Are you a millennial? Do you work with millennials? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, millennials are expected to make up half of the workforce by 2020 and 75% by 2030. So, it’s important to figure out ways to understand these smart and talented millennials working at your company. Are there any idiosyncrasies with this generation that may be helpful to marketers?
Today, my guest is Garrett Mehrguth. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Directive, a growing digital agency that employs several millennials. Fortunately, Garrett has found unique ways to keep them engaged and motivated.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
- Garrett’s Motto: Learn, Engage, Create
- Lesson Learned from First Consulting Client: Ask clients to pay you upfront
- Never use your power as a leader to manipulate anyone to make a decision
- Attract millennials by investing in social media to create a positive work culture
- Utilize recruiting tools to find the most talented millennials
- Best Defense for Bad Reviews: Demonstrate importance of sharing experiences and showing reviews to everyone involved to continue to grow and retain talent
- Millennials are the same as everyone else, but treated differently, alienated, and made to feel demotivated and devalued by others
- Directive offers a meritocracy and culture where people can grow in the company based on how they perform, not how long they’ve been with the company
- One of the simplest ways to create a structure for success and motivate millennials is to help them prioritize their tasks and goals
- 99.9% of millennial performance issues are related to time management and communication, or under-developed professional expertise
- Millennials are motivated when being a part of something larger; they want to feel like what they’re doing is contributing to something
- Directive supports career-driven millennials who want to be paid what they’re worth in an environment that accelerates their development professionally
- Offer benefits that serve your team, not ones that attract talent; Directive’s coolest benefit is mental health support
- Millennials want to learn, and Directive stresses its importance to be successful by requiring each employee to create a piece of content every quarter
- Be a leader for millennials by holding yourself accountable and taking an authentic look at and fixing everything that’s wrong in your organization
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Quotes by Garrett Mehrguth:
“If you could learn, engage, and create, you could always be better tomorrow...because you never take your foot off the gas.”
“We had this thought process that if we can’t attribute something to revenue, it’s not valuable, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Your brand dictates the type of talent you acquire or it dictates the success of your organization.”
“Millennials want authentic leadership and want an authentic team and an authentic culture that’s doing things for them, not to attract them.”