Millennials—Lazy, Unfocused, Undriven Geniuses

The millennial generation has earned itself a pretty bad rap, if you ask corporate America. Actually, if you ask just about anyone in business, many have very few good things to say about us. We’re lazy, no work ethic, constantly calling off, taking vacation, no drive, can’t stay off our phones, always on Facebook, and constantly leaving "normal jobs" after a few months because we feel "a lack of accomplishment." We are the "right now" generation; the snowflakes. Whenever I hear a business owner talking about Millennials in this way, I always have one thought—wow, here’s a business that won’t be around in ten years.

Why?

First, you must look at it from a business point of view. The millennial generation is the largest generation to date. Yeah, that’s right, baby boomers. Sorry your reign and influence is coming to an end. Yet, millennials are being told how they should be living and the way the world works by older generations who refuse to see what we see. That world, in many ways, doesn’t exist, and in a few short years, simply won’t. Don’t believe me? I know I’m just another kid who thinks he knows better. The housing market crash—a market that was viewed to be impossible to stop growing, let alone decline...EVER; Toys R Us filing bankruptcy; giant retail companies falling left and right; malls sitting vacant. Business owners can sit and blame the economy, but it’s not. There is more money available now than there's ever been, you just have to look in the right places. Simply put, if a business isn’t generating income online and isn’t looking on how to transfer business operation to online-based in the next five to ten years, you’re signing your own death warrant. Don’t blame us for seeing it and not wanting to subject ourselves to more of what we grew up with, which brings me to my next point:

The majority of Americans would classify themselves as middle class. To understand millennial society and mindset, you need to realize what we grew up with. We witnessed the "way of the world" fall apart. Many of us grew up in middle class homes in the middle of the second largest recession is US history. We watched our parents, who worked good jobs for many years and may have even retired, get laid off, let go, their benefits reduced and cut, working part time jobs on the side, losing our homes. Simply put—we watched everything we were told would provide us a good life fail. We grew up with technology; we didn’t read about natural disasters or political scandals, we saw them live. We didn’t have to wait for the weekend to discuss ideas with friends and family—we shared instantly. We helped and watched people create fortunes just by clicking a share button. In a world where everyone was telling us how to live, we watched individuals who said "screw that" build empires; Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Even Williams (side note: if you don’t recognize some of those names you may have answered your own question on why you don’t get millennials if you don’t even know our modern day business idols equivalent to the Warren Buffet of our generation).

Millennials aren’t lazy. We don’t lack work ethic, we just live in a different world ,and it’s world world you need to join or you will find yourself working for one of those lazy, good-for-nothing millennials in the next ten years. The simple fact of the matter is that Millennials question everything, and that is why we don’t fit the mold of yesterday's market. Why do we have to go to work nine to five every weekday when we could literally do everything asked of us sitting in our living room on a laptop? Why settle down when we could travel anywhere we want and still do our job? If the answer is "because my boss says so," then you can probably bet we’ll leave. Why work for someone else when we could create something new that "isn’t stupid" (we struggle in expressing ourselves)? Why won’t these companies just listen and embrace new things?

Millennials aren’t struggling in the workforce. We aren’t short-minded...we’re tired of waiting for you to catch up.