Build a Brand Gen Z Wants to Work (and Buy) From

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz and my guest today is Len Silverman. Len has over 30 years of experience in marketing his own, a seven-figure company with dozens of employees in multiple states. As a former Learning Center owner, he has seen Gen Z grow up and has gotten to know the generation and what makes him tick. So maybe that's why he wrote a book called Mesh, Aligning the Personal Brand of Gen Z with Your Company Culture. So Len, welcome to the show. Thank you. Appreciate you having me, Carl. So Gen Z is, as I recall, something like 13 to 28 years old now.

0:45Is that who we're talking about? Yeah, pretty much. I look at 1997 as the beginning of that group. So, yeah. So the personal brand of Gen Z, what is that? So, you know, a lot of people these days are talking about personal branding. So I thought it'd be really nice to sort of combine that with things that I'm hearing about Gen Z on the street. But just to give you a little bit of a frame around this, I started in the Learning Center business in 2004. So at that point, Gen Z was 70 years old and I owned learning centers for 21 years. So basically I have seen these kids grow up and I call them kids.

1:19Obviously some of them are young adults, but more and more, as I talked to business owners and leaders, I've been hearing stories about, oh, they're so hard to work with and I can't figure them out. And basically some people are saying that they're kind of washing their hands a bit. And that really was disappointing to me. And I thought, well, the first thing is you've got to understand Gen Z. And I'm not saying that you as a company have to completely change to meet them where they are. But I'm a big believer that you need to understand your customers. You need to understand your constituents.

1:55And in this case, you need to understand your potential employees. So I go into a lot of depth in terms of why the generation Gen Z is the way they are. You know, you can't paint anyone with a broad brush. So they're obviously not all the same. Sure. But they, you know, they experienced their economic downturn in 08 or 09 and watched what happened to their parents who maybe thought they had safe jobs. They saw the whole country shut down for COVID. they obviously grew up with phones in their hands for the most part so their access to information and their view of the world so much broader than mine was at that same age that i think their perspectives on working and being a part of a company are very different than my generation gen x was when we were first coming out yeah and i i think every it's interesting i've read some you know, society or societal studies on, you know, generations.

2:59And, you know, a lot of it comes from what their parents experienced. You know, that's what they experienced as they were coming up. Same with, you know, I was born in the 60s. I mean, so my parents were, you know, post-World War II. And, you know, it really has a lot of, you know, influence. But from a workplace standpoint, particularly, you know, what are some of the common, probably stereotypes is the best word, you know, that, that, that, you know, folks are saying, Hey, I don't get it because X. Yeah. Probably the one I hear the most is, oh, they're lazy. They don't want to work. They ghost you.

3:37You know, you'll not only set up an interview, but sometimes you'll actually hire them and they don't show up on the first day of work. So those are some of the common things that I hear. I also hear really quite a lot about and and first of all i do want to preface this by saying i'm not saying this these are the things i'm hearing but that they're they're kind of uppity that they will they will sit in a meeting with senior executives and chime in like they have an equal say say at the table which is an anathema to baby boomers and gen xers we we just frankly don't get that I'm not going to turn this into a comedy routine, but I could.

4:21So who do you feel? I mean, on the surface, you wrote this for maybe people like me that are hiring folks, right? But I think there's kind of a broader audience for this, isn't there? What I really, the people that I'm really trying to get to pay attention to this would be folks who are in a position where they are frequently hiring and need to understand that they are going to have to make some changes or adaptations in their company to work with this generation, which now is more than 20 % of the workforce. And obviously it's only going to continue to grow because these, these guys are becoming more of the age tour.

5:04So the old ways of doing things are not necessarily going to work. And I'll give you a couple of brainstorming. When I started working, and this was probably the same for you, John, we had mentors and they maybe didn't call themselves mentors. I had people who would grab my shoulder and say, Len, we don't do this. You don't do this in the office. If you're in a meeting with my boss, you don't talk. Those were things that I was told. And in a lot of ways, I think that the the folks that I've met with are almost a little afraid to have those kinds of conversations. But I will tell you that Gen Z craves mentorship.

5:44It has to be positioned the right way for them. They have a different way of speaking and being mentored than we did, but they still want that kind of tutelage. The main thing is they want opportunities. I found them to be extremely entrepreneurial and that's whether they're doing their own thing or within an organization they're basically doing what we call skill stacking they just want to grow their own skill base which means look for you know cross-functional opportunities for them and ways for them to grow their own personal skill which hopefully they'll continue to pay back to the company but from their perspective it also allows them to take those skills somewhere else so that's another thing is you got to be aware, your interaction with a Gen Z employee might be shorter than it used to be with someone Gen X, Gen Y.

6:38So if I'm a 24-year-old looking for a new place to go work, would there be something in this book for me? There would. First of all, we talk about, and you're going to be very familiar with this. I know that you and I and a lot of other people have talked about the customer journey for a long time and I'm a big believer in it. I know that there are people who have discussed the employee journey, but I hadn't seen a whole lot where folks saw the interaction between a customer journey and an employee journey. To me, they're kind of one in the same. And so if I was a younger employee just starting out, I'd be looking at companies very differently.

7:21I would be looking at kind of the pre-application process, what kind of brand they're positioning themselves with out in the marketplace. So if I get to know them, what are the things that are going to make me like and trust them? I would be actively looking for companies that are talking about the things that are important to me. I discuss those in the book. But I also give advice to the employer that some of the hoops you have to go through in today's world when you submit an application to a company are just not going to work anymore. So you've got to make it transparent, quick. I'm not going to say easy, but at least it has to be manageable for the applicant.

8:04So I think that to help Gen Z sort of understand and identify those companies that are clearly trying to make a connection with them will make it a lot easier so they don't do what I call crop dusting, which is going on and shooting out 40 or 50 resumes. Because that's very disheartening when you do that. So they can spot things that I'm talking about in the book to identify those companies who are clearly making an outreach to them. So there was a day when this is a prestigious company, this is a big company, they pay well. I mean, that was like the checklist, right? But now it might be, hey, a lot of flexibility for time off.

8:49They give to causes I believe in. How much of that sort of balance of the brand is kind of just playing to who they're trying to attract? I mean, because the problem with brand and culture is it's kind of hard to fake it. You know, it usually comes out, you know, one way or another. So how much, you know, is a company, you know, this idea of aligning their brand? You know, how much of that is, is intentional? How much of that is just, Hey, we're already doing this stuff. We're just not communicating. In my opinion, it's very intentional. As a matter of fact, I just made a Lincoln post about five minutes before we jumped on here.

9:26And it talks about that kind of consistency that you can, you could talk about culture all day long, but at the end of the day, your culture will show itself through how you and your leaders represent your company on a daily basis. this so from my perspective for those companies that are serious about this there's pre-work that needs to be done you know you you need a you need a quick audit to make sure that your experience and your your brand as a company are what you think that they because otherwise you're going to keep having these glancing blows where gen zers will try you out and they're pretty quick to discover whether you're fit or not.

10:06And they'll go find something else because they clearly have a work to live attitude versus a live to work attitude. So if it's not you, they'll go find some gig work until they're able to find the next full-time job. Yeah. So you really do need to look at your own internals and make sure that your company on a daily basis is what you think that it is. Monitor and manage that, then go out there looking for that new employee base. Your retention will be much better. You know, I wonder how much generations, whatever all the letters we apply to them, millennials and Gen Xs, I wonder how much they could learn from that.

10:47Because, you know, there was that kind of, they're just lazy, you know, they don't want to work hard, you know. And some of it was like, no, they just want to have a life. And, you know, here I am working 80 hours a week, you know, thinking that that's like the way. And if they don't want to do that, then they're wrong. So I wonder how much the new workplace, the modern workplace in the world could actually maybe gain from a different mindset. I remember clearly, I can't remember if I talk about this story in the book or not, but I remember clearly one of the very first corporate jobs that I got.

11:22I'd been in the job maybe six months and my boss calls me in his office and he says, Len, I got to tell you, I really appreciate your work ethic. and I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, you come in on time. When you go to lunch, you only take an hour for lunch. And he said, I got to tell you, I've worked with a number of people your age and it's very unusual. Okay. And I'm Janet. So I don't think what we're talking about now is anything totally new. I think every older generation in a way kind of thinks the younger generation is a bunch of screw ups. which, you know, clearly they're not.

12:00But what's different today is I think we all talk more openly. I think that the ability to have these kinds of conversations are so much easier than they used to be. So now is a great time for employers to pick up on it and realize, you know, again, this is a growing workforce. We have got to figure out how to make this work for everybody. And you mentioned work-life balance is going to be incredibly important for this generation. They're going to look for, you know, what kind of community impact you're having. So there are things that you could pay attention to and kind of put in place again before you go out there full-throatedly trying to hire these younger people.

12:43You know, we've spent most of our time talking about employing the generation, but there's a lot of them that could be customers too, right? And so would a similar kind of brand alignment, you know, apply to your marketing messaging? Which is precisely, and I'm glad you brought that up. It's precisely why I think that the employee journey and the customer journey are so closely related. Because early in that process, it doesn't matter if you're positioning your brand for employees or for customers, that voice should be the same. And so I do think that this has a huge impact. If you're going after a Gen Z consumer base, the book clearly lays out what's important to them and can really help a company to kind of align not just their communication, but more importantly, what they're doing every day with what Gen Z is looking for.

13:34Yeah, there's certainly a growing trend in marketing circles of this idea of employer branding, where the idea that you're a cool company to work for is a pretty good marketing message, too. I think it is. Yeah. I mean, we, we want to be the cool kids and it's, it's good to work for a company that you can be proud of because as you know, I mean, you've got, you know, the marketing hourglass and bottom of the hourglass is basically repeat and refer, which is retention and being an advocate for your company out in the marketplace to find other employees. So our end goal is really the same. And that's to convert these employee customers into advocates for our business.

14:18So I think a lot of companies, whether they wanted to or not, found that as a practical nature, we're not going to find the people that we want if we don't kind of realign our brand. What are some of the mistakes you see people that are actually trying to change? What has either been their perception or their reality? What are some mistakes in trying to kind of adapt and align with this new generation? You know, it's hard to say if it's a mistake or not, because I think that the jury's still out a little bit. But, you know, we've read in the press about DEI initiatives. And, you know, right down the street from me, we have Tractor Supply as an example.

14:56And they had initiated DEI as a department. And then they pulled back on that because they were getting pushback from their customer base. So were they doing that in order to grow sales? or were they doing that in order to attract this younger generation? I don't know which it is, but again, it ultimately turned out to be a misalignment with their company culture. So I would say if you're doing these kinds of things, if you are looking to use pronouns with all of your employees, just make sure that that absolutely aligns with the company you are and you're not simply doing that to try to placate Gen Z.

15:40Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. Those are the mistakes that I see. If you're genuine, you're fine. Well, and I think you go to really the root of all of this is be who you are. It's probably going to now, are there some things that you can do to, where I see people make a mistake is they have that alignment, but they just don't communicate. it. It's like, well, of course we do that. That's the right thing to do, as opposed to, but then can you take that too far? And you see companies promoting their environmental consciousness and it's like, you make styrofoam. But they're aware of it. So how far is too far?

16:28You know, I think that is a very interesting point. And, and I think that is for each company and possibly its own board of directors and its customers and its employees to kind of decide for themselves. But, you know, again, in marketing, we talk about content pillars. And I think for a company like we're talking about, if I were them, I would come up with three or four areas that I would want to talk about. And then I would weight them. So if environmental issues are important, but maybe they're not the most important thing, I might spend 10 to 15 percent of my time talking about that. And that would be internal conversations first to make sure that we do have that right mix that feels right.

17:10How would you advise a company that wants to realign their brand, but there's also... It's like, here's our culture and we believe it and we're going to stay true to it. How does somebody like that attract... So they attract folks that want a job. How do they turn them into A players? They may be a little bit misaligned initially, but is there a way to then say, look, here's how we do it here. Here's why we do it that way. And some will fall off, but some will turn in day play. You hit the nail on the head. We do it this way. And this is why we do it this way. That's the most important thing for this generation.

17:49They want to understand why. And if you've established the culture that I think we're both talking about, then the whys are going to be there. And the other thing, I'll go back to the mentorship thing again. You know, I talk about this in the book. I think it's critical for these new employees. you could set up a buddy. It could be a peer mentor. It could be a leadership mentor. But someone who reinforces that message and helps that newer employee to shape how they're presenting themselves to align with the company, most importantly, understanding why we're asking to do that. And it could be, hey, I've been on your social media and I got to tell you, some of those things just don't really align with what we're doing.

18:33Let me tell you why. This is my customer. And my customer doesn't really like to see that on social media. Oh, okay. Well, that becomes pretty clear. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about abbreviations and punctuation. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not going to go there. It's danger to stop the talk. So, Len, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by. Where would you invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work, but then obviously more about the book Mesh? it is very simple the easiest place to go is len silverman which is l-e-n silverman.com awesome well great it'll be interesting to see you know we're talking about gen z now what's the next generation what's going to be like their iteration right gen alpha that's what we're calling we're going back that's what we're calling okay okay all right awesome well again i appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by hopefully we'll see you out there on the road someday soon awesome thanks john you