23: How Millennials are Changing the World for the Better

Kuinert on the show. I usually introduce my guests, but I think I'll have Jared kind of talk about himself in this one, because you're quite an interested fellow, aren't you. I would hope so, and that's why you have me on your podcast. You have a very interesting trajectory to what you're doing, which I really like. First of all, how old are you? Nineteen as we recorded for that, So you're still a teenager? Yeah, it's My birthday is

October sixteenth, So unfortunately notccerb a teenager much longer. But I am enjoying my teenagerhood for the last few months that I have it. Well, now, when is your When is your book due out July twenty eighth, before you turn twenty Yep, goodness, that would have been awkward. The title of your book is called two billion under twenty, Is that right? Yeah, two billion nunder twenty. Millennials are working down age barriers, changing the world. Okay, so you

believe millennials are changing the world. I think that's a hypothesis. I think it's inevitable. It could be wrong. No, but you're saying it's true. And so how are they changing the world? Jared? Yeah, I think that there's a lot of different ways you can look at it, depending on whether you want to look at entrepreneurship and how millennials

are changing that space. If you want to look at corporate America, if you want to look at education, which you're a huge proponent of and you'r or in the thick of it at pen There's a lot of places to look, So I guess I can start with the basics. Millennials seem to be more of an entrepreneurial generation than generations past, and I think that is because we are the first generation that you could go on the Internet like I did at fifteen and try and start a business,

and that really hasn't been possible before past generations. You could have started a business fifteen, but you'd have to do it brick and mortar, style, or you'd have to do a garage sale or a car wash or something else that just required a lot more moving parts, whereas you can just use the Internet and pop something up today, whether you're ten or whether you're one hundred, and I

think that fundamentally changes things. With technology, also comes the rise in social media and different communications channels that allow millennials to voice their opinions more than other generations have been able to. So unfortunately, I think we get the narcisistic label a lot, or have gotten a narcissistic label in the past a lot to describe millennials. Yeah, well, there's an interesting there's interesting research on that showing that

millennials on tests of do score higher. Right. I mean, I think that at times it can be misconstrued as well. And I think that the use of social media and the ability for millennials to really speak their mind more than past generations have been or speak their mind and have it heard more globally at a more rapid pace. While it does lend itself to potential narcissystem if you get carried away with it, I think it does have

a lot of really good benefits as well. And that's when you can see the social movements that you've been able to see in the past few years really cooperate together and thrive at a global level. You can see people connecting at global scale. You can see youth leading youth at global scale, and that's really something that hasn't

been able to happen before. But now you have communities like two billion member twenty, you have things like the til Fellowship, you have even Malala and her work, you know, has all been youth leading youth at a global scale, and that's really not been able to be possible before at the level and at the speed that it is now.

So I think that's really interesting and it's eventually going to create, I hope, a more understanding world and a world where there's less hatred and there's there's just more cooperation amongst individuals, despite ethnicity, socioeconomics, any of the barriers

that exist between us. So I do fundamentally think that millennials are going to start creating more understanding and obviously we're not there yet, but I think that's another really different thing about millennials and past generations, since that will be a more understanding generation, and who knows what that'll that'll translate to an education or in business. It might be too early to tell, right, No, this is a

this is all a good point. I think that the technology has certainly given your generation of voice in a way that that like, my generation really didn't get a chance. Although we're my generation was just starting with the whole Internet revolution, we had we had more private voices like

friends and stuff. But yeah, I think so. Do you think that that the millennials, like this generation, they actually care about more issues impacting the world, or just they are given more of a chance now to actually express those interests. I think the second one probably fuels the first.

You know, if you're able to a good point, if you're able to voice your opinion and you start seeing results from it, and maybe things happen at a local level that you know, push you up in the hierarchy in terms of social status and you know, in terms of recognition from your peers, or if you actually see change we made and you're able to raise twenty thousand dollars for a hospital, or you're able to crowdfund, you know, fifty thousand dollars for your new tech invention, I think

that naturally is going to get more people to do more of that positive thing. So yeah, I think the second feels the first. That's a really it's a really good point. Now you've so you've been really busy. So let's kind of like outline all these things that you're involved in. So you're cauthor of this book two billion or twenty year calluthor with Stacey? Was it Ferrara? Stacy Ferra. Yeah,

she's another young entrepreneur. I guess her claim to fame is that when she was eighteen, she raised a million dollars or actually a little over a million dollars from Richard Branson and a couple other people essentially off the tweet. So talk about the use of technology. Wow. Wait, Richard Branson saw a tweet that she wrote. No, so I guess I'm going to share her story? I guess, but please do. Yeah. So she was on Twitter one day, saw Richard Branson had made a tweet about a charity

event that he had coming up in Miami. So join me for to make cocktails two thousand dollars a person you know, email this person if you're interested. Wow. And

she saw this tweet. She she was working on creating a company called my Social Cloud, with her brother and a third co founder at the time, and her and her brother, you know, got the cash together to like, within forty eight hours go to Miami and like, make this four thousand dollars bet plus airfare and food and whatnot to meet Richard Branson, And they ended up meeting him.

They pitched him their idea, and then a few months later, Richard Branson asked a couple of his colleagues, Jerry Murdoch and Alex Welch, to go visit the two in la and within three months of meeting Branson, they had had one point two million dollars in seed funding. Wow, so she's quite a go getter. Yeah, she's she's amazing. And then they sold the company within eighteen months to Reputation

dot Com. So she's one of the youngest female tech entrepreneurs to have an exit of that magnetus dude, And yeah, just been amazing co author and co founder. Is she a millionaire? I don't know. It's undisclosed how much she was bought out for, but she's all right. I guess she's living in Manhattan. Wow. Well, she just stoked the envy of lots of twenty one year olds listening to this podcast for just now, Well, she's she's twenty two herself now, so probably still twenty one year old's envs.

Probably still true, probably some forty one year old, probably some sixty year olds or some thirty six year olds envious. Yeah, okay, so but no, we've we've been busy with the book launch. As you said, Yeah, let's get back. We'll focus back on you now. Yeah. Oh, they's it's a battery pack. We come together, but we're we're both working on the book launch. How do you meet her? Then? Tell me that backstory? Sure, we met? Do you tweeted her? No? I didn't tweet it her. We met and shook hands

in a New York City subway for five minutes. And that was a partnership. But are you serious? Well, yes, it came because we were both in town and we were both at the Teal Foundation's summit in twenty twelve. Were you a fellow, I'm not a fellow. Actually, Stacy just became a fellow. Okay, it's cool news, But yeah, we were both there. I was. I don't even know how today was at the time. I think it was still seventeen. I just turned seventeen and a long time ago.

I know, crazy light years, but I just turned seventeen. I was in New York and Stacy was also at the event, although I didn't know that until probably two days in. But we were at the Teal Foundation summit. And for people who are listening that don't know what the Teal Foundation is, it's Peter Teel and his kind of nonprofit. Part of what they do is trying to get young entrepreneurs and scientists to take a look at education as potentially not the path to acting on their

businesses or their science endeavors. And he pulls kids out of school for two years to build their businesses, create nuclear fusion reactors or whatever crazy science stuff that you know some of the fellows are doing, and he gives them one hundred thousand dollars grant to do this. So they also have the summits that they put on once every six months or so, and we were at the summit.

The summit was actually where I got the idea for the book, because we were listening to a talk that said there was about twenty people selected for the Fellowship each year. It's about two hundred people in the room that day, but two billion people in the world twenty years old younger, and we've the whole world. Yeah about that many people now, I guess it is the two brilliant. That's a lot. Okay, Lizzy's confirming the start to start cutting the two billion under twenty and we'll see how

long the podcast episode goes. That's really good. Okay, many people are in America? How many young people are? Just how many people? How many people? About three hundred and twenty million? Okay, cool? Okay, well, okay, so that's a huge audience. Then CLO includes people who are zero age, right, the people who are like two months old? Yeah? Everyone everyone under twenty. So but in your book do you

feature like, like who do you feature? You feature the whole gamut of ages from zero to twenty not zero. But I think we have we have a couple of people that were like preteens, so you know, eleven or thirteen. Most people are a college age, I would say, and then you know, the people are all varying. We have Olympians in the book. We have teenage entrepreneurs of you know,

money and or started building successful businesses. We have uh singers, we have actors, we have scientists and like kids who developed nuclear fusion reactors in the garages or have developed like early detection tests to detect cancer. And then we have like a girl lost one hundred and fifty pounds and saved your life. We have literally the entire gambit of people you'd want from all over the world and all walks of life. And so the book drops July

twenty eighth. Yeah, what do you say, I'm excited. Yeah, you should be over over two years in the works. So it was over two years in the works, and you did how many interviews throughout the course of that. So the unique part about the book is that everyone wrote their own anecdotes and so we reached out, but everyone wrote their own one of three page stories, so

we didn't we didn't actually interview them. We got in touch with them, they decided to contribute their own personal stories as written by them, and then we just edited the hell out of everyone's stories and made sure it was, you know, book ready. So it's a really interesting process. And would I do it again. I don't know. It's we didn't necessarily write a three hundred fifty book where we managed like a community of three hundred plus people

and that's equally as difficult, if not more. Yeah, I mean you must have had a bit of a team. Did you have research assistant? Sir, No, it's really just me and Stacey, and then everyone took on their you know, their own writing. We edited the initial drafts and then had we had a professional editor, and then Saint Martin's Press is our publisher, so they came in and they did more edits and more edits and you know the rest is history. Very cool. Do you to feature any like?

I guess you would have featured some prodigies like Jacob Barnett. Jacob, for various reasons, couldn't be in the book, but his mom actually endorsed the book. Yeah, so yeah, it's I think because of his own book and because of just writes that he signed away at a young age. He couldn't be featured in another book, or he could be featured in it, but he couldn't write his own story. That's fair enough. Yeah, but you feature I mean, I think in an area of overlap of both of our

interests is so called gifted children. But you know, children that just do remarkable things at a really young age, well beyond was expected based in their age, So I mean in a way this is also a catalog of gifted children. This book absolutely big fan in that phrase. But you know, these are extraordinary people. What I mean, what do you think are some of the characters if you don't mind me like discussing some psychological aspects of this,

because this is something that I'm really interested in. Yeah, what would you say, are some uniting characteristics that all these people seem to share? Would you think Grit was a big part of a lot of them? Sure. If you want to talk about a someone that most people would deem a prodigy in the traditional sense, it's someone like Jack and Raca who he's the one who developed at fifteen an early detection test for pancreatic long and

ovarian cancers and one Intel's IF competition. Now he speaks around the world about opening up access to science information for both at the same National Association we give the Children conference. I did there you go last year? Yeah? Yeah, it went down. His talkically went down very well. It

was very popular. Yeah. His backstory in terms of GRIT was at fifteen or fourteen, even when he had what he thought might have been an early detection test, he reached out to I think two hundred different professors and one hundred and ninety nine said no or didn't answer his request to working in their labs, and one gave him a lukewarm yes, and that's the one he went to and ultimately made his creations with. But that takes a lot of grit. Yeah, I'd say, but is that

great or is that hutzpah? I've been thinking about trying to measure come up with the hutzpah scale. Huh yeah, I mean you might have to explain that from the non Jers listening to the podcast. Are you non Jewish? Cliner, No, I'm definitely Jewish. I mean, client so a very Jewish. Last time I was gonna say, so you knew you knew what I meant. Yeah. By the way, we don't have non Jews listening to this podcast purely the Jewish network. That's not true. I'm sure there's plenty. All are welcome,

All are welcome to listen to this podcast. Yeah. Hutzpah is kind of this Yiddish phrase for someone who's uh, go getter and like a but but there's kind of like a sense in which like, like how dare you you know what I mean like like you're kind of unreasonable go getter, you know, but but it's still like good like you know, like I when I was like

how old was I? People have often described me as having huts, But like when I was in college, I emailed the head of the psychology department at Cambridge University and I said, hey, can I study with you? Like people are like, how could you like email the head of the department, you know, like on an email, right, Like people like that's you have a lot of I mean I see that in you, Jarren. You I mean

you just reached out to me. You're like, hey, I'm going to be a pen like I stopped by your office, Like, I mean, that's there's a certain characteristic there not. I don't think everyone has that, sure. I mean, actually Adam Adam Grant connected us, but I guess they had him. So oh yeah, I mean you had a lot of let's put connecting with that on that's right, So good for you. So so there, So tell me some more

of the other things you noted. I know that like you weren't prepared necessary to do a full analysis, but I'd love to hear some in your intuitions about what you think are these characteristics because you know, I write about this a lot. You know what, what drives creativity?

So sure, I think for for various reasons, I don't know, it'd be interesting to revisit all the contributors and do another kind of interview series with them to figure out how that how they found exactly what they were passionate about. But all of them are acting on their pathsions in one way or another, which is very interesting, and I think that contributes to them all being prodigies and them

all you know, finding and acting on their gifts. Because I do think that everyone has the potential to act on their passions. I do think everyone has the potential to do something great, and that you know, there's multiple forms of intelligence, you know, doesn't You don't just have to be BookSmart the intelligent. I disagree. I think there's only one kind of intelligence. Really interesting. No, that's my whole stick, I agree with you. So my whole stick

is there's multiple. So so I think that you know, all these people definitely acted on their passions and it'd be interesting to find out from them what triggered that, because I'm sure it differed for some of them. It

might have been traumas you know. I know one of our contributors, dow Jock, grew up and lost his father in the Sudanese Civil War and then ended up escaping, escaping that situation, came to America, taught himself English in six years, and ended up getting on Penn's campus, and he was the captain of the Penn basketball team for a couple of years, which is that's an incredible story.

And maybe maybe trauma was the trigger for him to realize his gifts, both in basketball and then more importantly in leadership and then developing a nonprofit under his father's name for other people. And I think Jack has a similar story where it was a family member who had pancredic cancer and he did just wanted to eradicate that disease. So I mean, trauma might be one of them. For entrepreneurship, there might just be this sense of like if someone else can do it, why can't I? And it doesn't

matter that I'm younger or older. If I have the hutzman, I have the work ethic, then why can't I go after my dreams? For you know, I don't know exactly where all the triggers were, but you can definitely see in the book that every single person is acting on their passions in life, and that is why they can be deemed prodigies. Yeah, it's an interesting line to look at.

It's a very interesting line to look at. It. I really like these insights that you're giving here, you know, it reminds me of this look at developing talent and young people by Bloom, which is kind of considered like a bible for a lot of us in the field of talent development, and he identifies three kind of stages are things that are really important towards this path towards

high performance or creativity. The first is really this play falling in love part of the equation is a very common stage among these young people who develop extraordinary talents. And then the second stage is more of a precision kind of methodology where they have mentors and they learn

from people about technique. And then this third part is this purpose part where they kind of realize through all this work that it kind of forms a big your picture and they see where, you know, very specifically their passion fits into helping something beyond the self. Sure do you do you recognize these these three things and these people that you were talking to, Yeah, there's there's definitely a lot of people in the book that seeked out

mentors along the way. I know, I've done it myself for my own journey, and Stacey's done it, and you know, definitely with the entrepreneurs in the book, you see them seeking the mentors that kind of would trigger the change, or would trigger the one book that they read that gave them the mindset shift that allow them to then go out and do their thing. Everyone in the book is really entrepreneurial actually, whether they're whether there entrepreneurs or not.

You know. So we have singers in the book who have taken on their careers in different lights and have used the platform of singing to then also sign book deals and also sign fashion deals and then get paid to wear clothes and get paid to write, which are too passions of you know, Talia, who's our Scottish pop star in the book, and it's kind of cool to get paid to write and wear clothes if that's two things you enjoy, she probably, I don't like wearing clothes now.

I would much prefer being naked all day. But it's the Jewish only naked podcast. I should do that that podcast. Who would I interview Jared? I don't know, just like naked Rabbis or something. I feel like that would be the most the weirdest podcast. It took me the name of your podcast, the Naked Rabbi Podcast. I mean, that would just be like so bizarre and yet amazing. A picture of a rabbi like covering his stuff with a

keep up. Yeah yeah, well I are showing me, you know, dressed as a rabbi covering myself with a kill yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, maybe we should move on from that mental image now that our audience has that mental image deeply informed greens in their mind. This is great, Yeah, it's great. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, so okay, yeah you mentioned someone who likes to wear clothes and gets paid for doing it. Yes, so so Talia Tally is a cool story where actually that's a perfect mentor story.

What's this person? Is this a female? Yep, Talia Storm. I'll put her in the show notes. She's a new version recording artist in Scotland. Okay. When she was thirteen, she was discovered by Elton John. Wow. She actually, you know, she had a cool opportunity where she was like on vacation. Do you know I actually discovered Elton John no way, Yeah, yeah, when he was thirteen. So we paid each pay these things back. And I think one of your amazing gifts

is the use of sarcasm. Oh really, so if I made your book, if I made a book, that would be the only thing that you highlight about me eventually. But he's a sarcastic ass, basically the sarcastic naked rabbi. But no, she she was found by Elton John at thirteen, and by like fifteen or sixteen, was just you know, has tens of thousands of Twitter followers and Instagram followers. She's making a name for herself. She kind of sounds like Amy Winehouse for like the you know Amy Winehouse

two point out and super talented. She looks really cool. Yeah, and now she's want to be your friend. So now she's not only a singer with Virgin Wow, she's getting paid to wear clothes. And then she's she's signed a two book book deal with Scholastic. So she you know, my point five minutes ago before Naked Rabbis and Mentors was that she's being really entrepreneurial about her career. And you know, she's not an entrepreneur by most people's like standards,

or by like Silicon Valley standards. You know, she's not starting a software business yet, but she is thinking about her career entrepreneurially. And a lot of the contributors are thinking about their careers or their lives entrepreneurially and really taking it into their own hands to make their paths rather than rely on people to craft safety nets for them or offer them things, or wait for a job opening or opening to appear in life and then you

applying or taking that. You have a lot of creators, and you have a lot of people thinking entrepreneurially about their careers and lives rather than accepting what's given to them. And I think that is that's different about millennials than maybe they're maybe our parents. Yeah, I mean that is that is a significant difference. What do you think that What are the cultural factors? It's more than just technology. What else is going on there? What? What is education different?

I feel like education still stinks. Oh yeah, but maybe maybe that's one of the big differences, is that it is really not doing well. And then you also see

new alternatives that haven't been there before. It's while it may have stunk for our parents, there was less alternatives to education, and like my mom and dad weren't like, you know, dropping out of college without a huge taboo, whereas I've taken, you know, one gap year and I'm taking a second and still able to support myself financially and also kind of I'm sure it's a little taboo for some people, but I've found the tribe that doesn't find a taboo, and it's made it a lot easier

to do. So do you think you may never go to college? It's a possibility. I wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, right, You could still become a multi billionaire entrepreneur. Yeah, I mean, I want to get to multi millionaire first and then worry about multi billionaire. But it's kind of necessary to get there first. You can't. You can't be a multiplionaire without the first being a multimillionaire.

Could you? Maybe you could? Why don't you count a two billion and we'll see you got a little sarcas sarcastic as in you too? Oh yeah, that's what I get. That's why we get along. Yeah, yeah, I think I think we connected since we first met, you know, And yeah, I'd be interested to hear kind of what your thoughts are on all this because you're you're a professor, and you see very smart people at PEN all the time. Do you see a lot of these same characteristics in

some of your students? That absolutely without a doubt, But I wouldn't say all, I'd stay you know, there are clearly some students who have are driven by some sort of purpose or some sort of guiding light that that other students haven't quite found yet. And uh, you know, I mean I do see queer differences among the students, But I do think that we as teachers can can

play the role in activating or inspiring students. And you know, one of my one of my job requirements, as I see it, is to help inspire students to realize some sort of future image of themselves or just to just be inspired to like learn the material on the course. Sure,

I think that's important. I think so another you know, I think that's another reason why we created two billion under twenty is that, yes, we want to really inspire young people to act on their passions, and then we also want to send out kind of a radar to see who's out there and if there are really crazy, wacky, talented millennials that we don't know about for some reason, we want them to reach out and know about us so we can connect them to our online community and

start doing cool stuff with them. But we also wrote the book to better educate educators and parents and people in corporate America about how millennials tick, because if you just read the media of the last five years or so, you're not going to get a pretty picture of millennials. I mean, if you go if you go to Google right now and you type in millennials are, you'd be amazed to see, like what drops down in the auto suggestion Let's do it. Let's do it right now. Millennials

are broke, stroked the worst. So nothing, I'm not making that up, folks. So when when we when we wrote the introduction to our book, the number one thing was I think it was stupid. So that's like how we started our book is like, millennials are stupid. But even if you there's there's some places where you can go and do that and you'll get ten dropdowns, you'll probably

only get one of those dropdowns. That's positive, you know, so you'll have I wonder if that's more general phenomenon, Like if you type women are you get women are like bacon, Women are like chats. Women are better than men? Isn't that? Isn't that based on what people search for in Google? Why are people searching for women are like bacon? I don't know, that's weird. We can't talk about that on the Naked Jewish podcast though, because we're not at vacant.

Of course, exactly right, that's exactly right. But but but this is this is my other podcast right now. Wait a minute, So there's like, so like, give me something else. Let's see if anything men are let's do men are? Men are better than women. That's funny because women are better than men. Yeah, are better than when men are visual. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Okay, so that's not as bad. But I mean, are maybe just

people on Google are just negative? I'm just trying to think scientifically about this, Like maybe it's not specific millennials. What about let's say Generation X are slackers. So look, no one's good, no one, no one's positive. We need more positive search terms. Maybe your book will improve that. Yeah, well, I think I think reading these stories and you know, seeing that it's seventy five people and then really, you know,

hundreds in our online community. It's not just the one off feature on ABC or Fox that you're going to see the successful young person doing something like building a nuclear fusion reactor. And then it's like, oh, great, you know little Timmy who's seventeen built a nuclear phasion reactor. Let's all pat him on the back, and then Timmy goes back to his normal life. No, this is a generational message coming to you from people from over twenty

different countries and literally all walks of life. It's hard not to take note of this, and it's hard not to look at what trends can come out of this in terms of millennials. So I think it really can open up the eyes of educators, of parents, of you know, people in corporate America about how millennials tick. And I think that's going to be another great byproduct of this book.

I really hope so. And I think I agree that that's a good, big possibility for So I want to wrap up here and just tell me any other projects that you're excited that you're working on right now. Yeah, well, Stacy and I are going to be launching companies underneath the two billion unt or twenty brands, So our intentions are definitely not just a book. Our intentions are a

lot greater than that. Can't announce exactly what company or companies we're going to be building yet, but the Naked Rabbi Company unfortunately not Stacy's not Jewish unfortunately, but you know, naked Rabbis really don't mind, yeah, interacting with people who are not, but okay, go on. Yes, I think one of our ventures will be to go to the Fortune five hundred and go to the larger companies and help them better market to millennials, better higher millennials, better retain

top young talent. I think will also be doing initiatives to continue growing the two Billion under twenty online community and maybe even bring it offline, but just continue providing more value to the people that we profiled in the book and you know, the people that end up reading the book. So I think those will be the two

of the things we really focused on postbook launch. And then I've been growing my speaking business, so I've been traveling around the world and talking about two Billion under twenty, talking about millennials in the world place talking about youth entrepreneurship. And I'm actually getting ready to pitch my second book to publishers in August, so that'll be exciting. Dude, you don't need like the kids don't go to college, That's

what I'm saying with you, coming from the pen professor. Yeah, I know, that's that's good irresponsible in me, I know. I mean, I don't think college is for everyone. It sounds like you've you know, for right now while you're on this path and you're you're cooking on all fours, you know, I say, just keep going, and I wish you all the best, Chared, I think. I think that's the stance I take, and that two billion under twenty two billion under twenty takes, is that do what's best

for you. You You know, if if you're conscious about your goals, you're conscious about what options you have, and college makes sense to do, then by all means, go do it and make sure you're getting a return from your educational investment. And if it means like taking a gap year, which is the focus of my second book, then by all means take a gap year and then reevaluate. If it means Okay, like, turn the jets on. I got to be building businesses. Are you inventing a cure for cancer

and that needs no college right now? Then don't do it? You know, it's it's really just being conscious about your decisions and then going with what's best for you. Cool man, Well, you're definitely leading a charge on this new philosophy, the philosophy of the millennials. Yeah, I hope so. So keep up the great work and thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to The Psychology

Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as informative and thought provoking as I did. If you don't like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com attata