Corporate Nomadland – the Gig Economy and Digital Nomads

Corporate Nomadland – the Gig Economy and Digital Nomads

Nomadland art … IS Life

The Academy Award winning movie “Nomadland” portrays a woman whose town is decimated when its largest employer leaves. No jobs means homes go valueless, and people are forced to leave. Not only the economy, but lives are wrecked without money, healthcare and any sense of economic future. What follows is a pretty bleak overview of living in one’s vehicle, hustling for jobs of any kind and building networks of other nomads who give encouragement to each other – but not a lot of help. During the movie, the lead character is offered at least two very solid opportunities to move into a more stable situation (one with her family, and one with the family of another nomad.) Yet, she turns down both. Despite living what the filmmakers portray as a very difficult, lonely and economically bleak situation she chooses to continue the nomad lifestyle.Today’s Gig Workers, or Digital Nomads, are often thought of as bleak, lonely people. No permanent job, no permanent employer, no “corporate” home. The view is often of people who are on the stark edges of the economy, struggling to survive in an uncertain future. And that view would largely be wrong.

The Gig Economy, and its self-employed Digital Nomads, represented HALF the U.S. Workforce before the pandemic hit. The World Economic Forum, Ernst & Young and the U.S. Federal Reserve all said that the emergence of the self-employed Gig Economy Digital Nomad represented the largest single economic shift in several generations. All have said this trend for business is as big as the emergence of mobile and internet technologies. It is characterized as a fundamental change in how people work, and a dramatic change in the outdated Industrial Era “contract” between companies and employees.

Digital Nomads are NOT merely a pandemic artifact.

They are members of an enormous mega-Trend: (1)

  • The gig economy is growing so fast its job creation alone can account for all the jobs created in the USA from 2005 through 2016 (corporate hirings/firings were a net no gain)
    • In the last 40 years the employer/employee compact has disintegrated, leading fewer people to trust their employers, so they seek alternative cash flow sources
    • It is estimated half of gig workers maintained full time jobs – but are actively seeking entrepreneurship. Thus the resulting unwillingness to return to low-pay jobs as the pandemic ends.
    • The Gig workforce of Digital Nomads is growing 5x faster than growth in traditional jobs
    • 63% of Gig workers say they started not due to economic requirements, but as a choice
  • In 2017, 53 million Americans participated in gig work (36% of all employees)
    • By 2027, trends project over half of all Americans will be involved in gig work. This pre-pandemic statistic is likely to understate the likely results due to pandemic changes.
    • Prior to the pandemic at least 40% of the American work force made at least 40% of their income from Gig Economy work
    • Digital Nomads cross all age groups? 44% of Boomers, 59% of GenX, 63% of Millennials

Digital Nomads mostly CHOOSE this work approach. In a fast-paced, quickly shifting world the idea that an employer can “protect” its employees is a façade. With the average corporation lifespans now a mere 8 years, no job and no employee can be protected. Neither pay nor benefits are ever a given in markets where companies acquire, merge, are acquired or fail with such regularity.

Employees Empower Themselves In Gig Work

Being a Gig Worker actually fulfills the corporate goal, sought for 35 years, of “empowering employees.” Despite what managers said, organizations operate today in the militaristic style of the last 100 years. Unless you’re the CEO (dictating your own pay and terms) someone is your boss. And your #1 job is to please the boss. Success is less about results, and a lot more about politics, corporate behavior and luck. But as a Digital Nomad you are your own boss. You contract to do something, at a rate, on a timeline and then you deliver. You are empowered to do the work you want, when you want it. To lead the lifestyle you choose, making as much as you desire. Doing your own training, building your own skills, selling your services and reaping the rewards.

Corporate Nomadland is much, much bigger than the Nomadland of the movie. And it is largely comprised of people who want to work like Digital Nomads. It’s not bleak. Rather, in many ways it is the future of work. Especially for people who provide services — from accounting to marketing to sales to planning, to education, workshops, security, etc. It is a world built on networking, connectivity, individual accountability, and entrepreneurial behavior as it existed prior to the Industrial Era.

For Full image: JDP Employee Screening
Unfortunately, a lot of old-school employers and government officials still don’t understand this mega-Trend. They keep trying to force Digital Nomads into becoming employees, by altering work rules and regulations and promoting old-school style unions. Efforts attempting to force employers to do what they can’t – operate their business like it’s 1966. Business people today must be adaptable to market shifts, changing competition and fast moving customer needs. They can’t afford full-time employees and incumbent overhead costs on roles that simply are not economically suited to their needs. Trying to force this behavior hurts the Digital Nomads even worse than the employers, because they don’t want these changes. That’s why the effort to change laws making Gig Workers employees failed in California. That’s why employees failed to unionize an Amazon facility in Alabama.  Even President Biden favors unions, “The policy of our government is to encourage union organizing.” (POTUS tweet 4 Feb 21) Those are not the right answers to today’s problems.

We are living a mega-Trend, accelerated by the pandemic

We now know we can work asynchronously and mobile. We know the results of our work are more important than physically attending meetings, or office politics. We know that we can be more efficient, and capable, when empowered to focus on results and not outdated policies, procedures and processes. And this trend will continue to grow. Despite the CEOs and other leaders that want to force everyone back in offices, in large droves people are choosing not to go.

That’s not to say the government couldn’t be a lot more effective if it accepted this mega-Trend and attempted to assist its citizenry with new approaches. There need to be entirely new approaches for implementing and regulating safety nets – like unemployment, health care and retirement programs. There need to be new regulations for contract negotiations and dispute resolutions between large corporate entities and Gig workers. New approaches for Digital Nomads to network in ways to set output standards, work standards, pricing standards for effectively working with their much bigger customers. There need to be new approaches for bringing on and eliminating transition teams for large projects. Basically, new approaches which support the adaptability and flexibility needed by both employees and Gig Digital Nomads. Digital Nomads are here to stay.  Speaking of mega-Trends, have you seen the new AI-controlled, EV camper?

(1) Section reference

(2) Additional references

-MegaTrends by HP “The Future of Work – The Gig Economy
-World Economic Forum – “The MegaTrend that Will Shape Our Working Future” the Gig Economy
-EY MegaTrends – “The Future of Work” the Gig Economy
-Supermoney – “The Growing Importance of the Gig Economy


Don’t Miss Adam’s Recent Podcasts!

Did you see the trends, and were you expecting the changes that would happen to your demand? It IS possible to use trends to make good forecasts, and prepare for big market shifts. If you don’t have time to do it, perhaps you should contact us, Spark Partners.  We track hundreds of trends, and are experts at developing scenarios applied to your business to help you make better decisions.

TRENDS MATTER. If you align with trends your business can do GREAT! Are you aligned with trends? What are the threats and opportunities in your strategy and markets? Do you need an outsider to assess what you don’t know you don’t know? You’ll be surprised how valuable an inexpensive assessment can be for your future business.  Click for Assessment info. Or, to keep up on trends, subscribe to our weekly podcasts and posts on trends and how they will affect the world of business at www.SparkPartners.com

Give us a call or send an email.  Adam@sparkpartners.com 847-726-8465.

How Amazon Used Trends to Buy MGM for Free

How Amazon Used Trends to Buy MGM for Free

Free Trend Money!

Amazon is buying MGM film studios for something less than $9 B. Sounds like a lot of money. But since Amazon can make its own money, effectively this transaction is free. Now you must be wondering, how can Amazon make its own money? By creating “Trend Value.”

Back in 2016, before Amazon started making acquisitions like Whole Foods, its valuation (or market capitalization) was $332 B. But its assets were only worth $30 B. And remember, Amazon was not, and still isn’t, very profitable. Net income was only about $2 B at that time. That extra $300 B of valuation (10x the assets) wasn’t from earnings, but rather because Amazon was a global leader in e-commerce with about 40% market share in the USA. Because e-commerce and cloud computing were growing trends, investors gave Amazon an additional $300 B in value as a Trend Leader.

Because Amazon was riding the big trends to e-commerce it created $300 B of very real value. This very high share price allowed Amazon to keep investing in ways to grow, including making acquisitions.

Compare with Walmart. In 2016 before, Walmart bought Jet, it had almost no e-commerce. Walmart had $232 B of assets (7 times the assets of Amazon,) but it’s valuation was only $216 B (2/3 Amazon’s.) Because Walmart’s assets (and business) were concentrated in the no-growth retail world of brick-and-mortar stores its value was less than its assets! Investors were basically saying that to create value Walmart would have to sell its assets – not grow its revenues. As a result, Walmart’s Trend Value was a NEGATIVE $16 B

Six years (and a pandemic) later, and the world of e-commerce has exploded. WalMart bought Jet, eschewing adding traditional stores and instead investing in e-commerce. As a result its assets grew very little, but its market valuation improved to $399 B, an 85% enhancement. And it’s Trend Value went up to $60 B. A good thing, but still only 1/5 the 2016 Trend Value of Amazon. A $9 B acquisition would be a very notable acquisition for Walmart using up over 50% of its cash. And taking out a 2.5% chunk of its market cap, and a whopping 15% of its enhanced Trend Value.Meanwhile, since 2016 Amazon has purchased an entire grocery chain (Whole Foods) and made enormous investments in distribution centers, trucks, and other supply chain assets. That has increased Amazon’s asset base 10-fold, to about $320B. But now Amazon’s publicly traded shares are worth $1.62 TRILLION. That’s right, with a “T.” By investing in Trends (e-commerce and cloud computing services [AWS]) Amazon’s Trend Value has risen to a whopping $1,300 Billion. Amazon’s Trend Value is 21.5x Walmart’s.

By investing in Trends, Amazon created a cache of value

They used that value to make more acquisitions. Even though it made huge investments in assets – far beyond WalMart’s – its Trend Value grew even more. Now Amazon could purchase MGM for $9 B and use only 10% of its cash. But it won’t. It will use shares. But that $9 B is now only .55% of Amazon’s value – and only .7% of its Trend Value. Negligible on the balance sheet, but opening up tremendous revenue growth for Prime Video.

If you want to create money, invest in trends. Walmart was the renowned leader in retail, and computing for retail, until trends shifted the market. Now it is an also-ran compared to Amazon. And because Amazon is leading in the Trending markets of e-commerce and cloud computing it has created the money to buy MGM. Again, not with profits (which are still only $20 B) but with the Trend Value created by proper market selection and investing.

So are you creating money by investing in trends? You can literally create your own money, usable for all kinds of investments, when you invest in trends. Or are you grinding out the business, like Walmart with all those stores, but creating almost no value in the vast majority of what you do? The choice is really up to you.


Don’t Miss Adam’s Recent Podcasts!

Did you see the trends, and were you expecting the changes that would happen to your demand? It IS possible to use trends to make good forecasts, and prepare for big market shifts. If you don’t have time to do it, perhaps you should contact us, Spark Partners.  We track hundreds of trends, and are experts at developing scenarios applied to your business to help you make better decisions.

TRENDS MATTER. If you align with trends your business can do GREAT! Are you aligned with trends? What are the threats and opportunities in your strategy and markets? Do you need an outsider to assess what you don’t know you don’t know? You’ll be surprised how valuable an inexpensive assessment can be for your future business.  Click for Assessment info. Or, to keep up on trends, subscribe to our weekly podcasts and posts on trends and how they will affect the world of business at www.SparkPartners.com

Give us a call or send an email.  Adam@sparkpartners.com 847-726-8465.

Trends Drive Value- Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft

Trends Drive Value- Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft

Click for ebook

Business Trends from COVID19 impact hartung

Thrive to the Future – 4 top trends for 2021 and beyond.

When looking at America’s 8 largest companies, a LOT has changed in 15 years. Back in 2005 the most valuable company was GE. The list was dominated by oil & gas companies; ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell. The biggest bank (Citi) and biggest retailer (Walmart) and 1 pharma company (J&J.) There was only 1 tech company on the list (Microsoft.)Value of top eight tech companies

But the world has changed, and that has impacted these companies dramatically. Most had GREAT pasts, but they did not adapt to a changing world. GE’s market cap has fallen 75% as it failed to keep up with trends. Oil companies failed to move into renewables and other industries (like electric car production) and they’ve lost over HALF their value. Walmart is most noted for missing the e-commerce trend, the big banks were clobbered by the Great Recession and “big pharma” hasn’t produced a blockbuster for many years. All down significantly.

But, the value of the top 8 companies is MUCH higher than 15 years ago – 5X more. These losers were replaced by some very serious winners. From $2.1T in combined value, the top 8 are now worth $10.5T. But notably, only 1 company is still on that list – Microsoft – which is up 620%!

The list is now dominated by 7 technology companies.

And for good reason – they all followed trends. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google,) Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent all built their strategies around developing solutions for people to follow the major trends of being mobile, operating asynchronously, supporting gig work and adding artificial intelligence (AI) to their customers. By refusing to rest on past laurels they have become the mega-giants of today. (Hartung, “Thrive to the Future – The 4 Top Trends for 2021 and Beyond)

 

Value of top eight tech companiesThat these companies would overtake old leaders was not a foregone conclusion – nor an obvious one to most people. Not only were the previous giants big, they had incredible reputations and extremely strong management teams. And these tech companies were not without problems.

  • Apple almost went bankrupt just a few years prior to 2005, trying to be the “Mac” company. But Apple built one innovation after another helping people meet the emerging big trends – until it became the most valuable company on the planet (10 yr value increase 540%)
  • Microsoft was locked in to its Windows/Office domination and seemed unable (or unwilling) to acknowledge the big trends and its value languished under a terribly myopic CEO (Ballmer.) Yet, new leadership was able to see the trends and moved radically to build out cloud services and support for alternative customer solutions that changed the company and its fortunes (10 year value increase 330%)
  • Amazon was a former book seller turned general merchandiser. But Amazon started applying technology to understand its customers and help them be better shoppers, using AI to make them the leader in all things e-commerce. Simultaneously Amazon built the worlds largest and most secure cloud services business (AWS) helping support all major trends (10 year value increase 1,350%)
  • Google was a search engine, with an unclear business model. But Google went to unexpected lengths to make ALL forms of information digital, and accessible, and searchable. And it monetized that digitization in ways far beyond anyone expected leading to the end of newspapers and many other publishers (10 year value increase 370%)
  • Facebook was considered a fad for young people. Most business leaders thought Facebook’s users would disappear, and its young leaders would learn there was no revenue in attracting eyeballs (just as News Corps learned and shut down MySpace.) But Facebook built out the trend for social contact in a mobile, asynchronous smart way creating an entirely new business market called “social media.” Facebook looked at trends in how people connected, making brilliant acquisitions early of Instagram and WhatsApp that allowed Facebook family of products to become the #1 use of the internet (10 year value increase 450%)

Key lessons?

First, the world is growing and leading businesses will grow. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Just like GE and Exxon. Second, never plan from past success, but instead plan for the future. You don’t grow value by being operationally excellent, because the world is forever changing and it will make your past business less valuable even if you do run it well. Third, make sure your plans are all built on trends. Let trends be the wind in your sales, or the current under your boat, or whatever analogy you like – just be sure you’re using TRENDS to drive you business planning, product development and solutions generation. Customers buy trends and help for them to achieve the future.


Do you know your Value Proposition? Can you clearly state that Value Proposition without any linkage to your Value Delivery System? If not, you better get on that pretty fast. Otherwise, you’re very likely to end up like encyclopedias and newspaper companies. Or you’ll develop a neat technology that’s the next Segway. It’s always know your customer and their needs first, then create the solution. Don’t be a solution looking for an application. Hopefully Uber and Aurora will both now start heading in the right directions.

Don’t Miss Adam’s Recent Podcasts!

Did you see the trends, and were you expecting the changes that would happen to your demand? It IS possible to use trends to make good forecasts, and prepare for big market shifts. If you don’t have time to do it, perhaps you should contact us, Spark Partners.  We track hundreds of trends, and are experts at developing scenarios applied to your business to help you make better decisions.

TRENDS MATTER. If you align with trends your business can do GREAT! Are you aligned with trends? What are the threats and opportunities in your strategy and markets? Do you need an outsider to assess what you don’t know you don’t know? You’ll be surprised how valuable an inexpensive assessment can be for your future business.  Click for Assessment info. Or, to keep up on trends, subscribe to our weekly podcasts and posts on trends and how they will affect the world of business at www.SparkPartners.com

Give us a call or send an email.  Adam@sparkpartners.com  847-331-6384

Disney and Uber – Using Trends To Great Success

Disney and Uber – Using Trends To Great Success

Click for ebook

Business Trends from COVID19 impact hartung

Thrive to the Future – the 4 top trends for 2021 and beyond.

In February, Disney appointed a new CEO from inside the company. I was not a fan. He came from the traditional,old Disney businesses – studio movies and theme parks. Both of those businesses are historical artifacts, not growing, and clobbered by the acceleration of trends due to the pandemic. But…… after crashing almost 50% shortly after changing CEOs (and the pandemic hitting the USA) the stock just reached a new all time high – recovering all those losses and pushing ahead an additional 16%.

A lot of companies are complaining about how bad the pandemic has affected them. They were tied to their historical value delivery system, and working hard to keep optimizing that business model. They weren’t following trends, so when the pandemic accelerated trends to more mobile, more asynchronous work, greater use of gig resources and ever greater expectations for AI (artificial intelligence) they simply were not prepared.

uber business pivot

But smart companies moved really fast to implement their plans for new business based on trends. For example, while everyone thought of Uber as an alternative to taxis, leadership had already been looking at changes in package distribution. They could see problems in the post office, limitations (and pricing) to UPS and Fedex, and the “last mile” delivery problem everyone local had — as well as alternatives being tested by Amazon.com. So when demand for local deliveries picked up, Uber was ready to change. In a year demand for taxi type services fell 45%, but deliveries rose 100%!! And even though it was small, freight jumped 35%. The net was that in an extremely fast changing marketplace, gross bookings for the first 3 quarters of 2020 were $40.7M vs. $46.8M in 2019. In a terrible year, Uber was ready (and able) to move fast to implement changes to keep revenues moving forward.

And Disney is another great example. Theme parks and studio entertainment seemed to be relics of a bygone era, and in 2020, demand was hit hard. Theme parks fell 37% and studio movies fell 13%. I thought Disney would go into cost cutting mode exclusively and start down the road to irrelevancy.

Disney business pivot

But I was wrong. Yes, Disney did cut employment in those two divisions. Extensively. But that was an acceleration of something bound to happen. Those businesses were shrinking and outdated. However, simultaneously, Disney poured resources into Media Networks and Direct-to-Customer, two business units highly aligned with trends! Basically, Disney went from that old-line movie and parks company to a very well positioned e-commerce vendor and competitor to Netflix!! In just 9 months. Already, Disney has 80M subscribers for Disney+, compared to Netflix 200M, and is targeting 260M by 2024!!! Disney has demonstrated it is ready to launch first run movies, at much higher prices, on its network – building out new pricing schemes as well as new business models for streaming content!

The lesson here is to be prepared for change! Don’t build your plans just on the past – past products and customers. Instead, look hard at trends and build scenarios for the future based on trends. Be ready for those trends to accelerate. And then TAKE ACTION. Don’t wait. Don’t stall. Go to the future by implementing those plans.

If you are planning based on trends you will be prepared for big changes in your “base” or “core” business. And you’ll develop plans for new solutions that meet emerging trends. So when the opportunity presents itself, like in a pandemic – or something a lot less dramatic – you’ll be ready to implement a new business. You can shift your value delivery system quickly to continue meeting the Value Proposition that you offer your customers.

Congratulations to Uber and Disney for doing good trend planning and being ready. Are you properly planning? Are you ready for change?

Don’t Miss Adam’s Recent Podcasts!

Did you see the trends, and were you expecting the changes that would happen to your demand? It IS possible to use trends to make good forecasts, and prepare for big market shifts. If you don’t have time to do it, perhaps you should contact us, Spark Partners.  We track hundreds of trends, and are experts at developing scenarios applied to your business to help you make better decisions.

TRENDS MATTER. If you align with trends your business can do GREAT! Are you aligned with trends? What are the threats and opportunities in your strategy and markets? Do you need an outsider to assess what you don’t know you don’t know? You’ll be surprised how valuable an inexpensive assessment can be for your future business.  Click for Assessment info. Or, to keep up on trends, subscribe to our weekly podcasts and posts on trends and how they will affect the world of business at www.SparkPartners.com

Give us a call or send an email.  Adam@sparkpartners.com  847-331-6384

Now’s The Time To Buy FAANG Stocks

Now’s The Time To Buy FAANG Stocks

Since 2012, I’ve been a huge fan of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. And they have dramatically outperformed the market. In the last few weeks their values have fallen dramatically, and I’ve heard grumblings that these are no longer the stocks to own.

I virulently disagree. Great companies are where you should invest. If you don’t think these are great companies, you would be right to sell them (such as GE, Sears, and many others.) But despite complaints about privacy, usage rates, nefarious users, and other attacks on technology, the reality is that we love the convenience these companies gave us. We may not think things are perfect, but we are a lot happier than we used to be, and we are pretty happy with how these companies respond to product concerns.

  • These companies are still global leaders in some of the biggest and most powerful trends everywhere
  • The shift to e-commerce from traditional retail continues unabated
  • The movement to mobile devices continues
  • Using the cloud to replace device storage and network storage will not slow
  • Entertainment continues to move to streaming from TV and other sources
  • Ad growth remains firmly on the internet and mobile devices
  • Platform usage (such as social networks) keeps growing as more uses are developed

These mega-trends are the foundation of the FAANG companies. These companies became great by understanding these trends, then developing products for these trends that have attracted billions of customers. Their revenue growth continues, just as their product development continues. And their profits keep growing as well. Nobody ever saved their way to prosperity. To increase value you must increase profitable revenues. And that capability has not left these companies.

Some of these company’s leaders have recently been called to Washington to testify. Will they be attacked, split up, further regulated? Will the government kill the golden goose? Given that the US House of Representatives has not firmly moved to the Democrats, I see almost no sign of that happening. Democrats like happy constituents, and given how happy consumers are with these companies the Democrats are very unlikely to intervene. There has long been a deep friendship, built on significant campaign financing and lobbyist involvement, between these companies and Democrats. The change in government almost insures that the actions in Washington will prove to just be a lot of short-term heat, with little change in the overall lighting.

I don’t know when these stocks will reach a short-term bottom. Just like nobody can predict market highs, it is impossible to predict lows. But the one thing I feel very strongly about is that in a year these companies will be worth more than they are valued today.

For insight into my strong favorability for these companies, take a look at the infographic I’ve provided regarding Facebook. Despite the Facebook stock ups-and-downs, this infographic explains why long-term it has been very smart to buy Facebook. Despite how people have “felt” about the company, it is a GREAT company built on powerful trends. To understand even better, buy the ebook “Facebook, The Making of a Great Company” on Amazon for 99 cents.