Episode #114 – Taylor Pearson on Evolving Worldwide Economic and Business Trends (and its impact on you)

It is John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy. I am here with Taylor Pearson. Taylor is a good friend of mine. We met a couple of years ago. Not sure where we met, Thailand, maybe Phillipines. Do you remember?

Taylor Pearson:  I think it was Bangkok two and half years ago, end of 2012-2013

John McIntyre: We have been working a lot on building businesses over the last years. Taylor isn’t a copywriter or a marketer. I think he is  a philosopher. He is a thinker. What is interesting in conversions we had about businesses, even changes that happened in last few years and some of the patterns that were seen. It is less about email marketing and how to build sales funnel. If you zoom out and look on the overall trend of last 50 or 500 years – interesting patterns are going on now, how global economic scale is shifting and what it means for individuals right now. Episode is quite different to usual episode. You might be starting business or you might have well-established business and looking for more ways to expand or start a new business. We will have this stuff in few moments. Taylor, how are you?

Taylor Pearson:    I am doing good. Thanks for introduction, John.

John McIntyre: Thanks for coming on the show. Before we get into the needy-greedy stuff, can you give  background on who you are and what you do?

Taylor Pearson:  In Bangkok I was working at digital marketing agency for a year and a half before that and I hooked up with guys from Tropical NBA. I came to work with them. I was managing online ecommerce stores. I worked with them for couple years. Then continue work with ecommerce clients. I do online marketing and conversion. What I have been working on for the last 6 months – I have been writing a book

John McIntyre: Tell me about the book. What is the book about?

Taylor Pearson: The title of the book is “The end of jobs”. It is very easy to get caught up in criminal games. I was talking to someone last weekend. She is an accountant, she was talking about this guy who is ahead of her in this company, he is struggling, he is really a nice guy. If things work out, maybe she could jump up and take his job as an accountant manager. I thought: “Oh my God, you are missing the whole point. No. The opportunity is not this guy’s management job. Internet and technology and all these things are going on.

The book is as you said a big picture look at what’s going on in terms of getting some perspective. Why is it happening like it is.

John McIntyre: One really good point that you brought up there. The [?] Arcada is missing the opportunity. Everything changes fast. We have brains of prehistoric times, we think nothing really happened. But now the way we communicate totally shifted, for example like we talk with the other side of the world via scype. In this situation good question is: “what am I missing? What do I dont know?” 

Taylor Pearson: If I think back to things I was working on three years ago and what stressed me out and what I was focusing on – it is so trivial now, that I have a broader perspective. As things change faster and faster at least for me

John McIntyre: Let’s talk about that and fourth economy. There is a lot of books that approach this topic from different angles. “Fourth economy” is an interesting book on changes we are talking about here

Taylor Pearson:     Everything he was talking about theoretically I saw was going on. He lays on the book the case for economy moving through different stages. Move from agricultural to industrial, to knowledge, to entrepreneurial. The reason we have this economic problems right now. We have successfully made this transition, we havent shifted from knowledge to entrepreneurial. He looks in a big macro prespective. And I saw it from micro prospective.

People in entrepreneurial economy, like you, are getting dramatic outcomes. I think she works 50-60 hours a week on that accountant job. You are getting much better outcomes than she is. Why is that? Are you than much smarter or harder working? Or are there other things at play?

John McIntyre:   I was thinking VC, venture capitalism, people who were here ten years ago. I think even they dont grasp eternal opportunity, change. Even when you say from the inside, from your own experience, like you are doing right now, it is too hard to understand how fast these changes are happening.

Taylor Pearson:             I had this conversation with someone in late 20s, and he talked “when I retire at 65”. I was like: “Oh, God!”You cant even imagine how the world is gonna look like ten years from now, much less 40 years from now. If you look at these things and where trends have come you get the notion of what’s possible and what the opportunities you are not taking advantage of.

John McIntyre:             Absolutely. What are some of the risks you are seeing? We have economical issues, wealth gape. That is macroeffect. Some people experience it, some people don’t. There are also risks on micro level

Taylor Pearson:    Middle class is at risk. Globalization and software are replacing middle management. We see occupy Wallstreet. Glass ceiling has disappeared, there is more upward mobility than ever. If you are not positioning yourself well – you will fall through the floor

John McIntyre:   There are a lot of advertizing agencies out there that have no accountables. They create fancy, wonderful looking campaigne, won awards, but they have no way of tracking whether they made a difference in sales. Companies would keep paying for the work. This stuff does happen today.

Technology improves. It is easier to deal with inefficiencies within the system. When you want to take something out of the system – something has to go back in. Global economy consists of small economies. We try to take value out of that, build families and stuff, if we don’t put the same amount of value back in, the economy will contract.

Today it is easier to find out who is doing the work and who isn’t. People who look for work – they are at a long way, who already work – they are at luck.

Taylor Pearson:  Absolutely. Middle layer disappears.

John McIntyre:   In some way it is scary. Softwear comes out, machines come out. More and more jobs are gonna get replaced. Someone think it is a bad thing. Jobs will be replaced offshore. But that is just the nature of economics – we can do it cheaper and faster. Those people who will be there, will need to create value

Taylor Pearson:  It is valuable to talk about this stuff. The punchline in macroeconomics is if people are operating these positions, they are told what to do, they are not growing in their career. If someone can do your job for 4 dollars in Sri Lanka, that job is gonna disappear. The flipside is for the people who are ambitious it is their time right now.

I can log into my Odesk account and I have access to a better labour pool than anyone on the history has had before. I have access to technology that was 10 times more expensive. I remember listening to interview with Ben Horowitz. He founded first cloud computing services. He was doing what Amazon web service does now. They were charging a thousand times as much. That were early 2000s

John McIntyre:          There has not been a better time for people to get into business, it is cheaper and easier and less risky than ever. Because of technology you have to create value

Taylor Pearson: Sure. Barriers are basically you need access to the Internet, laptop. Once you crossed that barrier, everything is on you. I consulted companies on online marketing and technology. Everything I learned either from free resources. People complain about $500-1000 online courses. You drop $20000 for a semester of college where you take four classes on like English Grammar. You take $150000 loan to get this Liberal Arts/Humanities degree or Marketing degree. Why would you pay $100000 for Marketing degree?

It is absurd. All barriers are right there. You just need your willingness to use them

John McIntyre: I think that is an interesting side there with education. Everything is online. Even if you take courses online, you dont have to pay for he whole semester. Universities face pressure. You dont need a degree anymore if you can get a result. Today is easier to measure what is making impact and what isn’t

Taylor Pearson:          Yes. Before you didnt have access to these resources. In the early days of printing press there were only 8 copies of each book. Today every 3 days there is more data  added to the Internet than there was in existence before 2000

John McIntyre: That is a challenge. It is easier to become overwhelmed.

Taylor Pearson: Our generation is defined not by what we say ‘yes’ to but what we say ‘no’ to. In 1980 US Department of Labour had 2000 possible career options. It is big number. You needed to take 49 questions test. And based on your test results it tells you what is your ideal career. And now we are 40 year later there is a million possible careers. What you do – conversion expert – would not  be listed under half million possible careers. There is even more than that.

It is increasingly important to say ‘no’ more often to figure out what the things are worth focusing your attention on. You, the individual out there is the cash resource. It is no longer capital or banks or governments, these are the things that are holding back economic growth. It’s individuals.

John McIntyre:         Uhm. Our generation grew up in affluence, there were no major wars, well, except the Iraq. We had some recession in 2008. Many people cultivated slight attitude of abundance. We need to follow our passion, enjoy our life. We talked about this book about Steve Jobs, people we really look up to. But if you look at the path these people took to be where they are right now, pretty much no one followed their passion. At the end of the day it was about becoming good at something. It wasn’t about fun. The foundation of this has to be skill and value.

Taylor Pearson:         Word ‘passion’ lost its meaning. There is no short cut for doing the work. For the people who are willing to do the work, we living in the greatest time of human history. The tools of production are are your fingertips, they are on the keyboard

John McIntyre: You have to do the work and you have to change. In 1900s change was more static. My grandpa finished school, went to university, worked in bank for next 45 years. The goal is not think “I will do this for the rest of my life” when you found something yours, but to embrace the ongoing opportunity

Taylor Pearson: A guy was working in post office on Germany. He wrote this article when he retired, saying, he was doing nothing for the last 20 years, just put papers across the table. Over the next 20 years that’s not gonna be feasible. If you push papers over the desk, they gonna get someone do that for cheaper, the papers will be digital

John McIntyre:      Humans if to look from evolution point, dont wanna spend energy, thats why some like routine and dont like learning. That’s not enough anymore

Taylor Pearson:          If you compare people who are obsessed with the idea of passive income. It is always rewarding to get up and work on something fun

John McIntyre:        Another thing is hussling. When people put pictures evryday on facebook, twitter, it is a bit like culture, it is when you think you are an entrepreneur and you are cool. There are few minutes left. What can we give to listener as a piece of advice?

Taylor Pearson: I am kind of interested to walk listeners through your story. Over the past years there is a notion – you go to college you get a good job. It wasnt the case before, people who went to college were wealthy aristocrats. I look at you, you kind of started with apprenticeship type of position. And this is a trend now: you go to someone who has successful business and you use it for building your skill.

John McIntyre: I grew up in Sydney, in 2011 I was in Nepal for several months, had a slight cultural shock. I didnt want to follow boring way of university- job. When this opportunity came to work on Phillippinnes, I bought a one way ticket. The worst case I saw then that I would borrow the money of my mom to come home.

When I arrived, my website that earned $400 a mo was smacked by Google. I stared a dating site. That failed, I didnt do one sign up. I learned how to ‘Sell’, I thought it was a greatest skill on earth. I was doing the best I can, grabbing every opportunity, hussling.

Taylor Pearson: So you found a community of people who were doing marketing and sales. Another interesting side is – in the past entrepreneurship was all or nothing affair, you had to mortgage your house, you had to open retail store on Mainstreet. Now it is cheaper to learn lessons like you learned from your smacked $400 website than 20 years ago

John McIntyre: The amount of people online is growing. All those people are gonna need products, servises. I listed the interview with Mr. Mask and he says there is no big risk on starting a business, if you have to wife, or husband, kids. Even if you fail, you can go and get a job at Mc Donalds. You can still find food, the threat to our survival is very little

Taylor Pearson: I have a friend, I went to college with him. He saw what I was doing. He quit a job half a year ago to start a company. He said worst case scenario was to loose skills. He was inhouse accountant at this big oil company Alabama. Now he understands online marketing, how to manage relationships with vendours.

I am reading the House of Morgan right now, a biography of J.P. Morgan. 2001 Borders turned over online book stores to Amazon

John McIntyre: It is better to be bad player in the right game, than good player on the wrong game.

Taylor Pearson: Get in the right game!

John McIntyre: So if people want to connect with you, where is the best place for the m to do it?

Taylor Pearson: taylorpearson.me. I will give away 67 of my favourite books on business. It is $1300 for the book. The book is called “The End of Jobs”. It will be on Amazon

John McIntyre: Thank you for coming on the show.