Business is booming across the U.S. Despite countless shakeups and economic concerns, the post-pandemic recovery in America remains strong in many areas — and a new generation is beginning to cast a fresh vision for the future: Millennials.
As their generation enters its middle-age period, Millennials aren’t just having an impact from the consumer side of the equation. The restless generation is beginning to accumulate wealth and enter positions of power, too. They currently own 13% of small businesses in the nation and are scooping up roles across the C-suite. As this transition of power takes place, a growing number of Millennial-led teams are changing industry norms.
Examples of a Millennial-led Team
Here are a few examples of how Millennial-led teams are shaking up their industries.
1. Boomn Is Redefining Marketing
Boomn is a growth marketing agency zeroed in on one area above all others: ecommerce. The Boomn team helps new direct-to-consumer businesses build customer acquisition strategies focused on high growth scale while still focusing on profit.
The young team at Boomn started as customer acquisition experts for all industries and business types. They grew up in the fledgling online marketplace and spent years, in the words of the brand, “trying, testing, and perfecting our growth strategies — and have results to prove just how damn effective they are.”
As Boomn grew, its team — including co-founder, COO, and YEC member Ryan O’Connell — realized that it needed to pivot. As a Millennial-led brand forged with energy and efficiency, they decided to focus their marketing specialty on businesses that sell products direct to consumer. They realized focusing on one niche allowed them to be highly specialized and become better partners for the brands they worked with.
By moving into a model focused on helping direct-to-consumer companies grow and operate more efficiently, they’re able to service these brands at a much deeper level and efficiency than trying to be an everything for everyone solution.
2. Bella+Canvas Is Breathing New Life Into Apparel
The apparel industry has an appalling track record. It’s estimated that as much as 10% of global CO2 emissions come from the fashion industry. Bella+Canvas is redefining what it means to be stylish and sustainable. It’s doing so with a Millennial-led team of C-suite women at the helm.
The brand stands for eco-friendly innovation. Its site sports the slogan “innovating today for a cleaner tomorrow,” and the commitment is easy to see across its business model. The brand’s EcoMax Tees are particularly impressive. The 100% recycled clothing is created from cotton scraps and polyester sourced from post-consumer PET bottles.
Bella+Canvas was originally founded in the 90s. While its first founders were from an older generation, in more recent years, its leadership has come to include a growing number of young, ambitious leaders. Megan Spire is one of these. She spent a decade working with Bella+Canvas, rising through the ranks to become the company’s Vice President of Sales.
The fresh vision of these younger leaders is helping Bella+Canvas maintain its focus as the brand walks the line between cutting-edge fashion and sustainability. It’s an investment that isn’t easy for leaders to maintain. For Millennials, though, they have grown up steeped in the need to prioritize the environment, which makes keeping things on track easier, even in an industry known for its excessive waste.
3. Meta Remains a Disruptor After Nearly Two Decades
The presence of Facebook on a list like this would hardly catch anyone’s eye. After all, the social media site practically defined the concept of its industry in the first place.
But Facebook’s new parent company, Meta, is a Millennial-led team that refuses to rest on its laurels. Owner Mark Zuckerberg continues to seek disruption in the already disruption-prone tech industry. How so? Through his company’s investment in the metaverse.
Sparked by pandemic pressures and the growth of remote work, Meta has been focused on the potential of the metaverse for years now. The results have been up and down, but it remains a primary focus of the brand. Even at the time of this writing, Zuckerberg still sees everything, even AI’s recent breakthroughs, through the lens of the metaverse.
While the speed and degree of adoption remain up in the air, there’s no doubt that Meta is shaking up its industry through its young leadership’s intense focus on blazing the trail for the future.
Millennials may still be coming into their own. But there’s no doubt that their transition into leadership is well underway. As that continues to play out, Millennial-led teams bring their own unique brand of leadership to the table, shaking up traditions, perspectives, and entire industries in the process.
