The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization by Michael R. Solomon

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

The New Chameleons: How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization by Michael R. Solomon Consumers are changing but the marketing categories used to identify them have not. Engage with this new generation of consumers who increasingly take for granted that products and advertising will blend their multiple brand identities rather than market to them as a specific subculture. Male or female, work or play, online or offline. These and other market categories are no longer relevant as modern consumers defy traditional boundaries and identify as members of multiple subcultures. The New Chameleons reveals how to engage with this new generation and how to stand out among the competition. Global consumer behavior expert Michael R. Solomon directs marketers to move beyond their traditional categories and communicate with consumers as individuals rather than as a market segment. He explains how traditional marketing is based on the assumption of boundaries between us and them, the individual and the collective, producer and consumer, work and play, humans vs. computers, and editorial vs. commercial. He then shows how those boundaries are blurring: people identify with members of multiple subcultures; individuals seek collective advice before making a purchase; consumers no longer distinguish between purchases online or in-store; consumer-generated content becomes the norm; gender identity is fluid; gamification strategies turn work into play; and identity marketing becomes more popular. Combining history, data, experience and examples, The New Chameleons is written for every marketer (or reader) who wants to offer products and services that resonate with consumers now and in the future.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss well hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com oh my god another podcast but you never saw that one coming huh? 12 years and thousands of podcasts. Yeah, you didn't see that coming, did you?

Anyway, guys, we are here again with another brilliant mind, another brilliant author, and it's not me. I think I just made a shirt I can sell on the merch page. Oh, yeah, that one's going to make myself laugh. Everyone at home is in horror just going, it's really not that funny. Anyway, guys, go see all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. All those kids' places that they go play and do their little TikTok videos. We're trying to be there and trying to be cool.

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for us as chris foss see my books over there and everything reading reviewing today another brilliant author like i said who saw that coming michael r solomon is on the show with us today. He is the author of the latest book to come out from him, The New Chameleons, How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization. And he's going to be talking to us about his book, some of his studies, research, and everything that went into it. I love this show because these folks, they go spend like 10,000 to 100,000 hours researching this stuff, and we give them front row for an hour. And guess what? We don't charge you, so that's pretty good to do. As a professor of marketing, he was in the high school of business at St.

Joseph's University in Philadelphia, and an industry consultant, Michael combines cutting-edge academic theory with actionable real-world strategies. He is a keynote speaker and the author of 30-plus books on marketing, consumer behavior, advertising, and social media. I guess he didn't do one of those Gray Love books. What was the name of that book? But we'll ask him about it. Dorian Gray? Or I don't know, whatever. The joke of the book I'm talking about, ladies. His most recent book, but we'll ask him about it during great or I don't know, whatever the joke of the book I'm talking about, ladies, his most recent book, the new chameleons, how to connect with consumers who defy categorization won the 2021 New York city, big book award in the marketing and sales category and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show, Michael. How are you? Hey, Chris, it's great to be here. I'm sorry. I didn't write 50 shades of gray, but

you know, what can you do? I mean, there's still time. 30-plus books. My God, man, I just barely got my first one done, and I'm 54. It took me that long to write it. Yeah, it's a process. It's a labor of love, I guess. Well, you have a lot of love, my friend.

So give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs and look you up and order the book. Oh, sure. You can reach me at michaelsolomon.com. That's my website. Or shoot me an email at michael at michaelsolomon.com. And you can find my books on Amazon and everywhere else just like yours. There you go.

You've got to love the Amazon. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Well, Chris, I've been studying consumer behavior for a really, really long time. And the last 10 years or so have been a real roller coaster for everybody, even before the pandemic. Lots of changes going on and definitely a lot of changes in the way that that consumers or we as consumers interact with the marketplace, the relationships we form with the companies that sell to us, how we think about ourselves, how we use those products. And many of these actually basic categories that we use to try to understand, describe our consumers are really obsolete.

And I'm talking about some basic descriptors like even male versus female, young versus old, and so on. And so I wrote the book, it's called The New Chameleons. And of course, a chameleon is a reptile that's able to change its color very quickly to adapt to the external environment. And I think that's a pretty good metaphor for the way consumers are acting today. Now, we're not changing our colors per se, but we're changing our identities constantly. So in the course of a single day, you can be actually many people. You might be a spouse, a podcast host. How preposterous is that? An executive, a parent, and on and on, an athlete, a stamp collector, whatever it is that floats your boat.

And for each of these identities, of course, we require a different set of products and services to really do our best at those roles. And so the New Chameleons is looking at how people, everyday consumers, are playing a much active role today in terms of picking and choosing the brands that really mean something to them. So back in the old days, back 20 or 30 years ago, we'd all just kind of sit back in our Barca loungers and wait for advertisers to tell us what to buy. And we would just kind of get up and do it maybe. But today, people aren't like that for the most part. They're much more proactive. They're much more that they want to participate in the marketing process.

And they just don't want to be told who they are. They want to tell marketers who they are and then challenge those marketers to come up with products and services that make it easier for them to change their colors, if you will, throughout the day. So that's the origin of the term, the new chameleons. Are we more multifaceted maybe now? Or do we just have so many interests, we're into everything? Yeah. I mean, obviously, life's a lot more complicated these days. We are multifaceted. Compared to someone in, say, 1960, everybody absorbs about three times as much information today as they did then. And so our very identities have become, as you say,

multifaceted. We're involved in a lot more different things. Back in the 50s and 60s, everybody was pretty much, you go to work, you come home, you take your kid to Little League, whatever it is. But today, everybody is picking and choosing all kinds of lifestyles and products. And, of course, the Internet has a lot to do with that because now we don't have to physically be exposed to these new things in order to want them and to buy them. So we're all becoming kind of like an artist that's using brands as a palette to sort of paint a picture of ourselves that's unique and attractive. Wow.

Was there a generation that this is in? Is this the millennials? Well, certainly the younger people are pushing the envelope, but frankly, it's even old guys like myself. I mean, you're seeing this all over the place. And again, the pandemic certainly had something to do with it, but people, and again, you talk about generations, that's kind of an outmoded concept in and of itself. And I talk about that in the book. If you have a young Gen Y and an old millennial, or excuse me, a young millennial and an old Gen Y, in other words, they might be a couple of years apart. There's probably that particular label is probably not going to distinguish them very well because there's a lot more nuance in

there. And so, you know, I'm kind of leery of these grand schemes that propose to put all the consumers in the world into two or three little pockets. And then we think we understand them. Well, this makes sense. Like you say, it used to be people sat in their parking lot and you were smoking their camels, watching the tube, telling them that Mick Jagger comes on and tells you how to be a man or if you want to be a really tough cowboy, Marlboro comes on and gives you that whole thing. And, yeah, I mean, now people can go online,

and, like, I'm pretty active in just what you're talking about, where I go on Amazon, and I'm like, I want a really nice jam. What are the, what's the best jam out there? And so I'll go on a jam journey. And so I'm not seeing commercials for jam. I'm just like, I don't know. I just got a craving for jam. And I'm like, Hmm, I'd like to try a really nice jam. I do that. I, and all through my life, I've done my adventures and things that I do. And the thing about me though, with the new chameleons is instead of just having different flavors that I like, I have different personalities, like seven or eight of them. So there's the one who goes on Amazon. He's the one who says, kill, kill, kill all the time. He always orders knives. And then there's the other person. Anyway,

I'm just kidding. Or I think I am. I don't know. It depends on who's in control right now. So how do marketers address these chameleons? Well, we really have to look, and the technology allows us to do this. Today, it's often a lot more useful to think about a market of one. Back in the day, we talk about big market segments, and that's what I teach my students the first week of their first marketing course. It's all about market segmentation, dividing people up into these groups, and then assuming that everybody in that group is going to be relatively some men in their 30s who live in urban areas or whatever the label is. But today, again, those labels really aren't going to do too much for us. So we're much better off

tuning into individuals, of course, trying to use behavioral tracking and so on to see where they're going, to understand what they're up to, letting them tell us what they're interested in. And in particular, really elevating the role of the customer to be much more of what I would call a co-creator. Because today, your customers are actually your partners. And this is something, some people have figured this out, others just, that's the last thing they'd ever want. But the reality is that we have co-creation going on

all over the place today. And we have companies that are basically partnering with their customers to say, we're not gonna tell you what to buy, you tell us what you want and we'll see if we can make it. So we're going to literally involve you both in product development and maybe even in promoting the product using words and symbols that make sense to you. So we're not going to tell you how to do it. You're going to tell us. That's a big change in the last 10 or 20 years. And is that meeting

like trends, like people who aren't vegan or they want GMO or they want a health-friendly environment sort of things? Is that cause-related maybe? Some of it is obviously cause-related. Many of the big changes that we've seen, especially because of the pandemic, relate to changes in values, people rethinking what they put in their bodies, what they buy in stores, et cetera. So particularly right now, we're in a very kind of values-driven climate. We'll see how long this lasts, but at least for now, coming out of the pandemic, consumers are thinking about sustainability and all of that. Many of them never really thought about it before, but now

it's become top of mind. So companies have to be responsive to that. And I would imagine that the COVID made people even more, number one, shop online. I think Amazon just about doubled its employee base, I think, or something along those lines during the thing. So likely the people shopped online more. Sometimes I think I remember during the pandemic, just for depression, I was just like on Amazon going, what can I do to improve my shitty life here at the house during lockdown? And then, well, that's pretty much any time I go on Amazon, actually. Feel better consumerism.

Depression consumerism. Your life was crappy even before the pandemic. Well, of course. I mean, America, anyway. But what are some other things? I mean, I imagine one of the things marketers have to overcome is the, is it more costly to deal with this? Or I guess do you come up with strategies in the book to help alleviate those

or keep those down? It's funny. You assume that it's more costly to be more individualized. But in the long run, it's probably cheaper. And the reason I say that is that we know quite well that it's significantly more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an old one. But the mistake that a lot of marketers make is they're always going after that next new customer. And they're kind of, I won't say ignoring their current customers, but maybe sometimes taking them for granted a bit, thinking that they'll be there even though I'm looking for new people to come in behind them.

Customer acquisition is obviously a very important thing for many businesses, but so is customer retention. And what that means is paying more attention to the customers that you that you already have, because you've already got them on on your side. They like you. They've told you like you. Why would you now move on? It's like getting a Valentine's Day card from one lady and you move on to somebody else in terms of the lifetime customer value, you know, how much that customer is going to spend with you, not just this week, but over a long period of time, that's where it starts to pay off to, to focus on really cultivating the people who have proven to be the most loyal to you. And you're, you're probably in your, your viewers, some of them are familiar with the so called 80 20 rule, which basically says that

80% of your revenues come from 20% of your customers. Now, those numbers aren't set in stone, but it's a great reminder that it's a relatively small number of customers who account for most of the sales in just about every company. Those are your hardcore loyalists. And by taking them for granted, you're kind of putting your cash cow out to pasture. You're not really taking advantage of that. So in the short term, maybe it's expensive. In the long term, definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's the biggest challenge is the cost on it, especially with all the bot ad clickers and there's so many different ways to bleed yourself out with advertising online and targeting these new people.

So you help people just get a better understanding of, of, of what consumers are doing. And is this global? Is this more America? Is this, are you seeing the spread around the world with consumers? Oh,

well, it's definitely, it's definitely global. And I've had the opportunity to, to, to work globally. I do work, for example,

with Nielsen, which is a global market research company. And they measure consumers' attitudes towards brands in just about every country in the world. And obviously, there's huge differences as you go from one market to another. A lot of marketers forget that when they just think if it works here, it's going to work anywhere. That's definitely not the case. So understanding consumer behavior in general is so crucial to any business because marketing is about meeting needs. But if you don't know what those needs are, you're really just treading water. So that's difficult enough. But, man, when you start to expand your marketing and go elsewhere, you've really got to shelve a lot of the assumptions that you have about what's going to appeal to those new customers.

Yeah, definitely. And it's funny to me how people don't regard new current customers as odd. I recently had an experience where for the last two years, my stuff that I brought up from Las Vegas during COVID, I was put into a storage unit. And one day I was cruising online looking at my expenses for the storage unit thinking maybe I should find a cheaper one. And the COVID first hit and I'm like, I don't know how bad this is going to get. I'm in full depression. And I found that the local, it's not a local, it's a big chain across the nation of storage units. They advertise considerably lower rates online. So I was looking at almost like half of what i would was paying at the storage unit place uh monthly on their online offers and i'm like well crap i i

need to get that rate that that looks great and i'm paying the same company and so i called them up and i said hey i see the rates guess, are dropped or something's going on. And no, it's like, well, those are teaser rates, but, you know, we offer them. And then, yeah. And I go, well, can I get that rate with half of what I'm paying now? And they go, no, you'd have to move out and then move back in again. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You're actually telling me that I would have to move everything out of my storage unit and put it in a truck and drive across the street and then drive back and reload it again.

And you'll give me that rate. And they're like, yeah, I was, I don't know how you feel about that, but I was flabbergasted. I was like, I was like, Florida, I'm serious. You treat new customers better than me. And that was interesting. That's a great example. I don't know if it's arrogance or just being clueless or what. I think I was one of the few people that caught on to it.

I don't think a lot of the customers catch on to that or go to the front page to see what's going on. But, you know, you go there to make your payment. And I was just like, holy crap. And they do kind of use it as a bait and switch. After a year or two, they start jacking your rate up, which is how I ended up where I was just like, holy crap. And, uh, and, and they do kind of use it as a bait and switch after a year or two, they start jacking your rate up, which is how I ended up where I was at. But in my experience, if I've had customers that maybe they find, they found a sale in one of my companies and they go, Hey, uh, I know we signed up with you and you're working on our product, but we just saw that there's a sale.

Can you give us that price and refund us? Yeah, sure, man. Sure. You got it, man. And they'll be back. They'll love it. They'll be back and they'll buy five more items over the next four years. So you don't really think about eating it a little bit for them.

And so it really surprised me. Interesting thing was I called them up several years and complained about it. And bitched and moaned, especially as the coronavirus thing got deeper. And I'm like, serious. But they had me by the nuts because for me to, I think we were paying like, I don't know, 80 bucks a month and it eventually went up to 150. For me to move that stuff out with the team movers, it would cost like two, three, 400 bucks. So they know they have you by the nuts because it's going to cost you more to move out. It might take you a couple of years to recoup the investment. So they're just, we're

just going to hold a gun to your head and leave you in there. And we're not going to give you those new prices. And so what's funny is I just recently moved it all to another storage unit because they're right. Erased went through the roof and they actually wrote me and said, Hey, can you post a review for us? And I'm like, sure. Be careful what you ask for. And, boy, they did not like my review. They replied and they were very unhappy that I outed their little scheme.

But, yeah, it was really interesting. I mean, like, I'd rather take care of a customer. I think we paid the bill there every month for almost two years two and a half years like why wouldn't you do that but then some of these storage companies they make money that storage war stuff so so so many of these businesses have this have this attitude really a death and what it is is they're thinking short term they're thinking this this month but this deal that is like basically you can sell you can sell something to somebody the first time. As they used to describe good salespeople, he can sell ice to Eskimo. That's how good he is.

Well, you can do that the first time. The second or third time, good luck. And so, yeah, you might get that first sale. And if that's the kind of business you're in where you only need one sale to make your week or your month more power to you. But I think 98% of businesses aren't like that. We're talking about long-term relationships and being short-sighted like that. It's kind of like a restaurant where they don't give you a free coffee refill or something trivial like that. How much is that going to cost you to give me a free coffee? But I'm going to remember, oh, that's the place that gave me free coffee. Little things like that

really go a long way. Yeah. It's interesting to me because you and I both grew up in the era of the Tom Peters book, In Search of Excellence. And that seemed to be a real revolution in customer service. And man, that whole book just seems turned to shreds. And when it comes to cable companies, someone took several craps on it. Sorry, Tom Peters, it's a great book, but it seems like just customer service has gone out the window, especially with the technology age. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's been kind of a renaissance of customer service. At least people are talking about it now. There's a huge focus in the business on customer experience, mapping the customer journey, and understanding it. But as usual,

it's like that 80-20 rule. Probably 20% of the marketers are starting to wake up to this, but the large majority still have that kind of outdated attitude that you're talking about. So what are some of the things we haven't touched on in your book that you're talking about. So what are some other things we haven't touched on in your book that you can tease out? Well, what I do in the book is that in every chapter, I basically take a simple dichotomy that we use all the time and show why it's no longer really very helpful to use it. So for example, I talk about male versus female, young versus old, rich versus poor, producer versus consumer, machine versus flesh. That's an interesting one. As we become, as the boundary between robots and humans really starts to evaporate, we're giving robots human-like qualities and we're putting

them out as service providers and salespeople. And on the other hand, we as flesh and blood individuals are incorporating more and more technology into our bodies, whether it's wearables or implants or things like that. So that's kind of fun to think of. That's an example of a fun boundary to think about that really is evaporating as we enter this era of androids and half people and half machines and what's that going to mean for us as marketers so i talk i talk about a number of those and i'm happy to get into any of them in more detail so these this is some of the big things one thing one of the things you talk about let me pull this up here because i had this way for me you talk about how you talk even

about like gender identity being fluid gamification strategies that turn into play, and identity marketing. Give us some talk about what that's about and what marketers have to do with that. The gamification, I mean, one of the interesting boundaries, and I know you and all your viewers will get this immediately. We used to have a boundary between work and play or home and office, if you want to call it that. What happened at home was at home and then you went to the office and you left that behind and you came home again. How many of us today have seen that boundary totally blown up, right? So what we're doing is we're working from home and we're also playing at work. Right. So we're working at play in the sense that many of us are focused on quantifying how many miles we ran this morning. What's my blood pressure? And so using some of these games to to encourage people to lose weight or to save money or things like that.

That's the gamification part. But but also when you look at when these boundaries start to disintegrate in our modern world, that creates a lot of business opportunities as well. So for example, if you're in the home furnishings industry, you love the pandemic, at least you loved it financially, because all of a sudden it creates opportunities as many people start to look at their home environment and realize, well, it's time to fix up this room or turn that room into a home office because I'm going to be working from home from now on. So it's not just gloom and doom. The idea is that as we change our definitions, the way we think about people, it opens up opportunities. And another one, male versus female, right? So we know that at least for many people, not just in the States, but around the world, there's this amazing conversation now

about what it means to be male or female or something in between or something different. So gender fluidity is totally changing the way fashion companies are advertising, they're getting rid of Charlie's Angels and replacing that with androgynous stuff. Again, that creates markets. So for example, as men's traditional roles, like what is it acceptable to buy as a man? As that starts to change, we can expand markets. So let's say that you make accessories like jewelry bracelets or or bags now men potentially are buying your product as well where they didn't before so really lots of men are wearing for example bracelets like the one i have okay right here they wouldn't have been doing that maybe 10 years ago some men are like to carry

around so-called man bags which they wouldn't have been caught dead with 10 years ago still shouldn't be where we're we're flux. We're definitely in flux. But what it means is that suddenly you have people who are potentially buyers of your product or service that weren't before because in the old days, they were just not part of that group. Because women control like, what is it, 90% of purchasing? And the wives go online and do the purchasing and men, I don't know, watch TV and drink beer or something. I don't know.

Yeah. That's largely true. Is that changing? You're seeing more and more men taking an interest in this stuff. So is that model, do you forecast that changing where maybe men are more in control of money or spending? Well, they're certainly more going to be controlling expenditures that relate directly to them, like their own clothing and personal care products, where traditionally maybe the wife dressed them literally, they have their clothes every day. Maybe that's still the case for a lot of men, but it's definitely changing. So if you look globally

at, for example, at personal care products generally and cosmetics and so on, obviously women are buying a lot more of that stuff than men. But when you look at the growth curves, what you see is that for women it's fairly flat, but for men it's like this. So there's a tremendous amount of growth going on. So that's an example of kind of looking between the lines to see advantages as our culture changes and we have to think of new ways to describe our customers. Let me ask you this because we're on a decline of marriage for, I think, I think it was like 2099 or 2003, 2006, I don't know, somewhere in there. Living in Vegas, they closed the weekend

24-hour window. They closed the 24-hour window at the office in Las Vegas for things. People were just getting married as much. And we've seen a decline of it since, I think, 2006, if I recall rightly. Do you think that maybe some of that shift towards men buying is people are more single lately and men are just, I think, out of buy for themselves? Yeah, that's a great point, and that's certainly true. People are getting, whether or not they're getting married, if they are getting married, they're getting married later. Yeah, that's true.

So are women. Women are now more likely to be in their 30s, perhaps. They're talking about having children or older, 40s, 50s sometimes. So, yeah, all these, that's exactly right. And, again, as these roles change and maybe women aren't as willing to do the shopping for husbands anymore because they watch TV and they see guys who are able to lay out their own clothes every morning. I don't know. It's possible. I mean, the shift of, like you say, there's more people getting married older. In fact, I believe there's a recent report. I heard

this from someone. I'm not sure. I haven't double-checked it. And I like to double-check my data. But I heard that there are more women over 30 now that don't have children in the UK than ever before. And it's a sign of, well, the rise of feminism and also the rise of this. Everyone goes, you can go to your work, you can put off the having kids and all that stuff. Even in my dating pool, I'm 54 in my dating pool. I'm just amazed at how many women are like 52, 54 and they have like eight and nine year old kids or sometimes even younger. I've seen really young and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's a different market than when I used to see when I used to date in my thirties, 35s, 15 years ago, where women were coming out of their first divorce.

Now they're coming out of their first divorce in their 50s and 54. And you're like, okay, this is really interesting how the goalposts moved on getting married. And I think it's interesting, too. We have the most incels, most virgins, I guess, now. The dating pool is really messed up with what goes on with dating. And so I think men are probably doing more of the buying, which is interesting. And this is kind of my whole lead up. There was a, I believe it was, who's the big stockbrokers, the number one stockbrokers in the world?

And they do trading money. Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, I believe, was the CEO that came out with a report and they called it the new femme economy, where as women are rising, working more, they're also going to college more. That's one thing that's really interesting. There's more women in college over the last two or three years

that they broke that barrier. And it's interesting because women are hypergamous. They usually marry up. It's part of the foundation of the human experience or biology that women seek a higher place in the status for the best mode for their kids to make up the challenge and propagate society. And what's interesting is those women aren't going to be able to find as many men who are above their level that have the college degree along with them because less men are going to college. So there's going to be, I don't know, I don't know how you even break hypergamy. You really can't,

it's just going to be messed up. So people are going to just be single longer and stuff. And well, that Goldman Sachs report said there's a FIM economy. I'm thinking more of what you're saying that it's the amount of money women control and what they do is going to kind of become more to people, a lot more men in the market having to buy. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's definitely something to that. And when you look at, for example, when you look at China, that problem you're describing is infinitely worse. Japan?

Women are just not getting married because they're basically – because women are so much more in demand, because there are more women than men in China, let's just say they've become very picky about who they're going to marry, and they're not married below their station, like you were talking about. So there's a tremendous number of single men, for example, in China. So it's not just an American phenomenon. But, I mean, definitely women are an incredibly powerful, powerful force. But the other part of this is is age related as well. To what extent do we value age versus energy? And so people are, as we said, they're waiting until later to get married, they're establishing themselves. And some of the some of this issue just boils down to finances where people, people don't feel confident about bringing children into a world where they

don't know how they're going to support them. That's true. And a lot of that comes down to, like you say, the economy. I know it's harder for these kids nowadays. They really sink a lot of money into college and they're indebted up to their eyeballs when they come out. And it's a real challenge for them to figure out what they want to do. I think the millennials have kind of the same problem coming out of being born or coming into their 20s into the world during recession and not having the same sort of opportunities of jobs and everything else. And it took them a little while to start buying homes. I think they just recently got around to buying homes.

Yeah. Well, just imagine if you had the bad luck to be a member of the class of 2020 coming out of college. And so, unfortunately, a lot of students really haven't gotten the experiences that they need in order to enter the job market as they normally would and socialize and network and all of that. So that's a big loss as well. You talk about how younger kids have lost out during the pandemic in terms of learning, but older people have as well, just in terms of social skills, professional networking, and so on. Yeah.

It's going to be interesting to see how this whole thing turns out, especially with the declining population, declining marriage. I don't think most people realize how important marriage is to a tax base of America. And if you're not a growing country, you're a dying country, you're a dying empire. And like you say, when you look at China, I think they really screwed up their policy with that one-child policy. They would probably be beating us in their economy right now, pants off, if they hadn't done that policy. And now they're trying to reverse it, which is a little too late. It's a little late for that. But you see the gentrification of, I think gentrification is the right word, in Japan.

They have a real problem of disparity between young people who can support the economy versus the people in retirement. Japan has, I think, the biggest problem in terms of the large numbers of the aged. But other countries as well. Italy, for example, has this problem. Ironically, it's a Catholic country, but their birth rate is extremely low. And again, it's because of the economy. So we definitely have to keep an eye on things like that. But that's only one of any number of variables that we've got to track. It gets complicated. It is definitely complicated, my friend.

Well, this has been really insightful. Anything more you want to tease on before we go out? I guess I would just say that when you're thinking about your customers, don't just rest on some stale assumptions about who they are and what they like. Don't just sit in your office and say, yeah, I know exactly what they like. Get out there, and the best advice I can give to managers is walk a mile in the shoes of your customer. Take the customer journey not as the owner walk a mile in the shoes of your customer, take the customer journey, not as the owner or the principal of the company, but as a naive customer who's never interacted with it before.

And if you're able to do that, it really can open your eyes. I'm sure that sounds really good. Well, Michael, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Give us your plugs again. One more time.

Sure. You can, you can reach me at Michael Solomon.com. That's three O's Solomon. My email is Michael one more time. Sure. You can reach me at michaelsolomon.com. That's three O's, Solomon. My email is michael at michaelsolomon.com. And you can find my book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et cetera. So I appreciate it. There you go.

Thank you for coming on. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks, Monis, for tuning in. Go pick up the book. You can go to Amazon where refined books are sold. The New Chameleons How to Connect with Consumers Who Defy Categorization.

You want to definitely pick up that book. And there's 30 other books too. I got to catch up to you, man. I got to start writing stuff. And a lot of these are really interesting on consumer behavior, et cetera, et cetera, and marketing. Yeah, mostly what I've written in the past are textbooks.

Uh-huh. There you go. There you go. I like this, why fashion brands die and how to save them. So that should be pretty interesting. So anyway, guys, check out the volume of his books. Also go to goodreads.com for us to see everything we're reading and reviewing. Go to YouTube.com for us to see Chris Voss,

Goodreads.com versus chris all the groups on facebook and linkedin hell you guys know where it's all at now anyway thanks for tuning in be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time