Southern Pines, NC (PRWEB) November 27, 2007 — Executive Coach, Bea Fields, joined a distinguished panel of Generation Y business leaders at the International Coach Federation (ICF) Annual Conference in Long Beach, CA, to present on the topic of Coaching at the Speed of Y: Bringing Coaching to the Next Great Generation of Leaders. Along with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, Fields is the co-author of Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders. (http://MillennialLeaders.com).

Fields shared the stage with co-author, Scott Wilder, General Manager of Intuit’s Online Community, David Charles Cohen, Chief Executive Maestro of Writers of the Round Table Inc., Misti Burmeister, CEO of Inspirion, Inc. and 19-year old Ben Casnocha, Founder of Comcate.

“It was truly an honor to be co-leading this presentation with such a dynamic group of young leaders,” said Bea Fields, President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. “I had the opportunity to interview Scott, David, Misti and Ben in 2007 for the Millennial Leaders book, and to be with them in bringing such an important topic to my professional colleagues was inspiring. These visionaries are having a very positive impact on our future, and the public needs to know about them and their successes.”

Fields’ mission with this presentation was to provide professional coaches with strategies on how to achieve greater levels of success by learning how to attract Generation Y while inspiring older generations to gain a greater understanding of Gen Y’s world views.

“Based on the positive response from over 275 attendees, I believe we achieved our mission,” said Fields. “Gen Y leadership is a hot topic, and I believe we provided the audience with a fresh perspective on the challenges Generation Y is facing and how we as professional coaches can start working with them to support them in being successful in the future.”

Millennial Leaders brings readers a unique, close up look at the people responsible for the cutting edge of social and business trends. The authors offer interviews with Wilder, Cohen, Burmeister and Casnocha as well as 21 other key Generation Y experts.

To learn more about Scott Wilder, David Charles Cohen, Misti Burmeister, Ben Casnocha and the Generation Y leaders featured in Millennial Leaders, visit http://www.millennialleaders.com/meet_the_experts.html

For more details about Millennial Leaders: Success Stories from Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders, visit http://MillennialLeaders.com or contact Bea Fields at (910) 692-6118.

Great article in the November Issue of Retail Traffic Mag:  (Just shows how Gen Y is indeed changing the biz landscape!)

“Libby Gronbach, a 15-year-old Connecticut native, spends a lot of time online, like most of her Generation Y peers.

She watches videos on YouTube, checks social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, downloads songs from iTunes and shares what she finds by e-mailing and instant messaging her friends. Most significantly, however, her online experiences irrevocably shape how she spends her money. ”

Grab the full article here.

This past summer, Business Week kicked off its third annual contest to identify and recognize the most promising young U.S. entrepreneurs.  Over 6,000 business leaders made it into the final top 25…the winners achieved their final spot by showing courage and originality and were formally announced on November 12, 2007.  These young leaders are incredible:View Slide Show

And…while you are on BusinessWeek.com, check out what last year’s winners are up to.  Two of these award winners are featured in the book Millennial Leaders:  Michael Simmons and Ben Casnocha!

View the slideshow update for the 2006 winners here.

Southern Pines, NC (PRWEB) November 27, 2007 — Executive Coach, Bea Fields, joined a distinguished panel of Generation Y business leaders at the International Coach Federation (ICF) Annual Conference in Long Beach, CA, to present on the topic of Coaching at the Speed of Y: Bringing Coaching to the Next Great Generation of Leaders. Along with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, Fields is the co-author of Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders. (http://MillennialLeaders.com).

Fields shared the stage with co-author, Scott Wilder, General Manager of Intuit’s Online Community, David Charles Cohen, Chief Executive Maestro of Writers of the Round Table Inc., Misti Burmeister, CEO of Inspirion, Inc. and 19-year old Ben Casnocha, Founder of Comcate.

“It was truly an honor to be co-leading this presentation with such a dynamic group of young leaders,” said Bea Fields, President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. “I had the opportunity to interview Scott, David, Misti and Ben in 2007 for the Millennial Leaders book, and to be with them in bringing such an important topic to my professional colleagues was inspiring. These visionaries are having a very positive impact on our future, and the public needs to know about them and their successes.”

Fields’ mission with this presentation was to provide professional coaches with strategies on how to achieve greater levels of success by learning how to attract Generation Y while inspiring older generations to gain a greater understanding of Gen Y’s world views.

“Based on the positive response from over 275 attendees, I believe we achieved our mission,” said Fields. “Gen Y leadership is a hot topic, and I believe we provided the audience with a fresh perspective on the challenges Generation Y is facing and how we as professional coaches can start working with them to support them in being successful in the future.”

Millennial Leaders brings readers a unique, close up look at the people responsible for the cutting edge of social and business trends. The authors offer interviews with Wilder, Cohen, Burmeister and Casnocha as well as 21 other key Generation Y experts.

To learn more about Scott Wilder, David Charles Cohen, Misti Burmeister, Ben Casnocha and the Generation Y leaders featured in Millennial Leaders, visit http://www.millennialleaders.com/meet_the_experts.html

For more details about Millennial Leaders: Success Stories from Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders, visit http://MillennialLeaders.com or contact Bea Fields at (910) 692-6118.

Source: Freezing Hot

Thanks to Freezing Hot, below are some interesting stats on FaceBook users

As expected, 18-24 year olds dominate.

Looks like FaceBook has done a good job penetrating the high school market, which was one of their big goals

More women than men

Both married and single people

Once again, want to thank Freezing Hot

Great article by Penelope Trunk:

“With 85 million baby boomers and 50 million Gen Xers, there is already a yawning generation gap among American workers–particularly in their ideas of work-life balance. For baby boomers, it’s the juggling act between job and family. For Gen X, it means moving in and out of the workforce to accommodate kids and outside interests. Now along come the 76 million members of Generation Y. For these new 20-something workers, the line between work and home doesn’t really exist. They just want to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways, no matter where they are”.

Read the full TIME Magazine article here.

The star of the Gen Y social networking sites is not FaceBook. It is Yelp.com. .. a site that consists of mainly user reviews.

Sure FaceBook has more traffic and more media buzz, but Yelp! seems to be acing grassroots marketing and is the scoring big with the 20 and 30 somethings. Yelp provides lets users review anything – bars, clubs, doctors, lawyers, etc. It is taking on and gaining on local services such as GoogleMaps, YahooLocal!. Yelp seems to do at the local level. It’s blog highlights all the local marketing it is doing — getting to the local influencers. To read more about Yelp.. check out the web sites below:

• www.Yelp.com
• Red Herring: Yelp Gets $3M-Plus in VC Cash
• Forbes: Yelp: Not Your Mother’s Local Review Site
• The Register: Yelp! A viral recommendation system you can’t resist?
• Businessweek: Tech’s Best Young Entrepreneurs
• San Francisco Chronicle: CASTING THE NET / Yelp is on the way
• San Francisco Chronicle: Amateur reviews changing approach of small businesses
• Seattle Post Intelligencer: When diners speak up online, restaurants listen
• Fortune: Business paradigm shifts and free tequila shots

Points for reflection:

• Gen Y will listen to their peers
• Gen Y wants the bigger companies to go local if they are going to market to them
  Gen Y will listen to marketers and C-level employees if they can relate to them (if they are Gen Y) or if they can learn from them
• Gen Y might just surprise you and go against the trend

Mor evidence about the importance of Gen Yers friends..

According to United Press International

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) — Young U.S. adults increasingly are bucking the tradition of spending Thanksgiving with family and instead are hosting dinners for their friends.Rasmussen Reports found 8 percent of those surveyed are spending the holiday with friends rather than family. Experts say the trend is rapidly growing among people in their 20s, also known as Generation Y, The Christian Science Monitor reported Wednesday.

Experts said the trend may be partially attributed to the high cost of travel and the increasing amount of time young adults are spending living on their own between college and marriage.

“It’s too early for this to show up as a verifiable trend in census data, but it’s absolutely clear that with the extended rise of education and delay of marriage it is something that is occurring more than just anecdotally,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Coontz said friendship networks and support systems are becoming increasingly important as young professionals spend more time unmarried. Census reports show it is not uncommon for men and women to remain unmarried 15 years into adulthood

In chapter 3 of Millennial Leaders, we talked to Dr. Rebecca Ryan of Next Generation Consulting about what it takes for a city to be “cool enough” for Gen Y to want to live there.

Ryan and her colleagues have developed this amazing handprinting system. They interviewed thousands of Gen Y young adults, and the results of the interviews revealed seven key indices that prove to make cities “cool” for Generation Y. Cities included in the study are: Nashville, Milwaukee, Oswego County (NY), Birmingham, Charlotte, Tulsa, Brevard County (FL), Iowa, Vermont, Canton (OH), Akron, and the Illinois-Quad Cities. The seven indices are:

1) Vitality. This is the community’s commitment to the environment.

2) Earning index. Does the city have a breadth of occupational options.

3) Learning index. Great K-12 education and options for contuning ed are a must.

4) After hours index. How much is there to do after 5:00 p.m.?

5) Around town index. How easy is it to get around town and “stroll” from one place to the next without having to drive from location to location?

6) Cost of lifestyle. Can Gen Y afford to live in the city?

7) Social network. Does the city have a rich social fabric, including a diversity of backgrounds and cultures?

Next Generation Consulting is really hot, hot hot! (or cool according to Gen Y). A copy of Next Generation’s handprinting systems can be located here: http://nextgenerationconsulting.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/consulting.
handprinting_madison.

As I am out and about talking about Generation Y, business leaders are often asking:“How do I market to Gen Y?”

I have one answer:

Apple and i-Tunes!

So, Steve Jobs did an amazing thing…he built a tiny device that could go anywhere and could hold 10,000 songs…now that’s cool. And…guess who took the i-pod and i-Tunes to millions of people? That’s right…GEN Y!

Yet, the i-pod was not the brilliant invention…It was i-Tunes that made the i-pod a household item. Why? Because of 5 basic reasons:

So, here are the 5 basics that Gen Y looks for when making a buying decision and how you can learn from what Apple did to become the mega-superstar that they are!

1) They want it fast. Gen Y is all about speed. They are master multi-taskers, and in order to multi-task, things have to be lightning fast! I can download one song on i-Tunes in 10 seconds. I have a high speed connection, and I have timed my download…I think it’s even less than 10 minutes, but I want to be factual here.

2) They want it cheap. Gen Yers are extremely resourceful. They know how to share files and songs back and forth with their friends…why buy it when you can get it from your friends? With i-Tunes, you don’t have to buy the entire CD for $12-$19. You can buy one song for 99 cents!

3) They want good quality. Even though Gen Y wants things to be cheap, they don’t want the quality to suffer in the process. With i-Tunes, the sound quality is fantastic! Even on my desktop, it sounds fabulous!

4) They want it cool! In an interview with the Discovery Channel, Steve Jobs said something to this effect “We want the i-book and iTunes to look so great that it makes you want to lick the screen”! (I am paraphrasing a bit here, but he did say something to this effect in an interview on the Discovery Channel). If you visit Apple.com, you see and feel the “cool” factor. If you watch their ads on television, it’s cool, cool, cool! They even make dancing alone look cool. If you are considering updating your website or your products and services, just visit http://Apple.com and see how Apple packages things. It just looks cool!

5) They want an experience. Gen Y is all about having a great experience…something they can share with their friends. Apple is now getting users involved in watching trailers, blogging, interacting online and downloading music straight into their cell phones. Gen Yers can be out and about, hear a song on the radio, and they then start texting their friends about going to i-Tunes and grabbing the song. In a matter of minutes, hundreds of friends in a network are jamming to the same tune (of course as they walk into the mall to do a bit more shopping and networking!)

So…when looking at marketing to the next generation (predicted to be the largest buying generation in history by 2010…only 2 years away), ask yourself these questions:

Are you delivering your products and services quickly? Are you responding quickly?

Are you offering a great quality product?

Are you selling your product at a price that seems reasonable to younger buyers?

Are you delivering with a cool edge?

Are you creating a true buying experience for your customers?

For more information on Generation Y leadership, visit http://MillennialLeaders.com.