Moving From The 'Old Economy Into The 'Passion Economy' Of The 21st Century

Speaker 1: 00:00 Contrary to what you might've heard. The middleclass is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. That's just part of the message. In the new book, the passion economy by the creator of NPRs planet money podcast, Adam Davidson Davidson says there are new rules for thriving in the 21st century and they boil down to doing what you love and figuring out how to make money doing it. Davidson will be in the Hoya tonight at 7:00 PM at the San Diego center for Jewish culture. He joins us now via Skype. Adam, welcome. Speaker 2: 00:32 Thanks so much for having me. Speaker 1: 00:34 So as I mentioned, the title of your book is the passion economy. If someone asked you what you mean by that title, what would you tell them? Speaker 2: 00:43 Well, I, I think we're going through a massive transformation from one sort of economy to a very, very different economy. Um, I think it's a huge shift on the level of going from agriculture to industry. And I think that, you know, much of that dislocation, like any massive dislocation is upsetting and scary and causes real pain. But it, and, and frankly, most of my career has been writing about the bad stuff, writing about the pain and dislocation. And I certainly, I think that's real and I don't in any way mean to make light of it. But I also think there's another story that's happening that alongside the pain and dislocation, there's real opportunity in this new economy. And, um, and, and that, um, there are lots and lots of people who are thriving in new ways, special ways, ways that human beings really haven't been able to take advantage of in the past. And so I was excited to be able to tell some stories of people who I think give us inspiring lessons and try and make sense of, of what those lessons are. Speaker 1: 01:55 Hmm. And can you tell us about one or two of those people you mentioned? Speaker 2: 01:59 Sure. One of my favorites is, um, this guy, Lance Cheney, who's in the bus brush business. He, uh, um, he, he makes brushes and, uh, his story, if you had met him say 12 years ago, 13 years ago, it was a very familiar story. It was a family business that had done fairly well for most of the 20th century making brushes, particularly for the food industry. And he was, um, and then a very familiar story. They started competing with, um, folks from, uh, China, uh, Chinese manufacturers who were exporting similar brushes to the U S and they were about to go under. And the business was being run by Lance's dad max. And the company was looked like a very familiar story. I, as a reporter, I've been to countless factories that had collapsed in similar ways, but Lance took a new approach. I'm passionate approach if I can, where he said, I'm done. Speaker 2: 03:01 Make mass producing brushes and trying to sell as many as I can. He said, I'm not going to sell to Walmart anymore, even though Walmart was his main customer. As soon as a brush is being made by an export from China, I'm going to stop selling that brush, which meant stopping most of his most profitable, biggest lines. And he scoured the world looking for brush innovations, knew people who had brush related problems. Um, he had a huge early success with a special brush for nuclear power plants where the, um, uh, the, the nuclear power plant was using a different brush when it was cleaning pipes to inspect them and it was creating these staples were falling off the brush, sloshing around in the coolant, all these metal staples. It's really dangerous. So Lance created a new brush that didn't use staples, so it was much more robust and it cost him about 12 bucks to make the brush. Speaker 2: 04:01 He was able to sell them for $6,000. Um, because you know, nuclear power plant will pay anything for a safer brush. It's now a standard of care. It's being used all over that nuclear power plants all over the world. And Lance just keeps finding new solutions. He created a brush for NASA that's now on Mars. There's actually two of them on the, two of the Mars rovers that is used to clean Martian rocks when they're inspecting them. And in each of these cases he happens to have a creative passion for thinking about how to make brushes that solve problems. And each problem is unique. And so he's not in that kind of commodity competition that we're so used to and he's just thriving. He's growing. He's been growing 20% a year ever since. Speaker 1: 04:50 Wow. He's decided to follow his passion and really turned it into a moneymaking venture. It sounds like, you know, I'm curious like what happened that brought you to the realization that the economy of the 20th century had changed and when did you realize that? Speaker 2: 05:04 You know, it's funny, I feel like I weirdly first started thinking about it when I was in Iraq. I was a reporter for public radio in, in Iraq. And I remember visiting this shoe factory, which like most business in Iraq was government controlled. And I walked into the shoe factory shortly after the ground war ended and all the staff were just sitting in the lobby not working. And I asked why they weren't making shoes. And the general manager said, well, we're waiting for a fax from the ministry of industry because under Saddam Hussein rocks economy was very centrally controlled. And there was some office in the ministry of industry that would decide how many shoes to make. And, um, and I had been to the ministry of industry. It was a hollowed out shell. The building had been destroyed and I knew there was no facts coming. Speaker 2: 06:00 And I remember thinking, wow, these people are stuck in an old economy that's gone and isn't coming back. Then I came back to the U S and started covering a lot of pain and dislocation here and eventually the financial crisis. And over time I was like, I think that's happening here, that we're waiting for a fax from the ministry of industry and it's not coming, but that maybe there's something new. Then I started meeting some people who really impressed me and um, and began to collect their stories. And, and then eventually I started meeting with some economists at Harvard and MIT. I worked with this team to really develop the theory behind the book. Speaker 1: 06:43 Hmm. So, you know, if I'm listening to this interview and I have a passion that I'd love to turn into a business, what are some of the steps I should be taking to make that happen? Speaker 2: 06:53 Well, I, I think there's really two step two parts of it. I mean, there is an inward looking. There's a process of figuring out what makes you uniquely you. So, um, over time I think a passion is something you develop, it takes, can take. I, I don't think I really knew my own passion until my mid thirties can take awhile and it's worth spending that time. But then there's a process of also checking with the marketplace and understanding how to match your passion to what other people want. And that's the tricky one because you know, there's not a guarantee that whatever you're passionate about is going to be a business. But I don't want to make it sound like this is just an easy gimme and we're all fine. I think this is tough and it takes work and it'll be easier for some than it is for others, but it's good work. It's work that's worthwhile doing. It's essential. Speaker 1: 07:48 Hmm. I've been speaking with Adam Davidson, whose new book the passion economy is now out. Mr. Davidson will be in LA Jolla tonight at 7:00 PM at the San Diego center for Jewish culture. Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 2: 08:01 Thank you.