The Future Will Not Work the Same
I’ve been hearing a lot of people say, “When things get back to normal …” “We’ll do that in the new normal.” “I just want to get back to normal.” 
As I learned when the floods washed away our Cedar Rapids offices, when the TV tower collapsed in an ice storm, when recessions rocked businesses, normal — that feeling of conforming to a standard, the usual or expected — never comes back. It’s new, but it is never normal again.
According to statista, “Millennials have now been devastated by not just one but two ‘once in a lifetime’ crises — the 2008 Financial Crisis and COVID-19.” That will change how millennials view the world forever. “One key trend that has emerged and remained largely overlooked is the massive, swift and efficient transition most office workers made to continue doing their jobs from home,” says Niall McCarthy, data journalist at statista.
This should change every marketing personna or profile of millennials. They can now work anywhere and at any time. That will change the workplace forever — and how millennials spend their hard-earned money.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.