Interview: Maddy Dychtwald

Maddy Dychtwald

Maddy Dychtwald is a nationally recognized author, public speaker, marketing executive and entrepreneur. She has spent nearly twenty-five years deeply involved in exploring and forecasting demographic, lifestyle and consumer marketing trends. In 1986, she co-founded Age Wave, with her husband, Ken. As the nation’s foremost thought-leader on population aging and its profound business, lifestyle, and cultural implications, Age Wave provides breakthrough research (including the landmark study Women, Money and Power), compelling presentations, award-winning communications, and results-driven marketing and consulting initiatives to over half the Fortune 500 companies.

Dychtwald is the author of three books: her latest is Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better (May 2010). She has also written Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy (2004), and co-authored an illustrated children’s book entitled Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings (March 2008). As a sought-after public speaker, she has addressed more than 275,000 business leaders worldwide. She has been featured in leading newspapers and magazines nationwide, including Newsweek, Time, Bloomberg/Businessweek, and US News and World Report. Dychtwald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children.

Morris: Before discussing a specific book, a few general questions. First, please explain the meaning and significance of the name of your firm, Age Wave.

Dychtwald: For the first time in history, we are seeing a dramatic shift in our population from one dominated by youth to one dominated by mid life and older adults. It’s metaphorically a wave of older adults hitting us, with the impact of a tsunami—transforming every aspect of our society from the marketplace to the workplace to the very way we define old. Not only does our company name describe the trend that our business is focused on, it suggest power and a positive vibe which, when we started the company in 1986, wasn’t usually associated with aging. We wanted to help change the attitude of aging to be more positive.

Morris: Given the number of speeches you have delivered and your interaction with the members of each audience, to what extent (if any) have the questions you’ve been asked and the comments people have shared changed within the last several years?

Dychtwald: When I first started speaking at conferences and association meetings, most of the audience thought age 50 was over-the-hill. It was also news that older adults had money and were willing to spend it. Today that has transformed dramatically. We all know that 50 and even 60 are no longer over the hill. And it’s the aging of the baby boom generation—those born between 1946 – 1964–that is responsible for this change. They are 78 million strong –1/3 of our population—and they have always done things differently than their parents and grandparents. With that in mind, we’re beginning to see how boomers are beginning to reinvent retirement and our perspective of what 50, 60 or even 70 can be like.
Morris: In terms of balancing one’s career with one’s personal life, is it easier, more difficult, or about the same today as it was a few years ago?
Dychtwald: Balance is a continuous struggle, but it used to be considered a “women’s issue”–something that primarily described women trying to figure out how to build a family and a career simultaneously. That has changed. Today, with the growth and importance of two income families, it’s become a “family issue.” We see men as well as women struggle to balance family and career. In many married couples, all roles and responsibilities are open to negotiation and that makes things even more complicated. However, now that balance is recognized as an issue impacting women and men, our workplace policies are more likely to become family-friendly, giving women and men a better shot at successfully balancing family and work rather than having to choose between the two.

Morris: Please explain the title of your book, Cycles.

Dychtwald: Cycles hones in on a major paradigm shift that many of us are a part of right now. It has to do with the very way we organize our lives. Keep in mind, through most of history, life was short and took a predictable linear path: birth-education-work-marriage-family-retirement-death. It was a linear path that was defined primarily by age and gender, so you knew exactly what you were supposed to do based on how old you were and your gender. But that’s beginning to change. As life expectancy has skyrocketed—adding another 30 years of life in the 20th century alone–we’re beginning to realize that our life path may be more cyclic than linear. For instance, education is no longer something that happens just when you’re young. Neither is marriage. People have 2nd and 3rd careers rather than one job for life. Many of us are cycling back to these lifestages based on our needs and interests rather than just our age and gender. This book explores the personal, social, business and economic ramifications of this shift from a linear to a more cyclic life arrangement.

Morris: The book was published in 2004. In terms of how we live, work, and buy, what has been the single most significant change during the six years since then? Please explain.

Dychtwald: I think we have reached a tipping point where the changing role of women coupled with their growing earning power has positioned them as both the leading change agent of the next several decades as well as the dominant market for everything, from food to automobiles, from pharmaceutical products to stock investments. That’s why I decided I wanted to focus my research and my thinking on this subject in Influence.

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