Living

What are you going to do before you're 100?

That's the question Internet guru Jeff Taylor wants to help you answer with Eons.com and Cranky.com.

By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published January 30, 2007

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Jeff Taylor is just 46, but he says he wants to help people "celebrate" turning 50. So he created a Web site aimed at filling the dreams of his fellow baby boomers.

Taylor says he "fell in love" with that generation during the past 20 years or so and became convinced that they would benefit from "the online social networking that has been a sport for the young." Enter Eons, launched last July.

Taylor knows something about the online world. He's the genius behind one of the world's most successful employment agencies, having created Monster.com about 13 years ago. Worldwide, the company says, more than 186-million job seekers visited Monster's electronic files in 2005. It posts about 1-million Help Wanted ads a month.

This month, the St. Petersburg Times joined with Monster to create a Web site that will e-mail relevant possibilities to job-seekers.

But what do Help Wanted ads have to do with the estimated 88-million Americans 50 and older whom Taylor is now addressing? In a phone interview this month from his office near Boston, Taylor told me why he has turned from the innovative project that made him rich to head in a different direction.

 

Why are you leaving Monster.com to create the new Web sites Eons.com and Cranky.com?

I had a full 360-degree entrepreneurial experience at Monster and I felt that it was time to take on a new challenge. . . . More importantly, I had really fallen in love with baby boomers: I had spent my entire tenure, 20 years, in recruiting as someone who kind of watched over the careers and job activity of baby boomers, (even) the baby boomer exit (from their careers).

I thought that "graduation" seemed to be a more fitting term (than "retirement"), taking the experiences and being able to apply them to a bigger, more fulfilling life.

And I realized that if that many baby boomers were (exiting) their traditional jobs, what were they going to do?

 

You conferred with people in their 50s and 60s around the country about this "what's next?" question. What's your answer?

This is not a group that is drying up like a raisin but quite the opposite - kind of pumping up their life - and they don't look old or represent themselves as old.

This is going to be a generational party that even younger generations will be jealous of. That was part of the thesis for developing Eons, this time of celebration . . . from turning 50 to the reachable goal of living to 100.

 

Your video introduction on its home page says Eons is about "your dreams and adventures, your memories and accomplishments." The page includes "buttons" to click labeled People, Fun, Money, Life Dreams and Obits. What's happening here?

Eons is to be a resource to help you raise the bar in your life and to live the biggest life possible.

For some people, that's the fullest life. For some people, that's a quiet life. But I think for everyone, it's a more connected life.

And the heart of the Eons mission is to help find challenges: What are the top 10 things you want to accomplish - not before you die, but before you're 100 . . .

It's Eons' job to help put the resources around those goals and dreams. There are about 500 groups already established by Eons members, on topics from classic rock to being an entrepreneur.

 

What was behind the spinoff site, Cranky.com?

The idea was that I was frustrated - cranky - with the search engine quagmire. As we were exploring the ideas for Eons, one of the things I asked older people was, "How do you feel about the Internet as a tool in your life?"

And an almost unanimous (response) was that "search" - so important to finding your way - was easy to look at in terms of the search box but it was very difficult to understand the results.

So there was a conscious effort to focus in on simplicity and relevance and, if we could do it, kind of the peer-review concept of what are the sites that are most interesting to people over 50.

Cranky is obviously a side-door entrance to Eons, the primary site. But there are a whole list of tools and services that we'll be launching as side doors:

Travel is going to be a huge area . . . We'll do more with the obituary area. You'll see us doing more with our Brain Builders area . . . We've mapped almost 100 games.

 

What's your take on this step in the second half of your own life?

It's so fun to watch this evolving. And there's a certain trust factor and kind of safe harbor in coming through Eons' door, where you can sneak in at 49 but basically, if you're not 50, don't bother.

Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at (727) 893-8496 or jenkins@sptimes.com.

The boomers

A 'perfect storm'

Eons.com creator Jeff Taylor said the first wave of boomers shares a number of factors that have created "almost a convergence, or what I like to refer to as a positive 'perfect storm' of energies."

According to Taylor, these factors include:

- "The 'bubble' of the 17-million babies that were born between 1946 and the early '50s - who are pushing up against 60 now. This group is the named generation:

"They were named teenagers, they were named hippies, they were named yuppies, they were named boomers.

"And this is a group that I think is really defining life, both in hitting the landmark kind of celebration of turning 50 - the conscious shift from a doom and gloom feeling (about aging) - and also redefining life in the second half of your life.

- "The fact that this is a rebellious generation - not so much in a Jimi Hendrix or lava lamps way but in having dual incomes, women in the work force, a kind of equality in the sexes in the work force.

- "This generation is rich in health, in experience and in dollars - with $2.4-trillion in annual disposable income . . .

"There's desire to put that money to work in experiential ways, as opposed to a 100 percent savings environment of their parents or grandparents because they were Depression survivors."

RESUME

Meet Jeff Taylor

- Founder in 1994, CEO and self-proclaimed "chief monster" of Monster.com, a dominant online job-search site.

- Attended but never completed degree requirements at Amherst. After success in the business world, he earned an MBA from Harvard. In 2001 he enrolled at the University of Massachusetts to finish the 31 credits needed to earn his bachelor's degree.

- 46 years old, married with three children. Spends late-night hours as highly regarded disc jockey in clubs in Boston suburbs - when not spinning records in his home's professional soundproofed basement studio.

[Last modified January 30, 2007, 07:04:19]

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