What's Next? Updated: Finding Your Passion and Your Dream Job in Your Forties, Fifties and Beyond - Softcover

Hannon, Kerry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425271471 ISBN 13: 9780425271476

Publisher: Berkley, 2014

Synopsis

Reinvent your own career or pursue a long-held dream.

You may never have a better chance or reason to do so—to get excited about work again and feel passionate about making a difference in the world.

Your new career could easily outlast your first one.

Breaking into a new industry or pursuing a different career can be intimidating, especially when you’ve built up years of experience in your current field. But jobs expert Kerry Hannon believes that you can start your next act at any age. In What’s Next? Hannon shows you how, with inspiring real-life profiles of people who have successfully changed careers midlife, as well as advice on:

· Determining how your next career will work with your spending habits and family situation
· Creating your transition network
· Finding a mentor to guide you along your new path
· Turning a hobby into a profit
· Finding capital to start your own business

Whether you’re fantasizing about a new path or ready to pursue it, What’s Next? provides the roadmap that will afford you long-term success. 

About this title

About the Author:

Kerry Hannon is a nationally recognized authority on career transitions and retirement who writes the “Great Jobs” column for AARP. She is the bestselling author of Great Jobs for Everyone 50+, and her work has appeared in Forbes, Money, U.S. News & World Report, and USA Today. Hannon lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

FOREWORD

When I met the late John Gardner in 1995, he was in his eighties and going strong. Although hardly a household name today, Gardner had served with distinction as secretary of health, education, and welfare during Lyndon Johnson’s administration. He created the prestigious White House Fellows program. He founded Common Cause, the first significant campaign finance reform organization, and Independent Sector, to provide a voice for the nonprofit world. A few years later he would help launch Civic Ventures and Experience Corps, to mobilize others in the second half of life to create a better world. There were many other ventures in between, along with a string of influential books on leadership, community, and self-renewal.

What I did not realize at the time is that he achieved all this after the age of fifty. For Gardner, the gold watch turned out to be a launch pad—the beginning of a new chapter that comprised his most significant achievements.

He is hardly the only person to claim such a trajectory. There are many other high-flyers who have gone from success to even greater significance. Former President Jimmy Carter created a more enduring legacy after his U.S. presidency. Al Gore’s encore career earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. And when Bill Gates departed Microsoft he emphasized that he wasn’t retiring. In his words, he was “reordering priorities,” concentrating on the most important challenges he could imagine—ending poverty, curing disease, educating all.

As examples of these vaunted second acts proliferate, Kerry Hannon’s wonderful and enlightening book What’s Next? offers hope and help to the rest of us. It is a compelling reminder that the chapters stretching beyond Act I are something to look forward to—a time of new meaning, immense contribution, and continued income.

By addressing the genuine challenges of what continues to be for many a do-it-yourself transition, this book proves that the midlife shift to new fulfillment is not only possible but deeply desirable. It offers a set of compelling, credible role models and distills their insights and experiences into a reliable road map for successfully planning this transition. What’s more, as What’s Next? shows us, these uplifting encore opportunities are hardly exclusive to ex-CEOs and commanders-in-chief. They are within reach for anyone.

As you ponder what you will do for your encore, remember that you’re in good company. Tens of millions of Americans are celebrating their fiftieth and sixtieth birthdays, making the shift from “what’s last” to “what’s next” more than a question of personal fulfillment. What millions will do next is a matter of national importance. How will we, as a nation, make the most of this talent and experience? How will we make it easier for the largest, best-educated, healthiest, and longest-living generations to create a better world for the generations that follow?

What’s Next? starts the conversation by redefining success. I hope you start there, too. Then read this book for the encouragement, guidance, and tools to make your dreams—and the dreams of those you can help in your encore career—come true.

—Marc Freedman Founder of Encore.org

INTRODUCTION

A New York investment banker becomes a small-town chef. A college professor becomes a chocolatier. An entrenched corporate exec accepts an early-retirement package and converts to the ministry.

Who doesn’t fantasize about a second career?

Perhaps you’ve worked in the same field for twenty-some years and have run out of fresh challenges. Maybe you feel you have talents that are going to waste. Or there’s something you’ve always wanted to do that’s calling louder and louder. Perhaps, like so many others, you’re simply worn down by the corporate routine. Or you’ve lost a job or were downsized and the frustration of landing a new position is pushing you to start your own business. There must be something out there that’s more meaningful and more rewarding, right?

Marc Freedman, founder of Encore.org, a nonprofit that is geared to helping people start second careers with social purpose and meaning says, “People are searching for work that is fulfilling and gets them out of bed in the morning.” While these work transitions involve following a dream or a calling, you don’t want to get caught up in the romance of it all. “There is a blitheness that all you have to do is embrace your passion and the rest happens magically,” Freedman warns. “It’s not that easy. You don’t open the doors to your bed-and-breakfast and the cheering crowds arrive.”

Indeed, millions of Americans have already launched new careers midlife and every transition is different. In 2006, I developed U.S. News & World Report’s “Second Acts” feature—a regular column that looked at people who successfully navigated a complete career change midlife. I profiled people who had made such moves and featured their challenges and their motivations. Since then I’ve been fortunate to meet and counsel people from all walks of life, ranging in age from the early forties to seventy-plus, who have taken up a new course either full-time or part-time. Meanwhile, some have chosen to strike out on their own. Each one followed his or her own heart down a new path with single-mindedness, passion, humbleness, and an ability to live moderately. It’s inspiring to sit down with people who are eager to start over in new ventures and find work that is more fulfilling. And why not try something new that excites you? The truth is, we’re living longer, healthier lives, and that opens the door to all kinds of possibilities, and your next career could easily outlast your first one.

There are things, however, that can hold you back. First, money really can be a stumbling block. You may need to earn a certain salary to make ends meet. Or perhaps you have a genuine fear of outliving your retirement savings or are afraid of losing employer-provided health insurance.

Some people aren’t sure what they are truly passionate about, even when they know they want to move in another direction. You may have a nagging feeling that when you start peeling away the layers to find your passion, you will come up empty-handed and discover that you don’t have any exceptional skills and talents. Not so.

Other wannabe career switchers I have met are afraid to fail or, oddly, afraid to succeed. Yep. There’s a huge accountability to success. You can’t let up, and that can be hard work. And admit it, sometimes the thought that it’s going to be all work can be a deal breaker at this stage in life. We simply don’t want to push ourselves to the limits after two or three decades in the working world, building a career, meeting goals, and facing other pressures.

Then too success means change and the unknown. Enough said.

Even once you realize what it is that you want to pursue next and then overcome any fears about finances or insecurities about failing, after age forty, it can be daunting to start a second act. The mere thought of going back to school, learning new skills, or beginning at the bottom of the ladder stops many people from trying something new. And in uncertain economic times, making a major move is more daunting than ever.

Let me tell you, these are very real concerns, and I will help you work through any doubts to figure out whether you’re ready to make a change. Career moves do not happen overnight. You might start working on a move today that you will make in a few years. Career change requires clear planning, market research, hard work, and a healthy dollop of confidence. It’s a process. But dreams can come true.

The best advice I can give you is this: If you’re feeling the calling to do something new, to find work that energizes you, gives meaning to your day and more, do it. Consider the old cliché that life is too short to be stuck in a dead-end job or dreading Monday mornings. Or if you’ve lost a job, have accepted an early-retirement package, or are a retiree or soon-to-be retiree worried about dipping into your retirement accounts and depleting them, don’t feel defeated. This might be your opportunity to reinvent your career and redeploy your skills to find a job you love or to pursue a long-held dream.

In the following chapters, you will meet people who have made the big swing and love it. Each one tackled the new beginning with a singular approach. You too will own yours. You may not want to do what they do, but you will get ideas. I did.

You’ll also find tips and advice on how to identify potential next acts, financially and physically prepare yourself for your next career, overcome setbacks and obstacles, network and promote yourself, and achieve success in your new role.

I’m certain you, like me, will be motivated by their stories to dig down and take the time to concentrate on your own goals and to tap into ways to shift your mind-set from thinking you can’t to believing you can. I have in my career and continue to every day; you can, too.

As the Winston Churchill quote emblazoned in decoupage on the glass tray that sits on my work desk boldly says: “These are great days.” Let’s get started.

CHAPTER ONE

To be the toughest female cop alive, you have to run three miles uphill, climb three hundred stairs, put the shot, climb ropes, bench-press, run a hundred-meter sprint, swim one hundred meters, and complete an obstacle course three football fields in length—eight events in one day.

Jill Angel has done that. And won. She captured the state of California’s Toughest Cop Alive endurance competition for women and came in second in the worldwide event.

Don’t be fooled by her five-foot-three, 120-pound physique. She’s tenacious—and strong. For twenty-two years, Angel was a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer, rising through the ranks from sergeant to assistant chief in Los Angeles, overseeing more than a thousand officers. It was a job she prized, and for a while, she was unstoppable. She witnessed the aftermath of countless horrendous traffic fatalities and was severely beaten by a drug-addled suspect. Afterward, as head of the CHP’s Critical Incident Response Team, she passed out at a shooting scene—partly from exhaustion.

Then it all fell apart. Handling nothing but the worst stuff on the Critical Incident Response Team for five years had taken its toll. Physically, she was spent: she had high blood pressure, migraine headaches, depression, and an inability to sleep soundly.

A single mom with two young daughters, aged ten and thirteen, Angel realized it was time to make a change. She handed in her badge and retired. But it was the power of music that really helped her turn the corner. And now she’s in training to be the toughest music agent alive.

Angel has dabbled in the music business for more than a decade. It began on a whim, trying to help a coworker get her music heard in Nashville, where Angel’s younger cousin, Ilene, an aspiring songwriter, lived. While still on duty, she began making monthly trips to Nashville, landing meetings with the heads of record labels and top producers. “Being an assistant chief at the time, I was determined to get through to people at my level. They didn’t know what to do with me,” she recalls. But she scored her ten-minute face time, and it made a lasting impression.

“People told me I would meet the worst people in the music business. ‘They lie to you’ and so on, they cautioned,” Angel says. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? I just spent twenty-two years as a police officer and was a commander in South Central L.A. The music people are some of the nicest people I’ve met.’”

While her fellow staffer never did land a record deal, Angel fell in love with Nashville and her cousin’s music. “The more I listened to Ilene’s songs, the more I believed in her talent. They gave me hope, especially in the dark days after I retired.” She began pitching her cousin’s work with a vengeance.

For Angel, it wasn’t a big jump from serving as a CHP to pursuing the music business full time. “Both are making the world better somehow, though the two fields couldn’t be more different in how they go about doing it,” she says. And she can afford to be patient. Angel and her family can live on her CHP pension, which provides full health benefits.

Since moving into her new gig managing singers and songwriters, Angel has worked with a half-dozen artists, but her biggest success to date is her cousin. Ilene Angel’s song “I Don’t Think About It,” sung by Emily Osment, costar of the TV show Hannah Montana, hit the Radio Disney Top 10, where it stayed for over four months. It went to No. 1 for three straight weeks.

Moreover, Nashville artists such as Dolly Parton, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire, Wynonna Judd, LeAnn Rimes, and Kenny Rogers have put holds on several of Ilene’s songs, expressing interest in recording them. Another protégé, Angel’s nephew Matthew Angel, an L.A.-based actor and singer/songwriter, has finished his first album, and his acting career has taken off.

Angel called her mentor, Dick Whitehouse, a former record label head who has advised her for four years, to tell him she and Ilene were number one on Disney with Ilene’s song. His response: “Of course you are. You’re Jill.”

And that’s why she just might become the toughest agent in Nashville.

Author’s Note: Jill is also now a certified fitness trainer working in person and virtually via online custom workouts offered through inerTrain.com.

*  *  *

I asked Jill to look back and share her thoughts on her transition to a career as a music agent.

What did the transition mean to you personally?

What drove me was wanting as many people as possible to heal from the music I was healing from at the time. My law-enforcement career had ended. Twenty-two years of law enforcement and I was really sick, completely stressed out. Multiple fatalities, line-of-duty deaths . . . after years of that I was depressed.

At the time music was really therapeutic to me. I started listening to Ilene’s songs. I threw myself into songs being written by her and a couple of her songwriting friends. I found myself healing from their music.

Were you confident that you were doing the right thing? Any second-guessing?

I was totally confident. I actually craved trying to make Ilene happen.

Anything you would have done differently?

I would have been more selective about how I invested the money. I spent everything I had on it and at the same time went through a divorce that finished me off financially. So here I am six years later and very selective about how I put money into this.

You have to know where to spend the money and where not to. I learned all of that the hard way. It really does take firsthand experience and listening to other people. I didn’t listen hard enough because I didn’t trust most people in the business. I was so driven to make it happen myself. I was so confident. I actually thought I could make it in three months.

You can spend a thousand dollars recording one song demo, and everything my clients wrote I was having demoed if I liked it. There were also the costs of...

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0425271471
• ISBN 13: 9780425271476
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272