Just after my 50th birthday, I was in a bit of a career funk. I had left the marketing agency that had bought my agency and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing next. I knew that I didn’t want to start another marketing agency, so I thought maybe I’d go look for a job…

I applied for a bazillion jobs with absolutely zero interest. I reached out to a friend, Harry, who is a really experienced recruiter in the ecommerce space. I’ve been pretty entrepreneurial in my career - and I knew that would be an issue for some employers. I was hoping he could tell me how to address that.

What he told was a shock, “Tim, just do your own thing again…you aren’t going to get hired for the kind of role that you want.” I started to tell him about my experience and my track record…he listened, and said “It’s not you…it’s them.” He went on to explain that companies get skittish about hiring old heads like us. If you’ve had a super big job at a really well known company, you might get a company that will hire you knowing that it is a step down and the idea is that you might get to coast a little bit while the youngsters learn from your experience. But that’s maybe a 2-3 year job. If you hadn’t had a big job at a well known company, you aren’t going to get hired because they may not want to build a team and processes, etc. around someone who might opt to retire when things get tough rather than buckle down and make the machine work.

The worst part, Harry said, was that the people holding that bias (CEOs, Board of Director people, etc) are probably your age peers - or even older! I said that that was discrimination and it is illegal. Harry said, “Maybe, but the way that they justify it is that they are making a decision about the future, and at your age, they can’t see you being part of that future.”

Anecdotally, in the world of big tech, there has been a purge of older workers. Via a friend in San Francisco, “…Microsoft is laying off tons of people in their 50s & 60s…” In the world of marketing agencies (see my agency newsletter Agency Inner Circle), I’ve seen a spate of “seasoned professionals” sporting the #opentowork frame on their LinkedIn profiles.

And via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the unemployment rate for older workers is low (3.1%), almost 27% of those unemployed workers are considered long term unemployed (out of work for 27 weeks or more - the highest of any age-based segment).

Question: What are you to do when you have too much experience to be considered “part of the future”, or maybe your salary starts looking like a cost that could be cut rather than an investment?

Answer: Nolite te bastardes carborundorum (faux Latin for “don’t let the bastards grind you down…which you may have seen scrawled in a closet in Season 1 of The Handmaid’s Tale)

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Are you feeling more inspired to create your new next chapter now? Well, good thing we have more concrete actions to take.

How’s it going? How are your lists feeling?  What interesting crossovers have you found?  Don’t know what I am talking about? 

Quick review: you are exploring the idea of starting a business, you made lists of what your talents/strengths are and what you love to do.  You then looked them both over to find crossover points.  And now here we are.

So, you’ve discovered a couple/few things that point in a particular direction.  Maybe collecting vintage aprons and sewing well makes you think opening a retro sewing school would be a good option.  Or your adeptness with numbers and interest in theater puts you in mind of bookkeeping for local drama groups.  Sounds promising!  But, first you need to determine if your idea actually solves a problem or offers a service that folks are actually looking for.

How do you determine this? Ask! Read! Search! Notice! Go ahead and ask around.  Do some googling.  Check out Reddit’s r/somebodymakethis.

Start to imagine what your idea would actually look like in action and then poke some holes in it yourself before anyone else can.

The goal isn’t to talk yourself out of it. It’s to make sure you’re building on solid ground. That way, when you do take the leap, you’ve already pressure-tested the parachute.

Next week, we’ll talk about turning that tested idea into something real—something you can launch without betting the farm.

Until then…don’t let the bastards grind you down.

We liked this one a lot - it’s not “groundbreaking” - it’s more get you pumped up and it gives you some great ways to think about getting feedback and testing idea viability.

chapter neXt is a newsletter/community/guide for entrepreneurial folks in their 50s and beyond. It is published by Julia Kelahan (check her out on LinkedIn, her amazing strength-based learning center & her ADHD & Executive Function coaching business) and Tim Kilroy (check him out on LinkedIn & his agency growth business & his agency-focused newsletter). They are the proud parents to 5 kids, they live near Boston & their dog’s name is Fred. Our ads are ads - duh. But some of the publishers that we link to in our content may offer us a commission if you buy something from them - that doesn’t influence what we link to, nor does it influence what we say about it.