In this episode, I am speaking with Emily Bron from International Lifestyle Consulting. Emily helps people relocate for retirement or for remote workers to find their ideal destinations. Emily has relocated to a foreign country multiple times in her life. You will probably pick that up by her accent. She is relocating again and helping others do the same.
Read the Emily’s bio:
After living and working in 4 countries (3 continents), experiencing several immigrations, changing professional fields (engineering, research, banking, IT, and travel consulting), and being an avid traveler with a cultural discovery mindset, she created International Lifestyle Consulting to advise how to find the best matching place for you to relocate abroad for a better quality of life, work, or retirement.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this episode I am speaking Steph Silver who is the author of the book Anywhere, USA: A Memoir.
This will be a bit of a different kind of episode. I have known Steph for many years and I had no idea that she had an upbringing with an incredible amount of upheaval. I want you to hear a bit of the story from the book, the process of writing her memoir, and what she got out of the book from a personal growth perspective.
Read Steph’s bio:
Steph savors the little things wherever she goes—like flowers in a field, sunlight through the trees, or sounds of laughter. Moving over thirty times before she was seventeen, traversing between campgrounds, fully furnished homes, and homeless shelters, Steph used her optimism and grit to rise to a place of comfort, peace, and personal success. She is now on a mission to enhance as many lives as possible and to help humans thrive.
Her first book, Anywhere, USA is a memoir that reveals some dark sides of a turbulent childhood while shining light and optimism at every turn. Despite close calls with disasters, both natural and man-made, Steph believes that if she is good enough, strong enough, or works hard enough, one day she’ll become worthy of the love and security she seeks. Who she ultimately chooses to become and if she’ll transcend her circumstances are questions Steph must answer for herself more than once in this gripping coming-of-age story.
Steph founded VINE Collective in 2018 after parting from a branding agency she helped grow over 12 years. Through individual and team coaching, retreats, public speaking, and brand work, VINE cultivates meaningful and memorable experiences that bring forth the most exceptional versions of each person and/or brand.
Steph also uses her desire for human connection, authentic experiences, and profound growth to train, educate, and amplify leaders and businesses who live through their mission, vision, and passion as host of MVP Business Podcast. She’s deeply driven to build relationships and help people authentically grow, succeed, and connect.
When she’s not managing her team, visiting with clients, or connecting with friends, Steph can usually be found cooking, gardening, dancing, or mountain biking with her two sons.
After listening to this episode, I want you to think about friends and colleagues. How well do you really know them?
I have known Steph for over 10 years and she is a really together person but after I read her book, I wondered how did she survive her childhood to become the person she is today.
Many of us had very difficult childhoods and not everyone is here today but people like Steph can be an inspiration for all of us.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode I am speaking with Wendy Mayhew who is the author of WISER: The Definitive Guide to Starting a Business after the Age of 50.
This is a rebroadcast of episode 180 I recorded with Wendy in early 2020. I think it is as relevant today as it was 3 years ago. This is a guide to entrepreneurship for those over 50.
Before we get to the episode this episode will publish the Monday before the US Labor Day weekend. I will not be publishing a podcast episode the week of September 3rd nor will there be a Career Pivot Insights newsletter on Sunday, September 3rd.
Here is Wendy’s bio:
Author Wendy Mayhew has been an entrepreneur for 40 years. Her most recent businesses are WISE - Seniors in Business and WISE 50 over 50 Awards.
WISE - Seniors in Business, was formed to change how older entrepreneurs are perceived and to guide wannabe older entrepreneurs on deciding if entrepreneurship is for them. Wendy has quickly become Canada's leading expert on older entrepreneurship. She has done extensive research and understands the challenges facing this newest and fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs. Wendy is a sought-after speaker and workshop facilitator by business organizations now starting to realize the importance of serving this newest group of entrepreneurs.
Seeing the gap in information available to older entrepreneurs, Wendy authored WISER: The Definitive Guide to Starting a Business After the Age of 50 to assist this group of new entrepreneurs in starting their businesses.
Wendy also offers assistance and guidance to help business organizations set up programs specific to new entrepreneurs starting a business later in life.
The WISE 50 over 50 Awards recognize and celebrate Canadian entrepreneurs over the age of 50. With the support of well over 100 Canadian organizations sharing information on the awards through their networks, the 50 over 50 Awards have generated awareness of the most under-supported and underserved group of new entrepreneurs in Canada.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this episode I am speaking with Mauro Guillén who is the author of the book THE PERENNIALS: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society. This is a topic that you need to be paying attention to as we are in the later stages of our careers. There are some big megatrends that many companies, governments, and people are not paying attention to but many of us will still have to deal with. This will affect our work life, family life, and retirement.
Read the author’s bios:
Mauro F. Guillén is one of the most original thinkers at the Wharton School, where he is Professor of Management and Vice Dean for the MBA for Executives Program. An expert on global market trends, he is a sought-after speaker and consultant. He combines his training as a sociologist at Yale and as a business economist in his native Spain to methodically identify and quantify the most promising opportunities at the intersection of demographic, economic, and technological developments. His online classes on Coursera and other platforms have attracted over 100,000 participants from around the world. He has won multiple teaching awards at Wharton, where his presentation on global market trends has become a permanent feature of over fifty executive education programs annually. He is the WSJ bestselling author of 2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything.
I have been interested in generational change for many years. We have a lot of generational change in our society that I think Mauro discusses in his book. He does not say how to solve it but spells out the megatrends in an easily digestible way.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I want to discuss with you what I am seeing in the 50+ job market. I was on an Encore Network call the other day and two of us were asked for our views of the 50+ job market. I want to discuss how I view the world in August of 2023 and take you through 4 examples of very recent success from members of the Career Pivot Membership community.
I am part of the Encore Network https://encorenetwork.org/ and I was asked to speak to what I was seeing. Another gentleman was asked to speak about broader economic data.
I know a lot of listeners of this podcast are career coaches, resume writers or provide other services in helping people with their careers. I want you to check out the Encore Network. The Encore Network is a coalition of leaders who champion the civic, social, and economic contributions of people 50+ by creating community, stimulating learning, and inspiring action to transform the encore stage of life.
Believe it or not, the economic numbers are pretty good. Yes, inflation has stretched a lot of you financially, but it is coming down. The big companies of the tech sector have been laying off but the tech sector is really a pretty small part of the overall economy.
I will tell you that the green energy sector is hiring. A lot of money has been flowing into that sector after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed.
The official unemployment for those 50-54 and 55+ is below 2.5 percent. I will link in the show notes the latest press release from Nifty50s.com with the data. Nifty50s is another member of the Encore Network.
I run the Career Pivot Community which has about 40 people currently participating with an average age of 60 and over the last six months I have seen a lot of success. I discussed some of the success these folks are having getting hired during the Encore Network discussion.
I want to highlight some of what I talked about.
These are folks who are mostly in their mid to late 50s. They are getting hired I want to take you briefly through their stories.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode I am speaking with Mitchell Clionsky who is the co-author with his wife of the book Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain. This is a topic that many of us will have to deal with. It may be an aging parent, a spouse, or yourself. It is a fascinating topic on what you can be doing now to prevent getting dementia.
Let me read the author’s bios:
MITCHELL CLIONSKY, Ph.D., is a board-certified neuropsychologist who specializes in evaluating and treating patients with cognitive impairment, dementia, ADHD, and traumatic brain injury.
EMILY CLIONSKY, MD, completed residencies in internal medicine and in psychiatry and is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She specializes in the care of patients with cognitive impairments.
They have a combined 70 years of professional and clinical experience in medicine and neuropsychology and have treated 20,000 patients. They partner at a private practice, Clionsky Neuro Systems, Inc., based in Springfield, Massachusetts. They are experienced public speakers, podcast guests, and workshop presenters for general and professional audiences.
This is a topic that has touched my life. My mother died in her mid-80s with dementia and her last few years were not pleasant due to the dementia. My son’s mother-in-law started showing signs of dementia about a dozen years ago when she was in her late 50s. She is now in her late 60s and requires full nursing home care. This a debilitating condition and for some this is preventable.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this week’s episode, I want to discuss Navigating the Emotional Roller Coaster of My Wife's Heart Surgery. I will keep this short but I want you to understand the strategies I am using to reduce risk and more importantly keep my sanity.
For new listeners, my wife and I have lived in Ajijic Mexico which is in the State of Jalisco only a short distance south of Guadalajara, the 2nd largest city in Mexico and the home of a number of the country’s best medical schools.
Health care here on the private side is mostly frictionless. Access to the private healthcare system is easy and affordable. The same cannot be said about the public healthcare system and I will put a link in the show notes when I discussed the public healthcare system in a previous episode.
To see a specialist, you usually can schedule an appointment in less than 2 weeks and often much faster than that. Recently, I went to schedule my annual skin check with my dermatologist, and I was able to secure an appointment for the next day. My doctor was not rushed and spent well over 30 minutes with me. Past appointments have lasted up to an hour. The cost was about $60 US. That was not a copay but the total cost.
I am far more likely to see my doctors and in between appointments I can call or text them via WhatsApp. If I have a question I will text them and usually I will get a response in a few hours directly from the doctor.
My wife has real relationships with all of her doctors, which includes a hematologist, endocrinologist, dermatologist, gastroenterologist, and now a cardiologist. My wife being a retired RN is a total pain in the butt patient and she loves her doctors here.
That sets the stage for this story.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this episode, I speak with Mike McNatt, a test and compliance engineer who continues to work contract jobs well into his 70s. He was introduced to me as the guy who has got this gig work down and that is not working for Uber. This is a rebroadcast of one of the best episodes of 2022.
You may be asking why I am doing a rebroadcast at this time. As my long-time listeners know I live in Ajijic Mexico just south of Guadalajara. My wife and I have some major decisions to make in the coming weeks. My wife needs to have what I hope will be non-invasive heart surgery. I will be putting my focus on whether my wife has the surgery performed in Mexico where we have no insurance but dealing with healthcare is much easier or do we return to the US where we are covered by Medicare but we will have to deal with the US healthcare system.
Just to be clear, my wife feels fine and has not been told to reduce her level of activity. This came as a complete surprise, and we feel blessed to be dealing with healthcare here in Mexico. Making the appropriate appointments with world-class medical specialists can be done in days and not weeks or months.
That is where my focus will be in the coming weeks and not producing content for this podcast.
Back to the introduction of the episode.
My good friend, Marti Konstant, who is a workplace futurist and career coach, said I needed to have Mike on this podcast. Mike has worked contract engineering jobs and has developed a strategy to stay fully employed.
Mike is an engineer who was interviewed for Forbes called, Working In Tech At Any Age–This Engineer Tells You How. He also produced multiple LinkedIn posts on his strategies which I will include in the show notes.
Back in the 1980s, when I worked for IBM, I helped lead a mechanical design support group. Our internal customers hired a lot of contract engineers for 12-to-24-month contracts. What I learned was they would work a contract, then take a few months off and then find the next. They were completely comfortable with this lifestyle.
Here we are 30-40 years later, and this is a new way of working. Mike has become comfortable with this, and I want you to listen to his story.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with my buddy Thom Singer. I have known Thom for 15 or more years. I met with Thom when I was in Austin in May 2023, and he told me that he had recorded a TEDx talk called I Did That. One of the key points in his TEDx talk is it is alright to ask for help especially as it relates to mental health issues. This discussion about mental health is one of the most consequential discussions I have had on this podcast. Please listen to all of it.
When I was in Austin in May of 2023, I had a coffee or beer with 10 individuals and 6 of them discussed some form of mental health issues that they were having or someone close to them was having.
One of those was Thom. Thom’s speaking business completely collapsed during the pandemic. I had Thom on the podcast during that time to track what he was doing to recover. The last time I had Thom on the podcast was in episode #255 in January of 2022 called Learning How to Adapt and Get Scrappy with Your Career with Thom Singer.
Thom did a lot of different stuff to keep his career going. It took its toll on him in so many ways.
What I want you to get from this episode is there are a lot of people out there suffering from various forms of mental health issues. It might be someone you care about or it might be you. It is okay to ask for help.
I have sought out help at various times in my life with my own mental health issues and Thom did the same.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode I am speaking with Kevin Kelly who is the author of Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. To his surprise, Kelly had more to say than he thought and kept adding to the advice over the years, compiling a life’s wisdom into these pages.
When I read this book, I was smiling the entire time.
Here is the short version of Kevin’s incredible biography:
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He co-founded Wired in 1993 and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years.
His newest book is Excellent Advice for Living, a book of 450 modern proverbs for good living.
He is co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, a membership organization that champions long-term thinking and acts as a good ancestor to future generations. And he is the founder of the popular Cool Tools website, which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years.
From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a subscriber-supported journal of unorthodox conceptual news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers’ Conference and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985.
Other books by Kelly include 1) The Inevitable, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, 2) Out of Control, his 1994 classic book on decentralized emergent systems, 3) The Silver Cord, a graphic novel about robots and angels, 4) What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology, and 5) Vanishing Asia, his 50-year project to photograph the disappearing cultures of Asia. He is best known for his radical optimism about the future.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
This is a rebroadcast episode that is publishing during the July 4th holiday of 2023. In this episode I am speaking with Fawn Germer, who is the author of Coming Back: How to Win the Job You Want When You've Lost the Job You Need. I have used a lot of concepts from Fawn’s book. My favorite is being relevant is more important than your experience.
This podcast was originally published in March of 2021.
Please read her official Bio:
“Fawn Germer is the irreverent, beloved best-selling author of nine books including the Oprah book, Hard Won Wisdom. She has been a keynote speaker for more than 80 Fortune 500 companies and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times for her work as an investigative reporter. Fawn’s first book was rejected by every major publisher in the United States, but Fawn would not give up until it was the No. 1 nonfiction bestseller that Oprah loved.
Her newest book, Coming Back was released by St. Martin’s Press in January 2021. The book shows how to turbocharge your career by changing the way you change. Fawn is an inspiring storyteller and life adventurer. She’s learned plenty the hard way and is as authentic as they come. She interviewed hundreds of the most accomplished leaders of our times, including famous CEOs, prime ministers, presidents, Nobel Peace Prize winners, scientists, Academy Award winners, and many other trailblazers who revealed that success is born in risk, and power comes from consciously disabling your doubt and self-esteem issues.”
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode I am speaking with Bruce Feiler. Bruce is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS, THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES, and COUNCIL OF DADS. We are discussing in this episode his latest book, THE SEARCH: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. As you will hear me say during our discussion, this is the most actionable book on this topic I have read and I have had a lot of authors of books on this topic on this podcast.
Here is a bit of Bruce’s bio from his website BruceFeiler.com
BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most thoughtful voices on contemporary life. He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS, THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES, and COUNCIL OF DADS. His three TED Talks have been viewed more than four million times, and he teaches the TED Course HOW TO MASTER LIFE TRANSITIONS. His latest book, THE SEARCH: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World is a bold new roadmap for finding meaning and purpose at work, based on insights drawn from hundreds of life stories of all vocations and backgrounds.
Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge to encourage people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy. LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, and exploring how we can navigate life’s growing number of life transitions with purpose and skill. “One of those books that are so profoundly aligned with the zeitgeist that you end up underlining the whole book,” Arianna Huffington wrote in Thrive Global. “Bruce Feiler is the perfect person to lead us on this journey.” The book was a Top 10 New York Times bestseller.
For two decades, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters. The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time, and became a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta and an NBC drama series.
A longtime columnist at the New York Times, Bruce now writes the popular newsletter THE NONLINEAR LIFE. He has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Gourmet, where he won three James Beard Awards. He is a frequent commentator on radio and television. A former circus clown, he has been the subject of a Jay Leno joke and a JEOPARDY! the question and his face appears on a postage stamp in the Grenadines.
A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their identical twin daughters.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with Donna Serdula who is famous for LinkedIn profile optimization and makeover. We are speaking today about how to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile and Boost Your Later Life Career Prospects. This is not something that most discussions around LinkedIn focus on.
Read a bit from Donna’s about page on her website:
My name is Donna Serdula & in 2009, I pioneered my LinkedIn profile optimization methodology. Since then, my team & I have helped OVER SIX THOUSAND professionals from all over the world tell their stories & build a powerful professional brand.
Look, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, it’s not easy to write about yourself.
I hear it all the time, “I can… sell snow to an Eskimo / manage complex projects / lead exceptional teams… but write about myself? NO WAY!”
Besides, who has time to sit down and complete their LinkedIn profile on their own? Maybe that’s the reason why so many LinkedIn profiles suck. Yes, suck. You read that right.
You know this… People are Googling you. Your LinkedIn profile is more often than not your digital introduction and first impression with the world. If your LinkedIn profile doesn’t showcase your skills and portray you as a polished professional you are letting the ultimate opportunity just slip away…
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with Laurel McDowell, who is the Project Coordinator for Manpower’s Mature Worker Program which focuses on job connections for tenured job seekers. This is a program that targets mature workers, who primarily want to work project work, part-time, remote, or some combination of all of the above.
Please read Laurel’s bio:
Laurel McDowell is Project Coordinator for Manpower’s Mature Worker Program which focuses on job connections for tenured job seekers. Laurel retired in 2019 after a 27-year career in the field of Manpower in Management and Project Teams. Manpower Executive Management, in their wisdom, realized that there was a wealth of knowledge about to walk out the door forever, and so to continue to benefit from Laurel’s knowledge, expertise, and ideas they found a way to retain Ms. McDowell in a position that was relevant to her, interested her and met her needs and preferences at this stage of her life.
As an “unretiree,” Laurel can relate to seasoned talent and works to connect them with opportunities that fit their skills and goals.
Prior to Manpower, Laurel excelled in a 25-year career in Retail Management and also originated, and was the President of, a hospitality corporation. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Edinboro State University as well as other specialty certifications. Currently, she is a contributing participant of the Living, Learning & Earning Longer AARP-sponsored international consortium, and a member of the Encore Network. Representing the Program, she has been featured by Fox News, Wall Street Journal, AARP, Business Insider, SHRM magazine, and other publications and podcasts.
This program primarily targets workers who have retired or are planning to retire but want to continue to work. This includes a wide range of industries and positions and as you will hear Laurel and her team are in high touch. They will help you along in your journey.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I want to discuss mental health issues that I have seen around me. We just spent 3 weeks back in the United States and I had many meetings with friends, past clients, and professional colleagues. I heard many of them speak about the mental health issues they or their families were experiencing in this post-pandemic world. I wrote about this in my last Career Pivot Insights newsletter, and I receive more responses than I have ever received. It obviously resonated with a lot of people.
This episode is sponsored by the Career Pivot community but more on that later.
I am going to keep this short as I think it is an important topic.
Topics I discuss are as follows:
If anything in this episode sounds familiar I want to encourage you to get help. I have experienced a lot of mental health issues in my life and it took some real prodding to get help. I have sought help multiple times in my life and I am always glad I did.
The pandemic has been hard on all of us. If you need help go get it.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with the Eanes, who has been on the podcast pre-pandemic. Russ has pivoted from religious publishing to being an author, walker, bicyclist, guide, travel educator and a few other things that I cannot remember right now. The point is Russ continues to adapt and takes advantage of opportunities as they arise.
Russ is a writer, walker and cyclist from Harrisonburg, Va., a freelance publishing consultant and a travel coach and guide. His goal in living is to inspire others to more meaningful, peaceful and less consumptive lives. He is also an avid traveler, with a love of culture, cuisine and history, especially of Europe and Latin America.
Russ is a former member and successful graduate of the Career Pivot community. I first interviewed Russ in episode 143 after he published his first book The Walk of a Lifetime: 500 Miles on the Camino de Santiago. I later published an updated episode in February 2021 about how Russ was adapting to the pandemic.
Russ continued to make adaptions throughout the next couple of years including spending one year working full time for GetSetup as a travel instructor.
Russ recently published his latest book, Pilgrim Paths to Assisi: 300 Miles on the Way of St. Francis.
We discuss in this episode how he got to where he is today and that he is not done yet.
Russ’s story was highlighted in an article in the New York Times by my friend and colleague Mark Miller, no we are not related, called How a Solo Gig Can Give You a Stronger Retirement. I recommended Russ to Mark for this article.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode I am speaking with Christina Wallace who is the author of The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card. This book was written targeting millennials however, I think it is a worthwhile read for anyone at a crossroads in their career or life.
Here is a bit from her website about page:
A self-described “human Venn diagram”, Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where she teaches entrepreneurship and marketing.
A serial entrepreneur, Christina has built businesses in e-commerce, ed-tech, and media. She also co-authored New To Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth and was the co-host of The Limit Does Not Exist, an iHeart podcast with millions of downloads over 3 seasons and 125 episodes.
I found the process that Christina writes about is excellent for anyone who is at a crossroads on what to do next. In some ways, it is more applicable to people in their 2nd half of life because they have more life experience to reflect back on.
If you are at a crossroads, then please give this episode your full attention.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with the legendary Fritz Coleman who went from being the weathercaster for NBC in Los Angeles from 1982 to 2020 to co-hosting Media Path Podcast with Louise Palanker in 2020. Fritz has an inspiring story to tell that you need to hear.
This is from his Wikipedia page:
After growing up in Radnor, Pennsylvania, he attended Salem University in West Virginia and Temple University in Philadelphia where he studied radio, television, and film. Like many popular weather anchors, he serves as a reporter instead of a meteorologist since he doesn't have a degree in meteorology.
He worked as a comedian and disc jockey for several years and as radio personality "Jay Fredericks" at WBEN and later WKBW in Buffalo, New York. He left Buffalo for Los Angeles in 1980 to work as a stand-up comic. In 1982, he began work as a weekend weatherman at KNBC and became the weekday weatherman in 1984. He also hosted or appeared on a number of other KNBC shows, such as "It’s Fritz" (1988-1990) and "What a Week" (1990 – 1991).
He has written and performed two one-man theater acts, titled The Reception and It's Me! Dad! He received the 2004 EMA Community Service Award for his involvement with KNBC's 4 Our Planet, a children's program. He appeared in a supporting role in one of Raymond Burr's last Perry Mason television films, The Case of the Telltale Talk Show Host, in 1993.
He received a "thanks" credit on the film Wake Up, Ron Burgundy: The Lost Movie, an "alternate film" companion to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.
From 2009 to 2011, Coleman also did the weekday weather (in addition to KNBC) for San Diego's NBC affiliate, KNSD.
On June 17, 2020, Coleman announced that he would retire on Friday, June 26 after almost 40 years at KNBC.
I think you will find Fritz’s story quite entertaining and more importantly inspiring.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
My wife and I are now in Austin but only after a long 2-day drive across Central Mexico and Texas. Therefore, I am behind in getting episodes produced for this podcast. Therefore, I'm rebroadcasting one of the top episodes from 2021. This is episode 250, where I spoke with Bonnie Marcus, author of Not Done Yet!: How Women Over 50 Regain Their Confidence and Claim Workplace Power.
Read a bit from her Amazon:
Award-winning entrepreneur, Forbes contributing writer, and executive coach, Bonnie Marcus, M.Ed., assists professional women to successfully navigate the workplace and position and promote themselves to advance their careers.
With 20+ years of sales and management experience, Bonnie’s extensive business background includes being CEO of a ServiceMaster company and VP of Sales at Medical Staffing Network and two other national companies in the healthcare and software industries. She has held executive positions in startup companies and Fortune 500 companies.
Bonnie started her corporate career in an entry-level position and worked her way to the top of a national company. Her passion is now to help other women embrace their talent and ambition and step into their full potential and workplace power. Bonnie shares her message globally through speaking engagements, live and virtual workshops, blogging, and her popular podcast, Badass Women at Any Age.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with my good friend Steve Harper. Steve is a serial entrepreneur, professional speaker, author, and leading business strategist; Steve Harper has successfully uncovered the secret to creating powerful and long-lasting connections and their impact on one’s personal and professional life. Steve is the ultimate connector and does amazingly well despite being a big-time introvert.
After having Kurt Schmidt, the author of the little book of networking, in episode 315, I wanted to bring Steve Harper on to discuss the art of building relationships.
Here is Steve’s bio from his website:
A serial entrepreneur, professional speaker, author, and leading business strategist, Steve Harper has successfully uncovered the secret to creating powerful and long-lasting connections and their impact on one’s personal and professional life.
Over his thirty-year career, Steve has maintained a unique focus on developing strong, long-lasting connections with his clients, prospects, employees, and friends. He’s honed his unique ability to foster relationships into a strategy for achieving solid business success. That strategy, represented in his book The Ripple Effect, is the backbone of his signature 8 Minute Ripple events, speaking, podcasts, courses, coaching, and online communities.
Steve’s unique and refreshing approach to how and why individuals, organizations, and even our society must reach outside the box to connect; is changing lives and impacting corporate bottom-line dollars.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this episode, I am going to discuss the legal processes and issues my wife and I have been experiencing in becoming an ex-pat in Mexico. This includes getting a resident visa, the various identification numbers you need to acquire, getting an apostille for your marriage certificate, having new wills created, acquiring a Mexican driver's license, and a few other tidbits of information. This will not be legal advice as I am not a lawyer but it will give you some things to think about. This will be specifically about Mexico but you will run into the same issues no matter where you choose to go.
For those new to this podcast, my wife and I moved to Ajijic Mexico in 2018. My wife retired and I moved my business south of the border. At that point, I periodically started blogging and podcasting about our experiences. Much to my surprise those episodes have been very popular.
We have crossed a number of legal thresholds like both of us are now permanent residents, and we both have Mexican driver's licenses. We bought a house in Ajijic in October of 2021 and bought a new car in Mexico in January of 2023. Buying a new car was painful as there is very limited availability of new cars at the dealers. The process was simple once the cars had been delivered but the wait was painful.
We chose to live in a very walkable place in Mexico and therefore, the 3 months we went without a car was okay. We did realize that we did not need the car very much but there were times when it was handy to have. Instead, we hired a professional driver to take us places. For example, my wife needed to have her hearing aids serviced and we hired a driver to take her into Guadalajara twice, once to talk with the audiologist and drop the hearing aids off, and another time to pick them up.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
In this episode, I am speaking with Joanne Lipman who is the author of the book Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work. If you would like to know the details about what it takes to reinvent yourself in life and work, this is a great book. Joanne details the stories of lots of people who have reinvented themselves and how they did it.
Here is Joanne’s bio:
Joanne Lipman is the bestselling author of NEXT! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work and the No. 1 bestseller That's What She Said. A pioneering journalist, she has served as Editor-in-Chief of USA Today, USA Today Network, Conde Nast Portfolio, and The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Journal, leading those organizations to six Pulitzer Prizes. A frequent speaker and television commentator, she is an on-air contributor at CNBC and journalism lecturer at Yale University. She was also named the inaugural Distinguished Journalism Fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.
Dubbed "star editor" by CNN and "innovator in chief" by The New York Times, Lipman began her career as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, ultimately rising to Deputy Managing Editor, the first woman to attain that post. There, she created Weekend Journal and Personal Journal, and supervised coverage that earned three Pulitzer Prizes. She subsequently was founding Editor-in-Chief of Conde Nast Portfolio and Portfolio.com, which won National Magazine and Loeb Awards.
In 2015, she became the first Chief Content Officer of Gannett. There she was Editor in Chief of its USA Today and USA Today Network, encompassing the flagship title plus 109 metro newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Arizona Republic. In that role, she oversaw more than 3,000 journalists and led the organization to three Pulitzer Prizes.
Lipman is a frequent television commentator, seen on ABC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, CBS, MSNBC and PBS, among others. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, Fortune, Newsweek and Harvard Business Review. She is also co-author of the critically acclaimed musical memoir, "Strings Attached."
Another fun fact is Joanne and I went to the same high school in New Jersey however, I was about 5 years ahead of her.
I think you will find our conversation to be quite fascinating.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with Kurt Schmidt who is the author of the book The Little Book of Networking: How to Grow Your Career One Conversation at a Time. I like Kurt’s book because it is an easy 1 to 2-hour read and it is very actionable. It is very worth your time to get this book if you are reluctant to get back into networking.
Here is Kurt’s bio:
Kurt Schmidt is the president of Foundry, a pioneering software design agency that serves B2B industries. He is also the host of Schmidt List—a podcast with over two hundred episodes connecting him with prominent leadership minds for over five years.
With twenty-plus years of leadership and business experience, Kurt has learned the best-kept secrets for career and business success. In "The Little Book of Networking", Kurt penned the networking handbook "The Little Book Of Networking" to empower individuals seeking professional growth.
I will be publishing several episodes about networking in the next month. In a couple of weeks, I will be speaking with my good friend Steve Harper who is the author of the book The Ripple Effect: Maximizing the Power of Relationships for Life & Business.
My perception and it is only my perception, is that many of you are uncomfortable getting back out there and meeting people in real life. We have gotten used to speaking with people over Zoom but it is so important to meet people one on one in person.
I will be spending much of May back in the US and I am currently scheduling one on one time with a lot of people while in Austin. My wife and I will be traveling to Annapolis Maryland to visit with our son, his wife, and their new sheep doodle puppies. So, I am following my advice.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with Howard Waldstreicher. He is the author of Facebook's Oldest Intern: How a 60-year-old fitness trainer reinvented himself with the most unlikely of companies. This is a fascinating story of how Howard, who was totally screwed in the pandemic as a gym owner and fitness trainer, picked himself up and revived a previous career, and got hired at Facebook at the age of 60.
Here is how Howard describes himself on his Amazon author page.
Call him what you will - a gadfly, a shortie, or a squeaky-voiced Texas cowboy. But I had a blast working for Ross Perot.
At age 26, this Queens-born boy got his first real job as a computer programmer for Perot’s Electronic Data Systems in Plano, Texas. I liked the structure and the dress code: wingtip shoes, blue and grey suits, short haircuts, and conservative ties. In fact, if you dared to visit the bathroom without your jacket it was grounds for termination.
These days, things are a little bit different. At 60 (61 now), I stumble out of bed, throw on some sweatpants, and meander to my desk. Nobody cares if I’ve brushed my hair or if I’ve showered, or if I'm wearing pants. After all, I work at Facebook.
Wait, it’s Meta now. Well, that’s what the millennials tell me, anyway. They’ve helped me with a lot of stuff I don’t know since I’m the oldest employee at the office, definitely top three.
Thing is, despite the fact that it’s the alter universe from Perot’s clean-cut company, I absolutely freaking love it.
I landed the job after a 20-year hiatus from the information technology world, during which time I ran a fitness center, was a tennis instructor, and had a family. So, not only did I leave my field, but I left the world of having to answer to a boss - at all. My adult kids thought my new gig was cool. No other employer would even speak to me about a job at my age.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.
Description:
In this episode, I am speaking with Polly Allen. Polly is an expert in artificial intelligence, and I will be speaking with her about ChatGPT. This is a topic you need to learn more about. I think you will have a better understanding of what ChatGPT can do and how you can take advantage of it in your career.
Polly Allen has over 20 years of experience developing software, building and leading software teams, and most recently leading data science and engineering teams as a Principal Product Manager for Alexa AI at Amazon. At Alexa, she led generative artificial intelligence projects (using technology similar to ChatGPT). As a leader in the application of Machine Learning, she is passionate about DEI in the space and empowering more people to understand, leverage and participate in the field. She founded AI Career Boost, an AI education company, in November 2022, aiming to increase diversity in the AI industry. Polly is an experienced angel investor, a board member at the Center for Workforce Inclusion Labs, and a futurist keynote speaker. She holds an M.Sc. in Software Engineering from MIT and the University of Victoria, and an MBA from the University of British Columbia.
I have been working with ChatGPT for about a month and the more I learn how to use the tool, the more I am blown away by what is possible. My buddy Ryan Rhoten said on a recent LinkedIn live that “you may not lose your job to ChatGPT but you could lose it to someone who knows how to use it”.
This episode is well worth your time.
This episode is sponsored by Career Pivot. Check out the Career Pivot Community, and be sure to pick up my latest book, Repurpose Your Career: A Practical Guide for the 2nd Half of Life Third Edition.