Over-50

Leonard Marsh aka "Mr. Snapple" - Another late bloomer

Leonard Marsh, who created the off-beat beverage Snapple, struggled for the big time for decades.  In 1992, he got there through bringing his company public. Then in 1994, he sold it to Quaker for $1.7 billion, reports Stephen Miller in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  Marsh died on May 21st, at age 80.  He could become an iconic role model for all of the rest of us late bloomers. 

In his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses," University of Chicago researcher David W. Galenson documents that there is such a phenomenon as the late bloomer. Unlike the Mozarts of the world, they don't find a way to express their talent until late in life.  Until then they keep experimenting. An example is Frank Lloyd Wright who didn't start Falling Waters until he was 60 years old.

Now that the economy is improving, more of us Baby Boomers can go for what for us will be the big time.  During the worst of times during The Great Recession we learned plenty.  For example, I finally nailed down that was standing in my way of success was me.  In the next few years the media could be reporting on how we Baby Boomers are bursting into bloom.

Baby Boomers: Remember our classmates who peaked too soon?

Jennifer Haigh, author of the 2005 novel "Baker Towers," has a lot of insight into the young who peak early.  In high school they are the cheerleaders, class president, prom queen and king, and winner of the appointment to West Point.  Then there was the rest of us. 

It took me until my late 50s to find myself, then after that I found a way to get professional attention on my own terms.  University of Chicago professor David W. Galenson studied our kind.  He documented there really is such a thing as a late bloomer. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't design Falling Waters until he was around 60. 

Some years ago I attended a reunion of members of my high school class.  The former student president bored us with talking about the satisfaction he derives from teaching back at our same high school.  The one who was known to have the highest IQ (homerun teachers took to boasting) had a conventional career in the helping professions.  The kid who had achieved national fame on television through a spelling bee contest had hung himself in college.

Me? Those attending probably still labeled me a loud, overweight loser.  Yet, at the time I was operating a thriving business in executive communications, one which I got going again in the past 8 months.  Those who had dominated social life in the past continued to that day. 

Online Video Misleads Us To Believe Business Is The World According To Youth

From all corners of the world for all lines of work, online video features Millennials providing the news, participating in panels, and interviewing other Millennials. 

Here, for example, is TechCrunch's online video of Millennial women discussing guilt as they Lean In. Clearly, in a visual era youth is on the front lines and many of Baby Boomers aren't invited to be part of that conversation which is in the growing stock of online video. Now and then there is an exception, of course.  A few weeks ago I was interviewed on ABC NEWS (Diane Sawyer) about competing against Millennials and Generation Xers for a job.  Here is that clip.

Once we accept the reality and implications of a youth video culture we Baby Boomers can then regroup for assignments and jobs off-stage.  What slowed down the recovery of my communications boutique after the worst of the two recessions in the 21st century had been my reluctance to become a support player.  After all, we Baby Boomers were the generation which disrupted the "Father Knows Best" white bread culture in America.  As affluence grew, there were plenty of professional opportunities which we took and accumulated influence, status, and even some wealth.

Now, that I don't expect to be invited onstage, even for a bit part, my services are back in demand.  I have both a job and a list of clients who value my ideas and the content I produce.  All it took was, well, living with the consequences of aging.  Getting older doesn't mean less work or less money.  What it could me is a much lower profile.

Aging and Work: Soon when a 67-year-old gets a job, that won't be news

The key to full employment for Baby Boomers, who want to continue in the workforce, is for the labor market to become age-blind.  That could happen sooner than we expect.  With a recovering economy, more employers and clients are willing to pay for the experience we offer.

But right now when an older professional lands a job, it's news.  Yesterday, after I blogged about getting a job, the producer at ABC News called me.  She wanted to interview me about the heady experience of competing against Millennials and getting a job offer.  Here is that interview.

I am grateful for the exposure.  It was a heady experience to be on national television.  My college buddies such as Charlotte Toal and Lee Harrison watched.  (I wondered if back in our days at Seton Hill College they had expected to see me on a "Wanted" poster in the post office instead of being part of a happy story narrated by Diane Sawyer?)

But the segment on ABC News was also a step forward in recognizing that the aging will remain a major component in the workforce.  We are here.  We are not going away.  So, policies and procedures should be created to ensure that we will "choose" you as an employer or client among the many who need us to provide them our experience, skills, and insight.

Those 236,000 Jobs Created in February: Baby Boomers can leverage experience

According to the U.S. Labor Department, 236,000 jobs had been created in February and unemployment is down to 7.7%. 

There is not only reason for us Baby Boomers to hope that we will get what we want in terms of employment or running our own businesses.  There is also reason to realize that, with a growing economy rather than one operating on cost-efficiency, experience will again be valued.  And that employers and clients will pay for it.

Here is my story.  On Monday I will be starting a full-time position in lower Manhattan with an ecommerce company.  Most of the tasks can be done via telecommuting.  To get this opportunity I had to compete with professionals in their late 20s and early 30s.  My hunch is that I was hired based on my extensive experience in the field of legal communications.  The law-related blog I have been operating since 2006 might have helped too.

Our key strength may be that we have already encountered many of the problems employers and clients need to solve and that we have been around long enough to develop insight about trends and fads.

Baby Boomers & Working: Setting our minds to it

Sometimes age has nothing to do with it.  Sometimes what gets us that plum assignment or job is the mindset.  We are determined to speedread the situation on an interview and pull out the best and most compelling evidence that we are the perfect fit for what that organization needs.

Relentlessly I competed with professionals in their late 20s and early 30s for a full-time mostly telecommuting legal communications opportunity.  I got the job.  I am 67 years old.  On this platform I can build my new career path, which I have a hunch can be lucrative. 

There is a saying: Change or die (at least in the sense of being highly employable).  I changed.  There were times, though, that I thought that I was dying.

Baby Boomers: What we have learned about working since invention of smartphone

Maybe the epiphany came to us when we were on a plane to an interview and running the script over and over again through our heads.  Maybe it was when we were experimenting with fresh approaches in our business and, shock, we discovered that they were working.

That realization was that we Baby Boomers could continue to be a force in the labor market, if we mined our strengths, not focused so much on the advantages Millennials had over us.  No, we probably weren't going to design the next kind of smartphone but we didn't have to in order to remain in demand in the workforce.

The mistake, and it was understandable, too many of us made was attempting to clone ourselves into Millennials.  Of course, that didn't pan out.  Fortunately, when it didn't, we who are so seasoned in problem-solving figured out what could be our best selves.  Here are some of the things we came up with:

Experienced in how to go to work.  Unlike Millennials, we understand that the employers and clients set the rules.  Whether we agree with them or not we have to conform.  In short, we know how to comport ourselves in the workplace.

Be hustlers.  Because there were 76 million of us, from the get-go we had to hone our inner hustler.  To stand out from our peers, we had to keep developing an edge.  In going after a job or new client account we provide added value such as editing free a document the interviewer is struggling with.

Put work first.  Our generation gave lip service to being well-rounded or balanced but we knew that work had to be the priority.  Do that and everything else fell into place.

Take care of ourselves.  Even in the most paternalistic days of the system, we got it that we had to look after our health, professional development, significant relationships, and employability in case the organization was taken over, our boss was fired, or the consultants came in to evaluate manpower needs.

Once we accepted that we had what was unique to employers and clients and demonstrated those attributes the need to find and keep work has become just one more thing to do, not the most scary thing in the world.

Ash Wednesday, Pope's Retirement: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

My First Holy Communion remains in my memory bank as the happiest day of my life.  That might be because I never married and that my only opportunity to get the white dress, the white veil, the white shoes, the white handbag, and white prayer book - and walk down the church aisle.

Growing up a Catholic woman had its perks.  However, the advantages receded in my mind and heart when I faced the disadvantages of the religion's mandates about birth control and, later, abortion.  On a train to Alexandria, Virginia I made the decision to chuck all that and that was that.  Since then I have studied spiritual paths ranging from Buddhism to the Society of Friends.

However, as the Jesuits often opined, give a child over to the teachings of the church and that child remains forever under its influence.  The announcement by the pope that he is retiring got me hoping that a more liberal leader would take over.  Perhaps then I could contemplate taking another look at Catholicism.  Today is Ash Wednesday.  I am focused on my sins, a concept still embedded in how I see myself and the world.

With aging I wonder what ministry will I call upon to assist me with dying: Buddhism or Roman Catholicism?  That's an issue for many of us Baby Boomers who started out on life as a member of Holy Mother the Church.  We were her child and had felt protected.  Will we seek out that sense of being cared for as we prepare to leave planet earth?

Aging and Support Systems: Clustering Mechanism

After we size up our neighbors in this 1,400 unit senior citizen complex in New England we align ourselves with two others.  They fill in the gaps on what we need to navigate this process, which keeps changing, called "aging."

Seven years ago, for the second time in two years, where I was renting went from pet friendly to pet free.  The affordable living residence specializing in rentals for the aging promoted itself as a sort of Eden, before the fall. From my legal writing, I knew that no sane property owner was going to separate a protected class like us from our animal companions.  So, I had my ticket punched.

So many studies have been done about the children in the "projects," that is low-income housing.  However, the aging has essentially been an invisible group.  Yet we manage to thrive, despite limited financial resources, because we seem to get a hang of finding the right people to help us.

One cluster of three has been three music lovers.  The woman is the nurturer and cook.  One man, who remains a computer freelancer, scouts up work-from-home assignments.  For a few years the three did polling from their 700-square feet apartments.  The third man provides the transportation with his SUV.  Despite bouts of serious illness, ranging from legal blindness to cancer, this cluster is thriving.

Right now we aging who are not wealthy are viewed as burdens on capitalism.  Yet we represent a grand experiment in how human beings can pool their strengths and unlock value in a community.

Baby Boomer Edge: We had also lived a life offline

Now that we Baby Boomers have picked up enough digital know-how to do our work and keep in touch with everyone while mobile we can exhale.  We remain employable and relevant.  We also have the edge, professionally and socially, that we had had a live offline.  Our medium had been television and the powers that be - parents, teachers, medical doctors - restricted how much we consumed.  On Sunday nights we were shut off after "Lassie."

Millennials grew up online.  That, as THE WASHINGTON POST points out, could be their downfall.  Adam Lanza, for example, could spend his short life in a cloud, only needing to go out into real life for a haircut.  That leaves that generation with a shortage of skills to navigate the social demands of working offline and intimate relationships with human beings.

The challenge for us Baby Boomers, now that we have regained our confidence, is to leverage our high emotional intelligence (EI) without adding to the tensions among the generations.  The tough nut to crack in professional life is for all of us to be able to collaborate in the economy which grows through shared knowledge and skills.