Consolidation

The Career Stage No One Talks About

When I was younger, I thought I would keep working until I didn’t want to work anymore, a time I vaguely assumed would be in my sixties. I worked in technology and then advertising, and I saw that the only older women still working in advertising owned their own agencies or were in executive roles, so I worked my way up to an executive role.

And got fired. My job performance was demonstrably exemplary, but the thirty something creative director didn’t think that I, in my fifties, could understand his creative vision.

I haven’t worked full time in advertising since then.

Fortunately, I had a backup plan. I’d experienced enough sexism and ageism that I returned to grad school in my forties to get a Masters in Transformational Leadership. I was able to pivot to consulting work and then executive coaching, which I’ve been doing for the last ten years.

The harsh reality is that we might not get to work as long as we think, in spite of how good we are at our job. Whether we are over forty, female, a person of color, or disabled, there are many ways in which our career can be impacted by various forms of discrimination.

You can find lots of advice on how to build a career, and how to get to your career peak. Acres of content exist about getting ready for retirement when you are done with a paying job.

But what about that liminal space so many of us find ourselves in where we are no longer in demand, but we’re not done yet? What is that called? Where is the advice for that?  

The Season of Consolidation

I call it the Season of Consolidation. Some people have the money, privilege or good fortune to leave at the top of their game or move from an unplanned exit into a comfortable retirement. But plenty of us were pushed out well before we were ready to go.

In a recent training I gave, I likened career planning to mapping a travel route. I live in Seattle, known for rainy, temperate winters, but I carry chains in my car in case there is snow. Plan for your eventual obsolescence. Plan for the ageism and/or sexism that might arise. And if you don’t need your plan, great. I take the chains out of my car every spring, unused, but I am prepared. Be prepared.

Planning for Consolidation should start when you are at the top of your career, or close to it, and you begin to think about what you could do next. This is a two-part process. First, decide what you want to do. In an ideal world, if you could wave a magic wand and erase college tuition costs for your kids, or the expense of Dad’s nursing home, what would you love to do for the next ten or twenty years?  Dream, discern, imagine.

Then, come back down to earth. What are your financial needs and personal responsibilities? How can you meet them if you choose – or are forced to – leave your current position or career? Get specific, and be realistic. I’ve talked to financial planners who are used to working with wealthy clients and assume all retired people will be traveling extensively between multiple homes. I know how to live modestly, and I have done it many times in my past, so I’ve had to reframe the “expert” advice about how much I will need to retire.

Once you know your financial needs, consider your options. What parts of your current skillset are portable? Can you coach, teach, consult or advise? Are there trainings or certifications you need to establish this next phase? Can you get that education with your current position? My grad school program was for working professionals, so I worked full time through most of it.

Ideally, there will be some overlap between what you would love to do and what you need to do. If not, maybe your Consolidation Season has two parts. I’ve been doing consulting and executive coaching which checked the financial boxes and now I’m doing more writing. When my book is published in the spring, I hope to move into the dream phase where more of my income is from writing, training and speaking. But I still have my executive coaching business, which I enjoy and can happily continue to do until I'm done working.

Do your research

Who do you know, or who in your network has shifted into something you think might be interesting? If you have a connection who went to teach at an MBA program after a career as an executive, or moved from corporate into non-profit work, take her out for coffee or jump on a video call and ask for information. When my career was starting we were told to do “informational interviews” – tell me about the career or job you have so I can see if I want to do it myself. Why not start that again? Tell me about how you built your next act, and what you like and dislike about it?

Over the years I’ve talked to people who want to be self-employed executive coaches but are unrealistic about how hard it is to run your own business, or underestimate their discipline or organizational abilities. Lots of established, certified executive coaches are struggling right now, which you wouldn’t know from LinkedIn, but you would know if you took an executive coach friend out for lunch.

It's tough to get kicked out of the high-flying career trajectory you’ve been on, especially when you thought you were going to ride it into the sunset. Pack a parachute, pack it well and carefully, with advice from experts. That way you’re ready, if you get pushed out, to pull the cord and hear the chute open and fill with air and see where the wind takes you.

A note to friends and subscribers

I’ve been having a hard time getting any of my content around aging and work, especially work in the advertising industry, into the ad trades or business publications. Since I was published in some of those trades when I was younger, I’m thinking that ageism might play a role. Not just the ageism implicit in the assumption that a 62-year-old woman can have nothing of value to add, but also the ageism implicit in the assumption that people over forty aren’t valuable as an audience. If you have any contacts, or just want to ask the ad trades to invite women to write something about being older that isn’t about menopause, that would be helpful. And feel free to send them the link to this substack or share it on social media. I really appreciate your support.