I went to a coach to try and get some direction in my life. During a lull in our conversation, I drifted off, as I often do; suddenly I realized that the coach was speaking:
She asked me quite pointedly, “Where are you just now?” “Describe it to me in detail” Whilst her voice was gentle, it was nonetheless firm and I received her question more as an instruction, rather than a request.
I responded, “I’m seventy two and was retired by my employer two years ago. They discovered my age by accident and told me I was an illegal employee. I was given a month’s notice and my leave pay.
I greeted the arrangement with mixed feelings. On the one hand I was relieved to be freed from my corporate shackles and their related stress. On the other hand the loss of my financial package and no pension or annuity funds, no savings or assets, presented me with a very real concern”.
The chances of me finding employment as a person beyond retirement age were nil minus!
Anyway, I reasoned, who wants to be ‘employed’? What person in his right mind would want to spend his last few days/years on earth being a slave to a salary, as a means of surviving?
What about doing something you really want and making a living out of that? This proposition sounded very good to me. After all who could beat doing something you really enjoy and sustaining yourself at the same time?
Wow! The idea was not only appealing, but quite frankly – great.
Where to from here?
Good sense dictated that I start with a list of what I would get real enjoyment out of doing and which would sustain me at the same time.
I started with a list of the things I would really like to do for whatever time God would give me on this earth. Then I split these into a categories of what would grow me spiritually, could use to sustain me, then enjoy myself.
It looked like this:
| Things I like Doing | ||||||
| Spiritual | Livelihood | Leisure | ||||
| Worship and Praying | √ | |||||
| Bible Teaching | √ | |||||
| Training | √ | |||||
| Telling Stories | √ | |||||
| Writing | √ | |||||
| Cooking | √ | √ | ||||
| Gym | √ | |||||
| Comedy Movies | √ | |||||
| Reading | √ | |||||
| Playing Golf | √ | |||||
Now considering my best options, I picked training and writing. I reasoned that I had the skills to be able to do specific training and as far as writing was concerned, whilst I would need training before I could make that a paying proposition, then I could enjoy what I was doing and sustain myself at the same time.
There was a third choice – story telling. But here I was not sure what the market demand would be, or for that matter, how to get into that market, if it existed at all. Then what training would be needed?. I now relegated that to a distant third option.
Where to from here?
This much I can say; the blurts now began with all their ferocity.
‘You’re too old, who would want you to train them, who would want to hear your stories? ‘It’s true, you don’t look your 72 years, but even if you looked only 60, you’re still old!’
I got around that one by doing an exercise of listing advantages to being my age and having something marketable to offer.
But I got stuck in the place of how to market my skills and have I really fully listed what I would like to do and decided what could sustain me?
From a marketing perspective, I reasoned that training could be sold by telephone canvassing, on the basis of number of calls versus appointments made and contracts achieved.
Writing could be researched whilst the training was being canvassed.
Well, that was three years ago. Canvassing to get training work did not result in me becoming a trainer. What it did do however, was to reveal a skill that I have in using the telephone to help others to build their businesses!
Now, I make over one thousand phone calls every month and my services are fully booked by satisfied clients. As most of my calling is done via cloud based software, I can live and work anywhere in the country.
What about my training? More good news! I will be launching, in the next month, a program to train people how to effectively use a telephone.
What about my writing? More good news! I discovered blogging and a wonderful organization called WordPress. Not only this, but a great global community of Bloggers. Because of this, I am not only able to share my story with you but I am gaining writing , web building and marketing skills – Yay!!!
Whatever your age, if you are in a dead spot in your work life, or have no current employment, join this seventy five year-old; go grab your dream and bring it alive!
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