Time was, as recently as 1900, you were a heartbeat away from your coffin if you were lucky to make it to 50.

Now, even a rare, fantasy retirement on a cushy pension loses its lustre when you might live another 30, 40 years.

More of us want to do more, but differently – pull back the curtain on our second act with a sense of excitement, ripe for new adventures and full of renewed purpose. But where to start? How to find that purpose?

John Tarnoff has made it his business to help us cut through the confusion of career reinvention after 50. He wrote Boomer Reinvention: How to Create Your Dream Career After 50.

Hear what when:

• How John made his transition from Hollywood film executive to career transition coach after being blindsided by 2008 financial crash
• A TEDx talk he was to give about transformation led him to refine his focus on +50s in need of help navigating radically-changing job market
• What makes his type of career reinvention coaching different from others?
• Personal goals of client come first
  

  “At this point in our lives we are looking for something different. We are looking for more meaning and more purpose in our work and our lives. There’s been a real change in who we are, what we know, what we can do and how we want to put all that into practise.”

• Many of us are trapped by our outdated thinking about how to find a job
  

  “It is not about what you see out there, trying to match or map yourself to some external position or criteria. It really is a personal development process…who you are, what gets you going in the morning, what sustains you, what can capture your imagination and, most importantly, where you can be most useful.”

• Finding your niche grows out of understanding your value and how to apply it to find your audience – a network that will pay for what you’re doing; it’s not about “following your bliss”, which won’t guarantee an income
• As a spiritual psychology graduate, he uses behavioural tools to get clients to reset mindsets, reframe ideas to eliminate limiting beliefs
• Biggest challenge is letting go of person’s attachment to professional identity when they lose their job and want to reinvent themselves
• Taking the next step involves properly activating your network, strategically, getting to know the people in your network, not just collecting random contacts on LinkedIn
  

  “You must first give before you can expect to receive – this idea of Always Be Giving – ABG. Your networking process is about what you can contribute to the network first and then build your reputation as the giver, the resource, by making introductions, sharing information regularly, solving problems, giving of your experience and wisdom.”

• 85% of all jobs come through referrals, not CV / resume submissions
• My encounters with ageism skeptics since launching this podcast
• The scourge of ageism – not imagined but very real with statistics and corporate examples to prove it, lawsuit against IBM for systematic ageism on a shocking scale and recent US election campaign video, satirical in intention but slammed for pitting older voters against the young
• Reinvention coach success story
• Does he ever tire of the constant whirl of social media self-promotion and profile maintenance?
  

  ---

Links

• JohnTarnoff.com
• Boomer Reinvention: How to Create Your Dream Career Over 50
• Ageism or Profit? Don’t Let Myth Interfere With Success
• John Tarnoff Twitter

Follow The Big Middle

Website I Twitter I Facebook I Instagram

Hosted + produced by Susan Flory

Music: “Beautiful Day” by Sahin Koc