Pivoting in Your Career: How Late is Too Late?

When you are looking for other career opportunities, and you feel like it may be too late. How late is too late?

In this episode I spoke with Monica Parker, a Career Coach who specializes in helping women who are in mid-career make a pivot. We talk about how old is too old to make a complete change in your career, the important questions to ask potential employers about their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, and so much more. Monica can help take your career change to the next level. Her contact information is below.

Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast

Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com

Get in touch with Monica here:
https://www.midcareerpivot.com/
LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/monicarparker
Go take your Sparketype Assessment here:  https://sparketype.com/sparketest/

Books Monica has written:
The Unhappy Lawyer: A Roadmap to Finding Meaningful Work Outside of the Law
What it Takes: How Women of Color Can Thrive Within the Practice of Law

Transcript

00:04
Hi, welcome to the Reboot Loading Podcast. I'm your host Stephanie. Well, hello everyone. On today's show, I am super excited to be speaking with my guest, Monica Parker. She has a very diverse professional background and I'm interested in learning all about how she came to where she is right now. And she has a very expansive knowledge set, let's just say.

00:34
And we want to touch on some things about sexism in the workplace, ageism, as well as how late is too late to change careers. For those of you who may be out there questioning right now, can I change? Let's see. So please help me welcome Monica to the Reboot Loading Podcast. Thanks, Stephanie. I appreciate you having me here and excited to be able to have this chat with you today. I really want to hear about your background and how you came to where you are now because I feel like

01:03
What you're doing right now is amazing. It's really hitting home as far as me and trying to find my career, that sort of thing. Sure, so I don't know, I'll tell you what I'm doing now and then we can talk more about my background, which as you said is quite varied. Currently, I am a career coach and I work with women in mid-career who want to make some kind of a pivot. And usually the pivot is something along the lines of being an unconventional career or they're interested in an entrepreneurial pursuit.

01:31
So that's what I'm currently doing. And my company is called Mid Career Pivot, and I'm at midcareerpivot.com. And y'all have to tell me where you wanna start with my career history. We can start with what happened right before this shift into being self-employed, or we can go back to when I graduated from college and what I did, what's your preference? Let's start with the college. I wanna be like, okay, you went to Harvard, and then you were a lawyer.

02:00
And now you are seriously living my dream, which is your own boss and doing your own thing, which is wonderful. Yes. Okay. Well, yes, I went to Harvard for undergrad and I was an English and American literature major. And I also had the great good fortune when I was in college to take a class with Spike Lee, who is a filmmaker. And after taking that class with Spike, I decided that I wanted to pursue film.

02:29
and ended up joining Spike first as an intern during spring break. And then after I graduated as an intern, and then that fall Spike hired me for his development department. And in film development is a very specific thing. It's where you're helping to develop screenplays essentially to be produced. And so my job was reading screenplays and going to film festivals. Yes, it's an actual job.

02:55
That sounds like fun. Yes, that was my first job. I did decide after a certain period of time, I think it was a couple of years, that I was not as enamored of film as Spike was, as people who work in that industry really need to be. And I decided that I was going to change careers. At the time I was living in New York City when I was working with Spike. I decided I wanted to come back to the South, to Georgia, where I grew up, and ended up moving to Atlanta.

03:25
without a job, I moved in with my older brother to try to figure out what I wanted to do next. And my older brother said, I noticed that Winn-Dixie, which for folks listening to this, is a grocery store chain, I noticed Winn-Dixie is hiring. Why don't you go see what they're doing? Because you love grocery stores. And so I went to Winn-Dixie and I interviewed for their management training program and became an assistant manager for the store and did that for two years.

03:52
After I got yelled at for having the wrong brand of baby wipes, this was clearly a sleep-deprived mother with a newborn, which in hindsight I now understand. But I thought to myself at the time, well, this is for the birds. I'm out of here. What I need is I need a graduate degree, because when I have a graduate degree, I'll have prestige and I'll have status and I'll have more income. And I was trying to decide what kind of graduate studies I wanted to pursue.

04:19
And I had a number of friends who were in law school at that point, and they said, well, the cool thing about law school is that you don't have to practice law unless you want to, and you can do a lot of different things with a law degree. So I ended up back at Harvard at the law school and graduated, and I did practice for a period of time, but then ultimately decided that practice wasn't for me. And I ended up spending several years working, I'd say, in and around law firms on the administrative side of things, so working in professional development.

04:47
which is focused on helping the associates develop, also doing training, and then eventually pivoted into diversity, equity, and inclusion work with law firms. But I have to tell you, Stephanie, there were a few sort of detours along the way. So for example, after I stopped practicing the first time, I actually went out on my own and I started doing work in conflict resolution because when I was in law school, there was a negotiation course that I took and fell in love with. And I became a teaching assistant for the course and then...

05:16
Eventually, I came back as Electron Law at Harvard to teach the course and worked with a number of folks in that field for several years as well. And I also had a career coaching practice back then, and I was focused on working with lawyers who didn't want to practice but weren't sure what they wanted to do. And it was called leaving the loss. And that was a new thing at the time. It was not something that folks knew, kind of a big secret, that there were a lot of lawyers who didn't want to practice but weren't sure what they wanted to do. So...

05:44
It was really fun working that arena. And I had a couple of books published at the time, which was an incredible opportunity. One for unhappy, called the unhappy lawyer actually. And then another book for lawyers in the practice of law called what it takes, how women of color can thrive within the practice of law. You're an author as well. I am an author as well. Yes, I was one of those fortunate folks who ended up having a literary agent, actually a lawyer turned literary agent who reached out and said, hey, have you ever thought about writing a book? And I...

06:12
said, Well, who hasn't thought of writing a book and she helped me put together a proposal. And that's how we were able to get the book, the first book published, the Inhabi lawyer roadmap to finding meaningful work outside of the law. And then because of that book, the American Bar Association came knocking and that's how I ended up writing the second book what it takes. So yes, so that was one detour. And then somewhere fast forward through a lot of the work with law firms, I had the opportunity to join an education nonprofit.

06:40
that focused on working with students who were often the first in their families to go to college, students of color, and ended up becoming the associate executive director for this organization. And that's actually where, I was going to say that's where I first got involved with DEI work. It's not quite true because before, you know, DEI was well known, there were law firms who had folks working in that space, but it was more as a part of your job as opposed to an individual role.

07:09
So I would say it was working with those students of color who were trying to achieve at their schools and go on to college and go on to careers. That's where I saw firsthand experience of building the pipeline. And based on that work, that's when I decided, you know what, I wanna move more directly into diversity equity inclusion work. And I started doing that work with professional services firms. And so that gets us up to where we are now, which is.

07:35
Then after doing that for a period of time, I decided, you know what, I miss being an entrepreneur. I miss being out there. What am I gonna do? I think I wanna go back into the career coaching side of things. At this point, I can say that I am a career transition expert based on my own experience. And then of course, right? And then I had stumbled across this really cool career assessment called Sparketype and decided that I wanted to get certified in that Sparketype career assessment and then work with women in mid career.

08:05
in the hopes of helping them navigate what can be a really tricky time of life because so many things have changed at mid career mid life. And now they're thinking, do I want to make a career change? Is this the right time to do this? What will happen if I do it? It just seemed like a crucial period of time to be able to work with with women. So that's what I'm doing. That's amazing. So you mentioned that it's spark type, you said?

08:30
Sparketype, so it's spelled a little bit differently than it sounds, it's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E. So the site is sparketype.com, anyone can go and take the assessment. It's online, it's free, probably takes about 15 minutes. And what I am as a certified Sparketype advisor or CSA, I'm certified in helping people take a deep dive into their results. But for sure, anyone can take the assessment for free and learn.

08:57
what some of the primary impulses are for them. In other words, the kinds of work that light them up and the kinds of work that drain them. That's amazing. I'm gonna do that. I wrote it down here. I hope you do. You'll have to take it and then send me your results so I can see. Yes, for sure. I know off the top of my head, things that I'm just like absolutely not 100% knows to, but it is really hard to find that sweet spot, right? And what I really love about your background is

09:26
the many different directions that you've gone into drives home the point that I have been trying to make pretty much my whole adult life, which is there is absolutely no possible way for us to really know what it is when we're in high school, in college, like what is it that we wanna do for the rest of our lives? Yes. And I have yet to see anyone really that set out in college and said, I'm going to do this and really just stuck with that thing.

09:55
It is

10:22
retired, you know, graphic gold watch and the pension. We live in different times now and people certainly make career changes on a very regular basis. So, and I think that's because there are lots of different things that we could do. And for some of us, we want to explore all those different things that we can do. It's almost like sometimes I feel like for myself, I have so many ideas in my head that I'm like, there's not enough time in my day to do all these things. Yes.

10:51
And then I'll have to kind of rank them out and say, okay, which one's most important for me today? It changes. It does. It does. And you do have your whole life too. I think, I believe to your point of, um, your experience of, of saying this your whole life, I think that we have the opportunity for those of us who are fortunate, right? To have that opportunity to make those kinds of changes throughout our lives so that you can explore as many of those things on your list as possible. Yes. 100%.

11:20
What I found is, and I don't know if this is what happened with you, but it doesn't seem like it, seems like you kind of just went for those things that sparked your interest. But sometimes what I will do is I will say, okay, do I want to go back and maybe get a master's? Do I want to continue my career and educate myself on certain things, certifications, et cetera? And then when I look at what the requirements are, what all has to go into that, and then I'm looking at, okay, there's

11:50
time period that I'm gonna have to dedicate to that. And it's like, am I too old to do this? Where am I gonna be in that amount of time when I actually build up tenure in that particular field, then how am I gonna do that? Am I gonna be well into my senior years? So I usually get discouraged and it just pushes me back. It makes sense. You're talking about the obstacles, right? So that's some of the work that I do with my clients is they're exploring possibilities because obstacles are going to come up.

12:18
And so then there's a conversation around, well, when are the obstacles real? Cause some of the obstacles are in our head, not the one that you're describing, but sometimes they're in our head. And then other times it's okay. It's an obstacle. How do you feel about that? What do you want to do about it? Is it an obstacle you want to try to overcome? Or is it something where you think, you know what, actually I don't, I don't want to do that, you know, some, something that I talk about with my clients too, is when they think about, okay, well, it's going to take this long to make this shift and what's that going to be like? Like, well, it's more a question of.

12:47
If you don't make that change in a few years, are you going to be where you currently are, which is dissatisfied and unhappy? In which case, maybe that kind of a shift makes sense. Or maybe there's something else that doesn't have right those same obstacles that you could pursue instead. So I'm all for action. Listen, I do think I'm unusual. I don't. It's rare when I meet someone who has made as many shifts as I have. I think you're right. I tend to say why not? You know,

13:15
Because from my perspective, I don't think it's hurt to make those changes. I actually have never had any employer ask me, why do you keep changing? I think most people are fascinated by it. And I look at it as just what you said earlier, I have so many different interests. I've just had the opportunity to explore a lot of them. I absolutely love that. I love the attitude about it because I feel like, at least in my own experience, probably since I was in my early 20s.

13:44
I would say to myself like, yeah, okay, I can do this, I can do that. And even then I was like, well, no, by the time I get done with this, I'm going to be, you know, close to 30 and that's too old. You know, and it's now looking back at it, I'm like, why didn't you do these things? But I feel like it's almost like, I don't know if it was just society kind of holding me back. It was myself. It was like you said, culturally.

14:11
we were raised to, you have to stay in particular jobs for X amount of time. And like you said, you didn't really have any issues with employers saying, hey, why are you changing so many times? Whereas I was always afraid of that. I thought, oh my gosh, if I change, I think in my professional career, probably the shortest amount of time I stayed at one particular job was maybe a year and a half. All of the others had been five plus years.

14:41
And now what I'm finding when I'm applying for jobs and looking at things, people are like, why'd you stay so long at X company? Why were you there so long? And it's the complete opposite. So of course, I changed. No, you're right. I mean, we see it a lot, you two to four year time span and then shifting to something else. And you're right. And in certain industries, that's expected as well. Others, it's a little bit more of a question.

15:07
But yeah, that has not been a problem for me. What I typically say to clients though is, let's create the story that you're going to share about the change that you're making, right? Because that's really what employers are looking for. And I also have had the ability, and this is again, what I work with my clients on is how do you sell yourself in that context too? Because all the work you've done, when you started your career up to now, have created a body of experience regardless of what career or careers you've pursued.

15:37
and those transferable skills are often what an employer wants to know about. So I do think that the storytelling piece is really important because otherwise, yeah, and I used to make a joke about this, Stephanie, when I started practicing law and people would ask about my background, I'd say, yeah, I started my career in film and then I worked in grocery store management and then law. You see the connections? Ha ha ha.

16:00
They're like, no, no. I'm like, yeah, they're on me. So I also, you know, I think I feel somewhat playful about the changes that I've made. And I think that comes across in how I talk about the shifts as well. Something that goes through my mind constantly, especially in the workplace, especially working in tech, where it's more male dominated is there's a lot of sexism. And oftentimes I am told, especially, and I find it more so with female managers who will just tell me, you know, you gotta fake it till you make it.

16:29
just fake it till you make it. And I'm like, why do we have to do that? Why is that a requirement? You know, when I would go for, hey, going to my managers and like looking for a mentor, that would be the answer I would get. And it's like, no. Yeah, it's funny you say that I got a similar response when I started practicing law. It was pretend as if you know the answer. But I don't.

16:58
That doesn't really sit well with me. I prefer to say I don't know and I'm gonna find out or like you said, have a mentor who can help me think things through and provide some practical concrete advice as opposed to the fake it till you make it approach. So that is interesting and that definitely crosses industries and I don't know, I don't find it to be particularly helpful. Sit and then and don't now. It absolutely isn't at all. And that's something I want to.

17:25
to provide for my kids is just don't try to fit yourself in this square peg round hole scenario. Yes, yes. You have to be able to have that exploration. You know, I really wanna see more women in more power positions and being able to not have to fake it till you make it, not have to take on, you know, these stereotypical roles and just be more powerful.

17:52
Be authentic and be powerful at the same time. I mean, that will definitely be beneficial to those looking up to them, right? With your work in DEI and your background there, I know a lot of people, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, where it became kind of almost like a fad for a while with a lot of companies saying, hey, we have this program and they're just throwing a bunch of videos at you and that sort of thing. And it-

18:22
really didn't feel like it was hitting the actual real goal of the initiative to begin with. So in your opinion, and just with the work that you've done, if someone is looking for a particular place, a particular company, organization that has a strong DI program in place, what are some of the things that they should be looking for? Yeah, you're right, because

18:51
What you're describing too is this almost like a check the box exercise. Yes. Yeah. If what I say to folks and in my experience of working in the field, you know, one of the first things you can be looking for is, you know, what do you see in terms of diversity within the organization itself? And then also, where are you seeing that diversity? Are you seeing it just at the entry level? Are you seeing it at the mid level? Are you seeing senior leaders who are?

19:18
folks of color, LGBTQ plus. In other words, are you seeing any diversity or are you not? Because I think that that's a telling feature. With that being said, there are organizations that are doing the work and it does take time for change to take place. So if you're not seeing that diversity there, I think even just having a conversation and asking an organization to tell you about its DEI strategic plan.

19:47
can be really insightful. Because depending upon the industry, right? But in certain industries, there are sort of certain kind of standard things that you might see. And if you're just seeing those standard things, like you said, oh, we have a Black History Month program, right, or we have a DEI committee, those are almost table stakes at this point, right? As opposed to we've taken an in-depth look at our hiring process.

20:17
We've taken a look at our work allocation process. We've looked at salaries. We've looked at advanced career advancement. And based upon what we've seen, we've made the following changes or here's what we're trying. And I think those are the more telling signs that an organization is actively focusing on DEI at the organization. I love it. I love that answer because...

20:43
that is I feel like I'm just thinking about like in an interview process or just talking to people within a company if I ask somebody that question how they would respond back and if they had if they came back with that I'll be like can you just hire me already I'm really good for the job just hire right together I can say I accept the offer you have not made yet I do want to ask you about

21:12
If you're working with somebody now, or somebody, let's say me, for example, I'm sitting there going, okay, I've been doing what I'm doing now for the past almost 20 years. I'm thinking I want to go back to school or I'm thinking I want to do something totally different. I don't want to work in tech anymore. Maybe I want to go work at the grocery industry. I don't know. True story. I wanted to be a cashier at a grocery store.

21:41
for the longest time. Like that, I wanted to be when I grew up. I actually wrote a story about it, I think in elementary school. Oh. And it'll date me some, but it was right around the time where they stopped having to type in all of the codes and the amounts and that sort of thing. And we got these little scanners in there. And they were about this whole, so even now I like.

22:08
bagging my own groceries. I was gonna say, you're probably that person who's super excited when they set up the self-service lines. I am actually. It's scan. I get it, I totally get it. Yeah, if someone came to you and was just like, hey, I want to make this drastic shift, like what is the first thing that you would do? Well, I am the eternal optimist. If somebody wants to make a shift, I'm gonna say, let's figure out how to make it happen. That's what I'm gonna say.

22:36
Because the process is going to be here, person's gonna be thinking about, here are some possibilities I wanna explore. We're gonna craft some experiments for them to explore those possibilities, so they get a sense of what it's like, whether that is going, taking a class, whether it's coming up with a project that you can do, or volunteer opportunity, after work or on the weekends. Because in the process of doing that, it's going to surface a few different things. One, it's gonna surface whether

23:06
you feel, you know, in your gut like, yeah, this, this is exciting to me. Like this is fulfilling. It sparks me. Right. Or you're going to have the experience of, yeah, no, actually I don't like it because we also tell ourselves stories in our heads about how things will be and how ideal it will be. So that's why the experimenting part is really important. So you might think, oh, so here's an example. When I was at one point trying to figure out what to do next, I thought that doing interior design would be really fun.

23:33
Particularly, I wanted to work with people on their kitchens and then their office spaces and their closets. And I had the chance to connect with an interior designer. And so one of the things I encouraged my clients to do is an informational interview. So I had a phone call with the interior designer, walked through my questions, really had a great conversation. We hit it off. And so then another thing I encouraged clients to do if they can is to shadow someone. So I spent the day.

24:00
with this interior designer and he picked a day where he was going to be working on a kitchen and a closet and an office. And at the end of the day, he's flipping through rugs for a client. And I remember thinking, I am so bored right now. When is this day going to end? So I had told myself a story. I'd built up this vision for what it was going to be like. And he meanwhile was like bouncing off the walls with energy. So all that's to say, that's sometimes what we discover.

24:29
we realize I do really like this and there are some obstacles, right, to this thing that I want to do. And then the conversation, the coaching is around, well, what do you, like I said earlier, what do you want to do about those obstacles then? Do you want to crash through that brick wall obstacle? Do you want to try to figure out a way around it or over it or under it? Or are you thinking, you know what, I think that's too much. So now let me explore either this iteration of the possibility or let me look at another possibility.

24:58
So that's what I'm gonna do when someone comes to me and says, I'm doing X, I wanna do Y, then let's figure out how we can make that happen. And let's explore it first to make sure that that thing that you think you wanna do is what you actually wanna do. I like that. I've started so many hobbies, I would say, in the past, where I think, oh, I could do this business, you know? And then when I start trying to do things a little bit more aggressively

25:28
either that wall of burnout hits, or it's just, you're not really seeing the return on your investments, and your hobby kind of turns into this thing where you loathe doing it. Sure, because sometimes hobbies are meant to stay hobbies, right? And that's why they're fun. It's the minute that you tie, I've got to make a living from it, or I have to make a profit from it, it changes the dynamic for some people.

25:55
You're still describing the way to explore though, which I think is lovely. It's you try something out and you see what you think. I'm looking for what I would classify as low risk opportunities. So instead of deciding I'm gonna go to grad school, what are some ways you can explore grad school, subject matter, what are ways you can explore the careers that people are doing coming out of that grad school program?

26:20
doing that first before deciding to make the leap into grad school right when you are basically taking on the debt, the time it takes, you're interrupting your current career to do something else. So, but you're onto something. I think that the exploration and then even doing a small test run of what it would be like to try to make money doing this thing that you wanna do, I think all that is really helpful in terms of deciding on the second thought. I think I'd rather just have that be a hobby.

26:48
Like I don't like making soaps anymore. So I've gone through those, the love hate part of my hobbies and trying to make them into something else. Yeah. Usually what ends up happening with me is I lose all my hobbies because I try to You're like I'm done. Something else. But I think honestly though, I think my hobby has become having a bunch of hobbies that I think I can turn into a business. So that's like my hobby.

27:18
All right, that's a good, I still think that's a good hobby because you may hit upon something. I think that's also why I like the spark a type assessment that we were talking about because for example, the way it works is you find out your primary impulse kind of work that you feel sparked by or fulfilled by, then your shadow, which I think of as your secondary so also important. And then your anti of course is the kind of work that drains you.

27:47
My primary is advisor and advisors guide people to grow. So, you know, coaching, training, facilitating, things of that nature. If I am doing some kind of work that has those components, then I'm likely going to be super excited about it. I shared that to say, for example, and I want to be clear, I'm not saying that you can't create a soap business if your primary is advisor, but what I'm suggesting is

28:14
that that might be something fun for me to do as a hobby, but it I'd have to figure out some way to make it connect with that primary impulse. Trying to even think what you do with soap. I don't know, maybe maybe the soap has like self development statements or something on it. I can't think of something in that context, but you get my point. My point is that that's why I think it's so beneficial to experiment and to have a resource like

28:41
architect to kind of help give you some sense of guidance. Because one thing I was just thinking when you were saying that is I feel like what I like the most about when I come up with all of my ideas is the planning, kind of like the business planning side of it and the plans of execution, the plans of marketing, like all of those things. Like if I could just hand that over to someone else to actually do it, maybe I'm onto something there. I don't know. I'm gonna have to do my.

29:10
for sure. You might be, you might be onto something. And you know, if you think about coaching as a profession, right? A lot of coaches don't like to market, you know, in their ideal world, they would hand that off to someone else and just be able to focus on helping clients, you know, develop. General wisdom about that is you do need to do some of the marketing yourself. What you have to do is you have to find a way to

29:37
make the marketing something that you feel comfortable doing or something you enjoy. So identifying marketing activities that work for you. So it could be the case that there's something that you want to do and there are some components of it that you don't necessarily love. And then to your point, like finding a way to do that so that you're comfortable or finding a way to delegate it can be helpful. That's also where that anti comes in. So you want to make sure that the majority of your work isn't in your anti-spark.

30:06
type because then that's going to make you a very unhappy person. But to the extent you can delegate those things or minimize them, that's great. It may not be the case that you can get rid of it completely. So that's why I'm suggesting if there's a way to make it more palatable for you, then you've got something there. But I agree with you. If you've got an idea that's percolating in there, I think you need to spend some time thinking about that because there could be something to it. And that's what I love about what you do is basically you can help people like myself

30:36
really explore and provide those things because we get so caught in our own minds and we're just stuck in there. Maybe we've tried a few different things and then we try to tweak it a little bit, but we're just so stuck in that lane that we can't really see the bigger picture. And you can come in and be like, hey, take a step back here. Right? And I do. That's what I do. You're absolutely right. A lot of what you're spot on, a lot of what I do is helping people see the big picture, helping them get out of their heads.

31:06
into the world where they can experiment. And I wanna make clear too, I also get caught up in my head, which is why I have a coach, right? So I do believe in the importance. When I was trying to make this most recent transition, I worked with a career coach because I wanted to have someone who could help me see that bigger picture and who could help support me with my plan. Because also partly what makes career transition challenging is sometimes...

31:32
family and friends see us a certain way and they have trouble understanding why we want to leave the practice of law to go work for the circus. I'm just making things up. That's the beauty of having a coach is that that person can provide that support and that guidance and that cheerleading that we have trouble giving ourselves and that sometimes those who are close to us have trouble giving us as well. How old is too old to change? Because

31:59
you know, being on LinkedIn, being on some of these like job sites and different things, I'm seeing a lot more people talking about over 40. And it's like, really, like, we're considered old now if we're over 40. That sucks. Yes. Yeah. How old is too old to make any change? Well, I mean, you already know I've described myself as the eternal optimist. So what I'm going to say is it's never too late. But I did do some research.

32:28
Get some stats for us to talk about. I've got my notes here, so I'm going to refer to those for a minute here because there's sort of, you know, again, my anecdotal perspective and then there's various surveys, studies. So there's a Harvard Business Review article that said, a survey of people who attempted a career change after age 45 found that not only were 82% of career changes successful, but also 87% were happy or very happy.

32:57
they've made the change. So that's one perspective, which spends us towards the, you can do it. Now, there's another body of research through AARP. No, we don't wanna hear about it, no. Most people believe age discrimination begins when workers hit their 50s, according to AARP research. 22% believe it begins earlier, in the 30s and 40s. 17% think it begins in the 60s.

33:26
and a higher percentage of women think that, right, than men. So to your point about ageism, and then we were talking previously on our call about sexism, right? So that definitely comes into play. Now, some other interesting research that I saw, there was an article talking about the fact that talent shortages are increasing worldwide while the number of older workers is also on the rise. So the article is saying that in spite of ageism,

33:55
there's an opportunity to capitalize on that fact. But if we've got talent shortages and you've got folks with capabilities who happen to be older, there's some potential there. And what the article talked about is there are a growing number of companies that are starting to value mature workers. So we might be seeing a shift, right, in the way society values those folks. And then the advice in the article was to deliberately target hiring managers who appreciate and value experience. And the tip there was,

34:24
send your CV directly to your future boss instead of HR. And I think what that speaks to is the fact that, and this is not new, but it's the networking piece, it's the building relationships. You're gonna be hearing about opportunities that not everyone hears about. And then also if you're building relationships with folks at organizations, those are the ones you're gonna be able to help bring you in as opposed to going through a traditional HR process solely.

34:52
right because it could be that you have to submit your resume and whatever to HR but you want to have those connections because those are the people that are not going to feel so I've got to follow like a certain prescribed set of rules about who I'm going to bring on mind you is you and I both know ageism and sexism are illegal but nonetheless right organizations do those things. Now

35:16
This is another cool thing that I saw. It said that women over 50 are increasingly embracing entrepreneurship and freelancing. And they're in fact the fastest growing segment of business founders. So much so that Forbes refers to them as the new entrepreneurial superpower. I love it. I thought that was really cool. So I guess what I'm saying is, of course ageism, sexism, all the isms exist, right? And if you look at different studies, you can see,

35:45
different results there. I think at the end of the day, it's recognizing that that's the case, thinking about what the strategies are to get around that if you decide there's something specific you wanna pursue where you're running up against that. Also recognizing when to cut your losses, pivot to something else if you're not seeing traction there. And then the final piece is, there are lots of interesting entrepreneurial opportunities that are available. And I love seeing the fact that women over 50 are

36:14
being referred to as the new entrepreneurial superpower. So that's another way to get at it. In spite of what I see in the research, Stephanie, personally speaking, I don't think it's ever too late. Can you be a certain age and get a job at a particular company? Maybe not, right? But can you do the thing that you're wanting to do in some capacity? Yes. And certainly, if you have the wherewithal, you can shift into an entrepreneurial space as well. So that's what I think about.

36:44
I love that the statistic that you gave about the women over 50, because I feel like it's almost like we're coming to an age where we just don't care what other people think at that point. And it's, you've spent most of your life kind of having to live up to unrealistic standards and always whether it's beauty standards or, you know, what people think you should be doing in your life and that sort of thing.

37:13
where you just get to a point where you're just like, I'm gonna do my own thing and nobody's gonna tell me otherwise. And that's definitely a perspective shift that I've seen come with age, both, again, personally, so anecdotally, and then in conversation with many, many women. I think one of the primary reasons why you see that shift into caring less about what it is other people think or say or feel is you go into paramedicopause.

37:42
I was just gonna say that actually. I was just gonna say that. I don't know, the hormonal shift sort of helps you transition into a world where it's really about what you think and what you feel. It's no longer about what the rest of the world thinks. I'm glad you said it because I was over here thinking it.

38:05
Well, Monica, thank you so much for joining me today. This conversation has been wonderful. I have learned a lot. I've thoroughly enjoyed everything that we've talked about. And I just wanted to ask you if you would be willing to come back on, I have some other topics I would love to discuss with you and go maybe a little bit deeper into that discussion, maybe go for my SPARCA type assessments. But yeah, I would love to have you back on if you would like to come back on. I would love to come back on.

38:34
and thanks for having me this time. Awesome. And I will have all of your contact information in the show notes, how anyone can get in contact with you. I definitely highly advise it because I can just tell from this short conversation here that Monica knows what she's doing and she will guide you in the right direction. Let's just say, I mean, I've learned so much. A lot of conversation, sometimes they'll spark things in me, for lack of better word, spark.

39:04
This conversation has sparked a lot of insight for me. I have notes all over my page over here, just for myself and things that you've said that I just really enjoyed. So I'm glad that you'll be coming back. If you're interested in becoming a guest on my show, all the information on how to contact me is available in the show notes. Also, if you're enjoying the content and would like a shout out in an upcoming episode, a link in how you can support this podcast is available in the show notes.

39:31
Thank you so much for listening and until next time.