Latest / Beyond Expertise / I Spent 40 Years Building a Career. At 60, Now What?

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I Spent 40 Years Building a Career. At 60, Now What? · Beyond Expertise

• 0:01
  Eric Dickmann: Welcome to Beyond Expertise, a podcast about identity reinvention for professionals ready to explore who they are beyond their titles and careers.
• 0:11
  Eric Dickmann: I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
• 0:13
  Eric Dickmann: Let's get ready to go beyond expertise Hi, I'm Eric, and I just recently turned 60 years old, and I have to tell you, it's given me a moment to pause.
• 0:23
  Eric Dickmann: I've been thinking about the last 40 years of my life that I've invested in my professional career and wondering, what comes next?
• 0:31
  Eric Dickmann: I've certainly enjoyed my professional career, but I also realize that at this stage of my life, the same things that used to motivate me aren't the things that are motivating me today.
• 0:42
  Eric Dickmann: I absolutely enjoy working, and I'm not ready to retire.
• 0:47
  Eric Dickmann: I'm looking for new challenges, new opportunities, new ways to contribute.
• 0:51
  Eric Dickmann: But the old motivations that used to pull me along in my professional career are not the same ones that are on my mind today, I don't know all the answers.
• 1:00
  Eric Dickmann: I don't know where my life is taking me.
• 1:03
  Eric Dickmann: I don't have a roadmap.
• 1:04
  Eric Dickmann: But I know it's gonna be different than the last 40 years.
• 1:08
  Eric Dickmann: Let me give you a little bit of background.
• 1:10
  Eric Dickmann: I was fortunate enough to get a job right out of college, and that job opened a series of doors that took me through most of my career.
• 1:20
  Eric Dickmann: One opportunity presented itself after another, and my career advanced at a fairly steady pace.
• 1:26
  Eric Dickmann: And I was grateful for those opportunities and for the advancement that I saw in my career.
• 1:32
  Eric Dickmann: My title increased, my salary increased, my responsibility increased.
• 1:36
  Eric Dickmann: From the outside, everything looked good.
• 1:39
  Eric Dickmann: But I can also tell you that I honestly felt that I didn't have my hand on the rudder, that I wasn't guiding my career in a direction that I wanted it to go.
• 1:50
  Eric Dickmann: I was simply walking through the doors that opened for me.
• 1:54
  Eric Dickmann: And I was fortunate, don't get me wrong.
• 1:56
  Eric Dickmann: But deep down, I always felt that I wasn't necessarily steering my career.
• 2:01
  Eric Dickmann: I was simply taking the next opportunity that was made available.
• 2:05
  Eric Dickmann: There was only one choice to make, either take the next opportunity or stay where I was.
• 2:11
  Eric Dickmann: I didn't feel that I had a fork in the road where I could go one direction or another And after a while, it began to feel like my career was somewhat on autopilot, where I was just following a predetermined path, but I didn't have a lot of say in exactly where I was going.
• 2:28
  Eric Dickmann: And I remember a couple of times specifically where I tried to steer my career in a different direction.
• 2:35
  Eric Dickmann: I tried to create an opportunity where there wasn't one, and candidly, I was slapped down.
• 2:40
  Eric Dickmann: It felt like every time I wanted to put my hand on the rudder to steer my career in a different direction, the universe said,"Nope, follow the path that I have laid out for you." And so I did, and I continued along, and I achieved increasing levels of success and responsibility and financial reward until ultimately I reached the top of my career.
• 3:04
  Eric Dickmann: I'm a marketer, and my last corporate role was as a chief marketing officer for a technology company, and I loved the experience.
• 3:13
  Eric Dickmann: But when that opportunity ended, once again I was presented with one more door to go through.
• 3:19
  Eric Dickmann: Not a series of opportunities that I could select from, but simply one.
• 3:24
  Eric Dickmann: And I looked at that opportunity and said,"This is not where I wanna go.
• 3:28
  Eric Dickmann: This is not what I wanna do next." And so I decided to leave the corporate world and go out on my own.
• 3:35
  Eric Dickmann: And I will tell you that that was a huge weight that was lifted off my shoulders.
• 3:40
  Eric Dickmann: It felt like for the first time in my career I was in charge, that I was guiding where I wanted to go, that I was making my own choice, and it was liberating.
• 3:52
  Eric Dickmann: At the same time, it was a little scary.
• 3:54
  Eric Dickmann: I had never been in business on my own before, and I had to build everything from scratch.
• 4:00
  Eric Dickmann: But even so, it was liberating because I knew that the decisions I was making were the decisions that I wanted to make.
• 4:08
  Eric Dickmann: And I've loved being an independent consultant, and I've been doing it since 2019.
• 4:14
  Eric Dickmann: And honestly, it's not the easiest thing in the world.
• 4:17
  Eric Dickmann: There are ups and downs.
• 4:18
  Eric Dickmann: In future episodes, I wanna talk more about that because it is challenging being off on your own.
• 4:25
  Eric Dickmann: But I think for the first time in my life I felt like I had a direction.
• 4:29
  Eric Dickmann: But I also realized, especially as I turned 60, that so much of my life has been focused on my professional identity You know, I use the example of going to a cocktail party and introducing yourself to somebody, and it's very common for people to say,"So what do you do?" And by that, they're really looking for what's your profession.
• 4:50
  Eric Dickmann: So much of our life is wrapped up in what we do.
• 4:53
  Eric Dickmann: And at least for me, I realized that turning 60, even though I had been in business for myself for a couple of years, that there were parts of my life that I just feel hadn't got the attention they deserve.
• 5:06
  Eric Dickmann: And as I look forward to this next chapter of life, I realize that all of this focus and attention that I have given my professional life maybe needs to be distributed more to other areas of my life As I mentioned, some people look forward to retirement.
• 5:23
  Eric Dickmann: They want a life of leisure, going on vacations, playing golf.
• 5:27
  Eric Dickmann: But I knew that that wasn't my path.
• 5:29
  Eric Dickmann: That's not where I wanted to go.
• 5:31
  Eric Dickmann: I really wanna continue contributing, and as I look forward to this next phase of life, I started to realize I really didn't have much of a plan.
• 5:41
  Eric Dickmann: What areas in my life did I want to invest more in that maybe had been a bit neglected over the years of building my professional career?
• 5:49
  Eric Dickmann: I value contribution, and I know that I wanna keep working, at least at some level, but I also know there are other aspects of my life that I want to enhance.
• 5:59
  Eric Dickmann: I know that I have attributes that are valuable.
• 6:02
  Eric Dickmann: I know that I have expertise, discernment, experience that is valuable in the marketplace, but many of those things are tied up in that professional identity.
• 6:13
  Eric Dickmann: What I wanna do now is focus on other things.
• 6:16
  Eric Dickmann: I wanna focus on health and relationships and building new networks of people outside of my profession.
• 6:24
  Eric Dickmann: There are so many aspects of my life that I feel I've just touched the tip of the iceberg on, but haven't really developed those in a way that I wanted to, you know, I've been a podcaster for years.
• 6:36
  Eric Dickmann: I've hosted a show called The Virtual CMO, which is very focused on marketing, my profession.
• 6:41
  Eric Dickmann: And about a year ago, I started Beyond Expertise, where I talk to other people who are in this same phase of life who are going through this transitional period, and that's been a great experience, and I love podcasting.
• 6:55
  Eric Dickmann: It's a way of putting myself out there, being my authentic self, talking to you and others like you who may be in a very similar situation.
• 7:04
  Eric Dickmann: Whether you're just turning 60, whether you're turning 50, 40, 70, whatever it may be, the age isn't important.
• 7:11
  Eric Dickmann: It's the idea that we are more than just our profession.
• 7:16
  Eric Dickmann: We are more than the expertise that we built over years.
• 7:20
  Eric Dickmann: There's so much more to who we are, but sometimes we get stuck wrapped up in our professional identities, that once that identity goes away, we find we're a little bit lost.
• 7:32
  Eric Dickmann: And while I don't believe my professional identity has gone away, I realize that as I pull back and work less, I need to develop those other aspects of my life.
• 7:42
  Eric Dickmann: I need to build up my identity in other areas beyond who I am as a marketer.
• 7:49
  Eric Dickmann: There isn't a roadmap, there isn't a master plan, and so part of what I'm doing right now is just understanding what this journey looks like.
• 7:57
  Eric Dickmann: How do I put these pieces together to construct a next chapter that is truly fulfilling, where I can be my authentic self and feel fulfilled in the life that I'm building beyond the expertise that I've developed in my profession?
• 8:11
  Eric Dickmann: This isn't a show about retirement.
• 8:13
  Eric Dickmann: This is a show about mattering, about value, about contribution, about leveraging who you are as a person beyond the professional experience that you've generated over the years.
• 8:25
  Eric Dickmann: Have you reached a milestone date in your own life and now are wondering what is your next chapter all about?
• 8:31
  Eric Dickmann: How are you navigating it?
• 8:33
  Eric Dickmann: What have you found out about yourself that you didn't realize when you were so focused on building your career?
• 8:40
  Eric Dickmann: What this show is really about is who are you beyond your professional identity?
• 8:45
  Eric Dickmann: When you strip that professional identity away, do you like what's left?
• 8:50
  Eric Dickmann: Thanks for listening to Beyond Expertise.
• 8:53
  Eric Dickmann: You can find show notes, resources, and links mentioned during this episode at podcast.ericdickman.com.
• 9:01
  Eric Dickmann: If this conversation resonated with you, I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue exploring what it means to reinvent ourselves beyond our careers, titles, and expertise.