How a 'Successful' Guy Like me Got 'Reorganized' at 50
Humiliation led to transformation
Getting fired at age 50 wasn't the end of my career. It was the beginning of my transformation.
Vision for Men Over 50 is a newsletter and community that offers you wisdom, inspiration and humor to help you see, believe in, and achieve your vision like never before.
Welcome! Your best is still ahead!
Getting fired at age 50 during a Recession wasn’t just a midlife crisis. It was a financial, emotional, spiritual and even existential crisis, as I learned:
I’m a human being, not a human doing
Life is not about being successful. It’s about being faithful.
I can reframe “failure” as “learning.”
I’ve learned a lot over the years, and I want to share it with you because tuition at The School of Hard Knocks can get expensive. Your resilience will increase. This isn’t original, but it’s true:
“It’s not how far you fall but how high you bounce.”
I bounced back by reinventing myself, taking my journalism skills to other industries while constantly learning new ways nonprofits and for-profit organizations can reach their target audiences.
The origin story for Vision for Men After 50 is my personal story. It explains how a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and communications executive (me) found new purpose and passion as a career and life coach for men over 50 seeking a fresh vision.
Here’s what happened.
Fired, Terminated, Dismissed, Canned and Pink-Slipped
WASHINGTON, D.C. — I sipped my morning caramel macchiato, leaving my office door a few inches open to let co-workers know I was accessible.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Come in,” I said.
The CEO opened the door halfway, not looking friendly. I rose from my desk.
“See me at 3 p.m.,” he said. My heart pounded. My mind raced.
When that fateful hour arrived, I knew what would happen when I saw the executioner—I mean, the HR director—with my boss in his glass-enclosed enclave.
They called it a “reorganization.”
Hah! If this was a reorganization, then why am I the only one on the organizational chart who got reorganized?
The unvarnished truth is I was fired, canned, dismissed, pink-slipped and given the big heave-ho, we’re letting you go, mid-life executive. Good luck I was pushed off a career ladder that was leaning against the wrong wall.
I didn’t know it then, but getting fired at 50 reorganized me from the inside out. It was the start of a journey I’m still on to learn, among other things:
I’m not a human doing. I’m a human being.
It’s not about being “successful.” It’s about being faithful.
Life is more about relationships than achievements.
My best years are still ahead.
The data showed I wasn’t alone
A pre-COVID government study showed that 56% of Americans are pushed out of a job, one way or another, after age 50. Of those forced to leave, only 1 out of 10 regained their annual income.
With ageism on the rise and the AI revolution expected to eliminate much of the workforce, I expect those statistics to look even worse in the future if you’re over 50. You need a fresh vision that aligns with God’s vision for your life. You also need a strategy and a plan, not just to survive but to thrive.
You’re not “over the hill”
It took a few years, but I regained my old salary and then some. I was happier, healthier and wealthier in my 50s than in my 40s and 30s.
I’m here now as a journalist, communications executive and leadership coach providing “Vision for Men Over 50” so they can see, believe and achieve extraordinary success.
If you’re a man over 50, you are not “over the hill.” You’re primed to climb new mountains!
However, you need the right guide, gear and friends to climb with.
My vision: Create a global community of men inspiring each other to climb higher than they ever could go alone. Interested?
Your 50s: A time for pursuing your passion
Remember your college graduation speech exhorting you to pursue your passion? You probably have the flexibility and resources now to do just that.
I thought it might be the end of my career. Instead, it was the beginning of my new and improved life.
It’s hard to believe it when it happens to you, but getting fired after 50 can get you fired UP after 50.
Your 50s are a great time to choose the career and life you love. You might have to be knocked down to look up if you're like me.
A corner office near the White House
In college, I tried broadcast journalism despite allergy issues. I was told I had a good voice for newspapers! Farewell, TV and radio. I met the school newspaper, and it was love at first write.
I got accepted into law school, a dream my father had for me. I chose to work for United Press International (UPI) instead. If you’re of a certain age, you remember UPI as the rival news service to the Associated Press.
I thrived on the fast pace of covering the news for a scrappy wire service.
I worked my way up from newspaper to newspaper to news service, crisscrossing the country and eventually traveling the world on an expense account to illuminate corruption and injustice. I afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted, earning six Pulitzer Prize nominations from the news publications I worked for.
By my 40s, I was the editor-in-chief of a niche national news service, overseeing more than 50 staff and freelance writers worldwide. I worked in a glass-enclosed corner office on the second floor of a plush building just a few blocks from the White House.
At times, I would look out my window to the busy intersection of Connecticut Avenue and L Street to watch people walking fast to get someplace in a hurry. I wondered if I had “arrived.”
When you see an iceberg ahead
I worried that the Internet would destroy the profits of the newspapers that paid my bills and gave me purpose for 25 years. Technology disrupts and displaces. It always has. It always will.
Newspapers have enjoyed an advertising monopoly in most major cities for decades. That was changing. Why pay for a classified ad in your local newspaper when you can use Craiglist for free? Why subscribe to get a dead tree delivered to your doorstep when you can get the news for free on your PC or phone?
I saw what was happening and was concerned. With a wife and three kids to support, I didn’t want to be the naive and hope-for-the-best guy working at the Western Union telegraph company after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
My colleagues said I worried too much. They sipped Chardonnay on the Titanic from champagne glasses with the orchestra playing on deck. I had a choice to make:
Option 1: Ride it out on the comfortable ship I loved with the people I liked until we crashed into the iceberg and died.
Option 2: Dive overboard, hoping to grab a yellow lifeboat. Then, I could pull myself on board and try to navigate the choppy waters of an unfamiliar, shark-infested ocean.
With a wife and three children to support, the answer was clear but not easy. I removed my wing-tipped shoes, left them on deck and dove into the icy blue waters of digital communication.
A mid-life existential crisis
With no digital experience beyond sending emails and doing Google searches, I pivoted to a job overseeing Web communications for a prestigious Washington think tank.
Many things went well, but my lack of IT project management experience did not. I allowed the building of a state-of-the-art website to go over budget. The website was so impressive that it was nominated for a Webby Award, the Internet Academy Awards. If they had had an award for “Dumbest Ex-Editor in a Documentary About Technology,” I would have been a shoo-in.
When I was fired, it wasn’t just a mid-life crisis.
It was a vocational, financial, emotional, relational and existential crisis.
Lots of questions, slowly emerging answers
With time on my hands, I had so many questions:
Should I have gone to law school when I had the chance?
Did I jump the journalism ship too soon?
What is my identity if I’m not working?
Has God abandoned me?
How will I pay my monthly jumbo mortgage, my kids’ college tuition, and that anniversary trip I promised my wife?
As songwriter Burt Bacharach asked: “What’s it all about, Alfie?”
I got answers to all those questions, but it took a few years.
Remaking myself
Necessity is the mother of invention — and reinvention.
In my 50s and 60s, I reinvented myself by learning new digital and AI skills, leading to several career pivots that increased my pay and 401k. I also learned a bloody lesson about working in the nation’s capital: “Watch your back when you’re swimming with the sharks.”
The joy of coaching other men
My salary grew 40 percent higher than when I got fired at age 50, proving I had beaten the statistical odds. But something was missing. I enrolled and graduated from American University’s executive coaching program.
I developed a “side gig’ with a niche of coaching men over 50. Here’s a comment from my very first client:
”I feel that I have found a way through the ticket. I know where the route lies, and I have a plan to access it. After three weeks of examining my self-limiting mindset, I secured $120,000 in new business, more than I had made the previous year. Being aware of the path, which was probably there all along and just needed to be uncovered, brings me calm, confidence and peace.”
— Jeff, a Boston-based author, speaker and consultant
We met every Saturday morning for two years. I used my journalism skills to write a one-page summary of what was discussed and what
I also conduct group coaching seminars that take men step-by-step through a unique process in which they write a three-word vision statement that serves as a North Star for their post-50 lives.
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Would you like to be calmer, more confident and more peaceful? How about happier, healthier and wealthier? It happened to me. It happened to Jeff. It can happen to you.
Helping men transform in the second half of life makes me happy. Knowing you are a subscriber will put a smile on my face.
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I just turned 63 and I’m in the last few years of a 43 year career in the dental business. I’ve been lucky far beyond my own expectations and have a wonderful life with countless relationships that bring me joy and happiness.
What I wrestle with is what should I do next. I have never had actual power but the relationships I have give me tremendous influence. I fear shortly after I retire much of that influence will be diminished. I’m growing weary of helping others make money and I would like to use my influence to help people in other ways.
Necessity is the mother of invention — and reinvention. And I've learned that desperation is the mother of genius. Especially after a few of my life changes.