"Have Laptop, Will Adapt" - Silicon Valley Baby Boomer's Secret for Staying on the Top of Any Game

Silicon Valley is supposedly the land of youth.  Maybe.  But both on that left coast and everywhere in the U.S. there are over-50 Baby Boomers like Marsha Keefer - and myself - who are beating the odds of aging.  We're starting businesses, getting lured away from our successful businesses by clients who want us all to themselves, and then re-grouping and entering a whole new discipline.  Keefer's mantra is: "Have Laptop, Will Adapt."  She's agreed to share her "secret" or the rule for attracting work to her.

JG:  From your work experience and from observing others over-50 such as Rupert Murdoch thrive professionally, what separates you/them from those sadsacks featured in that famous FORTUNE [May 16, 2005] article "50 and Fired?"

MK:  Murdoch sets the bar high for exceptional brass as he guts THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  Jane, that takes courage and confidence to be able to step out and take a chance no matter what.  It's also about keeping in motion and making it count. 

That might sound too rah-rah to someone who has just lost a job or whose business tanked.  But it's exactly the must-do for all of over-50.  The new world has no defaults set for us. 

JG:  That isn't easy. 

MK:  Jane, that depends where you started from and with.  My background is less-than-Mayflower.  I never expected it to be easy.

JG:  So early adversity can be a career asset?

MK:  It could.  But others can learn the same things that life taught me and taught you, Jane.  I know you grew up in a tenement in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey.

JG:  By the way, here readers can retrieve a complimentary copy of my e-book on lessons learned and re-learned from that kind of growing up Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.pdf.

MK:  Yes, people who never expected such a bumpy career journey can get stronger, wiser, and prepared to bounce back many times. 

Suppose there you are, a Harvard Business School alumnus, and you're sitting on a curb wondering what the heck happened.  Well, thank the universe for this surprise ending.  This gives you a time to search inside yourself and what's really happening in the work world.

More specifically, find the stories in your life that have meaning to you.  What about the one about pulling victory off in the last minute?  How about the time you decided you weren't going to take the "it" any more, whether in a marriage or in a profession?  There was probably times when you managed to do a 180, almost magically.  Yesterday you were X and tomorrow you are Y. 

We are our stories.  We tell those stories to employers and to prospects in our business.  The trick is to pull together all the meaningful material from our past and present.  From that we can create our new story going forward.  Anyone, even the most pampered, lucky executive can do that and move on after setbacks, disappointments, and betrayals - over-50, over-60, over-70.

JG:  What I hear your saying is: Drill down to your strengths and repackage them for this new world.

MK:  Exactly.  Many of us have been doing that since we graduated college, only we didn't realize at the time that we were doing it.  I went from waitress to retail to signing up for an MBA to running my own public relations firm for technology clients to going to work full-time for one of the clients to who knows what next. 

The trouble starts when somewhere along the line we got comfortable, maybe too comfortable, and assumed the present would be the future.  We stopped fine-tuning our strengths, developing new ones, scanning the horizon for insights outside our own discipline, and observing Gens X, Y and Next.  The result is that we not only got stuck.  We got stale.  One day that tap on the shoulder comes or clients stop buying services from us.

The secret to attract work to you is to not get comfortable, not assume the present will be the future.  Even if your company folds, you will attract opportunity to you.

JG:  That is useful generic insight for staying employed outside high-tech areas.  But what about Silicon Valley?  Isn't it brutal there for the over-50?

MK:  Well, at the top of the pile, such as being the Chief Executive Officer of a company, age doesn't matter much.  There, it's the mindset. 

For a mid-level person it can be tough.  My advice is to start your own business.  Jane, isn't that why you started yours?  Even outside Silicon Valley, securing a traditional corporate job with benefits can be difficult.  As the cliche goes, we have to think out of the box.

The good news, even in The Valley, is this: Every day I hear anecdotes about vendors over-60 or even over-70 making dynamite presentations at ad agencies or at corporate marketing offices and closing the deal right there.  These people have the skills, knowledge of the industry/company, and the presence to get the audience to become age-blind. 

But there are subtle points here.  The winners tell just enough.  They don't over-document to show they know their stuff.  To do that - not over-sell - takes us back to courage and confidence.

JG:  Okay, 50 may be new 35 but energy lessens.  How do you manage to be at the top of your game with a diminished energy level?

MK: Well, we have to take better care of ourselves.  We can't get away with much. I experience more reaction to poor diet, too much coffee, too much time on the laptop.

Down time is a must-have.  In fact, that's when the breakthrough ideas come.

And once I have the idea and it's approved by the group, I try to allow myself more time on it. 

In our particular office at Rubicon Consulting we're big on lists.  We use a communal weekly list and that makes what every one is doing transparent.  As a group, we feel good each day about what we can cross off that list.  Incidentally, making sure you are working with the right people is part of taking care of yourself.

JG:  Can those unemployed defeatists sitting in Starbucks searching for jobs which no longer exist really get back in the game?

MK: People can do anything they want to do. 

JG:  Anything else?

MK: Consume information, concepts, perspectives outside your field.  You might want to dip into:

• "My Half of the Sky" - Jana McBurney-Lin
• "The Handyman" - Carolyn See
• "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" - Dai Sijie
• "Henry V" - Shakespeare
• "A Thousand Splendid Suns" - Khaled Hosseini
• "Point to Point Navigation" - Gore Vidal

And, to get in touch with the emerging or prevailing paradigms, you might want to check out:

• "Here Comes Everybody" - Clay Shirky
• "The Black Swan" - Nassin Taleb
• "Six Degrees" - Duncan J. Watts
• "Convergence Culture" - Henry Jenkins

JG:  Thank you for your optimism and concrete guidance.  And this blog will be inviting you back for interviews on more specific subjects related to how we 76 million Baby Boomers can choose to continue working.   

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About Marsha Keeffer:

Marsha Keeffer is currently Executive Director of Rubicon Consulting, a strategy firm that helps high-tech companies find and win markets.

Before that, she founded and operated MKeeffer Consulting LLC.  There she provided public relations services to BEA Systems, Brio Software, Hewlett-Packard, Rubicons Consulting and confidential accounts.

In her earlier jobs in waitressing, retail, writing resumes and coaching careers, she learned that success, organizational and individual, can only come through people.

She can be reached at Marsha@rubiconconsulting.com.

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