Whether you’re retiring or you’re looking for your next step – but you just don’t know where to put your expertise to use, there’s still a lot you can do to make an impact in our society.  

There are talent gaps out there. Companies are still short of talent. They're puzzled about where they can find new talent in areas where they need to help people build their skills. 

So where do they get these talents from? 

Think Silver Entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, the majority of the older population are either being released or retiring in their 60’s – trying to figure out their “next act.” These are people with the experience, talent, and expertise that can help companies with their needs. 

There’s definitely a huge amount of talent sitting on the sidelines. And tapping into the experience and expertise of Silver Entrepreneurs may just be one of the best hiring decisions businesses will ever make.

An Expansion Journey

After an extensive and rewarding career in manufacturing for 41 years, I finally became eligible for retirement and decided to reinvent myself and start a new career. Once I embarked on consulting, I realized the actual practice required even more practice.

I’ve done the research necessary to begin this new phase all the while thinking it was as easy as setting up an LLC and a website. As it turned out, it was more than that. So I had to attend a variety of classes with other beginning entrepreneurs and learned a series of new skills around technology, marketing, connecting, and developing my value proposition. Yet the biggest struggle I found was with confidence. 

Having spent a long time in the corporate cocoon, there was this sense of comfort and safety that I’ve gotten used to. Coming from a place where I had a high level of expertise, I was not used to publicly being bad at things like blogging, speaking marketing. I was used to being good at things and learning these new things just felt all new to me. It was definitely out of my comfort zone. 

I also noticed that the complete freedom which I never had back in the corporate world was making me less effective. I was easily distracted that it held me from moving forward. 

Finally, after so many lessons, trials, and mistakes, I made the transition from manufacturing employee to Silver Entrepreneur. 

Today, I specialize in coaching highly-driven executives and professionals through leveraging the framework of Emotional Intelligence to guide leaders and help them build a framework as they develop self-awareness, focus, and resilience. 

At a certain point in our career, we, as leaders, often struggle with the question of “where should we go from here?” Through strategic planning, I help them develop their vision and establish tactical steps to achieve objectives and create a future for themselves and their organization.

I am still on this journey, but I’m getting farther along down the road. Let me walk you through this path of the Silver Entrepreneur – so you, too, could become one, or at least, begin to understand that there is still that space, in whatever industry you’re in, where your expertise is needed.

Talent Shortages at Record High

 With a huge talent gap in our world today, it has never been this hard for companies to find qualified workers. Companies still struggle with finding qualified talent specialized in building skills in their new hires. 

A recent survey conducted by the job placement firm, Manpower Group, reports that:

• Nearly 7 in 10 employers reported talent shortages in 2019 – the worst level ever with a jump of 17 percentage points from just a year ago

• This rate increased three times higher than ten years ago.

• Manufacturing job vacancies continue to show a 24% decline year-over-year and hirings rate dropped from 4.3% to 4%.

The Labor Department also reports that there are nearly 700,000 job vacancies than there are unemployed workers. This growing demand for technical skills along with the significant drop in recruitment has only compounded this widening labor gap we have today. And so, we succinctly pose this valid question – how are we going to get the talents that we need?

A Growing Demographic of Silver Entrepreneurs

Across industries, what many companies may seem to have overlooked is this huge reservoir of talents sitting on the sidelines. People leaving the corporate world and looking for their next act in life could be by choice, or it could be because a business has closed. These are people who have maybe completed or at least had a significant corporate career, and now they're looking for their next step. They may be retiring in their 60s, or they've been released for one reason or another. In other words, they have the accrued experience and expertise that the new guys still don’t have. 

 They are – the Silver Entrepreneurs.

• There are 7.7 million workers over the age of 65 in the workforce. 

• There’s about 55% growth in the workforce for the 65- to 74-year-old age group, while the rest of the workforce is only growing at 5%. 

• The average lifespan is above 81 for women and over 76 for men. 

• For every two baby boomers that leave the workforce, only one person is entering the workforce. 

With the older workforce either retiring in their 60’s or being released, we definitely have a huge amount of talent waiting to be tapped.

The Advantages of “Older” Workers and Why They Complement New People in the Organization 

Silver talents are some of the most trained and capable and productive workers. They may need to update technology skills, but the experiences they’ve had can be vital to helping your organization. 

 These “older” workers have seen things over decades that may have only happened once or twice. They have seen a lot of people's issues so they can help everyone navigate through those as well. 

Silver entrepreneurs share the skills, knowledge, and experience they've accrued over their long careers with people that need those things. These could be small or medium-sized manufacturers or even larger manufacturers that need people to mentor their new and upcoming leadership. 

The “Next Act” of a Silver Entrepreneur: The Many Pathways

When people leave corporate life, they can choose many different paths to do that. A silver entrepreneur probably isn't interested in starting a big consulting firm, but they do want to have a context for them to share their expertise in their own time, their own place, and in their own way. In a sense, they're a company of one. 

Those “next acts” can refer to so many things depending on the Silver Entrepreneur’s interests, their energy, or whatever it is that intrigues them. 

A Silver Entrepreneur may take on any of the following roles:

• Volunteer at nonprofits

• Mentorship (passing on your expertise to people) - Check out SCORE (Service Corps Of Retired Executives), a network of mentors that provides free counseling to people who are starting businesses

• Do freelance and contract work - They can use their skills and apply them in a particular job. Then they can decide when, where, and how they want to do contract work.

• Consulting & coaching - sharing your expertise and helping people develop themselves

• Teaching - You can help people learn and pass on the skills, whether it be in a formal setting, such as a college or university, or informally with an individual firm or online. 

Opportunities for Targeted Work

A Silver Entrepreneur may have already picked out probably some elements of the work they used to do. But usually, they don't want to just be the temporary CFO or the temporary engineering manager. 

They probably have a narrower target on what skills and knowledge they would like to share with people so they need to find out how that matches up with what companies and people need. 

For employers, here are some things to consider as well:

Phased retirement

Phased retirement is an employment arrangement that allows employees nearing their retirement age to make a smooth transition. This could be in the form of reducing the workload, reducing the work hours or days, or going from full-time work to part-time work. As an employer, you may choose to assign these talents into some coaching or mentoring roles with fewer working hours, while you’re bringing in new talent they can develop in the process.

Encore careers

An encore career refers to a new or second vocation at the later part of your life. For example, you may have worked in logistics or something else. And now, maybe you want to use those skills in a different field, say, healthcare. 

People usually pursue this not for the financial rewards, but more for serving their purpose and having a sense of fulfillment. While encore careers are found in whatever industry, they are more likely in areas around the environment, healthcare, government, education, and nonprofits.

The First Steps of Becoming a Silver Entrepreneur

1. Identify your expertise and interests.

Based on Gay Hendrick's book, The Big Leap, Gay has identified the four zones where you might be doing work today or in the future:

• Zone of incompetence -  These are the things that you don't know how to do now. In that case, you may hire someone else to do them.

• Zone of competence - These are the things you know how to do. But again, many people know how to do those. Therefore, this zone isn't where you're going to add your greatest value.

• Zone of excellence - This is the zone where you're maybe a little better at this than other people, but not necessarily where your highest value is. 

• Zone of genius - This is where you’re going to make the greatest impact, which may still be something you need to explore within yourself.

As a Silver Entrepreneur, you want to focus on identifying your Zone of Genius because this is where you will be adding the greatest value as an expert.

Four questions to help identify your Zone of Genius:

• When have people shown appreciation for how you have helped them?

• When did you do a task or project that really energized you? Make some notes. Reflect on these things and see what resonates. You may do this over time, or you may write down your initial answers, set it aside for a while and come back to it.

• What is something that you are really passionate about? This is in the context of you adding value to others. You may have personal passions, but this is more about adding value to others. 

• What can you do for long stretches of time and not get bored? This is what they call being in "the flow" where you're doing things and then you lose track of time.

Be able to answer these four questions in the context of your expertise. You may have given them titles in the past or they may have been job descriptions, but what was the real concise essence of what it is you're doing or what you enjoy doing? 

For example, if you have expertise in logistics and you have experience and knowledge in that area, how would you answer those four questions in the context of your expertise in logistics?

This may not only be true to the technical aspects of logistics but the leadership aspect of it as well. And maybe your expertise and experience lie specifically in the IT side of logistics. So again, how would you answer those four questions in that context?

2. Create your value proposition for an expertise business.

Work on your teachable point of view and how you can create gains (and lessen pains) for your customer. To help people with money or time, there are 3 elements of what a customer needs:

• Gains - what will improve their business

• Pains - what’s frustrating them or holding them back in their business

• Jobs to be done 

Think about your target customer and the problems they want you to solve. 

You need to sharpen your focus on your ideal customer and who would be the best fit for you and for them. What is the problem the customer is finding a solution for? How can they be solved? Does it need consulting? Does it need information? Do they need to buy equipment? Think about the measurable outcome that the customer wants to achieve.

Is this something people actually will pay for? 

If you had a corporate career, they obviously paid you a significant amount of money for your expertise. Smaller companies may pay differently – you won't be on salary or you may be on project terms, but people still need this expertise and they’re always willing to pay for it. 

Think about the competition. 

Are there a lot of people doing what you do? Figure out your Zone of Genius that isn't held by everybody else.

Think about the financial viability.

Is it going to be so expensive for you to offer these services that you don't end up making any money? In which case, this becomes more of a passion project, not necessarily a business. 

3. Begin with your customer discovery.

Uncover what your customers need.

Based on the concept of the Lean Startup Program, it’s not about selling or even describing your service, it’s about uncovering what they need.

Talk to 100 people (it’s a proven number). As you hit those customer discovery conversations, you start to get some clarity around how their business works and what's going to be needed. Look for patterns of needs and test your hypothesis on what your service will be. Use these conversations to help disprove or prove or refine your hypothesis. 

Make calls.

Now in today's world, it may be difficult to do in-person meetings, which are the richest and most valuable, but you can at least try to do video calls. They're much richer than simple phone calls. Obviously, those are much richer than emails. So you want to get the whole feeling as you can have talking to a potential customer. 

Use open-ended questions.

Here are some examples:

• I'm trying to understand your needs around, say logistics, what are the things that may be missing? 

• What are your frustrations with the logistics you're using?

• What do you find difficult in doing the processes and meeting the needs of your logistics for your products? 

• What did you like about your most recent experience? Have you ever thought about changing how you do this? Then maybe this is where your area of knowledge can help them.  

Always remember that you have to be curious about what the customers need, and not you leading them or selling them into your service/product.

4. Create action, practice, and learning plans.

Plan for your personal and business development. Pick one idea and put it into practice before starting on the next. Learn how to “practice” new skills. Figure out how to do deliberate practice on the skills you want to build. And then put a learning plan into place. 

Through joining a mastermind group, I was able to learn the skills of creating a value proposition and marketing a business. In over two years, the support and encouragement that my colleagues and I have given each other made small steps in building my business. They also gave me some tough love to challenge me to take more explicit actions on building my business. 

Being someone who loves to chase every new or novel idea – the “shiny object syndrome” in other words – I would research it and before I could even put it into practice, I would find another new idea to explore. And so, my colleagues in the mastermind group often called me out and told me to pick one idea and put it into practice before starting on the next. 

5. Build or hire the skill sets.

Decide which skills you want to build for yourself and which you might want to outsource to others. Take small steps forward because success comes through small consistent actions. Recognize that you may only need to develop five skills. And for a reasonable cost, you realize you just need to hire out the other five skills and have a virtual team at reasonable cost in today’s world.

So try to figure out which of those skill areas you find yourself stuck in and consider hiring the services of people who are experts of those. Now, while I was making these small steps, I also realized that I was getting stuck on some skill areas that I just had not developed and maybe wouldn't probably even develop any time soon so I found some help by outsourcing those stuff. 

In my case, I hired a virtual assistant to help with my editing, writing, and posting to my blog and social media accounts. I also hired a photographer to provide me with some great photos for both my blog and my podcast. Then I got stuck in the publishing aspects of my podcast. I hired a talented person to take my rough audio files, clean them up, and publish them, and who also helped me with the social media marketing of my podcast and other aspects. And those took away all the technology excuses I had. 

There are other elements of your business where you're going to hire some help, but you're not going to hire a bunch of employees. In today's world, you can leverage that and get help in different areas – be it in marketing, podcasting, finance, bookkeeping, and whatever it is that you need – to help you run your business without hiring full-time staff.

7. Mindset is key.

Mindset is the linchpin that creates the foundation for your progress and success. Therefore, the kind of viewpoints or perspectives that you bring to your work – and your life – make all the difference in what you can accomplish and create – whether you’re still at the beginning of your career, or you’re towards the end, just waiting to jump into your next act. 

Therefore, as a leader, you need to have the right mindset geared towards success so you can always keep moving forward. Here are some mindset hacks to help you shape your mindset that’s geared towards success, especially as a Silver Entrepreneur: 

Have a growth versus a fixed mindset.

As a Silver Entrepreneur, you certainly have gone through so many challenges within the organization and have withstood the test of time. So you have to alway look at problems as opportunities to move forward. Don’t just try to prove how smart you are. Learn, listen, and understand new things. It's not just about the final result, but it's also about whether you're doing the right things to get there. You may not know the answer or the path forward but look for the next few steps. 

Examine your identity habits and mindset.

In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about these identity habits, which aren’t just goals, but habits of people you want to be. First, think about who you want to be. Then think about examples of people you want to emulate. And then finally, take five small steps, that in some small way, would demonstrate that you're becoming that person. 

For instance, rather than a goal of losing 20 pounds, work on becoming a physically fit person. So what are five small steps you can start doing tomorrow morning? Get up and put on your running shoes, plan and pack your lunch, etc. Whatever that looks like – have a clear mental picture of where you’re headed to. Those small steps, if you do them every day, will keep building into larger steps and eventually, you will become the person you're trying to be.

Work intentionally on them to become the person you want to be – not just a particular goal you want to achieve. 

Change your perspectives to help shape your mindset.

• Move from saying “This doesn’t matter” to “This does matter.” Just that slight change in your language will make a significant difference. Treat each person, moment, and conversation like they do matter. 

• Choose trust over evidence. Don't wait to see for your team to prove to you that they'll do the right thing. Trust that your people are going to do the right thing.

• As a leader, you’re accountable for it all. You have to do everything you can to make the whole organization successful. 

Pay attention to your body.

What you think and how you feel are all wrapped up together. Your mind affects how your body feels, but your body also affects how your mind feels. And so you really have to pay attention to your body – not just physically, but also mentally. 

Avoid food high in sugar as well as a big, heavy meal at noon because that can make you sluggish all afternoon. Find ways to get moving, and don’t just sit in front of your computer the whole day, doing emails, or sitting in meetings.

Finally, get all the rest you need. We can't sprint all out all the time. It just doesn't work that way. And quite frankly, our bodies will fry our minds if we just exhaust them too much. So you have to intentionally get the rest you need. 

Resources to Help You Get Started

Here are book resources to help you figure out what you want to do for your next act:

1. Business Model You by Alexander Osterwalder, Tim Clark, and Yves Pigneur

This book really focuses on you and it gives you the 9 key elements of what makes up a successful business. It helps you create and understand your value proposition.

2. Company of One by Paul Jarvis

Paul talks about having a business but intentionally staying small. It means you’re not putting up a business that you're going to scale up. Again, the Silver Entrepreneur is probably not in the business of creating a new, bigger business, but they'd like to have a business may be just for themselves to work. 

If you've had a long career, you might not want to jump back into 60-80-hour weeks starting a new startup or creating some huge organization. You want to create a business enough for you to make your contribution – not overwhelming and not something that's just going to grind you down. And so, this book gives you some idea on how to go about that and the right mindset you need to have in order to succeed. 

Another point made out in the book is having value over quantity since you're not going to scale this into a huge operation with a lot of people. Therefore, what you should be really looking for are quality customers instead of trying to find as many customers as you can. 

3. The Million-Dollar One-Person Business by Elaine Pofeldt

Elaine brings an interesting concept here that it’s possible to have a high-income business with only one employee – and that would be yourself. In the book, she presents great examples of the different businesses you could form. Now, she has more than just coaching/consulting, she also gives you ideas around your thought process. 

Also, she brings up the idea of scalable systems. Since you don't want to hire people, you want to find systems that will scale. For example, you don't have to hire a full-time accountant or a full-time lawyer, but you could hire their services, which I clearly pointed out earlier.

4. The Consultant’s Quick Start Guide by Elaine Biech

This book jumps into all the business details you need to consider including the little steps that need to happen for you to have a business, whether it be coaching or consulting or offering other expertise. You may have a particular skill that you want to offer as a consultant and this book is great because it gives all the details you need to consider.

5. Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss

This book talks about having a mindset for consulting and the interpersonal skills you need, whether it be how to approach the economic buyer, how to close the sale, or how to even craft an offer. He also discusses how to create prices as well as value-based fees. 

6. Your Message Matters by Jonathan Milligan

Jonathan has what is called a manifesto which consists of the themes he chooses to live with every day. For example, “ As I begin this day, I choose to begin this day from a place of mission, not fear; from a place of service, not greed, and from a place of humility, not pride.”

These are some great guiding principles that you can work with to help guide you through your day.

Build Your Brand and Let Them Find You!

As a silver entrepreneur myself, stepping out of a role where I was an expert and then immigrating into a new, different arena was challenging. After all, who am I to share my expertise? 

But after doing all the research, practice, and the hard work needed to build my skills and position my expertise around my “next act” –  it was definitely worth it!

At the end of the day, you still want to be able to serve other people. And apparently, there are people who still need your expertise and they’re looking for it, no matter the cost – it's just a matter of them finding YOU.

Tune in to my podcast to hear more about Silver Entrepreneurship - https://www.lynnfriesth.com/podcast