Umbrellas and Encore Careers

#MoreRunwayThanYouThink

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In the late 1990s, when I immersed myself in the study of coaching as a domain, I read two books by the late Barbara Sher. These books had such a profound effect on my life and work that the title of one book, It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now, has become a personal hashtag and mantra for me. The other book, I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, also remains a seminal piece of thought leadership for figuring out what makes for a satisfying career and life.

Sher’s work gave people permission to have multiple careers, avocations, and side-hustles. She understood that there are precious few careers that can provide someone with complete fulfillment or satisfy 100% of our curiosity. It’s even fair to say that there is no one person in our lives who provides for 100% of our needs. We require a posse composed of family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. Barbara Sher’s voice is also in my head when I tell clients not to put worldly success above happiness.

I see clients with two mirrored challenges: they are either in a role/career they love that doesn’t pay them enough to support the lifestyle they want, or they make so much money in the soul-sucking role/career they have that they feel they can’t afford to make a change to find something they love.

In both cases, one can make a practical argument for staying in place, but neither makes for a completely happy life. Sher would advise both these client types to stop looking for an “all-in-one” solution. There are many ways to make a few extra dollars in just a couple of hours each day. And there are many ways to satisfy our passions outside of work.

This brings me to something I call an “umbrella” career; that is, the notion that in the entirety of a great career, passion, satisfaction and compensation can come from different sources. And as women of a certain agency (WOACA), we need to put a multi-activity plan into place to match our life goals with our financial plans and reject traditional “either/or” thinking.

In an umbrella career, the job that pays the rent is, at least, pleasant. No amount of money makes staying in a toxic environment acceptable. But once we rule out the activities we never want to do again, there’s another subset of activities that we’d like to incorporate because they fulfill us and make us happy. Once we do the pen-to-paper exercise (old-school!) to determine that list of fulfilling activities, we should work diligently to incorporate them into a side-hustle or avocation.

In the case of an “encore” career (I’m in my third encore, in case you’re keeping track at home), the domain knowledge and expertise we accrue in our life and career can be used to inform the next steppingstone in our journey. And what we bring to the new work adds value, fresh eyes and frequently, innovation for success.

“In the case of an encore career, the domain knowledge and expertise we accrue can be used to inform the next stepping stone in our journey."

Gen Z and Millennials have no intention of remaining with the same firms or even in the same fields for 40 years.  We should learn from them and realize we have plenty of time to start and build our “next thing.”

I have a 55-year-old client who was underfunded for retirement at 65. We figured that if she took the next 10 years to build her fiber arts business to the point where it was earning $25,000 per year for the 10 years between age 65 and 75, her assets would fill the gap. In other words, by doing what she loves (and would be doing anyway) with the intention of monetizing it for 10 years after her original target retirement date, she could have a successful retirement. And I’ll bet that she has no intention of ending her fiber arts business at 75 if she is healthy.

Sher asks us to revisit our childhood for clues to what will make us happy. When I look back on my own childhood, it was filled with reading, writing and acting. And when I told an old friend about my plans for Madrina Molly, he didn’t miss a beat and said that I’d returned to where I started. And now, I realize  he was right.

And that’s probably the most important lesson from Barbara Sher: Never assume that because you’re not doing something you love in this moment that you won’t ever be able to do what you want.  We all will be living long enough to have satisfying encore careers. And in turn, they will help us fund our increasingly long retirements. #MoreRunwayThanYouThink

The information contained herein and shared by Madrina Molly™ constitutes education and not investment advice.

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