Retirement coach Larry Jacobson joins Suzanne to talk about inspiration, fulfillment, and satisfaction in our later years.
Suzanne described her own experiences when she was downsized out of her career at 52 years old, and she found a calling to pursue the dream of starting her own company. Larry says most new businesses started today are by people who are in their 50s or over 60. He coaches entrepreneurs, and one of his retirement training modules is all about fear. It’s very scary to try something like this to be fulfilled, reinventing yourself. Larry walks people through, starting with visioning what your life might be life if you could rebuild it. It ends with perseverance, commitment, risk taking, and a strength-weakness analysis.
Learn about his training course on Navigating Entrepreneurship for those over 50, or visit https://larryjacobson.com/ for more information.
Suzanne: And welcome back everyone to Answers for Elders Radio dot com, heard across the USA in 29 different cities. And we’re so honored to be with each and every one of you this weekend. And again, we are talking to retirement coach extraordinaire and dear friend Larry Jacobson. And Larry has been so so inspiring this hour. And you know, Larry, as you’re talking about this, we touched on the fact that there’s so many opportunities to start new businesses because that’s really what’s going on with the Boomers.
And I go back to my own story. My own story was I was working in the corporate world. I was a director of marketing and I had like 250 sales reps underneath my responsibility. I was traveling all over the world — or, not world but northwest sector — in digital media. And I look at my life now and I think to myself, here I had lost my job due to a lot of politics because I was taking care of my mom, I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t travel as much as I used to. And so what they ended up doing is just downsizing me out of the company. And here I was, I was 52 years old, I was in the digital media world, Larry, and I’ve been making a six-figure salary. Right. Well, guess what? They’d rather hire the 35 year old that’s willing to work for $50,000 or $60,000. And I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t in that lifestyle. And so here I was in this scenario and I thought about… I have read a lot of Emma Curtis Hopkins, who is a spiritual teacher. And one of the things she says is if you see a job, it’s yours. I remember that feeling of, you know, I have this pull to do something and it was scary. It was very scary. But I, it’s like that Phoenix rising out of the ashes. I was determined to do it. And yes, I took a lot of stumbles along the way. Yes, I made a lot of mistakes. But you know what, starting my own company in my 50s was probably one of the hardest things, but the most greatest things I ever did in my life, and what you’re talking about a lot is you mentioned that a lot of businesses are started by people over 50.
Larry Jacobson: Well, most new businesses started today are 50 people, 50 and 60 plus, which is why in addition to coaching people on retirement, I coach people entrepreneurs who are 50 and 60 plus. And also I just wanted to mention, you just mentioned fear. One of the modules in the Sailing Retirement program is all about fear and managing fears, because elders have that when you’re leading to go do something new, it’s scary.
Suzanne: It’s very scary. You have life savings and you think, am I gonna throw this into a company or do I need to live on it, and, you know, and be safe? But I’m not going to be fulfilled. I’ve always wanted… to open a dive shop. I’ve always wanted to be a YouTube star, whatever it is.
Larry Jacobson: I became a writer and a speaker. I mean, it’s a matter of reinvention, reinventing yourself. It’s not as hard as it sounds, but it is scary.
Suzanne: It is. And I understand that all too well, I understand.
Larry Jacobson: That’s where coaching really helps.
Suzanne: And so many people said, oh, you don’t have the experience starting a company. Oh, you know … really what I was hearing between the lines is you’re a woman, and you’re too old, and that was the thing that I just didn’t listen to. I didn’t listen to that chatter, I just kept moving forward.
Larry Jacobson: Good for you. Knowing you, that must have really got to you (laughs).
Suzanne: Well, to a certain degree. But I realized that in my world that’s the greatest attribute I have, because I’ve lived it, where a lot of people don’t. And that’s the thing I think that has been driving for me is taking that experience. But in making your dreams come true is something I think that is so valuable when you talk about fulfillment. Tell us a little bit about how you get to that with people.
Larry Jacobson: Yeah. Well, I, I walk them through… the course sales retirement does the same thing and there are options. You can take just the course, or you can take the course plus some coaching, you know, one session, four sessions, nine sessions, depends upon what we think that you need. And by the way, I’m always available for a discovery session. If someone wants to just send me a message on my contact form on my website, say I’d like to just chat. We have a 30 minute complimentary chat to discover. And sometimes that’s all it takes, just or me to just give people a little push, a little kick.
There’s nine different modules on stage and we start with visioning. What is it that you can imagine that your life might look like if you were able to build it, to be that and that, that’s actually, that’s the free lessons as well. And so that’s where we start, and we end up with perseverance and commitment and we talk about risk taking and we do a S-W-A-T analysis of you, what are your strengths and your weaknesses? And there’s different modules that analyze different parts of who you are, what it is that you want. And and by the way, I wanted to mention on the site https://buoytraining.com/, which is where you’ll get to from my website, if you wanna go directly to the training, it’s https://buoytraining.com/. There’s also a course called Navigating Entrepreneurship, and that’s for 50 plus entrepreneurs.
Suzanne: I love it. I love it. So, Larry, we have about one minute left, and I really wanted to say, first of all, thank you so much for being on the show with us this week. I would love to have you back. I’d love to talk about how we build our dreams. And I also would love to have each and every one of our listeners reach out, go to LarryJacobson.com. Even if you are just starting to think about what am I gonna do after retirement, it might be five years from now, or you’re already retired, wondering is this all there is? And so it’s never too late or too early to start planning. And thank you again, Larry and again for all of you, free tools for you to take a look at at LarryJacobson.com.
