Confessions of an Aging Business Expert
I sit in rooms with babies on their laps.
Recently I wrote to an Instagram expert and shared my truth, vulnerably. I said I was trying so hard and nothing was sticking, and that I figured people were scrolling past me thinking, who is this old woman?
She wrote back: "I can see that!"
Then she invited me to join her challenge.
I have 40+ years of business experience. I was building a worldwide following before social media existed. I taught myself self-publishing. I earned my coaching certification when the world didn't know what coaching was. Today I walk circles around my 24 year old son on artificial intelligence, and he still calls me boomer when I fumble a simple tech task.
Some days I still wonder whether any of it matters anymore.
If you are anywhere near the edge of the "aging out" generation, you already know the questions.
Do people still see my value in my fifties and sixties?
Can I keep up with everything I'm bombarded with?
Will I keep getting passed over for someone younger they can mold?
Who am I when so much of my identity has been wrapped up in work?
This week I published a long piece about sitting inside those questions instead of trying to ignore them.
Here is what I found, and it was not what I went looking for.
Nobody sees their own value. Not one of us.
Two things showed me. I had dinner with the man who gave me my wings in marketing, someone I have looked up to for forty years, and he said something across that table that I am still thinking about months later. And a twenty-something entrepreneur said something to me on Threads that answered the exact fear I had confessed to that Instagram expert.
I'm not going to flatten either of them into a takeaway here. They're worth reading whole.
What I will tell you is this. The grief is real. Ageism is real. And the younger ones coming up behind you are not judging you the way you think they are. Some of them are intimidated by you. Some of them are waiting for someone to tell them they belong in the room you're already standing in.
That changes what you do on Monday morning. It changes who you reach out to, whose advice you go looking for, and how quickly you count yourself out of a room.
It also changed how I'm making decisions right now. Slowly. Intuitively. Protectively. I'm saying goodbye to my youth and embracing my wisdom. I'm walking away when I don't feel valued and staying where I feel at home.
I walked away from Instagram last week. That decision started with a younger woman teaching me how to leave.
The full piece is on my Substack, The Offer Magician's Notebook.
It's about grief, respect, and the two directions expertise actually travels. Read Confessions of an Aging Business Expert here.
Hi, I’m Lori Young. I'm an offer ecosystem and business strategist for expert entrepreneurs whose work is too layered to fit a template. I help them turn scattered offers, messaging and big ideas into a sustainable business ecosystem, with clear entry points and a real path for clients to go deeper over time. Creator of the OfferMojo™ way of building a business and host of The OfferMojo Show.
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