The Transition Nobody Expected After 50

speaker-0 (00:03.864)
Welcome back everybody. Today we have Mary Cronin. Now Mary is a researcher and author and she’s done a lot of work in the entrepreneur side, helps with our retirement and entrepreneurship pillar. Mary, it always sounds better coming from the person I talk to. So why don’t you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do and then we’ll go from there.

speaker-1 (00:29.612)
I will happily do that and thank you, Neil, for inviting me to be part of your transition network. I’m delighted to be here. And let me start by reintroducing myself, if I may, because there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of Mary Cronin’s out there. So I go by Mary J. Cronin. Always try to put that in my books and on my website and bio.

And in a nutshell, Neil, my background is I am an author. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’m a research professor at Boston College School of Management, where I teach entrepreneurship to students of all ages. And I am a passionate and enthusiastic believer that the best time of life really starts after 50. And that includes

becoming a founder, becoming an entrepreneur or solopreneur, living your best life. And in fact, one of my recent books is called, Starting Up Smarter, Why Founders Over 50 Build Better Companies. And my other book is called The 100x Entrepreneur. Well, my most recent book, I actually have 12 books, all about business and success in business. And The 100x Entrepreneur,

I co-authored with David Reske, who is a dear friend and colleague from my work consulting for his company 25 years ago now. And we interviewed entrepreneurs of all ages for the 100X entrepreneur. And our theme was inspired by the Inc. 5000, fastest growing companies in America. And we picked.

the top of the top of that Inc 5000 list to talk to literally entrepreneurs who have grown their companies 100 X in volume in terms of business and revenue. And I’m pleased to say there were in fact founders over 50 that we were able to find on that list of the fastest growing companies in America, as well as all of the inspirational founders I talked to for.

speaker-1 (02:55.296)
starting up smarter. So I am always interested in talking about why it is such a great idea for people who have an entrepreneurial mindset and an urge to do something both creative and purposeful in their lives at after retirement or as a transition away from a full-time corporate or other kind of job into retirement.

Think about entrepreneurship. It’s a great next step.

speaker-0 (03:29.038)
It’s interesting, when we first were talking, I had mentioned that my very first interview was with Paul Tasner. Yes. And I understand you’ve talked with and interviewed Paul as well.

speaker-1 (03:43.34)
Yes, Paul is in fact one of the chapters in Starting Up Smarter, why founders over 50 build better companies. he is the, as you know, now that you’ve talked to him, the most amazing and inspirational story of laid off when he was 64 and just wasn’t ready for retirement and started a new and now very profitable company that he’s been running for over a decade now.

speaker-0 (04:09.558)
Well, he’s 80. So he’s what? That would make it 14 years if I do my math correctly.

speaker-1 (04:15.822)
Right, over a decade. And he’s just wonderful to talk to and so honest about all of the problems he ran into when he was trying to raise money as a brand new founder, first time founder, over 65. Honestly, what I’ve learned from all of the people I’ve interviewed and talked to and mentored and helped is think about starting a company that you can start

on bootstrapping on your own terms. Or if you have skills like consulting or accounting or anything that you want to bring into a solopreneur practice, you will be able to build your company on your own revenue. The way Paul ended up doing once he discovered that he couldn’t raise money from venture capitalists over 65, when he was over 65, he figured out a profitable from the get-go business model.

One of the entrepreneurs I interviewed in a chapter in the 100X entrepreneur, Mike Salguero, here in my hometown, Boston. He started his second company after having had a very well-funded VC startup, which actually had to close down after a few years of struggling to find its market.

He vowed that he would never again raise money from venture capitalists. And he started his second company, which is ButcherBox. I don’t know if you’re a subscriber or have ever heard of it. It was one of the first subscribed to organic meat by mail. And the ButcherBox promise was they would have prime organic farm-raised grass-fed beef delivered to your doorstep.

as a subscriber. And if you are a subscriber, you get a free bacon for life as the kind of marketing incentive. And Mike is, he has converted or stepped up to, I guess more accurately, his commitment to organic natural farming and supporting independent farmers by becoming a benefits corporation, a certified benefits corporation.

speaker-1 (06:42.56)
And he has kept true to his word now, growing year after year at an incredible rate and profitability and never raising any outside funding. Started in a Kickstarter campaign. So for anyone who’s listening and thinking about, can I do this? Can I grow a big company? Well, if you have a big vision, Neil, grow a big company. If you want to have a lifestyle business as a solopreneur,

start a small company. know, entrepreneurship is vast and there’s so many different ways to be an entrepreneur as a solopreneur in partnership as a major 100X success story. So I’ve, love those stories. That’s what I love to do the most. have a podcast now, the 100X entrepreneur podcast and YouTube channel. And, I just really believe

that this can be the most satisfying, successful, and financially rewarding time of life for people who have an interest in entrepreneurship.

speaker-0 (07:57.646)
Yeah, no, something that you said earlier, close to the beginning, has intrigued me, especially since we started talking, and that you said something to the effect of people that start businesses over 55 are more successful than younger. Why is that?

speaker-1 (08:20.696)
Well, let me first tell you that is based on a huge study. That is not just one of those factoids that’s floating around. one of, and it’s, I talk about it in detail in Starting Up Smarter, if anyone is interested, I’m happy to share the actual study. And it was done by four researchers who looked at millions of

Records from you may know the Bureau of Commerce You when you register for what’s called an EIN in the US at least which is an employer Identification number it’s one of the things you need to do when you’re starting up a company even a small one a solopreneurship It’s a good idea to have a tax identifier in the US So so records are kept at by the government in the US by the

federal government of all of the applications for EINs and all of the companies that go on to have employees. And so these researchers took a decade. I think it was six to seven million companies that were started during that decade. And the ages of the founders are part of that application process. And so they had that data and then they went out and followed up.

with those companies, which ones had actually gone on to hire people, which ones had become profitable, which had gone out of business, which as you may know, full disclosure here, most startups, especially ironically, most startups that raise venture money don’t stay in business longer than five years. So the majority fail within five years.

What the findings of this extensive research study, which is now about five years old, were that literally the most successful businesses were started by people about 45, contrary to the media 20-something startup success story. That’s just statistically untrue.

speaker-1 (10:43.886)
Most companies are started by people who actually have decades of experience and know what, know what it’s like to be in a business and possibly to be a manager in a business. And then the likelihood of success in, in contrast to younger founders. If you were 60, when you founded a company, you were 10 times more likely to be successful than if you were 22 and you started.

speaker-1 (11:16.288)
Isn’t that good news? Isn’t that under-reported good news?

speaker-0 (11:21.524)
It also tells you how it goes to another aspect of ageism where people over a certain age tend to be ignored. And the fact that there’s this type of detail and information saying, hey, this is a cohort that’s actually really important to the economy, to society, that sort of thing.

speaker-1 (11:44.748)
Yes, well, I will also happily tell you, and again, I have to remind everyone that read this book because it’s a really fun book. And if you’re thinking, starting up smarter, can I be a founder over 50, over 55? Can I be successful? Well, the answer is yes. And there’s just so many stories in my book of people I talked to who just did exactly that, like Paul Tasner and many other founders, and also just a lot of data.

So another piece of data provided by the Small Business Administration in the US is that most small business in the US is defined as under 500 employees. But in fact, the vast majority of the 33 million small businesses in the US are under 10 employees. that trend is increasing.

year over year and the age is increasing year over year. So a very high percentage of the founders of small businesses in the US are over 50.

speaker-0 (12:58.776)
So why do you think that somebody over 50 is more successful in keeping the business going than other ages? it just the career side of things where they have that experience? Is there a personality change? Like I’ll tell you right now, I’m a lot more patient now than I was when I was 20. When I was 20, I wanted it right then and there.

speaker-1 (13:28.162)
You wanted it yesterday. Yeah. And you point to, yes, there are studies, I’ve done some of them myself, that correlate a number of factors with business success. One is persistence, patience. Persistence, I like persistence better than patience because entrepreneurs are not typically

patient people. I know I’m not patient, but I am very persistent. And when I get something into my mind that I want to do it, I am strategic. So I don’t leap and then wonder why I had a hard landing. I tend to now in my own career plan ahead. I think about planning. I also think about partnering. So again,

older entrepreneurs, no more people have a big network, understand how to cultivate long-term relationships that are built on trust and mutual goal setting. And so they have more partners and customers potentially to call on, right? So in my other

YouTube channel and podcast is why authors, right? And I do like to talk to debut authors who are over 50 when they wrote their first books. And, this week’s interview is with, Christopher Morabile, who did a massive career pivot. He, has spent a life, a career long venture investor and court before that, a corporate lawyer. So he calls being a full-time author his

third or fourth act. Anyway, he published his book, his first debut novel. It’s a detective series that he’s planning on growing into a bestselling detective series. He has first book tour. Well, people who write books now, they’re expected to promote their own books. If you don’t get out there and promote them, no one else will. So I asked…

speaker-1 (15:45.294)
Christopher that like what did you carry over from your entrepreneurial career and your corporate career now as a full-time author What were what have you learned from all of your past experience and one of his big examples because he’s justly proud of this is He had a very hard time convincing even his local bookstore to Have a book talk by him

his first novel. And he said, I guarantee you I will fill every seat in this bookstore if you bring me in. And so he, course, he knows so many people. He has a huge network from his past careers, many past careers, many decades of full-time business success. And so he said the bookstore was blown away. Like, they bought.

50 copies, which is a lot to sell on Booktop. And they sold out the first 50 copies. Fortunately, planning ahead, he had brought along with him in the trunk of his car two more cases of his books. And they sold all of those too. And that was just like one small indicator of what he said he brought from his previous careers into this new career pivot.

And I hear that from so many of the founders over 50 that they understand time management. They understand strategic planning. They understand you have to show up every day and put in the time and the work. They also understand how to leverage and partner with the people they already have established relationship with.

As Christopher said to me, I’ve heard a million no’s in my career. I’m not going to be daunted by a couple of no’s. I’m just going to figure out how to get to yes. And I think that is often something that younger people underestimate. How many no’s any new business is going to have to transcend until they find the right match for their customers, until they

speaker-1 (18:11.16)
find the right members of their team or the right advisors. So we’ve all heard a lot of no’s, right? At a certain age. And finally, and very importantly, I think, if you start a business when you’re over 50, over 60, you’re doing it to prove a point. You have a purpose. You’re not typically just looking to make a buck. Of course, you are often looking.

to improve your financial situation and why not, but it’s not just about the money. And a lot of customers today, a lot of partners really resonate with those business like ButcherBox that has a purpose. It’s trying to do good in the world as well as be a successful startup. So all of those things come together from your ability,

network and your persistence and your vision of how to launch something and not try to do it all on day one to that sense of purpose. And really you want your business to make a difference and do good and leave something good behind. And that actually is a very good decision.

and a very good strategy for creating a business that has value beyond you, the founder. You think that way. You don’t think, I’m going to be here for the next 50 years and I’m not going to worry about what comes after me. You start thinking from year one, year two, how am going to build this as a legacy that goes on? And one of the founders,

I talked to in Starting Up Smarter, Bill Barron, he made his mark as a graduate student at MIT in writing the Limits of Growth, co-writing the Limits of Growth, one of the very first environmentally conscious, we can’t go on growing like this, and started a solar power installation company when he was in his 60s. And now he’s 80, and he’s still

speaker-1 (20:38.558)
It’s a very, very profitable, very successful New England based company. Revision Energy is the name of it. And Bill said to me, one thing I always do is hire college graduates. They’re going to be the employees living in the future. And I listen to when I hire people, I hire people of all ages, but I make sure that I have that perspective.

of people who are thinking of what will this company be in 50 years? And he knows I’m not going to be here 50 years. They are. It’s smart that I listen to them. And it’s smart to have all ages, multi-generational company team. And again, there aren’t many, I say this without prejudice, honestly.

It’s been my experience, Neil. There aren’t many 20 year olds who are keen to hire 70 year olds. But there are lots of 70 year olds who are keen to hire 20 and 30 year olds.

speaker-0 (21:47.118)
You’ve brought up several things. First off, purpose. Every single conversation I’ve had since I started this podcast has always come back to purpose. Everybody’s talking about purpose, whether it’s health, whether it’s starting the business, whether it’s reinventing themselves. It’s always been figure out what your purpose is. I have a partnership with the Rotary Clubs.

And they’re always saying the reason why we’re successful is we get people, we give people purpose from a volunteering point of view as well. So the purpose side of things has become a real thread within everything that I’m seeing. Let me switch a little bit to focus maybe on the dollars and cents side of things from where you’re coming from.

First, when I was doing the research for this podcast, one of the things I discovered, which I was surprised by, was that people that are over 50, over 55 have 70 % of the wealth in the country. Yet everybody doesn’t, nobody spends time marketing to that group. They focus on the twenties and thirties. So there’s this pool of capital. Now, is this a

reason why you get more success when you’re older because you’re able to get by that valley of death of lack of funds to get through to the other side where revenue hits.

speaker-1 (23:29.198)
Well, it’s two sides of the coin. So I already said, Neil, if you’re over 60, probably don’t even bother to think about raising venture capital. It’s not impossible by any means. I know people who have succeeded in that. It is possible. If you have a great business model, a great team, and you’re a serial entrepreneur, you’ve already had a success story that you’ve exited your company, then yes, you may be able to raise money.

But in fact, most, again, I love data, so I’ll just share some more data. Most startups started by founders at any age do not raise venture capital. The vast majority, as we’ve already said, are small businesses. And those companies do have to find another way to fund themselves and their growth. And it can be a loan, can be friends and family.

Most often, that’s what it is. Max out your credit cards, borrow money if you can get it from a bank, or friends and family who support your vision. And that’s for founders of any age. So it’s more possible sometimes for founders who are over 60 to use their own savings. However,

I’m here to say it’s not necessary. It’s far, far better no matter what age you are when you’re contemplating starting a company as a high growth company where you’re going to hire people or as a solopreneur. Have a business plan that generates revenue. Don’t start with the business plan that says, I’m going to raise $2 million and

then I’ll figure out how to make revenue and go and become profitable in a year or two after all that money is gone. That’s really not a good business plan. if you’re a founder over 50, over 60, keep that money in your pocket and come up with a business plan that is going to allow your passionate

speaker-1 (25:53.422)
project, your purpose project to become a profitable business. any business can become profitable. It’s not always the first thing that you think about, but it should be something that is part of your planning before you launch is who are your first customers? What’s the value proposition you’re offering them?

How much are you going to ask people to pay for whatever the service is that you have to offer them? And again, one of my favorite examples, I did a webinar a couple of years ago called From Side Gig to Startup. one of my guests was someone I know who retired early from his extremely well-paid

a corporate position at Fidelity Investments because his passion, purpose was to become a full-time artist. And he calls himself an artist entrepreneur because he went into becoming a full-time artist with the plan, a hope and a plan to make a living as a full-time artist in his fifties. And so.

There are a lot of people who want to paint, a lot of people who love art and good for you. If you love to write, you love to music, you want to sing, you want to paint and that’s your retirement hobby, If it becomes important to you to also turn it into a business, you can. My friend, artist Ross Ozer,

is in galleries all around the country now. He sells his paintings, sells his art, and he’s proud to be an entrepreneur as well as an artist. And to make a good living from being an artist takes planning, takes all of the things that we talked about, Neil. It takes a willingness to hear no and keep going and understanding of who you’re marketing to, all the same skills as well as a purpose that

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that keeps you going when days don’t go as well as you had wished. But I’m here to say, if you have a passion for something, think about the possibility of turning it into a business and a profitable business.

speaker-0 (28:34.018)
So you originally said that you yourself do a lot of partner, versus like Paul, if I remember correctly, he started off singular. Is there a benefit from going either way?

speaker-1 (28:50.538)
It really depends on what the company vision is that you have. Many, many individuals now do very, very well as solopreneurs. And, that just means a one person business. can be fully incorporated as a one person business and millions of people are. And it’s just the incorporation is just a legal protection for you as a business owner, as you know. And so if you are.

If your vision, your passion is to have the kind of company that needs employees, have a company that needs employees. If your passion and vision is to be a creative person, maybe you want to think about just being a solopreneur. And partnerships are somewhere in between. lot of the professional legal accountant

financial advisor, all those kinds of career tracks are often partnerships. I mean, my accountant is in a partnership. My dentist is in a partnership. You’re, know how, how frequent that is. And so, really depends on an individual’s passion and my experience and my belief and what I’ve seen work is

Do what you truly believe in needs to be done. Fill a need with what you do, have a purpose with what you do. The money is important to think about. I am an entrepreneur. I do think about money and profitable business models, and I mentor a lot of older founders about those questions. And it’s not

If you never want to talk to people about money, if you can’t stand to even mention money in a conversation, perhaps entrepreneurship is not really your calling. If you love what you’re doing and you want to turn it into something that reaches more people and has more impact, maybe you want a partner who loves the sales part. And you are not that person.

speaker-1 (31:16.194)
find that person and share the money. One of the things that Paul Taster said when I talked to him that I loved so much, which are words to live by, is he found a co-founder when he started and just have somebody to talk to every day. And he said, if you’re founding a company and you’re so greedy that you can’t even imagine sharing the revenue with anyone, you know, that you probably won’t succeed.

So you have to be willing to share your ideas, share whatever good comes of what you’re doing and whether that’s with a partner, a team, maybe contractors who you hire and you know this, there’s so much you can do with freelancers and now with AI. The billion dollar businesses are starting to pop up.

rarely, but million dollar solo businesses are not so rare anymore. They’re becoming more and more common. So really depends on the size of your vision and the, amount of time you want to spend. I’ve talked to very happy solopreneurs over 60 who tell me I only want to work two days a week. And that’s, that’s plenty of money for me. And the other three days of work.

week I do something else with my life. I volunteer, see my grandchildren, go golfing, whatever it is. I mean you can you can pick your lifestyle to match your entrepreneurial vision.

speaker-0 (33:01.26)
You had mentioned earlier about hiring younger kids. One of the themes I started seeing last week was the entire conversation around intergenerational relationships working together, that sort of thing, whether it’s…

From the policy point of view, whether it’s from the volunteering side of things, now I’m hearing from within the business, the hiring. I’ve heard that from job sharing. So a senior versus somebody that’s just coming into the industry, that sort of stuff.

Are you seeing that happen a lot more in terms of the giving back, the raising up of the next generation? has it always been around there?

speaker-1 (33:56.8)
I think it’s always been around. mean, think of family businesses and how many family businesses there are. And the successful ones do bring the next generation into the business. And a lot of my own students, mean, teaching in college is by definition intergenerational. True. Every year I have a new cohort of

18 to 22 year olds that I get to know very, well. And I do hire them as research assistants and I hire them out of my own pocket to help me with the businesses that I run. And they’re wonderful, wonderful, incredible human beings. And I’m here to say, you know, if you rely on media headlines to think about college students and

recent college graduates and their work ethic and their ability to contribute to society and their commitment to making the world a better place. Don’t believe it. Yes, as in every generation, there are some people who are not committed to a work ethic, who are not good team members. But I have been extraordinarily fortunate to work with some of the

most incredible, hardworking, and purpose-driven young people over decades of being a college professor. And they are absolutely great people to have an intergenerational relationship in the workplace or in a startup. yes, think it’s, unfortunately, it’s

being presented in popular media sometimes as being a clash of generations. And it doesn’t have to be a clash. We are full of experience, decades of work experience, sometimes startup and management experience. And 22-year-olds, definitionally, are not.

speaker-1 (36:22.464)
able to bring those decades of experience. So we have different perspectives and that’s very valuable. And I do think that what you mentioned previously, Neil, the word patience, I think it’s incumbent on people who have those decades of experience to show a little patience and open-mindedness and willingness to learn from

other generations as much as it is incumbent on younger generations to show that equal open-mindedness, respect, and interest in other people’s way of looking.

speaker-0 (37:05.56)
For me, it’s always been, I’ve liked to bring on fresh graduates for the very simple reason that they don’t have the bad habits. They haven’t learned the bad habits. Anytime I’ve hired on somebody in their 40s, they’ve brought along patterns of behavior that was successful for them in whatever instance, but it wasn’t appropriate for where I was. Whereas…

By bringing on a fresh kid, I could get him trained properly. Yes, they didn’t have that knowledge of right off the bat, but that was balanced by that extra energy that they had and that enthusiasm to learn and to grow, which I think is often, once we get a little bit older, it’s like we’re starting to feel

Feel the weight of time, so to speak.

speaker-1 (38:05.64)
Well, you know what, if I may gently disagree and present a different perspective, some of the most energetic and open-minded and eager to learn people I know are 70. And some of the most narrow-minded people I know are in their 30s. And I wouldn’t hire the narrow-minded people no matter what age. don’t get along with narrow-minded people as much as I

speaker-0 (38:10.328)
Sure.

speaker-0 (38:30.574)
Yes.

speaker-1 (38:35.054)
value and get along with, eager to learn, enthusiastic and energetic people. And I find that age is not the best indicator of that. Really talking to people, really asking them what they want to achieve in their life, really listening to what they say is how you find out if the people you might want to hire or partner with are a good match for you. And…

I know in my own outlook on life, I am known as the woman who has 10 ideas a day and loves all of them. And that drives some people crazy. I also know that. I’ve managed organizations with hundreds of employees. And they made fun of me for being like, here’s Mary. She has another new idea. And there are people who want to be

the doers in the organization. And I have always hired those people who want to do things with clear understanding of what needs to be done. Organizations that don’t have a good mix of the visionaries, the people who execute the vision, the people who make sure it’s all done correctly, those are not as strong.

if you don’t have all of those roles in an organization. And if you want to start or manage an organization, you have to value all of those roles. And over and over again, I have talked to founders who have said sometimes they learned that belatedly after they hired someone who was really brilliant in their resume or had brilliant experience and didn’t really come into the new position.

with a willingness to learn and to share and to be good to their team members in a positive way, to have a positive impact on the whole group and not just on their own role. And to me, that’s, again, that’s not about age. That’s really about an attitude toward life and the world that people can get better at.

speaker-1 (40:59.99)
or they can get worse at. Doesn’t really matter what age they are. So again, gently disagreeing with, you know, kind of saying what you said.

speaker-0 (41:13.154)
Mary, that’s honestly to me that makes for a better conversation. It allows us to bounce back and forth ideas and come to a better understanding on our own terms of where things sit. I’m fine with that. Is there an ageism aspect? So you had said seventies are perfectly willing to hire twenties, but twenties not necessarily seventies.

speaker-1 (41:27.906)
Wonderful.

speaker-0 (41:42.402)
Is that an ageism thing?

speaker-1 (41:46.734)
Probably people have narrow-minded attitudes again one of those narrow-minded attitudes is the capabilities and the level of openness to new technology that people of a certain age might bring into a job and That can be that can go both ways I will say that there are some people who will never hire

a 22 year old because they think they’re not going to have that work ethic that somehow magically people of other generations have. I think there are definitely people who will not hire anyone over 50, say, into a technical job, which requires a lot of AI. It’s a super mistake on their part. you’ve learned AI. I’ve learned AI.

speaker-0 (42:43.47)
I’m through that.

speaker-1 (42:45.304)
No, we use it every day. you know, clearly it’s a falsehood that people over 50 don’t learn and use AI. It’s a falsehood that people who are 22 don’t have a good work ethic. can’t succeed if you stereotype people by those gross generalities. You can only succeed if you take people on their own terms and figure out what you need and whether that person

has what you need. And I would, of course, love to see more of that openness by employers when they’re looking at people over 50, over 55, over 60. And there’s a lot of data that people of those ages, if they get laid off, are highly unlikely to be rehired in the same level or a higher level job. And I’ve heard that story, and I’m sure you have.

That lived experience is very painful. And that’s one of the things that makes me so eager to point out that there is another alternative, which is be your own boss.

speaker-0 (43:55.09)
And quite honestly, I haven’t worked for another company since 2004. For the very simple reason, it’s like, I don’t trust them to do what’s in my best interest. So this is my way of controlling what happens to me in my life, that sort of thing. But you bring up another point. I remember seeing a video last week where they were determining who they were going to be laying off. And because somebody was older,

Their salary was going to be higher because of seniority and that sort of stuff, but they were also older people and they wanted to make sure that whoever they were staying, keeping, were there for a longer period of time. Somebody that’s 50 is probably approaching or starting to think about retirement versus somebody that’s 30. That’s where I think.

Is that, and we’re kind of slipping away from the entrepreneurship side of things.

Should people be thinking when they get a little bit older to start thinking about their own side hustle to then drive into a business when they retire?

speaker-1 (45:09.358)
Again, I’m here to say, Neil, that is an open door for anyone who wants to think about starting their own business at any age. It’s an open door. Some people don’t want to walk through it, but I think it’s useful to know the numbers and know how successful people over 50 are being in owning their own business, being their own boss.

turning their passion project or their side hustle into a profitable business, that’s happening in massive numbers, in the millions. the data is showing us that year after year now, in part because of the capabilities of AI and the organizational capabilities of hiring great freelancers without having any employees, that a lot of those companies

which were maybe conceived of as being a very small side gig have the potential to become very lucrative sources of income for people who are over 55 who are moving into retirement. And I’ll tell one more favorite story of a favorite person, a woman also called Mary, Mary Schrader, who

had her career as a corporate lawyer. She happens to be an alum of Boston College. So I talked to her about her story. She’s living now in Texas in what’s called the Hill Country, a beautiful part of Texas north of Austin. And she kind of accidentally started a cooking channel on YouTube to

She liked home cooking. She, you know, wanted something to do. Her husband agreed to be the videographer and film her cooking in her own kitchen. And she called her cooking channel Mary’s Nest. Mary Schrader now has over a million subscribers on her YouTube channel.

speaker-1 (47:31.022)
Those of us who have YouTube channels are instantly humbled by that and know that that is like a fraction of 1 % of all YouTube channels ever get a million plus subscribers. has two cookbook contracts, two published cookbooks with Random House. Somebody saw her channel at Random House and said, would you like to write a cookbook? She’s of course said yes. She has a lot of sponsors and most important, she just loves it.

She loves it. She glows when she talks about it. She glows when she’s cooking on screen. And she told me that she makes like so much more money on Mary’s Nest, the YouTube channel, than she ever did as a corporate lawyer. So, you know, that tells you the potential of doing something you’re passionate about.

speaker-0 (48:23.758)
Yeah, and it’s doing that as opposed to chasing the dollars.

speaker-1 (48:29.11)
And absolutely. also, however, I will say in this case, what I learned from Mary is if you’re going to do it, do it right. So she took a workshop about how to start and run a YouTube channel. And she laughed and said she was telling me this. said, of course, I was the youngest person in the whole workshop, far younger than the instructor. And everyone, everyone in the workshop was looking at me and saying,

cooking channel, Mary. What are you thinking? Guess what? Six years later, she’s being asked to teach that workshop.

speaker-0 (49:09.054)
Interesting. One of the things I like seeing is the information about how people got to where they were going. The biographies, for lack of a better term, of what they did, how they got there. So it’s like a consolidation of, if you do this, you have a chance to

speaker-1 (49:30.018)
Yes. And also it takes time, you know, to be a podcaster, which I am now, have my own YouTube channel, which I do now. I was so curious and I was so inspired, honestly, by Mary Schrader story. And one of the things she told me was just, you know, you have to be willing to do it every week, be consistent, take the time to learn all the best practices.

how the algorithm works, well as how to present yourself on the screen. And don’t give up. Don’t give up after three months or six months. It’s going to take you a while to catch on. But if you love what you’re doing, why not keep doing it?

speaker-0 (50:16.846)
Yeah, and there’s ups and downs. Mind you, that’s with everything. There’s going to be good days. There’s going to be bad days. Keep an eye on the-

speaker-1 (50:23.394)
Yes. It’s been a lovely conversation, Neil. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.

speaker-0 (50:29.474)
Mary, thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure. For everybody, I have information in the description about Mary, her books, and where you can find her. And don’t forget to click like and subscribe. It helps the channel grow. Mary, Absolutely.

speaker-1 (50:46.83)
Like this channel and I would love to hear from you if you’re older than 50 and thinking about starting a new company I’d love to hear about it and maybe write about it

speaker-0 (50:58.006)
Absolutely. Mary, thank you very much.