by Gail Z. Martin
What is your “Second Act”? Do you know what you want to be doing in the future, and are you making plans to make it happen?
Are you preparing for your next success? Think ahead five years, ten years—where do you want to be, and what do you want to be doing?
If you know where you want to go but not how to get there, it’s time to think about Second Act Success.
I spent 17 years in Corporate America running PR and Marketing departments. It was fun, and it was exactly what I went to school to learn how to do, and I made a good salary. But I always knew that someday, I wanted to write books, especially epic fantasy books filled with magic and swords and adventure. There just never seemed to be enough time.
When I left Duke Energy in the meltdown over Enron, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I looked for the same job at different companies, only to find that the positions available really did not offer much in the way of growth. Colleagues began asking me to take on projects for them, and my consulting business was born.
Working for myself (DreamSpinner Communications is 11 years old now!) gave me the freedom to write the books I had always wanted to write. Glance through the newsletter, and you’ll see how that turned out!
Bottom line—I replaced my corporate income, and then exceeded it while constantly learning new skills and facing new challenges, and I was able to achieve my long-time dream and actually turn that dream into a new core for my business. That’s what I’m talking about when I say “Second Act Success.”
Now, your dreams are probably different. But it all begins by visualizing where you would like to be in five to ten years—and then charting a course to get there. Do you want to be leading adventure travel tours in the rainforest? Running a bed and breakfast? Teaching yoga on a beach somewhere warm? Would you like to be running a business, but a different one from what you have now?
Time to start making a plan to get you from where you are to where you want to go. And if you’ve already made the leap, have you considered how you will get friends and colleagues to see and understand the “new you” so they can contribute to your success? (That’s where personal branding and social media really play a part!)
Learning to publicly reinvent yourself when you make a big change requires some soul-searching, and it also takes strategic thinking and some savvy marketing. It’s a journey, filled with a lot of challenges and big discoveries. But the results can be amazing, and oh so fulfilling.
I suspect that a lot of folks have reached the mid-point in life and are re-assessing where they go from here. For some, mergers, layoffs and ageism may have forced a change of career plans sooner than expected. For others, dreams long denied are insisting on having their turn. And yet others may want to make big career shifts and lifestyle changes for health reasons, or to savor more time with family.
That’s why I’m working on a new book tentatively titled “You After Corporate” and it’s all about creating “Fresh Start Success” for the second act of your life. I’m interviewing people who have left big corporations, government, and institutions and have created a successful Second Act. I want to find out how they succeeded, what they learned the hard way, what tips they would like to share with others, what secrets they’ve uncovered—and then I want to share those secrets with you.
You’ll be hearing more about this project, but I’ve already got some amazing people on board, and as I interview them over the next months, I plan to introduce them to you!
But I need your help—I am looking for introductions to people who have made the Second Act leap successfully. So if you or someone you know sounds like the kind of person I’m looking for, please send me an email at Gail@DreamSpinnerCommunications and put “Second Act Success” in the subject line. Thanks!
