White Papers from the Gold Coast Institute Fellows

We live in a phenomenal era where we will outlive our great-grandfolks by 30 years. That’s a third of a lifetime! Speakers are blessed with a profession that only requires a voice, an able mind and an able body. And as long as our voice and the demand are there, we can continue our professions almost forever.

“But we must accept reality,” says George Morrisey, CSP, CPAE, and Cavett recipient. “You won’t be as much in demand as you reach your more mature years.” So, he says, it’s important to “start working for a balanced life early in your career, particularly with your family.”

Here are some questions we need to be asking ourselves as we face the latter part of our careers: How long do we want to speak full-time? Or even part time? Somewhere between about 45 and 55 we can peek over the top and ask, “How much of this do I want to do from 60-90?” Morrisey points out. “And what else do I want to do instead, or in addition, that will fill my life with fun, meaning, joy, and purpose?”

Strategize the Future

Glenna Salsbury, CSP, CPAE, and NSA Past President, has a strategic career plan designed through age 95. “After that,” she says, “I plan to pursue some specific avocations.” Alas, many of us are booked up to two years out, compared to 45 minutes when it comes to other aspects of our lives. Plan the second half of our lives? We barely planned the first!

The French call the 50-plus period the “third life,” with the first 20-30 years for studying, finding our feet, and growing up; the middle segment devoted to societal demands (marriage, kids, jobs, and keeping the economic cogs turning), and the rest of our lives to use what we have learned to enjoy living and to share. We call it the “second life” in the U.S., with menopause, the “empty nest,” and retirement the admission signs at the gatepost.

Our dilemma is how we can pluck from the best of speaking and build a joyous, comfortable, giving life around it. If mated, we’ll also want to get in sync with our partner, to create a united plan to blissfully share as we age, while also defining distinct areas of individual growth.

Build a Second Life Plan

One way to build a Second Life plan is by first surveying our present financial and health status, then determining what changes we must make to create a comfortable, healthy future.

Then we should make some lists. One list asks what contributions, achievements, and activities we have accomplished to date, what skills we developed in doing them, and how might we apply those skills in the next 30 years. Another is an adjective list: which adjectives might an objective person use to describe you now? Which adjectives aren’t applicable now but might have been used about us earlier? And which adjectives do you want to be properly used about you from now forward?

Three more quick lists: (1) List 10 words that describe your life until now. Which of those do you want to continue to describe your coming life? (2) List 10 words that would add joy and worth to your Second Life; and (3) What attitudes, activities, traits, etc. do you want to leave at the gate as you pass into your Second Life; which of your strengths do you want to take into that life, and what strengths do you want to develop in your future life?

Drawing from the answers to those lists, you can gain insight and direction into the kind of person you want to be in the next 30 years. Five procedural steps can then help you put flesh around that skeletal figure.

(1) Create a dream list. What do we want to do, see, learn or share in the years to come? What kind of person do you want to be in your second life?

(2) Prioritize those dreams, then list them in appropriate time brackets, so you have the will, ability and wherewithal to make them happen when you want to.

(3) Ask your spouse or mate to complete (1) and (2) also, so you can compare your individual and joint dreams and bring them into harmony.

(4) Reduce those dreams to specific Action Steps that break each dream down into its logical and doable components. Inject the needed financial and health planning into each set of action steps, so you can afford to make them happen and you’ll have the energy and well-being to enjoy the endeavor—without so depleting your coffers or corpus that there is nothing left for future dreams.

(5) Take all of those dreams (broken down into affordable and realizable action steps) and from them create a final (but always modifiable) Action Plan!

Plan Your Business to Support Your Second Life Dream

“Run your speaking like a business at every step,” says Dave Yoho, CPAE, and Cavett Recipient. Morrisey suggests investing as much as we can in our retirement plans even if it means sacrificing some short-term needs and wants. “And resist the temptation to live life to the hilt during the high-income times.”

Burt Dubin, of Kingman, Ariz., agrees: “Put cash from your earnings into an untouchable nest egg.” Jim Zinger, CSP, goes a step farther: “Put early earnings into investment-producing property, like apartments or office buildings, for an income stream later.”

“Products should always be part of the mix,” says Yoho. A product line that stays fresh, one that doesn’t age quickly, is going to bring in additional revenue for a substantial time period.

“Product, product, product. Nothing equals passive income,” adds Dubin.

Create Options that Blend the Past to the Future

You can certainly link your future by building on the foundation that got you there. You have a lot of options in planning your “Second-life Speaking Plan.”

Why not scale back your career by designing a modified time and travel schedule that builds more extensive vacations and family/friend visits into the out-of-town bookings?

Stay active in the community. One of the ways you can do this is by training other speakers at all levels, from high school to the NSA level, and from all angles of need, such as marketing, visuals, integrating the new electronic tools, voice use, dress and appearance, story-telling or movement.

Become a mentor. Santa Barbara’s Barbara Mintzer says that helping a younger person learn the speaking business “helped me rediscover why I went into speaking in the first place! It forced me to take a fresh look at what I was doing. The young woman asked me some terrific questions that forced me to re-evaluate my present vision and future goals.” Mentoring is a delicate relationship that works best when liberally bathed in good will on both sides and is built around achieving a well-defined goal or set of goals that both accept as desirable and attainable.

Share your knowledge of the business. Publish your experience and ideas about one or 150 aspects of speaking in articles, books, newsletters, audio or videocassettes or CD-ROMs.

Develop new areas of expertise (and new cores of passion) about which to speak or share, using the same skill and discipline that made you a success in speaking about your earlier topic(s).

NSA Past-President Jim Tunney, CSP, CPAE, suggests, “We’ve got to give the gifts back. Speak to help organizations raise money. A great way is to perfect our skills as Masters of Ceremonies, which, in turn, can lead to other, full-fee bookings!”

Morrisey agrees. “Speak pro bono for NSA, other association chapters, your church and community. It’ll keep the skills sharp while providing a valuable service.” Stay active in NSA and the local chapter. “That will bring incredible psychic income and will help us remain younger longer.”

“I volunteered to record books for the blind and dyslexic,” says Mintzer. “It’s really an extension of our speaking since we can give the written word more excitement and momentum, which gives the reader a much richer reading experience. It’s very satisfying.”

And have fun. That’s the reward: wrapping joy around meaning. “Keep and use your sense of humor,” says Morrisey. Make the last 30 years the best blend of wisdom, reflection, sharing, and astute planning. It’s an unexpected gift that we can truly shape and use as we wish!

“The idea’s not to slow life down, but to calm it down,” says Jim Tunney.

Salsbury agrees, “You can always change course as the years go by, but it is never too soon to start thinking about what you’d like to be doing later. Identifying your personal passions, desires, gifts, and talents is foundational. From these you can build a plan for your future which incorporates fulfillment and personal satisfaction.”

“What are the benefits of planning the last 30 years well before they arrive?” you may be asking yourself. First of all, serenity that comes from a self-drawn map that ties the present to the distant future, with the key places included that we wish to visit in between. Secondly, you can gain vision, then the tools to create or make that vision happen. Thirdly, you’ll be renewing your ability to stay “in the present,” to work harder and better, so you can make your dreams come true—clear reasons for saving money and taking care of your mind and body. And lastly, you gain the ability to take possession of your future and assume its responsibility.

Gordon Burgett, NSAer since 1982, speaks and writes about niche publishing, article and book writing, empire-building and second-life planning. Contact Gordon at (800) 563-1454 or at http://www.super-second-life.com/. Gordon Burgett expanded his publishing firm, Communication Unlimited (begun in 1981), to include a dental line in 1995. Gordon has published 1,700+ articles and 27 books, including his most recent,  (How to Create A Great Second Life: What Are You Going to Do With Your Extra 30 Years?). Specific details about the products mentioned in the article can be seen at http://www.sops.com/. This article appeared in the December, 2000, issues of both the P.M.A. (Publisher's Marketing Association) Newsletter and the A.S.J.A. (American Society for Journalists and Authors) Newsletter, and is (as noted in the text) updated in 5/2005. He can be reached at (800) 563-1454 or at Gordon@super-second-life.com.  

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