Fired at 60. Flourishing at 64
by Yeoh Siew Hoon
What do you do when you’ve worked for one company all your life and then you get fired at 60 because well, you’re too expensive and you’re too old?
I met such a man – someone who’d worked for a multinational trading firm for three and more decades. He’d worked his way up, held several senior positions, seen the company through a few mergers and restructures until, as he put it, “I was re-engineered out”.
That’s how they put it to him the day they told him.
At first he was filled with anger. Then resentment. He certainly didn’t feel old, felt he still had the energy to go on. After that, acceptance. And, towards the end, professionalism.
“I worked hard till the last day,” he told me over a glass of wine.
The next day, he started on an idea that he had been hatching since he heard of his “re-engineering”.
He sent out emails to all his former business contacts and trading partners, saying he was starting a marketing consultancy based in Hong Kong, where he was living at the time he was fired. Having been in Asia for more than 20 years, he did not see his family and him moving back to Europe.
Several clients wrote back, expressing interest. Over the years, he had built strong relationships with them and they knew him, and his capabilities.
Today, four years on, his business is thriving. What started out as a marketing consultancy is now a trading firm and he has also invested in the businesses of his clients. He believes relationships and networks are critical to business success and that’s where his experience comes in.
“Experience comes with age, yet age is not valued by companies. Today, at 40-50, you are considered vulnerable. People don’t want to hire you between 40 and 50 and worse, at 60.”
He’s not making more money than he used to but he says that’s not his motivation these days, neither is anger and the sense of outrage he felt at the time.
He admits those feelings spurred him on to put his all into his new business. “I wanted to prove to them that I wasn’t past it. I certainly didn’t feel it, I still had energy and drive.”
Today, he’s doing it because he loves it. “I wish I had started this 10 years ago.”
I suspect his story is not new. There are many people out there who have given their working life to one company only to have it cut short by circumstances beyond their control.
I have met many – and to a man and woman, they all say it was the best thing that ever happened, getting fired. It spurred them to think about what they really wanted to do with their lives.
I share this story because he inspired me with his energy, enthusiasm and, mostly, his zest for life.
Today he sells coffee machines, and he sells them with passion.
That’s something no one can ever fire out of you.
Catch up with Yeoh Siew Hoon at The TransitCafe – www.thetransitcafe.com
Ian Jarrett
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