Comeback Careers

INTRODUCTION

Stronger, Wiser, Better

I used to think my career would be over by the time I hit my forties.

EVERYONE IN TELEVISION knows this truth: time is not on your side. My attitude was that I needed to save enough money by the time I turned fifty because then my career would be over. In an industry that values youth and beauty, another birthday often signals another step toward your own expiration date.

But the funny thing is that what I’ve learned in my forties and beyond is what has prepared me for reinvention. What makes me feel powerful right now is all the knocks I have taken over the past decade. Whether it’s being publicly fired and starting my career all over again, or being mocked on social media (by the president of the United States, among countless others), or just everyday failures and frustrations—I’ve gotten better at taking a punch, I’ve gotten better at punching back, and I’ve gotten stronger as a result. I’m far less traumatized when something changes completely and I then have to redevelop a project I’ve been working on for six months. The daily knocks that you’ve endured by this point in your life—that’s how you develop a thick skin, and it makes all the difference.

So now, as I enter my fifties, I may have some battle scars, but I truly feel like I’m in the prime of my life. I love my work on Morning Joe, interviewing some of the most interesting people in the world and addressing big questions about the direction of our country. I’ve worked my way up (and down and back up) the corporate ladder. I’ve used my own experience—along with expert advice and research—to write a series of best-selling books that empower women to take control of their careers and maybe even their lives. I am proud of the movement I started with Know Your Value, the book I wrote about the forces—both internal and external—that are holding women back in the workplace. It took me so long to truly understand my value, to communicate it effectively, and to get what I deserved—not just money but also recognition, influence, and the power to dictate my own terms. I wanted to empower other women to find their voice and get the raises and promotions they deserve. Know Your Value is now the basis of a women’s conference series, a bustling online community, and more. To this day, everywhere I go, women from all walks of life want to talk to me about that book and how its message resonated with them.

All this is to say: this is not what I expected my career or life to look like at my age. Perhaps I was wrong about the limitations I thought I would face. A generation ago a woman like me might be the only woman in the room, if she got there at all. There just weren’t a lot of role models of powerful women working and thriving well beyond our life’s midpoint. But times have changed. Now we’re seeing more. And our runway is extending—Susan Zirinsky taking over CBS at sixty-six, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, incredibly powerful at seventy-nine, and my own mother, still working as an artist at eighty-eight.

These are women who know their value and are shattering all kinds of ceilings and stereotypes about women and power. Their age and experience are assets, not liabilities.

Midlife doesn’t have to be a career killer for women after all… right?

IT’S SEVEN O’CLOCK on a cold morning in December 2016. I’m on set talking about Donald Trump’s surprise victory, which, though a month old, still boggles everyone’s mind. I’ve been up since 3:30 A.M. as usual—hair, makeup, six newspapers, and coffee—and we’ve been at it for an hour. The bright lights on set, combined with my early-morning wake-up call, make it seem like it’s noon. Someone on set brings up Know Your Value, and I am thrilled because my Know Your Value movement is on a roll. NBCUniversal is rolling out conferences nationwide with me—we are bringing my empowerment message to working women around the country, and I am feeling great.

Then my phone buzzes. It’s a text from my sister-in-law Ginny.

This came as a bit of a bubble-bursting shock. It had never dawned on me that my own sister-in-law and many other women felt left out by Know Your Value.

I realized in that moment that so much of my attention had been on women who were in the first half of their careers, struggling to move up. But what about midcareer women, women in their forties and fifties, and, especially, women who aren’t currently working—women who had been laid off, or were trying to pivot to something new, or had off-ramped or back-burnered their careers because of the often-incompatible demands of caregiving and work? I know very well what it feels like to be going through a career change and to wonder whether I have any value at all. How could I address these women, help them feel fierce, help them take control over their work life?

Slightly bruised ego aside, I realized immediately that this was something I needed to address as we continued to expand Know Your Value. Clearly, because my employment had been pretty steady in recent years, I also needed a trusted, talented ally with firsthand experience to help me reach women returning to or transitioning in the workforce. As fast as my fingers could type, I replied YES! and asked Ginny to take on the project: Create a new silo for Know Your Value. Become the Know Your Value voice for this group of women. Be our Comeback Career blogger. And, of course, write a book with me. This was an opportunity to help Know Your Value reach out to the many women out there who were feeling just like Ginny and to shine a spotlight on the challenges they face and the value they possess.

And so that December day Comeback Careers was born.

GINNY AND I SPENT the next year and more working on this project, digging deep into the subject of women at midlife, their careers, and how to articulate the special value a seasoned woman can bring to new ventures. We interviewed scores of women who have taken career breaks, transitioned, or started something entirely new at midlife. We talked to career-transition experts and coaches. We asked the critical question: How can women past the midpoint of their lives make this part of their careers the best part?

We began by focusing on moms like Ginny who were returning to work after a career break or downshift. We found that she was far from alone, that time-outs, downshifts, gigs, pivots, and work-arounds are necessary features—not bugs—in many women’s career trajectories. Today close to 30 percent of women report that at some point they have taken a significant (more than a two-year) career break to care for family (children, parents, spouse). Statistics show that the overwhelming majority who take time off will want to return to the workforce. After three or ten or even twenty years, when the work-life balance becomes easier or the kids are in school, or when the nest is emptying and the tuition bills are exploding, or when divorce or illness or even the death of a spouse brings loss of the family income, many women want and need to reboot their careers or forge a new career path—but they aren’t sure how to make their next move.

We quickly discovered it’s not just the stay-at-home moms and downshifters who need a hand with a career reboot. There’s a whole midlife career crisis going on for scores of women in their forties and fifties. In our conversations with these women we heard the word “invisible” a few too many times. Midlife is a time of numerous life transitions, many of them difficult, painful, and frustrating. Turns out that there are a whole lot of women—not just the women who took a career break—who today are trying to figure out their value and career path at midlife.

The truth is that knowing your value is more complicated as you get older. Sure, by now you probably have a track record of experience—you know what you’re good at and, as my friend and former senator Claire McCaskill says, “you have receipts to prove it.” You have more patience, deeper networks, more practical knowledge. You’re at the apex of your capabilities. You should be killing it. But just as women at midlife should be celebrating their strength, for so many of them the ground starts to shift under their feet. Sometimes their own values and priorities have shifted: what seemed important in the first half of their careers—glamour, travel, making that career-defining win—now seems less compelling. Sometimes they feel that their momentum at work has cooled, though not by choice, or that they’ve been sidelined altogether. And whether or not they would put a name to it, most women around age fifty operate under the convergence of gender bias and age bias. Their jobs are more insecure. They are more insecure.

Ginny and I wondered: How can we help women rewrite this narrative, take control of their careers, and make this a time of acceleration toward meaning and, while we’re at it, money? How can they operate from a power position instead of feeling increasingly vulnerable?

It seems like just last week we were freaking out about our ticking biological clocks. Now it’s our career clocks that we can’t stop hearing. Whether you’re a “fired at fifty” or the collateral damage of a corporate reorganization, you hear that clock. Maybe you heard that ticking when you hit a milestone birthday and said, “There is no way I can do this f*&king job for the next couple of decades.” Or your nest empties and your purpose leaves the house and you are ready to write your next chapter but don’t know how to start. Or you are trying to come up with a viable side hustle because you are worried sick about whether you’ve saved enough for retirement. Or you are simply looking for more meaning and fulfillment in life and have the skills and talent but are afraid you’re too old to try something new—and that damn clock just keeps ticking.

We see you, and we’re here to help.

It’s time for a Know Your Value intervention.

These years can be the best of your life, and that’s not just my own personal experience. In our research we talked to many women who told us exactly that. Their enthusiasm came as a bit of a shock after all the angst-ridden testimony we’d heard from women who hadn’t taken steps to launch their own comeback career. The women who were thriving had started businesses after forty-five, gone back to school, reinvented themselves, returned to work after career breaks. They used terms like stronger, wiser, badass, and primetime to reassess their midlife from a new perspective.

We’re going to help you get your groove back too.

I’ve spent a decade telling women that if they want a raise or a promotion, they need to know and be able to articulate their value. It worked for thousands of women, and it is a message that women in the second half of their careers need to hear as well.

You are stronger, wiser, and better at the midpoint. You have skills, experience, and maturity, and you need to tap into that power. We are going to show you how.

I believe that if you can identify and articulate your value, you can rebound from any setback or career break into a new, more fulfilling career—whether you are thirty-five or sixty. Knowing your value is the key. Finding work that you love will make you happier, more fulfilled, and more financially secure. It will put you back in control.

We wrote this book for you. We wanted to create a guidebook to help women rediscover and learn how to show their value, to reboot their confidence, and to figure out a new path. It’s the book I wish I’d had when I was fired and sitting at home, trying to figure out my next move.

It’s all here.

With this book we will help you rewire your mindset and create your action plan for getting to the next chapter. You’ll find résumé strategies, social media advice, dos and don’ts for interviewing, negotiating guidance, and recommendations to ensure that your digital footprint complements your IRL (in real life) goals.

We’ll show you how networking now is as much about brainstorming with your girlfriends over coffee or wine as it is about making awkward small talk with strangers at conferences. Having a “squad” at midlife to seek in-person support and guidance from is now more important than ever. Let the women in your life power charge your next steps. We’ll show you how.

We tackle the issue of ageism and get the best advice for combating its many forms. We’ve got advice for working in today’s multigenerational workplace—where your boss and many colleagues may be decades younger.

Beyond advice, inspiration, and an action plan, at the end of the book we’ve listed more than a hundred resources to help with your return, reinvention, or rebound—from websites that detail midcareer re-entry programs, to resources with support for starting your own business, to the new crop of women’s freelance job boards and free online class sites to power up your tech skills.

We won’t tell you that this journey will be easy or painless. But from our experience working on this project, what we will tell you is that returning, reinventing, or rebooting a career is eminently possible. Getting started is half the battle. One woman who successfully returned after eighteen years out of work told us, “Fear was my biggest obstacle. When I got past that, I was all set.”

As women, we’re fierce when it comes to protecting, defending, and amplifying the success of others. We go to the mat for our spouses, our children, and our colleagues. But when it comes to knowing, articulating, and defending our own value, we go silent. Or we self-deprecate and apologize our way through the conversation.

That changes today.

Read this guide, mark it up, dog-ear the pages, do a deep dive into the Resources. Whether you are headed back to familiar business terrain or considering a pivot to a new career, whether this is about the paycheck or the fulfillment, this book will help you find your own successful comeback career. We want the stories of the women in this book to inspire you to rewrite yours.

Let’s call BS on “invisible” once and for all.

It’s your time to be fierce—this time for you. Get ready to begin your comeback career. You have value too.