By Susan Dunn
Reprinted: 2003-10-27

Over 50, don't have a job and wondering what you can do? Well, you can start University of Phoenix, how’s that?

I can’t write enough about the joys of middle-age, since half my clients are in a midlife transition and finding their passion; sometimes for the first time in their life, and because when they come for coaching, it’s about the last thing they can conceive of.

Whether it’s retirement, down-sizing, or planning a chance of scene for the next 15 years, mid-life is a time to rethink it all. For many it’s the first time in a long time it was even possible.

THE SCENARIOS

There was school, after all, then marriage, kids, needing to live near her folks, not having enough money for the Ph.D. Needing to get some money coming in right away. So you took a job, it became a career, and here we are, 30 years later and suddenly it’s all gone stale.

Or, there was no money for college, so you started off on your left foot.

Or, you were the “C” student now the predictably successful business owner, but something’s missing, and it could be the sort of enrichment higher learning brings.

Or, last kid off to college. Now it’s time for ME. Wait a minute? Who is “me” and what does “me” like? It’s been a long time since someone asked.

Or, alcohol problems even in college, so didn’t finish school. Took a sales job for “the freedom,” i.e., only thing you could get without a college degree that would allow you to drink all day long. Got cleaned up, got divorced, got the kids educated and on their own. Now … I think I’ll go back and do it over. There’s always a second chance.

Do any of these sound like you?

You’re at a turn in the road, or have been set at the crossroads, but you think you can’t, or it’s too late, or who would possibly, or how could I, or I’m too old.?

You can’t have going against you what John Sperling did, so read on and get inspired. Then get some coaching and get ready to have some fun.

John Sperling, 82, was a sharecropper’s son who is now a multimillionaire. He barely made it through high school, but somehow got into Reed College, which was really radical back then and, I guess, could accommodate to his personality. Later he bailed an academic career to start the country’s biggest private university – Phoenix – which is reshaping adult education in the US. Some “retirement,” huh?

His father died when he was young and his mother didn’t care for him much, wrote the interviewer. “Hardened by isolation, shaped by a willingness to take chances, and with a ‘skeptics be damned’ attitude,” he’s a caricature of the irreverent, irascible entrepreneur.

His son says, “The influences of his childhood made him a loner and just incredibly tenacious. He’ll go through walls to do what needs to get done.” His son is not sure how the dynamics work. “I can’t feel what it’s like not to be loved,” he said.

That’s probably what made all this possible; and it certainly had nothing to do with age.

MEN IN BLACK

The interviewer puzzles that Sperling is do dynamic and passionate when he talks about his business, yet so reluctant to talk about his past. If you saw “Men in Black,” I recommend the stun-gun at around 50. Most of us over the age of 50 don’t talk about the past. Paradoxically, it's time to look forward, and get rid of the accumulations of the years.

This is one reason coaching works well at this age -- it keeps you facing forward Best to empty your mind of the puzzling array of successes and failures, comedies and tragedies, births, marriages, divorces and deaths, good times and bad … and fill it with something new and fresh and exciting. The world, as you know, is always full of possibilities.

Back to Sperling, true to the Men in Black, he declines to comment on how his childhood influenced his present. He says he isn’t interested in nature/nurture arguments. Who is at middle age? The answer to the Psych 2020 Multiple Choice question is always “D. All of the above.”

We aren’t older in order to be dumber.

Sperling was the youngest of 6 kids, lived in extreme poverty, abusive father, transient lifestyle, barely made if through high school. He says he graduated barely literate but halfway decent in math and, mainly wanting to escape, joined the merchant marine.

Fast forward to his matriculation at Reed College, know at the time for … put it this way, there were two things my conservative corporate attorney father put on my “NO WAY” college choice list. One was Reed College. The other was any educational institution anywhere in the State of California.

Having gone to a school similar to Reed, however (Carleton College in Minnesota), I relate when Sperling says, “Once you go through the experience [of Reed], you never get over it. The intellectual intensity makes it a world unto itself.”

I submit that Sperling found one of the bases of authentic happiness, and the foundation of resilience – a lifetime love of learning. I recommend it. It will never let you down, it can compensate for other things less attainable, and it will become more treasured each year you live.

Reed being Reed, Sperling felt compelled to get a doctorate, attending first-rate UC-Berkeley and Cambridge in the UK. He became a professor of economic history and, he says, learned to survive, and thrive, “as a pariah,” [like he had a choice] by doing such unpopular things as trying to unionize the faculty. ["Pariah" is a member of a low caste in southern India, and has come to mean “outcast from decent society”.]

“Without that lesson,” he said, “I could never have become a successful entrepreneur. The lesson was simple—ignore your detractors and those who say that what you are doing is wrong, against regulations or illegal.”

When given a grant to teach teachers and police officers how to deal with juvenile delinquency in 1970, Sperling saw what he was looking at immediately. “Instead of snotty college kids, you had motivated adults,” he said. All of us in education know the difference!

He targeted a market being ignored – older, working adults — but got no support from administration, so left in 1972 and founded a small company, the seed of the U of P. When it got accredited, and students could get loans, he knew he had a money-maker, and, in his mid-50s, left academic and the rest is history.

The University of Phoenix has been called a diploma mill, and also “McEducation,” I say – how about this – a man in his mid-50s reinventing education for adults; creating what he calls “a transformative institution.”

SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THE NEXT 20 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE?

“What’s fascinating about John,” says Reed President Steve Koblik, who recently accepted a $600,000 donation from Sperling, “is he didn’t start his entrepreneurial activity until his 50s. He’s doing all this at an age when a lot of us are retiring to the beach.”

Plans for the future? “I’d like to sell education to the Chinese,” he says. “There are a lot of Chinese.”

The man does not over-think things.

He’s also trying to get marijuana legalized (on principle), collects art, funds animal cloning, listens to opera, and lives with his dog, Missy.

“He’s entirely engaged and excited by what he does,” says his son, “but I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s the happiest guy. He’d love to have closer personal relationships, but because of his childhood, I think he’s afraid to get close.”

Life is what you make of it, and happiness, I believe is both a state of mind, and a moveable feast. Meanwhile, are you entirely engaged and excited by what you do? If not, wouldn't you like to be?

MORE MIDLIFE MOGULS

Colonel Harland Sanders, KFC, began actively franchising his chicken business at the age of 65. He began with his $105 Social Security check.

Frank Kaiser, Suddenly Senior columnist, faced retirement age with no savings, no pension, and no support for himself and his wife except a SS check for $616. That’s when he started his newspaper column which is syndicated nationally, and his website which gets 200,000 hits a month.

What are you going to do with YOUR first social security check?

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