What is Value Now?

There doesn’t necessarily have to be a conflict between value and pleasure, but you will need to be very clear about where the trade-offs are for you.  Value is in the eye of the recipient and it may be that the optimum value comes from bringing the richness of all of your experience, knowledge, relationships and connections in a different way than you might have done in the past.  Leading and directing may not be the most pleasurable or value delivering activity.  I worked closely with a serial entrepreneur who had started his work in retail in his family business, developed a successful cash and carry, built a CEO development brand and then in his late sixties decided his next business would serve CEOs in the charity sector.  However, as he grew older, he relinquished his leadership role but he wasn’t ready to stop working.

Influencing

Coaching, mentoring, and governing are often great ways to bring value.  For this serial entrepreneur, he chose to use his long-standing trusted relationships to offer 1-2-1 coaching and mentoring.  You might be considering joining a board: perhaps as trustee of a charity or a non-executive director of some other organisation.

Coaching, mentoring and governing can bring enormous value, but will it bring you the pleasure that you are looking for?  If you are an activist, then perhaps just sitting in a room and talking to people is not going to be enough for you.  Are there different, more active ways, that you can create value by getting stuff done?

Bringing Insight

You may believe that ‘everyone has a book in them’ and it is easier and cheaper than ever to get a book published.  You will have your own story, your own perspective and often a unique understanding of an aspect of the world.  Autobiography, memoir and ‘how to’ genres may be very attractive and accessible for you.  Perhaps you want to do something more experimental – poetry, children’s stories, short stories or to scratch that itch the potential novel in your imagination.

However, you no longer need to assume that a book is the only medium for you to express yourself.  Blogs, podcasts, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are all examples of alternative formats for you to be creative and offer your own insights.

If you want to have more contact with your audience you can develop a speaker offer (try out your local chapter of the Professional Speakers Association or Toast Masters).  As your confidence grows consider preparing for a TEDx  recording.

There is a useful distinction between writing, speaking and teaching.  Teaching can be the most intimate way to engage with an audience.  Gone are the days where the only way to teach is to stand in front of a class with a whiteboard and talk at them.  Increasingly people want to learn by participating.  A blended combination of short videos, longer audio, some written material, seminar and workshop style interaction and reflective practice sessions provide a multi-mode, richer, participative learning experience.  You don’t need to be an expert in all these different teaching methods to engage with a teaching programme.  However, you may enjoy developing the variety of skills to increase the depth and reach of your teaching.

Making Things Happen

Are you somebody who really wants to make things happen?  Do you want to work on projects that have a beginning, middle and a clear end?

There is somebody I know well who took charge of the whole building programme when his local congregation decided to demolish the existing building and build a brand-new modern church.  He and his wife ran a farm and he had lots of practical skills.  Ensuring that the design and build company delivered on time and to budget was a major challenge.  He was able to actively make things happen and once the building was handed over the job was done.

Another project-based activity which can be enjoyable and rewarding is to help businesses and organisations access money – fundraising.  You may have a great extended network.  You could have lots of experience in communicating, pitching and organising events.  You may be a highly trusted individual who can build engagement with investors or donors.  Perhaps you have the necessary attention to detail to make applications for grants, or helping organisations to get government local authority contracts.

Recently, I wrote a grant application to The Heritage Lottery Fund.  I had never done this before but it was project based so I wasn’t doing it forever and I could proudly say that with a relatively small amount of effort, I had raised almost £150,000.  Many of the skills that I already had in report writing and consultancy were readily transferable.

Becoming an Expert

There is one other way of developing deep value: find a niche and become an expert on it.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that you must be an academic but again and again I see people who have found an interest later in life, developed a passion and built an extremely rich understanding of a topic that no one else has got.  From that, you can bring huge value to someone else.  There is somebody I have been working with for a while who is very interested in the ethics of AI.  Now he has an opportunity to go in and take a particular aspect of that and drill down, think it through, research it, and develop opinions that he can then offer to other organisations.  Have you got an emerging passion that you could develop to become an expert?

Conclusion

There are so many ways you can maximise the pleasure of what you do while bringing huge value to others.  There is some much to enjoy when you are working after 70!