The 50Plus Nation Story
50PlusNation is focused on the needs of members of the 50Plus demographic. There are 110 million of us in the USA with vast experience, knowledge, talent and wisdom accumulated over many years. We have collectively made significant impacts on the world to date. Thanks to medical science and healthier living we have been gifted with decades of additional time. We are ready for some changes but we hunger most for a new sense of purpose. 50Plus Nation is dedicated to exploring the ways we can continue to support ourselves and our loved ones with a rekindled sense of purpose by taking full advantage of the interconnectedness of the world we live in.
The young people in our lives were the first "digital natives", born into a world just beginning to connect digitally at increasing speed. We slowly dipped our toes in and learned enough to be dubbed "digital immigrants" as we watched the millennials as children diving in, experimenting, connecting, and eventually collaborating with abandon. Lest we forget, the pioneers that brought the world this amazing connectivity are, or were, members of our cohort - the Steves (Jobs and Wozniak), Bill (Gates), Tim (Berners-Lee), Vint (Cerf), Larry (Ellison) just to name a few. Because of them we are now living at a convergence — with the forces of innovation, transformation and connection at our fingertips. Most of us still have "accents" from the analog world we were born into. However, almost without realizing it we are graduating to "digital pioneer” status. We are the first human beings to hit 50Plus with a very important choice to make. Will we leverage the full power of our connected world to fill the needs and solve the problems of a dramatically expanded life span? For those who answer “yes”, a willingness to embrace entrepreneurial thinking will be the key.
The first decades of the digital era were a land grab with immense wealth ending up in the hands of a lucky few. That may be what comes to mind when you hear the word "entrepreneur". Are we talking about playing entrepreneurial lotto where the winners take all again? No. Entrepreneurial thinking is about cultivating a mindset to solve problems. Tina Seelig quoted from a long standing saying at Stanford, in her new book Insight Out, "Entrepreneurs do much more than imaginable with much less than seems possible". She punctuated them with her own words, "as this message communicates, entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting companies. It’s about starting anything". It can be simply about making a living, doing something that you love with a deep sense of purpose and leaving the world a better place.
Demystifying entrepreneurship and innovation is a big part of what 50Plus Nation is about. Like some of you I have been on a decades long journey into all things entrepreneurial and continue to learn more every day. In Insight Out Tina Seelig has done an amazing job of creating a new framework out of words that many of us have been using for years. She calls it the Invention Cycle. Her four key words are imagination, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Her construct is novel and enlightening, even for someone who has been an serial entrepreneur and teaching entrepreneurship for years. Tina nails it when she says, "these skills can certainly be learned, and it behooves us to teach people of all ages to be entrepreneurial, enabling them to invent the world in which they want to live". We have been experimenting with ways of teaching millennials all about it for years now. We have more recently reached all the way down into K-12 curriculums. However, very little has been targeted to the 50Plus demographic, much less emphasizing our specific needs. With the time we have been gifted we can ask ourselves what world do we want to live in? Let's keep learning and do our best to create it.
My role models: 50Plus Nation will introduce you to others in our cohort that have already embraced entrepreneurial thinking in their own unique ways. I will be interviewing as many as I can posting podcasts as often as I can. However, I will also be interviewing some younger folks - my role models are all millennials and young Gen Xers. Full transcripts will be available for those that prefer to read. There are lots of great stories out there.
Get ready, 50Plus Nation is here.