Age Is Not the Problem: Longevity & Career Reinvention with Helen Hirsch Spence

GGGR Episode 352

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Karen,

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hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of The Good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host,

Karen Yankovich, and I have Helen Hirsch Spencer with me today. I’m so excited for you to

meet Helen. We had like, a five minute conversation. I was like, oh, no, I need we need to talk

about this on my show. So I’m excited to have her here with me today. She’s a dynamic

speaker and age inclusion advocate who’s transforming the way we think about growing older.

With over 35 years in leadership across education and now the founder of top 60 over 60, she

brings deep insight and bold ideas to conversations about aging, equity and the future of work,

her engaging nonsense approach has made her a sought after voice for media outlets,

conferences and organizations looking to better understand the opportunities of an age diverse

world. Helen is available for commentary, interviews and features on topics ranging from

longevity and leadership to social innovation and the economic impact of demographic change.

Her book reset, make the most of the rest of your life will be launched in the spring of 2026 I’m

going to bring Helen up here with me. And Helen, I’m so excited to have this conversation

today.

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Yeah. So Helen and I met like through some it was sort of LinkedIn connection. Actually, I saw a

post that an interview she had done with somebody that I knew. This is how it works, you guys.

01:29

I saw an interview that she had done with somebody. I was intrigued by the interview and

reached out to her, and we had a quick conversation. I actually wasn’t quick. I was sitting in a

parking lot, and I think we talked for way longer than I thought, but we would, yeah, the shore

almost closed on you.01:44

But I was so intrigued by her perspective on how she talks about like in her bio and age diverse

world, that I wanted to have that conversation here. So Helen, why don’t you tell us a little bit

like behind the bio, tell us a little bit about you and what kind of brought you to this world of

talking about top 60, over 60, or making the most of the rest of your life

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easy answer, the reality is that in my mid 60s, I was losing my self confidence. I felt like I was

irrelevant, invisible. You know, the typical kinds of feelings that I now recognize as having been

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beliefs, myths about aging, and it’s called self directed or internalized ageism. But I didn’t know

that. That’s what it was at that point. And so it was when I realized it. I thought, Oh, my God, if I

feel this way, having had an outstanding career in leadership and in many different areas, not

just in one what what is the average middle to older aged woman feel like when she hits this

stage? And so I delved into that. I took courses on social entrepreneurship. I mean, having been

in schools my entire life, I’m passionate about learning and growth, and always am very curious

so and I asked too many questions, and people get annoyed at me, but I really don’t care,

especially not at my age. And so much fun, right? It’s so much more not care what people think

about you well, you know. But that’s one of the gifts of growing older, and that’s one of the

biggest gifts of growing older, is caring less about what other people think about you, you

know? So I investigated, and then I realized, you know, the problem is we don’t have any really

good role models as older adults. And we need to recognize the contributions, the value and

the respect and dignity that older adults actually deserve but are not getting. And that’s why I

came up with the idea of top 60, over 60, which has expanded and gone different places, but

which I still will do and hopefully in the near future. And you know, I just have been working

constantly, and it’s become like a passion project to help people like yourself and others

recognize that that old narrative of learn, earn, retire, is dead. It was dead in the 20th century,

and that we have 20 to 30 years longer to live, which is referred to as a longevity dividend, and

we’re not taking advantage of it. And as a society, we are penalizing older people because we

still believe in the old, outdated notions that life ends at 65 essentially. So, right? I’m here to

broadcast that that’s not the my 65th birthday is next week, so I hope it doesn’t end at 65 it

doesn’t end.04:33

The reality is, it begins at 60 Yeah. Well, you know, here’s the thing, I agree with you, and I, you

know, it shifts, it changes. I was just saying. I was just saying, so I don’t normally talk about

time of year or whatever, but it happens to be that we’re doing this interview with Thanksgiving

week, and I’m hosting Thanksgiving at my house, and a ton of people, like 17 adults and seven

kids or something like that. And I was saying to my partner the other day, like, I got I really

want to.

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Like, make some more cookies and bake a cheesecake, but, like, I can’t do what I was able to

do for Thanksgiving 20 years ago. So there is a reality to there being a shift in but I will say it’s

a conscious shift, right? Like, I could have done it right, but I didn’t want to kill myself to do it

like I wanted to enjoy. I want to enjoy the lead up. I want to enjoy hosting and having

everybody at my house and not be exhausted, right? So maybe 2030, years ago, I could have

done that and not been exhausted, and now I don’t feel like I can do that, so, but, but I’m

making these conscious choices as I’m stepping into each new year and each new chapter of

my life, right? On how I want to spend my time and how, you know, and how I want to create

my my career, right? How I want to create my career? I, for sure, I loved that you I loved one of

the things that you said and I wanted, that’s really what I wanted to dive into, is we don’t

remember, or we don’t realize, or we don’t think about the fact that, because we live longer

lives, we have longer productivity opportunities, right? And at the same time, you know, I don’t

think you’re saying, work yourself to death, right? Work till you die. So tell us a little bit about

that, right? Tell us a little bit about that. What does that look like? Okay, so for you, there’s 60s

and 70s and 80s. So I’m 76 at the moment. And06:19

you know, if I think back at younger years, 76 would have been absolutely ancient. But the

truth of the matter is, one, I don’t feel it. I don’t behave as if my life is ending. What we have to

recognize today is that we’ve got a multi stage life, and this is what I would encourage a lot of

younger people, or people who are hitting their 40s and 50s, in particular. For women, there’s

so much gendered ageism out there, which really refers to the intersection of sexism and

ageism. So it’s a double whammy for we women, you know, we only are getting into our stride

and into our 50s or early 60s when our families are more or less off and launched, so to speak,

and we can really devote the attention to ourselves or to whatever it is we choose, and that’s

when we can really reinvent ourselves, if that’s what we want, or we can do it later. But there’s

no real reason why we have to stay in the same paradigm as our parents were in. In other

words, if you’re 45 and you’re not happy with what you’re doing, my recommendation to you is

take some time off, a gap year, a sabbatical, whatever the hell you want to call it, it doesn’t

matter. The point is, you can get back into the workforce, although it’s much more difficult as

an older woman than it is when you were in your 30s, but you can if that’s what you want, but

you can also maybe start something new. You can get a new career. You can go back to school.

Universities are going to have to shift to accommodate older populations, because we’ve hit an

age cliff, especially in the United States. I live in Canada, at age 18, there are no more 18 year

olds coming up in the numbers that there were before. In Canada, we have more people over

the age of 65 than we do under the age of 14, and that’s been the case for over 10 years. In

the United States, it’s true as well. They’re something like last time I looked over 12,000

Americans turning 65 every day. You have far more older people by 2030 than you do have

young children. So that requires an adaptation, a readiness that neither businesses nor

individuals are ready for. But we’ve already seen we’re a little bit ahead of you in that case,

that there’s a talent shortage with all the politics going on, which I won’t get into, but with less

immigration and so on, we need to take advantage of the experience and expertise that you

Karen and I could bring to businesses or to entrepreneurship or to any institution or anything

that we want, but we’ve been cut off traditionally because of our gray hair, and when I talk

about gendered ageism, I want you to recognize that I could be a bald, beer bellied older

gentleman, and I would be considered distinguished, but with my gray hair, I’m over the hill,

you know. And that’s the that’s the transformation. It’s that narrative that we really have to

shift well. And I think it is shifting. I mean, one of the things, one of the things you said was, you

know, take a gap year. And I heard collectively, the universe, women in the universe, going,

how do I describe that on my LinkedIn profile? How do I describe that? That like, you know,

when you, when you maybe take a few years off, if you’re having children, and you decide you

want to take a few years off, yeah, we’ve been taught to worry about that gap. That’s right,

instead of embracing that gap exactly and owning what we’ve done in those years and then

just moving forward from that space, but you could not have done it if you didn’t have people

my generation who was a feminist in the 60s and 70s, and who fought for for

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maternity leave and so on and parental leave.10:00

For men as well, but you can do that today much more easily, at least. You can hear, I know it’s

bit more difficult in the States. However, it still exists. Those possibilities do exist, and we need

to recognize them, and we need to really fight for them. And those of us who are a little bit

older, who’ve done that, we can support you, and we need to support you. You need to

understand that your your belief in aging is misguided. The brain continues to grow. There are

lots of advantages and benefits to growing older. For instance, we actually have more

connections, neural connections, than before. We have crystallized intelligence, we have better

emotional regulation, we have better judgment and perspective. And this is all because of lived

experience. It’s not because of intelligence necessarily that helps, but it’s not the, you know,

the only thing so. So if you listen to my TEDx talk later, which, I think,

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which is amazing. It’s all about embracing age with a longevity mindset. And a longevity

mindset just means a growth mindset focused on the positives of aging. And there’s enough

psychology out there to, you know, to understand that if you think positively about growing

older. This is a study done by Becca Becca Levy, she has a great book out. I think it’s called

breaking the age code. But I may be mistaken, and I’ve gotten somebody else’s name mixed up

with it, you will live 7.5 years longer with a positive mindset about aging, and you will heal

faster. You’ll have less cognitive decline. That is how absolutely important our mindset is,

especially as we grow older. So important. Well, let’s, let’s talk about entrepreneurism in this

whole in this whole conversation, because I, I’ve been seeing a lot of studies lately, and I don’t

have any in front of me, but I can find them. If anybody wants them, you can message me on

LinkedIn about how women over 50 are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs. And

I love hearing that, because I feel like,12:10

you know, I’m on the, I’m on the other side of that, right? But, but my generation, we were

taught you, you know, you get married, you have kids, you have a job, and you stay there till

you retire, right? So it’s just, it’s just the women now that are over 40 and over 50 and over 60

that are realizing, Wait, what if I don’t go back to work after the pandemic, or what if I don’t

want to do this anymore? Or, in my case, I really wanted, you know, I’ve had entrepreneurial

endeavors my whole life, but I had a paycheck job up until, like, 10 years ago, but I decided I

wanted to be able to have more freedom in my life, to be able to spend time with my kids and

their kids as they started getting married and having kids. And that’s why I chose to do what I

do. If it had been 10 or 20 years earlier, like, I don’t know that the world would have been ready

for that, right? But the world is starting to shift and being more ready for women entrepreneurs.

And I think that’s what that, to me, is one of the reasons why we’re seeing statistics like that,

because women are starting to realize, Wait, what if I do do something different? That’s right.

And entrepreneurship, I mean, so there are, there’s lots of studies that actually prove that

those of us who are over 50 or in particular, it’s like, I think it’s a Kauffman study that older

entrepreneurs are more successful. It makes sense, because we have networks that are

established, we may have finances that are established, we have the experience that gives us

a performance edge. So it’s not surprising that older entrepreneurs may be more successful at

their endeavors that so I don’t know the statistics about women, but I know there are more

women who are getting into entrepreneurship over the age of 50 for the simple reason that

they cannot be they are left out of the hiring of Typical jobs no matter what, and that the

average woman who’s over 50, who tries to be become an employee again, often takes up to

two years to find a job that is way below her pay level and her skill level. So they give up, and

they become entrepreneurs. And I mean you, you have to think about what you really value in

life. You know, if you value family connection and interpersonal relationships and you don’t

have time for it because you’re killing yourself, you know, from nine till seven every night,

yeah, you know that’s no life. And you know young people today get it a lot better. They’ve

seen our generation, or at least my children have their their Gen X, and millennials, they know

that. You know that it’s a short time that they have to spend with their children, and that’s

when they wanted to, that’s one of the things they want to do. And they want to be respected

for having those beliefs. And they’re looking for jobs where they’ve got the kind of.15:00

Benefits that will give them the flexibility that they or need. Yeah, you mentioned, you

mentioned women that are kind of just not able to get where they want to get in the workforce.

I talked about, I’ve been talking about that for years. To me, when you take control of your own

destiny, like with an entrepreneurial endeavor, or at least your own brand, right? Really into the

skills you have, the experience that you have, and the expertise that you have. I think we can

kind of just, like, say, you know, screw the glass ceiling with the glass ceiling, like it’s there, you

know, just go around it, right, or ignore it. Or do, like, when you hit the glass ceiling doesn’t

stop. It doesn’t mean you have to stop. You can just move on and move somewhere else where

there is no and I, I firmly believe it comes down to having, I think, a community of people that

support you with this, because we’re having this conversation. But not everybody has people in

their lives that can have these kinds of conversations with them, but also having to be brave

and confident in your skills to really say, What can I do if I if I hit my top here, what can I do

that’s different than this? And it takes guts, because we were not brought up to to know that,

that there was something else that we could do. And I’ve been giving courses on transitioning,

finding purpose, you know, all of this sort of transition territory that can happen as a result of

divorce or a new job, or being nudged out or totally eliminated from the workforce. You know, it

really is probably one of the the most

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challenging parts of life. It because you’re also, as I say, aging, and with aging, and because of

our society has spent so much time, perhaps,

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obsessed with youth. And,16:45

you know, we’ve been a youth centric society. I mean, look at television, look at media, look at

magazines, podcasts. I mean, how often do you see well, now we’re beginning to see Isabella

Rossellini and other people with L’Oreal because they’re ahead of the curve, they’re smart.

They’re getting the women who the generation of women who have the most wealth on their

covers and so on and more. It’s called the longevity economy, and we need to develop that

better. And we met. We need to make people help people understand that this is here for the

long haul. We are not replacing ourselves. Birth rate wise in any country at this point, only

underdeveloped countries, a few of them, still have more young people than older people.

Wow, yeah, no, we are interesting concept to think about. I had not really thought about that.

Well, you need to think about it, because that’s the future when we talk about the future of

work, we have to reincorporate all sorts of people into the workforce that are now, typically

older. That means we have to reskill, upskill, you know, get them credentialed, which is an

opportunity for colleges and universities that no longer have young people attending. They

need to, you know, rethink how they are going to offer to be able to stay sustainable, you

know, financially. So there are tons of implications. That’s what I’ve been working on here in

Ottawa, is looking at longevity and helping others understand this isn’t this is a mega trend

equal to climate change and and technology, and yet we are not thinking about it in those

terms. And we need to for survival, you know, for survival of the economy, and also to keep

older adults out of the healthcare system. If they’re engaged and they’re working, they stay

cognitively, socially engaged. You know they have, they have benefits, they have all sorts of

things that that may enable them to stay healthier for longer, because living longer is totally

irrelevant, if it’s not a better life or a good life, right? Yeah, yeah, I agree. So let me ask you

this, you you have a lot more background in education that I have? Do you I feel like I’m seeing

changes in education, in that. I definitely think, you know, education is, I think education has

saved us in so many waves, right? Like, you can, you know, I

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at the same time I think we’re also recognizing experience, right, as we’re recognizing

education, right? And I was, I was actually having a conversation with my son. So this doesn’t

really fall into the ageism category, but I was having a conversation with my son. Ageism goes

both ways, yeah? So he, so he works for a company that’s having, it’s a big company. They’re

having massive layoffs, and he has not been laid off, but everybody on his team has been laid

off, so demoralizing in many ways for him, yeah? So he was looking at other opportunities, and

he was like, Well, I don’t have this particular degree. I don’t have that particular degree. And I

said to him, you know, here’s the thing, somebody up higher in HR is saying, and we need this

particular degree for this particular position, but the person that’s hiring you, they want your

experience. They want to know you can do the job. You know how to do the job, you’ve done

the job before, and you can do the job.20:00

Up for them. They don’t really care as much about that. So I to me that almost comes down to

the specialty certifications and things like that. Like, I do think a degree is still value,

immensely valuable. But at the same time, I think we need to recognize that these specialty

certifications are something that is really it helps with you, with your personal brand, right? Like

everybody has, not everybody. But, you know, many people have a college degree, but not

everybody has the specific certification, the specific skill. How do you what are your What are

your thoughts on that? Well, I do think that we there’s such a great need now for technical skills

and other skills because of AI, for instance, knowledge workers are the ones who are going to

be knocked out of the employment cycle, probably first. Because the reason for these layoffs in

the company that So, which is totally unreasonable too, because we need them in order to

manage the systems and whatnot. I mean hiring, or HR is a great example. I mean, a lot of the

AI hiring is so biased, one against women, against older people, against all sorts of other, you

know, classifications of, you know,

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race and so on. It’s a real problem. But it it, it’s a model that has been developed by men talk,

you know, teaching AI what it is that they need. And so there isn’t the diversities. So we need

that diversity in the workforce to continue to work with with AI, I don’t know if I hope I’m

making some sense. No, you are, you are. It makes sense. It does make sense. And you know, I

also, you know, told him, and would tell anybody else listening, pull on all that expertise when

you’re stepping into whatever your next chapter looks like, right? Because it’s that expertise

that we21:43

we think is because it comes easy to us. Is it as valuable as the the other things that we think

people are looking for, but it’s really the expertise. Sorry, I think however, we have to be

creative about that and not stick in that box of the expertise we have. Think outside the box.

Think where else can my training or my expertise be used? So I was trained as an educator.

However, I can assure you that most of the skills I’ve learned are extremely valuable in every

other realm, because I can listen, I can interact with people. You know, I have the interpersonal

skills, the soft skills, and that is what is emphasized today in the in in the working world, are

those soft skills that many people have lost along the way because they’re interacting with

machines rather than with people. So I would always say, for somebody, don’t downplay any

credentials you have play up whatever you have and think how you can explain how valuable

your your expertise is in wherever it is that you are applying for a job. You know, I also think

that in many cases, entrepreneurism is is going to help them get to their financial goals faster

than getting a job. I mean, there are certainly jobs that pay well, but there’s also a lot of people

that get kind of stuck in this place where, first of all, they don’t know if they’re gonna be able to

keep their job right, so you don’t have as much control over usually when you were employed.

That was the security. Now it’s the opposite. Now, if you are leaning into your personal skills

and entrepreneurism, that’s more security than a paycheck. I wouldn’t agree. I wouldn’t

necessarily say that that’s the case, Karen, but it depends on the individual and what the job is.

What we do know is that in the olden days, we had companies that were very solicitous

towards their employees. You know, they got gold watches at the end of the time they

respected them. Retention was everything they were loyal to them, and their employees were

loyal to them because they got benefits and everything that no longer is the case. And

therefore these young people who are looking for jobs are switching, very often, more readily

and more easily because they’re not finding what they want, but it’s also because the

companies are not committed in the same way as they were to their employees in times past.

Now I understand that. I mean, that’s the evolution of work and what’s changing. So, you know,

there’s a lot of literature out there on leadership and what leaders need to do in order to retain

employees, and one of them is to give them lots of opportunities to change roles within the

organization, so these people don’t get bored or soured or unengaged in their jobs. So there’s

lots that can be done. There’s a lot to be learned, and it’s a shift right now. We’re going through

a huge, huge shift. Yeah, yeah. So what do you see ahead? What do you see ahead as you’re as

you’re moving into your next chapters and you know, and what you’re doing with the 60 over

60 and and the book and other things that you’ve got going on, where are you leaning into

Yeah, well, I’m leaning into this in a big way, because I think there’s more and more need for

young people in particular.

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To understand that they have a multi stage life. They can have like what’s called a career

portfolio, career in which they change careers, because they are going to be working into their

80s and 90s as the norm. Their life expectancy is, on average, 100 years, and that means they

could be 12025:19

or they could be 80. But the reality is they’re going to be working a lot longer, and so there’s

going to be a need for them to be more flexible, more understanding of the changes that are

going to take place, and everything is going to shift. And it is a it’s starting, but it’s extremely

slow in North America. We are not age ready at all. So that’s what I’m working on. I’m working

on organ is working with organizations and businesses to help them prepare for this future of

multi generational workforce. And that’s really important. People don’t understand that we now

have up to five generations working at the same time, and their values are very similar. Their

styles of communication may be very different, and therefore there’s sometimes some conflict,

but the conflict can be easily resolved if you start talking to people about it. So I really am a

firm believer also in what I refer to as reciprocal mentorship, so we can no longer think that we

as elders have something to offer wisdom wise to young people. It’s not a one way street. I

have as much to learn from the young person as they have to learn from me, and that’s always

been why I’ve been passionate about being in schools as I was in education, in public schools

and in private, independent schools, because I’ve learned and probably the best experiences of

my life are a result of the encouragement of students I’ve had who said, you know, you could

do this. Mrs. Spence, go give it a try. And they were right, and they encouraged me. So it goes

both ways. We have to be open minded, obviously, too. Yeah, yeah, you know. So, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. So interesting. It’s so interesting. Well, listen, I love the idea. I love the mindset

shift, or the just the identity shift, stepping into your next decade, whatever your next decade

is, knowing that there’s more decades ahead then you do whatever you want. You could work if

you want, you could sit on the beach if you want, you could play golf if you want, or you can do

all of those things if you want, right? And and that we’re not locked into, you know, a

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modular thought they were going to be locked into. The point is, you can do things differently

now than you could have before. Without being a privileged white person. You can step out of

that paradigm and move yourself forward in different ways. And you know, money isn’t

everything. I know capitalism is is God at the moment, but it doesn’t mean that there’s only one

type of system in which you have to operate. You can operate with kindness and you know

honesty and trustworthiness, and sometimes you know just being being a good person means a

hell of a lot more than you know what you bring in, or you know in terms of what you do. But

now is the time to start thinking differently, because, especially if you are young, because it’s

not the way it was. And I mean, we see it already. We have children who are going back living

with their parents because they cannot afford it. And that’s the other thing I wanted to mention,

is that if we live longer, we need to be financially secure for a longer period of time, which

necessitates us working longer. Yeah, well, it’s not going to just be28:32

frivolous. It’s going to be by design, if you’re lucky, by default, if you just lose track, you know

you need to be conscious of what lies ahead and and be optimistic. That’s all I can say. That

makes a huge difference. Yeah, well, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to spreading

this message and talking more to more audiences to help them understand and I guess, and I

believe in role models, and I believe that when I get going with the top 60 over 60, there will be

that that’ll move some people forward, because they’ll see it. But I feel like I’m a living role

model, having started something new at age 67 I love that. I love that well. So you have a

newsletter that comes out regularly called age sense. It’s a LinkedIn newsletter. So we’ll put the

link to your LinkedIn in the show notes and the link to your newsletter. You know, I’m assuming

that if we’re subscribed to the newsletter, we’ll get some information on when your book is

coming out, right? Because I know the book is is almost ready for pre sale, so that would be

great. And then,

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yeah, and then, and, you know, Helen and I met and having conversations around speaking

engagements, right? So

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I will say to you, and I will say to anybody listening, if you have an audience of people that need

to hear this message, reach out to Helen, because she you know, I think you’re a leader in this.

I talked to a lot of people about this topic, and this is a perspective that I had in.30:00

Heard yet the way, the way that you described it, so I appreciate you bringing this down to a

level that we can all understand and that we can all relate to. And that’s exciting, right? It’s

exciting to think about stepping into a next chapter with with with excitement and hope and

and and positivity around what it could be, and watching it unfold in a fun, positive way, as

opposed to thinking, okay, every day another bone is gonna hurt, you know, like, you know it

will hurt, but get over it. Get over into it anyway, right? Make, let buy the cookies. Buy the

cookies and make something else, right? Yeah, look at it as an adventure to explore, you know.

Yeah, it is. It really is, and you’ll eat. There’s a book out there called the U curve of happiness

that shows that when you’re a child, young child, and an older adult, those are the best times in

your life. That’s really hard to convey to somebody in their 30s and 40s who think they’re living

their best life, right? It gets better. Yeah. How fun is that? I know. Helen, thank you so much for

this conversation. This has been great. I am very much looking to forward to your book and to

keep keeping in touch with you on an ongoing basis. And I think that this is a conversation we

all need to be having more of. So thanks for starting the conversation. Well, well, I welcome it,

and I thank you very much, Karen, for for having me on your show, because I’m delighted to

talk about it. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And for you listening, make sure that you’re

connected to Helen. Make sure that you’re connected to me on LinkedIn. We’ve both got a lot

of things coming up in the next year that you might want to be interested in checking out so

and then come back on. Come on back here next week for another episode. We’ll see you then.