Making a career change? We’ve all had plenty of time for it. The question is, do we know where it’s going? Kind of like a fresh graduate, do we know what we want to do for a living now? Former television executive Alice Riehl faced it before, and although she’s closer to retirement age than the age to start a career, she’s now facing the big question again: What do I want to do when I grow up?

A year and a half ago, I sold my business. It was an accidental business, if you must know. After 20 years of selling TV advertising time and managing TV stations, I was fired … again. This happens all the time in the industry, but it still hurts when it happens. So my sales manager (fired on the same day) and I — my job had been as the general manager of a small market Fox affiliate — decided to try our hand at something new, something we could not be fired from. So we began a newsletter for people who do what we did in our careers: sell TV ad time.

We had to disregard the advice of people we respected to begin the publication, but it was successful almost from the get-go. Our fearlessness was helped tremendously by the low startup costs and our lack of other employment. Neither of us had ever made our living by writing, and neither was used to sitting in an office for eight hours a day with little contact with other humans. But we made it work and, after nine years, we were making very good money and had a readership of about 80 percent of the TV stations in the country.

That’s when we got the offer we couldn’t refuse: someone wanted to buy us! After the sale, my partner stayed with the publication, working for the new owner. But I wanted out. I needed a change, and I wanted to do nothing for at least a little while, after working very hard for the last thirty years. And that’s what I have been doing, mostly — nothing — for the last year and a half. Some months were semi-employed by getting my house in order for a sale; some were devoted to caring for my mother who passed away; some were spent taking online classes and learning to play bridge (badly); and some were spent traveling (though not as mush as I had envisioned when I quit working). Maybe that doesn’t sound like “nothing,” but it felt like it to me.

The sale of our business did not set me up for the rest of my life — it just gave me breathing room. So now I have to begin to think about what to do next. After a year and a half, my old profession has probably passed me by and, anyway, I don’t want to get back in and be subject to the same whims that got me fired in the first place, especially at my age (58). Anyway, after nine years of being my own boss, I am an even worse employee prospect than I was earlier in my career when I only thought I knew more than my employers (though I was right, sometimes). Now, I know it.

A new business is the best idea, I think. But what business? Real estate, during the worst downturn in 30 years? A newsletter in a new industry? But I don’t really know any other industry. A turn-key home-based business? They all seem so sleazy to me.

Have any of you started again after 55? Is there any advice you can give me? I’ve you’ve walked where I’m walking, maybe you know where it leads.

Share your thoughts … email Alice Riehl

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