(Updated on August 27, 2024.)
When I was in my 50s, I shifted careers to join a friend and start a business…
I kept telling myself that Ray Kroc was in his 50s when he started McDonald’s... so it was okay.
Then, when I did it again in my 60s with another friend, I reminded myself that the Colonel was in his 60s when he started Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Now, here I am in my 70s and I tried it again with another venture. And while it didn’t quite work out, my inspiration to give it a try was Warren Titus...
Who is Warren Titus?
Chances are you’ve never heard of Warren Titus, but he should serve as an inspiration to all of us 70-somethings who aren’t about to hang it up....
Titus died in 2009 at the age of 94, but it’s what he did 22 years earlier that I find so inspiring – especially now that I’m launching yet another business with somebody else when all I keep hearing is that I’m supposed to be retired.
Think about it...
Here was a guy who was a pioneer of the modern cruise ship industry... who had founded Royal Viking cruise lines and is widely regarded as the innovative father of the industry’s luxury cruising segment. Royal Viking was so successful that as Carl Nolte wrote in his obituary of Titus in the San Francisco Chronicle, it became “a staple of the upscale market in the 1970s and ’80s.”
One More Try
But Royal Viking ran into financial trouble and was sold in the early 1980s. Titus stayed on briefly, but left in 1987. As Nolte wrote...
Mr. Titus, who was then 72, figured his career was over. But he got a call from Atle Brynestad, a Norwegian millionaire who asked him to start another cruise ship company. It was the beginning of Seabourn Cruise Lines.
Byrnestad wasn’t just any Norwegian millionaire, but had been an investor in Royal Viking... so he knew what Titus was capable of doing. The kicker, as Nolte wrote...
Within four years Seabourn had been named the top cruise line in the world by Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
Titus retired 15 years later, but his legacy lives on – as does the cruise line he founded, which is now owned by Carnival. (And Brynestad, now 70, owns the ultra-luxury SeaDream Yacht Club cruise line.)
I think of Warren Titus every time I’m asked, “So, when are you going to retire?”
I get that a lot these days...
It’s Up To My Brain
And I always answer, “I can’t imagine stopping... as long as my brain is still functioning.”
And now that I’m just a few months away from being the same age as Warren Titus was when he started Seabourn, and hardly feel “old,” I usually also tell the story of Titus.
It’s hard to explain what motivates people to keep working. For some people it’s financial. For others, it’s the joy or even inner-competitiveness and drive to keep moving forward... or merely the need for something intellectually stimulating to keep their focus.
As The Economist put it in an article earlier this year...
Some simply won’t quit. Giorgio Armani refuses to relinquish his role as chief executive of his fashion house at the age of 89. Being Italy’s second-richest man has not dampened his work ethic. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s sidekick at Berkshire Hathaway, worked for the investment powerhouse until he died late last year at the age of 99. Mr. Buffett himself is going strong at 93.
The number of highly successful people I personally know who could retire many times over but continue to work is extraordinary....
Staying Relevant
People like 83-year old Chicago attorney Lloyd Shefsky, a former clinical professor of entrepreneurship & family business at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who has written multiple books on entrepreneurs...
Full disclosure: Given my age and the fact that I figured there would be no more business partnerships in my future, I sought Lloyd’s counsel before I launched into my latest venture… this time with an entrepreneur I met last year. After all, Lloyd has seen and heard it all. He still counsels tech startups and consults with large family businesses regarding such things as succession, governance, hiring and compensation. (He gave me a checklist.)
In Lloyd’s view, the thread among people who don’t retire – if there is one – boils down to two things: That it feels good for them to continue working, and that they’re looking for a way to stay relevant. “Those mean different things to different people,” he says, “but the principles are common.”
I’ll add something else, which I believe is true especially for anybody with even an ounce of creativity in their DNA, but certainly with the likes of writers, artists – even scientists...
Can’t Flip a Switch
It’s not like you turn a certain age and can simply flip off that creative switch. You can’t. Your brain is always firing.
That’s why Norman Lear was working until the day he died at 101. Or why at the age of 90, composer John Williams called off his retirement. “I can’t retire from music,” he said. “A day without music is a mistake.”
Or 80-year-old R.L. Stine, known for the Goosebumps series of kids’ books that I used to read to my kids, once told an interviewer....
I don’t think writers retire. They just drop dead on their keyboards.
One of my favorite lines about retirement comes from this Wall Street Journal story, which is part of a series of special reports they have been doing on retirement. This one was headlined, “When Will I Retire? How About Never.”
It was the first line of an interview with a 70-year-old that grabbed my attention:
I’ll retire at my funeral.
I fully get it!
I understand why people look forward to retiring and never look back. The most successful and happiest, it seems, have a myriad of hobbies and activities and have always been good at playing. I wish I had that gene, but I’ve been working since my teens – first for pocket or gas money… and as I got older, sometimes for free, just to get the exposure.
I’ve taken enormous risks with my professional career, always trying to put myself out of my comfort zone with a willingness to rise to the level of my incompetence. I’ve mostly won. A few times I’ve lost. That’s how you grow and evolve and keep from getting bored.
Learning How to Throttle Back
I’m just now trying to learn how to throttle back, but I’m also still at my desk by 4:30 most weekday mornings and generally continue until 5 in the afternoon. (“At 5-O, is when I go,” has been my mantra for decades.) I create my own deadlines, and on days when I don’t feel like writing… I don’t. Sometimes I work on the weekends.
I also take time out to exercise and feel less guilty than I once did – even when I ran my own businesses – about taking time off during the day... even if to just run an errand. And I have no problem driving seven hours on a weekday every few months to spend a week with our grandkids. The good news about writing for a living... you can do it anywhere.
No, I don’t play golf, even though I’m surrounded here in San Diego by golf courses. But my wife and I travel, which feeds her hobby and passion – writing a travel blog, which you can read here.
She spends hours, days and even months researching our next destination and planning out the trips. Then, elegant writer that she is, once we return she spends hours and days glued to her keyboard writing. She quit work in public relations 40 years ago to raise a family, but like our kids and me, she’s a hard-wired right brain. The ideas simply don’t stop flowing.
And that’s the point...
Why stop if you still have the drive to keep going? As R.L. Stine told an interviewer a few years ago...
I’m having fun. That’s the weird thing.
At this stage, that’s the only thing that matters.
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Yikes, a typo in the first sentence after it was proofread and proofread. Goes to show! Thanks to my friend who pointed it out.
I'm 70 and just resigned from my job. Too much drama and I realized that I'm old enough that I don't need to deal with it anymore. I expect to continue working, as your article says "until I die".