# You're 53. You're done — why 'pack it in' advice is toxic - **Episode:** [187](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/187.md) (2025-04-10) - **Type:** interview - **Tags:** ageism, career-advice, toxic-advice - **Time:** 0:00–6:33 (start 0s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/187?t=0](https://truthliesandwork.com/187?t=0) --- [0:00] John Tarnoff: Over. It's over. You're never going to get another job. You're 53. Oh, you're done. And this advice that you should just pack it in is, is toxic [0:11] Leanne Elliott: So first of all, accept that ageism exists [0:14] John Tarnoff: The fastest growing element of the US workforce is over 60. You're more than your resume, right? You want to be the single solution to someone's problem. Putting senior director of marketing is not going to help you. All it's going to do is get you searched by recruiters who are looking for senior directors of marketing. You're going to go up against a zillion other senior directors of marketing. You're more than that. The resume is a document of the past, right? It tells them nothing about what you can do for them in the future [0:50] Leanne Elliott: I'm, I'm buying from you, John, if that's, that's what you're saying to me [0:53] John Tarnoff: On Monday morning, he calls me into his office. Without looking up from his desk, he says, today's your last day. We're going to escort you out. It was one of those dizzying moments of abject humiliation. And I, I was just completely crushed by that. Because what does that say about me that they would fire me this way? Right? It must mean that on a certain level, I'm a piece of shit. Stop chasing job openings [1:29] Leanne Elliott: Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. We are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist [1:42] Al Elliott: My name is Al. I'm a business owner [1:45] Leanne Elliott: And we are here to help you create amazing workplace cultures [1:48] Al Elliott: Yes, we are. Today we are joined by a career transition coach, And TEDx speaker John Tarnoff, who specialises in helping professionals over 50— well, actually technically 45 upwards— reinvent their careers. John has seen it all. He was famously fired from 39% of his jobs in Hollywood before pivoting to become a respected executive coach. Now he helps others navigate what he calls the purpose portion of their careers [2:13] Leanne Elliott: With so much focus on early career professionals, we too are guilty of rarely talking about the challenges facing experienced workers despite them making up the fastest-growing segment of the workforce today. The research is pretty clear: we're living longer, which means we're going to work longer. But organizations are still scrambling to fill skills gaps, replace experienced talent, and many are overlooking one critical factor: ageism. Despite the growing number of older workers, age discrimination remains one of the most persistent and ignored forms of workplace bias. So could this so-called talent shortage be a problem of their own making? Well, in this episode, John offers a refreshing perspective on how leaders can rethink aging, tap into the potential of experienced professionals, and design a more fulfilling and inclusive second act. After spending an hour with John, I soon realized that he turns conventional wisdom completely on its head. Instead of seeing age as a liability in the workplace, he shows how it can be your greatest asset [3:12] Al Elliott: So maybe you're an older professional and you've been ghosted during job applications. Perhaps job hunting has been really tough and you're wondering, what am I doing wrong? I've got all this experience. Or maybe you're told time and time again that you're overqualified. Very, very common. In the next 45 minutes, John will help you overcome each and every one of your concerns [3:31] Leanne Elliott: It is interesting and it is so practical, this conversation. So after this very short break, join us and we'll discover why the key to career success after 50 might not be chasing job openings, but building meaningful relationships instead [4:19] John Tarnoff: Nice [4:20] Al Elliott: Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Welcome back. Let's go and join Leanne and John as they demystify the job market for late career professionals. Oh, and we'll find out why John has been fired for so many jobs [4:37] John Tarnoff: My name is John Tarnoff. I live in Los Angeles, California. I am an executive and career. I'm a career transition coach, and I focus primarily on mid to late career professionals. So that is, generally speaking, 45 to 55 and up, people who are hitting what I call the purpose portion of their careers, where they have learned all of the good stuff, they have achieved a certain amount of success, and now they are thinking in their life and their careers, what's next for me? I kind of dine out on the fact that in my own career, my prior career as an entertainment studio executive and film producer, I was fired 39% of the time. And I came to that calculation kind of as a joke in a TEDx talk that I did about 10, 15 years ago, which was really the beginning of this coaching practice. And I was kind of searching for a justification for why I was up on that stage talking about people and careers. And I did the math and realized that in all of the jobs I had had in entertainment, which is, as we all know, a very volatile industry [5:43] Al Elliott: Yeah [5:45] John Tarnoff: I'd been fired from 7 out of 18 jobs, which came to 39%. And I thought, let me throw this out there. And of course, I got a laugh, a nervous laugh, because I mean, who talks about this stuff, right? But for my purposes in trying to reach out to people who are experiencing their own career challenges, it seems to me that, you know, you want to be working with someone who knows what you're going through [6:08] Leanne Elliott: So let's talk about your clients. They're typically professionals that are in their in their mid-career onwards. And when we talk about professionals over 50, which isn't very often, I think there is a, there is a lack of conversation about that, which is why I was, I was so keen to, to have you on the show. I'm curious, from the people that you work with, what are the main fears and worries of, of this age group of people in terms of their career?