[You’re Invited] Bestselling author discusses “The Second Act Advantage”

My favorite story from The Second Act Advantage by Jay Samit unfolds in Chapter 5.

Ken Frantz has just retired from a long career in construction and development in Virginia.

One morning he’s sitting in a car dealership waiting room, killing time while they change his oil.

He picks up a National Geographic and lands on a photograph of men in Ethiopia crossing the Blue Nile by hanging onto frayed ropes strung high above the water. On the far bank sit the remains of a broken bridge.

Most of us look at a photo like that, feel something for a second, and turn the page. Ken thinks: “Here’s something that I can do. There’s a tremendous need, and it wouldn’t be that hard.”

So he flies to Ethiopia. With no connections there and no plan to speak of, he builds the community a new bridge in three months.

Then he learns rural isolation is a root cause of poverty all over the world. He starts a nonprofit called Bridges to Prosperity.

Ken and his volunteers have now built more than 450 bridges connecting over 1.5 million people across 21 countries.

Here’s why I love this story…

We’ve been sold a story that says your working life is the main event and everything after is the epilogue. Samit encourages us to flip that script.

The experience you accumulate, the network you build, the money you set aside, the judgment you earn the hard way — none of it expires. It compounds. And just like Ken, you can connect all of that to a newfound purpose in your second act.

In your second act, you don’t have to ride into the sunset and spend down your savings. You can build a lucrative business.

Samit points to research showing a 50-year-old founder is nearly three times more likely to succeed than a 25-year-old.

The book is full of people who prove it. A woman who was broke and divorced at 52 and built a $50 million company around her bulldog. A 100-year-old who works full-time at Home Depot because she got sick of retiring. A designer who joined IDEO at 89 and is still at it at 101.

But Ken is the one I keep thinking about. He’s just a guy waiting on his car who decides that a thing he notices is a thing he can fix.

The Second Act Advantage is our July pick for The Mastermind Book Club.

You’re invited to join us today when we discuss the book with the author.

Every month, Ted Prodromou and I choose a great business book and dig into it together. We meet live on Zoom, usually on the fourth Thursday. The meetings are free.

Join the Club and you also get the online community and the meeting replays.

Jay Samit wrote the bestseller Disrupt You!, published in 12 languages. He helped grow LinkedIn before it went public, served as Independent Vice Chairman of Deloitte Digital, and held senior roles at Sony and Universal Studios.

He’ll be in the room to take our questions today.

Thursday, July 23

2:30 p.m. ET / 1:30 p.m. CT

Click here to join the Zoom room

Haven’t read the book? Join us anyway. The conversation is the point.

See you this afternoon.