Are You Too Old For A Creative Career?

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Are you too old to have a great creative career?

Is it really possible for you to achieve success or is your age working against you too much?

There’s a lot of this talk in the world I’m in, the music world.

And on one hand you’ve got legitimate stories of artists who aren’t even old not being given opportunities because of their age.

And on the other you’ve got the classic & inspiring “it’s never too late, look at all these people who achieved success later in life” stuff.

Today we’ll talk about the age thing, kind of.

If you know me you can probably guess that my viewpoint is that of course you can still have a great creative career regardless of age.

I don’t want this to be another thing that just shows you a bunch of examples of artists who made it later in life.

Because as much as that stuff can be great and I sometimes use that to give myself a boost, I think it can distract from what you should really be focusing on if you’re too consumed by it.

So instead, let’s get real about this and talk about it from a more useful angle.

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Ok, let’s get into it.

Ask the right questions.

In my view, the question shouldn’t be “am I too old?” I think we should be asking these instead:

• Am I doing the work? Am I focused? Do I have the skills?
• Do I know what I actually want?
• Am I adopting the right attitude?
• And am I using my circumstances to my advantage?

These questions transcend the age thing in my opinion.

I think they’re not only much more empowering, but much more useful in your pursuit of a creative career.

I do want to acknowledge that there are situations where age is a factor, of course.

And I also don’t know all the inner workings of everything. I only know what I know and what I’ve seen.

I’m sure there are probably a lot more people and organisations that discriminate based on age than what we know and see, and that sucks.

But I want to focus on succeeding despite setbacks like this, despite age feeling like a disadvantage.

I don’t believe we should ever let gatekeepers stop us from winning.

Even if that means finding a hole in the fence round the back so we can get into the party, or even just finding a different party to go to where they’ll actually let us in.

So with that stuff in mind, let’s get into it. And we’re going to start with some personal experience.

Stick with me, I promise there’s a point to it.

Life begins when you get focused.

I grew up half excited about life and creativity, and half living in constant fear of getting too excited about it.

I won’t go deep into it, but basically the environment I was in as a kid taught me that:

1. Achievement is how to be loved and accepted, and…
2. I don’t deserve to be loved and accepted, and if I’m too happy I’ll get knocked down.

Or at least that’s how I understand it.

And so the way this has translated growing up is that I’m simultaneously hyper driven to succeed, but also terrified to succeed.

Pretty annoying problem to have.

This has led to years and years of wasted time and energy in my adult life.

In my teenage years things seemed pretty much ok.

I made tons of music, played in heaps of bands, did heaps of shows, explored all kinds of creative stuff without any worries. I had what felt like a pretty promising future in creativity.

But when I was 18, my dad died, and it was around this time that things started to go downhill.

Life kind of froze for about 5 or 6 years, and I think part of me was using this as a reason to avoid success, to avoid moving forward.

In this time, I lost that boundless energy for creativity (and life).

I still was doing music stuff and I had this little spark in me that wanted to be more, but I was mostly just kind of numb.

I ended up dropping out of school the year I was supposed to finish.

I started making all kinds of bad lifestyle choices.

I couldn’t hang out with most of my friends unless I was fucked up—not sober in some way.

And I lost any real ambition I had for getting out of my hometown and making a real future for myself.

Big patches of this 5 or 6 year period are super blurry.

I did basically nothing that was good for me.

It was a massive waste of time, and I couldn’t finish a creative project to save my life.

When I finally started to come out of this blur, I moved to Melbourne, which is the big city closest to where I grew up, and where I am currently.

I was 23 or 24 when I got here, and I started studying music.

This kind of reignited the flame for music and creativity, which was awesome.

And in 2015 I started working professionally in the music industry with one of my lecturers on various production jobs.

So things were looking up… kind of.

I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

My simultaneous need for and fear of success was still there, maybe worse than ever.

And somewhere along the way, I’d developed this new crazy obsession with comparing myself to everyone around me.

On top of that, my need for approval from others had gone way, way up.

And on top of that, I wasn’t actually happy with my situation.

This meant that, even though I was now working in a creative industry, making a name for myself in the scene and earning the respect of the pros around me…

…my energy was at an all time low and anxiety at an all time high.

I was spending so much of my time and energy comparing myself to others instead of actually improving.

I was working myself to the bone for approval in various ways.

And I didn’t feel like I was doing what I really wanted to be doing, which at the time I was clueless about. I had no idea what I wanted.

And this led to me eventually bailing out.

I had all of these reasons to keep myself small, and they got the better of me.

So even though I’d gained some decent knowledge and experience in the industry, I felt like I was back at square one.

And I definitely wasn’t as far along as I could have been had I not spent the last almost decade fucking with myself.

Ok, so now we’re getting to the point of the story:

I came back.

I picked myself up, had some hard conversations and finally stumbled onto a better path, one where I was more fulfilled, which is basically what I’m doing now.

It wasn’t until my late 20s that I had even a rough idea of what I truly wanted to do.

And it’s really only been these last few years that I’ve been actually productive, actually moving forward in a real way, actually becoming my version of successful.

And there’s still a long way to go, but here’s the important point:

In these last few years, I’ve achieved way more than I did in the 10 years before that.

Even though there were some great experiences and moments in those ten years, a lot of it was completely wasted.

I gave most of it to comparison, the need for external validation, fear of success, and lack of focus and skill.

I spent more time focused on how well certain people were doing at what age and freaking out about how scary the world is than actually doing any real work.

And when I finally got to the point where I was just fed up with being stuck in this small world I’d built for myself…

…I stopped being so obsessed with what other people were doing and how far along they were…

…I stopped worrying so much about getting approval from others…

…I got focused. I learned the skills I needed. And I just did the work…

Everything changed in a matter of a few short years.

I’d actually say in one year I saw rapid transformation once I committed to this new way of being.

And I’ve learned a hugely valuable lesson from this:

The life you want begins the moment you get focused on the right stuff.

You could give years of your life to things like worrying about age, coming up with reasons why the world is against you, and letting everything but what you truly want distract you.

But the moment you properly lock in, start learning the skills you need, and doing the work, none of that will matter anymore.

I’m in my 30s now, and i feel like my life has only just begun. I really mean that.

I don’t look back and curse the wasted years, because I’m now focused on the right stuff and I’m making progress. And that feels good.

The last 3 years feels like an entire lifetime of progress because of how much more focused I’ve been, how much more I’ve committed to what I actually want.

You could be 80 years old right now, or 50, or 20, and feeling like it’s all hopeless.

You can turn that around in a matter of 3 months if you decide to just lock in.

It does take time, of course, and you should start right now.

I think that’s one of the big mistakes people make by endlessly consuming content about people who made it later in life:

They go “phew! I can relax, there’s still time” and then they never actually do anything.

As inspiring as those stories are—and again, I use them too—I think they can be used as yet another reason to procrastinate.

If all you do is constantly say “there’s still time to start” but you don’t ever start…time will slip away from you.

But the moment you lock in, a new life begins.

Get focused.

Learn the skills.

Do the work.

Do that for a year and tell me you’re just as worried about your age as you used to be.

What do you actually want?

You will also benefit massively from trying to figure out what you truly want.

When you know what you want, you can take a more direct path to it, and age again becomes less of a factor.

If you don’t know what you want, and you never take any time to reflect on it or pay any attention to it, it could take you 50 years to achieve something that could have taken 5 years.

You will end up looking back at your life wishing you’d paid more attention.

And this might not happen simply by sitting and thinking about it.

You will most likely have to do a fair bit of work to find what you want.

But you should at least try to move yourself in the right direction so you have more chance of figuring it out faster.

When I started working in the industry as a musician, I took the opportunities that were in front of me (when I wasn’t sabotaging myself and bailing on stuff), not knowing what I actually wanted.

I think this was a good move at the time, because it gave me a frame of reference.

But if I had never paid attention, if I’d never stopped and asked myself “how is this going? How am I feeling about it? Do I feel like I’m moving in the right direction?”…

I think I would have ended up very unfulfilled.

And this could have easily lasted for years and years, and by the time I realised what I really wanted to be doing, it might have been too late.

You must pay attention.

The modern world is full of distractions, and that includes the distractions of different paths.

If you don’t intentionally position yourself to succeed and find your true path, you won’t find it.

Nowadays I try my best to create a lot of space for reflection.

I never used to do this properly and I let myself go down all kinds of weird, dead—end paths for years.

When you have space to reflect, you can constantly course correct and drastically reduce the distance between where you are now and where you want to be.

You could easily be tricked into thinking you want a certain creative career, or a certain life path, and walk that path for your entire life if you never stop to question it.

This can also impact your day to day actions.

I talk to a lot of musicians about building their online presence, and a lot of them have ideas about things they “should” be doing instead of what can help them achieve their goals.

A really common example of this is musicians focusing so much on getting views.

They’re fixated on increasing their views, but when you talk to them about their goals, they just want fans or they want people to buy their service or product.

So they’re spending all this time trying to make content that gets views instead of content that more directly helps them gain a fan or get someone interested in their service or product.

And exposure can definitely help, of course.

But I can tell you in most cases, a 200 view post that clearly, effectively, and accurately showcases your music and artist identity…

… or a 200 view post that talks about overcoming a struggle or belief related to the service you’re providing…

…is more likely to help you get what you actually want than a viral post that has nothing to do with any of that.

Sure there are some ways to generate attention that can lead back to people checking out your music or service in a kind of roundabout way.

But 9/10, something solely for the sake of views will not do what you want it to do, unless you’re really smart about leading people to what you actually want.

And most of the time from what I’ve seen, these types of posts can often hurt you because you attract the wrong kind of people anyway.

So that’s a smaller scale example, but it’s still important because your daily actions build your life.

You need to know what you actually want so you can figure out what will actually help you get it.

You do that by taking a lot of action, learning a bunch of stuff from that, and doing a lot of self reflection so you can keep yourself moving forward in the right way.

Your age is an advantage.

Ok, let’s talk about your age actually being an advantage regardless of how old you are.

I used to be obsessed with people’s ages, and my own.

I used to think if you hadn’t achieved “x thing” by “x age” you were behind, and there was no way to turn it around.

I would constantly look up people’s ages to find out when they became successful and then compare myself to them.

And I know I‘m not the only one.

But in a lot of situations, your age—whatever it is—can actually be an advantage.

And before I say more on this, I will acknowledge this:

Society in general has a bias towards youth in a lot of ways. Not all ways, but a lot.

What about the beauty industry? It’s fucking horrible.

Women over 30 are made to feel like they’re ancient and unattractive (not true—if you’re a woman over 30 reading this don’t believe the lie). That’s crazy.

People are scrambling to ‘stay young’ because they’re being fed this bullshit that to be young is always better.

And a lot of people who are propped up in mainstream society are young (and often terrible role models for other young people).

I’ve also heard plenty of stories from artists about record labels having an issue with their age.

Not at all surprised by this.

And I would say there’s a general message being put out there that the older you are, the worse your life is because “once you hit 30 it’s all downhill from here”.

Total bullshit.

I understand there might be people reading this who have had experiences where age has been a disadvantage.

Of course those experiences are going to exist.

But this stuff doesn’t mean you can’t thrive as someone who doesn’t fit into this super youthful category.

And I want to keep this focused mostly on the positive; if we focus on opportunities, that’s what we’ll find, right?

So you can still do very well as someone who’s not super young.

One reason for this is simply because there are all different kinds of people in the world.

Not everyone gets value from the same stuff and the same people.

There are people out there who prefer to give their time and attention to and get value from creatives who are a little older.

You don’t have to “compete” with these younger people if you don’t have the same audience.

They’re not stealing people’s attention away from you—they’re talking to a different type of person and offering something different.

So you might see some 18 year old with millions of followers doing great and feel like you could just never compete with that… but you don’t have to.

Those millions of followers are not who you’re for anyway.

This alone is, I think, a really important thing to remind yourself of constantly.

When you’re looking at people who have something you don’t and feeling bad, ask yourself “do I actually want what they have, specifically? Or do I actually want something else and this is just reminding me of it?”

Counter culture.

Not only do different people have different preferences, there is also a counter culture for everything, which in this case is great for you if you’re “older”.

If there’s a bunch of people obsessed with youth, that means there’s a bunch of people who don’t want to focus on that, and instead maybe prefer the experience, wisdom, and character of older people. And how that comes out in your craft too.

This is not me just making things up. Go and look for yourself.

The internet nowadays is full of inspiring stories of older people beating the odds, or embracing their age and saying “fuck it, I’m doing this anyway”.

People love it. It’s super inspiring. It’s interesting.

It rejects the idea that you have to be super young to succeed in this way.

Some people are just plain bored with young people and they’re looking for something more than the often surface level value they can offer.

This is where older people can step in and fill that gap.

The further we get into this digital age, the more perspectives and different types of people we’re being exposed to.

And as we’re now getting sick of short and shallow content and wanting to go deeper, you may even have an advantage as someone who’s a little older.

You can probably offer a lot more depth and wisdom, right?

My view is the further you get into life—if you’re paying attention and working on yourself—the more valuable and interesting and skilled you become.

Your creative work is better.

Your understanding of life is better.

Your ability to communicate is better.

These are massive advantages if you can learn how to capture attention, which isn’t easy but not at all impossible with a bit of focus and practise.

And this brings me to the next little bit, which is that you should identify your individual strengths and lean into them when it comes to building your creative career.

This is how you can really use your age to your advantage.

Regardless of how old you are, you will have some kind of advantage.

An 18 year old kid who’s great at making music might have endless energy to release a bunch of music, get out there and meet people and start building a promising career.

They might also attract attention from certain organisations who are looking to work with young people.

And they might be more comfortable on social media and so more likely to attract attention with a high energy presence that appeals to a lot of younger people.

Not saying someone older can’t do this, but you’re more likely to see an 18 year old jumping around on camera and sticking a phone in their face like they’ve been doing it their whole life… because they have.

That’s a big advantage for this 18 year old kid.

This endless energy, connection with technology, and appeal to certain brands, labels, companies, whatever, could help elevate them in a big way.

A 50 year old might not have those same advantages.

But what they may lack in connection with technology, they make up for in connection with and experience in the real world.

What they might lack in youthful energy (if they do lack it), they might make up for in a deep understanding of the world and a sense of calm that soothes others.

And what they might lack in appeal to certain people, brands, etc. they might make up for in appeal to other people, brands, etc.

Like I said before, if there’s a group of people who want to pay attention to young people, there’s a group of people who want to pay attention to older people.

But we don’t have to keep it so general. What are your individual strengths?

• Are you loud and high-energy, or quiet but intelligent?
• Are you all about having a good time and not taking life too seriously, or have you got endless wisdom to impart?
• Have you got mainstream appeal, or counter culture appeal?
• Are you just beginning, or have you been in this game for decades?
• Are you progressive and fighting for change, or do you value the beauty in tradition?
• Are you young with an old soul, or old with a young soul?
• Are you young with a young soul, or old with an old soul?
• Is there appeal in you documenting your rise in your creative career or is there more appeal in being like a mentor type figure to younger creatives?

All of this stuff is valuable.

Nothing is better than anything else.

I’ve literally never met an artist who didn’t have something valuable they could offer; it’s just about knowing what that is and how to communicate it.

I’ve worked with extreme beginner musicians who were able to appeal to a certain community because of their perspective around going down the artist path.

And I’ve worked with pros, artists on the total opposite end of the spectrum, who were able to appeal to other types of people because of their experience, achievements and connections.

I know you can always find a reason why things are unfair for you, or things are tilted too much to one side.

But I don’t choose to look at life like that.

You can choose to have an advantage.

It’s not always easy, but it’s totally doable.

I used to look back and say things like “I would have been better off if I didn’t waste those 10 years.”

But if I’m being real, I don’t really know if that’s true.

Maybe I would be a little further along like I said earlier, but who really knows?

I think a lot of the value I can offer nowadays has come from my experiences being what they are.

If I hadn’t wasted 10 years of my life to comparison and needing approval and self—sabotage, I wouldn’t be able to help other people fight against this stuff.

If I’d never fallen into a pit of despair and pulled myself out of it, maybe I’d be doing different stuff.

And maybe that stuff would have been valuable, but more valuable than what I can offer now? Who knows?

I’m 33 now. If you’d met me when I was 23, you would not get the same experience at all.

I wouldn’t be able to help you market yourself, for one, because I didn’t have the experience.

I knew nothing about branding and marketing.

The only reason I can help with that now is because of all the experience I’ve accumulated in these last however many years.

I also wouldn’t be able to talk about personal development, because I lived like shit.

I wasn’t working on myself.

You would not have been able to ask me anything about to improve your life, because I didn’t know and I wasn’t doing any of it.

I personally think I’m much more valuable to you as a 33 year old with legit life experience and professional experience.

If I was 33 trying to pretend I was 18 and trying to appeal to other 18 year olds… maybe that would be a little weird.

But I’m leaning into my strengths as a 33 year old, sharing experience that 18 year old me or 23 year old me could never have shared.

Again, that’s not to say a 23 year old can’t be valuable—of course they can.

But you’ve got to break away from this idea that your age is stopping you from succeeding.

Ok, so you were rejected from this opportunity because you’re not young enough… that sucks, and I’m sorry that happened.

What do you do? You can get angry, for sure, that’s totally reasonable.

But what then?

Are you going to give up and let the gatekeepers win, or are you going to find a hole in the fence round the back to get in?

Or are you going to go to a whole different party?

If a label or brand doesn’t want you, find a different way.

If you’re 35 and you’re trying the same approach as an 18 year old and it’s not working, find a different way.

Life has developed the way it has because people kept finding a different way.

There is always a way. Your age is only a barrier if you let it be.

Again, I know there are certain things where age does matter.

I’m not pretending those situations don’t exist. And you’re allowed to get angry at that.

But I challenge you to not let that stop you.

You can be smart.

You can find your advantage, and you do have one.

You can show the world yet again that there is a different way.

If you stop focusing on how many barriers there are in front of you, and instead focus on how many potential solutions there are, you will see life differently—in a better light.

You can do this.

A final reminder on this stuff before we wrap it up. I’ve already said this but it’s worth mentioning again:

As you get older, you and your art are only going to get better.

The only way they won’t, is if you stop paying attention, or if you stop altogether.

Things will change over time as you change, but your skills will only continue to improve.

The blind spots you used to have won’t be blind spots anymore.

That deep knowing and inexplicable connection to creating great art will be strengthened.

If you choose to go this way, you will only continue to develop yourself, your skills, your art, your confidence, your understanding, as you get older.

I don’t see it as “the older you get, the worse life gets”.

I see it as the total opposite. And that’s been true for me so far.

People who live in the past can too easily let themselves get bitter.

They’re not paying attention to the present and the future, and so their life gets worse.

But if you turn around, you look at the present and the future, and you allow yourself to see that you’re in control… amazing things can happen.

And remember, you can turn things around drastically in a matter of months.

Your life starts the moment you lock in.

• You need to figure out what you want.
• You need to be focused.
• You need to develop the skills.
• You need to do the work.
• You need the right attitude.
• And you need to find your advantage.

Age can be a barrier, or it can be what helps you succeed.

You get to choose.

And if you need to look at examples of artists and people who became successful later in life to inspire you, do it.

I do it. I love it.

Just don’t let that make you complacent.

Because the true solution is action.

Ok, I hope this was valuable to you in some way!

Please remember to check out Awaken Your Fan Base course if you’re interested, because time is running out.

Keep going.

You’ve got more power than you think.

You’re more capable than you think.

You’ve got this.

Talk again soon 🙂