The Audience Nobody’s Talking To
A few years ago, after more than a decade of (semi)retirement, I decided to build a small copywriting business.
It made sense at the time. I’d spent decades as a consultant defining marketing strategy and helping write ad campaigns, direct mail, and sales content for clients, from startups to the Fortune 1000.
I felt I could make a contribution doing something I enjoyed and was good at. I knew the craft. I had the experience. The freelance copywriting market was large and, by all accounts, growing rapidly.
What I didn’t know, and what nobody was talking about yet, was that the copywriting market was about to come under threat from an emerging technology.
AI writing tools were brand new and still pretty clunky, but they were improving quickly.
Clients who once flocked to professional copywriters for their emails, web content, and marketing campaigns were beginning to experiment with doing it in-house.
The early results were sub-standard and performed poorly in the marketplace, but they were VERY inexpensive, and quality over quantity is an idea that is lost on many.
The impact on the copywriting marketplace was swift and unmistakable.
The low end of the copy market, where most freelancers compete, was began to hollowed out, billing rates fell quickly and the business model struggled for a footing.
In retrospect, I wasn’t wrong about my experience or skills, or about writing as my path forward. But I was wrong about how to best put those skills to use.
After two years of concentrated effort, I made a decision that initially felt like retreat but turned out to be something quite different.
I stopped chasing a market that was accelerating away from me and started paying attention to an audience that was right in front of me.
I started paying attention to people just like me, who were either considering or actively working on UnRetiring. Once I focused on it, I was astonished how large and underserved the UnRetiring audience actually is…
…and I was living it in real-time.
Roughly 70 million Americans are over 65. That number grows by ten thousand people every day.
A significant and growing portion of them are not done working, not done contributing, and not done building things. More people over 65 are working today than at any point in our history.
A surprising number will tell you that they’re open to stepping forward again… under the right circumstances.
What they mean, when you press them on it, is not the same old circumstances. Not the same pressure, the same agenda, or the same fifty-hour weeks.
What they are saying is they see their future as something different. Something that uses what they know without demanding a replay of what they’ve already done.
And when you see a generation of capable, experienced people with a strong, specific need… that almost no one is speaking directly to, that’s an opportunity hiding in plain sight.
And that’s how you happen to be reading this post today.
The copywriting market has become overcrowded, and commoditized. The UnRetiring marketplace is vast, dynamic, and still taking shape.
That forward-looking view is what UnRetiring is here to explore.
What does it actually look like to stay in the game, on your own terms, in a world that doesn’t have a clear template for people our age doing that.
That question turns out to be one of the most important of our time for both those contemplating UnRetiring… and for a world in desperate need of our collective knowledge, skills and experience.
And it’s time to start talking about it.