Live Without an Expiration Date

Rich Jones

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Weekly podcast hosted by executive coach Rich Jones exploring the human side of career disruption, identity, and reinvention through honest solo reflections and guest conversations for those navigating change and redefining success. rjones0747.substack.com

3d ago

Act Your Age? Act Young? Or Just Act Like You?

“Act your age.” It’s one of the most confusing instructions we get. Stop having fun. Stop being so serious. Dress appropriately. Don’t be so old. Don’t be so young. Nobody ever gives you the chart. In this episode of Live Without an Expiration Date, Rich takes on three behaviors that look similar from the outside and feel completely different on the inside: acting your age (living by someone else’s script), acting young (performing relevance), and being authentic (being the same person in every room). Rich walks through where each one comes from, why mid-career and second-half-of-career professionals fall into the first two so easily, and what each one costs you with colleagues, hiring managers, and yourself. Along the way, he shares a few embarrassing moments, a Marine’s view on “bearing” versus “performing,” and a simple five-question test you can use before your next big conversation. You’ll leave with a practical framework, a few phrases to try, and permission to stop auditioning for a version of yourself that was never yours. In this episode * Why “act your age” is a rule nobody can actually define * The three behaviors: the Script, the Costume, and the Signal * How age-performance shows up at work, in interviews, and in LinkedIn photos * The five-question Authenticity Check * What a Marine learned about presence versus performance * Why authenticity is a differentiator, not a personality quirk This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Oct 12

Dealing with the Feeling That Your Career Has Stagnated

You’ve been good at your job for years. Maybe too good. The title hasn’t changed. The scope hasn’t changed. Your learning curve went flat sometime around... you can’t quite remember. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet voice is asking whether this is it. In this episode of Live Without an Expiration Date, Rich Jones takes on the feeling that nearly every mid- and late-career professional eventually faces: the sense that your career has stagnated. Drawing on 25-plus years in financial services, his time in the Marine Corps, and roughly a decade of navigating his own career gap, Rich explains why this feeling is not a verdict on your worth, but a signal worth decoding. In this episode, you’ll learn: * Why the feeling of stagnation is nearly universal, and why it usually shows up because you’re competent, not because you’re failing * The four kinds of stagnation (pay and title, learning, meaning, and organizational investment) and how to tell which one you’re really in * The three-question audit: Is it the job, the company, or me? * How the stories we tell ourselves (”it’s too late,” “I should be grateful”) quietly make a plateau permanent * A 90-day reset plan: Inventory, Experiment, Ask * Exact language for the conversation you’ve been avoiding with your boss * How to know when the answer is to grow where you are, and when it’s time to leave Challenge for the week: Do one 20-minute thing. Details at the end of the episode. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Oct 5

Your Career Was Never Supposed to be a Straight Line

We’re taught to picture success as a staircase — steady, upward, one predictable step after another. Then you hit your 40s or 50s and the staircase disappears. You get passed over. You take a lateral move that feels like a demotion. You leave a title behind to build something that matters more. And somewhere in there, you start wondering if you’ve lost the plot. You haven’t. You’ve just outgrown the metaphor. In this episode, Rich Jones makes the case that the straight-line model of success was never true — it was just easier to sell you when you were 28 and hadn’t lived enough to know better. He walks through what the real shape of a second-half career actually looks like: plateaus that are secretly preparation, detours that turn out to be the whole point, and the setbacks that don’t erase what came before them. Drawing on two decades in credit union leadership, a stretch as an entrepreneur, a Marine Corps background, and his own career disruption, Rich argues for judging a career by its direction, not its slope. If you’re in a season that doesn’t look like progress — this one’s for you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Sep 28

Ctrl+Alt+Delete: Rebooting a Tech Career Outside of Tech

For twenty years, “I work in tech” was the career equivalent of a permanent parking spot — stable, a little smug, and always close to the good snacks. Then the layoffs came. Then the “AI efficiency” memos came. Then the second round of layoffs came. Now a lot of sharp, seasoned tech professionals are staring at a job market that no longer recognizes the rules they mastered. In this episode, Rich breaks down why the tech job — long considered the most future-proof contract in the American workforce — is behaving like every other broken contract we’ve covered on this show: retail, manufacturing, financial services, media. He walks through what’s actually happening in tech hiring right now, why “just learn to code” was always a half-truth, and how the skills tech professionals already have translate directly into industries that still run on people showing up, solving problems, and shaking hands — including plenty of brick-and-mortar businesses that would kill for someone who thinks in systems. Expect some self-deprecating detours about Rich’s own track record of confidently walking into rooms he didn’t fully understand, a practical framework for translating “tech speak” into plain business value, and an honest look at the identity work nobody warns you about when your job title stops being a personality trait. Runtime: ~30 minutes You’ll learn: * Why tech’s employment contract broke the same way manufacturing’s and retail’s did — and why tech workers were told it couldn’t happen to them * The three tech skills that translate almost anywhere, and the two that quietly expire * How to talk about your experience without sounding like you’re still trying to get funding for a Series A * A field guide to industries — many of them decidedly non-digital — that are hungry for exactly what displaced tech people carry * Why “brick-and-mortar” doesn’t mean “backward,” and why that assumption might be the thing costing you the interview Who this is for: Tech professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s navigating layoffs, stalled searches, or the quiet dread of watching their role get “restructured.” Also for anyone who’s ever updated a resume at 11 p.m. and wondered if they’ve become a legacy system. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Sep 21

Fired at 52, Hired at 55: What Changed?

Everybody wants the highlight reel: fired at 52, landed the role, redemption arc, roll credits. This episode is the expensive, occasionally funny truth about everything that happened in between — and it runs long, because the real story didn’t fit in a tidy soundbite. I walk through my own career-transition case study — a twenty-year entrepreneur who had to fire-sell his own business, then lost a director role to an acquisition, then got caught in the dot-com crash, and the three years it took to land the credit union role that became an eight-year career. We break down: * The three moves that ate most of two years and felt like progress but weren’t — the mass-application “job board casino,” the credential chase, and the coffee-chat grievance tour * The four pivots that actually worked in about eight months, once I finally tried them * What I’d skip entirely if I had to start over tomorrow * Why the job that felt “beneath me” turned into the best career decision I made If you’re in the middle of your own gap right now — the real one, not the version you post about — this episode is for you. No inspirational fluff. Just what actually worked, what wasted time, and what to do differently starting this week. Runtime: ~30 minutes - Host: Rich Jones, Live Without an Expiration Date This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Sep 14

How to Keep Ageism from Creeping into Your Own Thoughts

Nobody ages you out faster than you do. Sure, there’s plenty of ageism coming from the outside — HR departments who think “digital native” is a job requirement, hiring managers who see “25 years of experience” and read “expensive and set in his ways.” But the version of ageism that does the most damage is the one nobody else can see: the running commentary in your own head that starts narrating your birthdays like a countdown clock instead of a scoreboard. In this episode, Rich takes on the ageism you inflict on yourself — the “I’m too old to pivot,” the “that ship has sailed,” the quiet self-editing that happens before anyone else even gets the chance to underestimate you. Expect some hard truths, some Marine Corps bluntness, a fair amount of Rich making fun of his own age awareness, and a practical framework for catching the ageist thoughts before they catch you. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying “at my age...” right before talking yourself out of something you actually wanted to do, this one’s for you. In this episode: * Why the loudest ageist in your career is usually you * The four phrases that are secretly self-imposed expiration dates * How to tell the difference between “wisdom” and “excuse” * A field-tested framework for catching the thought before it becomes the belief * Why Rich thinks his own internal ageism sounds suspiciously like a bicyclist who thinks he’s too old only to find out he isn’t. Runtime: ~30 minutes This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Sep 7

When Loyalty Becomes a Liability

You showed up. Every day, for years. You didn’t job-hop, didn’t play games, didn’t hold the organization hostage every review cycle. You were the dependable one. And somewhere along the way, that became the problem. In this episode, Rich breaks down the quiet, unspoken shift that happens when an organization stops seeing your loyalty as an asset and starts treating it as a guarantee — the moment they stop investing in you because they’ve already decided you’re not going anywhere. We’ll talk about how to spot the signs before your paycheck does, why “dependable” can become a career-ending label, and what to do if you realize you’ve already crossed the line. Bring your coffee. This one’s going to sting a little before it helps. Runtime: ~30 minutes This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com
Aug 31

Working for Someone Younger Than You

Your new boss wasn’t born when you got your first performance review. She’s sharp, she’s fair, and every time she says “let’s circle back,” some small, petty part of you wants to explain what circling back looked like before Slack existed. This episode is about that part of you — the ego mechanics of reporting to someone with less tenure or experience than you — and how to actually get good at it instead of just white-knuckling through it. Rich unpacks the specific triggers (the language gap, the “I trained people like you” reflex, the credibility math your brain keeps running in the background), tells on himself for failing this exact test, and lays out a real playbook for turning tenure into leverage instead of resentment. If you’ve ever caught yourself starting a sentence with “back when I was doing your job,” this one’s for you. Runtime: ~30 minutes Themes: ego, authority, career disruption, leading from behind, credibility, humility that actually works This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rjones0747.substack.com

Weekly podcast hosted by executive coach Rich Jones exploring the human side of career disruption, identity, and reinvention through honest solo reflections and guest conversations for those navigating change and redefining success. rjones0747.substack.com

Creator

Rich Jones
Years Active

2026
Episodes

42
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Rich Jones
Show Website

Live Without an Expiration Date