Author Tom Marks and Coming Of Age In Retirement

Lisa [: 00:00:00

Hello, listeners. Welcome to Aging in Full Bloom with Lisa Stockdale. I'm your host, Lisa, and today we have a special guest with us. His name is Tom Marks. He is a best selling author and his latest book called Coming of Age in Retirement, An Advertising Executive Story of Enlightenment and Revelation is doing very well. Correct, Tom?

Tom Marks [: 00:00:25

It is. Lisa, thank you for having me on your podcast. Thanks to your listeners for tuning in. Yeah, my book is doing great. It's the best selling retirement book in America. The best selling book on aging, which they also call gerontology.

Lisa [: 00:00:53

They really need, they really need to do something about that. Anyway, carry on.

Tom Marks [: 00:01:00

It was also the best selling philosophical memoir because half the book is pretty much about me. And then it was also the best selling best selling book on mental health. See, I forget these things.

Lisa [: 00:01:17

Yeah. Yes. Now, when we say best selling according to who, how do we know that.

Tom Marks [: 00:01:25

It'S Amazon has a ranking system.

Lisa [: 00:01:28

Okay.

Tom Marks [: 00:01:29

And so it's a little tricky because if you and I'll let you in on the, and your listeners on the inside scoop of this so that they understand it, you are a best selling author if you crack the top 100 in your books category.

Lisa [: 00:01:53

Okay.

Tom Marks [: 00:01:55

But in order to say you're the, which I have said, I'm the number one best seller in these categories that we just listed, you have to be number one. So I was number one in all of those categories, but that was two months ago. So I, I don't even, I don't keep checking.

Lisa [: 00:02:18

But that's because you don't need to look back.

Tom Marks [: 00:02:22

I don't need to look back. I just need to focus on the future.

Lisa [: 00:02:27

That is the truth. Now I have this here. Somebody wrote reading this book felt like sitting across from a sharp, funny, slightly grumpy friend at dinner who's finally telling you what's really going on. So tomorrow, what's really going on?

Tom Marks [: 00:02:46

So that was a quote from Thomas Anderson, I believe, who's the editor of Literary Titan and gave the book a five star review. My family loves that because they identify with the grumpy part.

Lisa [: 00:03:06

My family might as well let me just tell you.

Tom Marks [: 00:03:11

I'm constantly setting the record straight though, with them. But. So what's going on is a, that's a loaded question. And we might have to chunk this up a little bit.

Lisa [: 00:03:24

It was loaded when Marvin Gaye asked it as well. So take us where you will.

Tom Marks [: 00:03:31

So when I retired or started the program process of retirement, sort of a phasing out. That was at the beginning of 2020 and just prior to the pandemic.

Lisa [: 00:03:50

Yeah.

Tom Marks [: 00:03:51

And I had built this global communications company where you had clients all over the world and quite a few employees. And when I finally cut loose, I was lost. And sort of the, you know, the, what we say in the lost retirement business is who are we when we are no longer who we were? And I was, I was writing and directing TV commercials and writing national magazine ads, newspaper ads, and hanging out with all kinds of young creative people. And I no longer. And I was also employing a lot of bootlickers and brown nosers. And so I, I, that was all gone. And my identity was this business that I worked at almost every day for over 40 years. And it just, I was, I didn't know what to do.

Tom Marks [: 00:05:14

I was making lists of things that I wanted to do and I was, it was just agonizing for.

Lisa [: 00:05:23

I'm laughing because I think I'll be the same. And I understand you probably were just like, what now?

Tom Marks [: 00:05:31

Well, I should have been thinking about it before I did it, but I didn't.

Lisa [: 00:05:36

Yeah.

Tom Marks [: 00:05:37

And, and I have this, I have this sort of passion project. It's, it's called the PeacefulRetiree.com and it's a collection of about 24, 25 contributing editors to this website. And so, and they, you know, they're, most of them are retired or looking into retirement. And I found out that transitioning into retirement is problematic for a lot of people. And I thought it was just me, but I had a whole cohort around the world that started contacting me and know, saying, well, you know, I have this issue too, and how did you do this? And I said, don't, you know, don't look at me for any answers because I haven't found them yet. So I just fumbled and stumbled my way through the first, I don't know, year and a half or two years of retirement. And I, I needed to, I needed to find somebody to talk to. And I asked a couple friends in Tucson where I am now and where I retired to.

Tom Marks [: 00:07:00

I said, I, I'm seeing nothing but curveballs. I need to talk to a therapist who's, you know, not somebody young. And so I saw this guy and we started talking and he knew I was the best selling author, so he was as entertained as I was about this whole thing. And he said, you should write a memoir. And I said, that would be a snooze fest.

Lisa [: 00:07:38

And, and without the bootlickers, you mean?

Tom Marks [: 00:07:42

Well, you know, who wants to. A guy like me. But I started, I started thinking about it. Not, not Writing a memoir, but writing. Just writing again. And I found this. I found some passages from the Buddha, and I'm not a Buddhist, that really moved me. And one was.

Tom Marks [: 00:08:13

And I. And I tell this to everybody. And they're. And they're equally moved by it, too, is there is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path. And that really clicked with me. And I was chasing all this stuff, Lisa, and some of it was obviously material things, which we all tend to do. And some of it was just, you know, these dreams that were going to be impossible.

Tom Marks [: 00:08:46

As I was in my 70s, and I really started thinking about another passage from the Buddha about detaching yourself from suffering. And that's, you know, in line with this path of happiness, not the path to happiness, where the more baggage we have on our journey, you know, the more complex life becomes. And I always refer to it to my wife Kathy, as I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel. I'm just chasing all this stuff and leading to nowhere. So one day I googled hamster wheel syndrome, thinking that there must be somebody else on this hamster wheel with me.

Lisa [: 00:09:42

You couldn't be the only hamster on the wheel.

Tom Marks [: 00:09:46

And so as it turned out, there's a. There's a psychological. Many psychological studies about this, but they're not called the hamster wheel syndrome. They're either called the. They're either called hedonic adaptation, chasing all these things we think are good, or the hedonic treadmill syndrome. And I said, I'm on this. And apparently, along with a couple hundred million other people, which granted some relief to my anxiety. But I dug deeper about that, and the research is really incredible.

Tom Marks [: 00:10:41

We chase all of these things, mostly materialistic, and they never lead to permanent happiness or rarely lead to permanent happiness. And the best examples are winners of millions and millions of dollars in lotteries where over 70% of them go bankrupt because they spend all this money. They just can't keep up. They want for more and want for more. And so I. I kept digging into this, and then I, you know, it still wasn't clicking for me. I mean, where was the book here? I didn't want to write about this sort of thing. And.

Tom Marks [: 00:11:30

And then I found out that part of this whole myth about retirement happiness and all this stuff came from the beloved industry that I grew up in and grew old in, which was the advertising.

Lisa [: 00:11:50

Advertising. Of course it did.

Tom Marks [: 00:11:53

And the more I dug, the more I was ashamed that my brethren had done the very things that I vowed to never do, which Was, was, first of all, put older people and by old in the ad agency business, I'm Talking about people 40 years old and older that the ad age is. The average age of an ad agency employee is 25, 25 years old. And so we had 25 year olds writing copy and ads about 75 year olds, or as I say, we had juniors writing ads about seniors. And I dug deeper and did more research and found out that it was intentionally, which intention is part of the ad business, but intentionally ad agencies were, were sort of promoting this retirement happiness myth, or the exact opposite, which was this, you know, you're, you're going to die. There's frailty and all this stuff, but they weren't telling the truth. And they were, they were making, they were, they had pitched people spokespersons who were actually made up to look like seniors, but they were really only in their 40s, 50s, and they put, you know, aging spots on them and they probably looked for people who were drooling and, and, you know, technology, technologically illiterate and, and all these stereotypes and.

Lisa [: 00:13:46

Tom, I, I have a question for you. You. I definitely don't want you to lose your train of thought, but I, I do have a question for you, because I'm in sales. I, I hear what you're saying.

Tom Marks [: 00:13:57

Yeah.

Lisa [: 00:13:57

Do you think that this intentional messaging, which of course you have established it was intentional, otherwise you're not successful and you don't get paid. Was it malicious or was it just that they didn't know?

Tom Marks [: 00:14:12

I think. Well, first of all, Lisa, that's a great question. I don't know that I have a great answer to it, but there are two very significant, maybe even three research studies that proved that it was intentional, including one by aarp. But I think the intention is always in my business or my former business profit. And so you've got to do whatever you do so that your client makes a profit. And as an ad agency, you keep the account. So in, in the agency business, you're not going to retain an account if it's not, you know, if the results aren't there. So intent is driven by money, but I'm not sure how malicious it was.

Lisa [: 00:15:10

Yeah, I get it. I understand. That's a fair answer. I mean, it doesn't sit well with me, but I know it's true. I know what you're saying is true, but I do think that sometimes it's not malicious. We think it is. And it's just they don't know. They're trying to earn a living and so people like you, people like me, people who are speaking up and writing books and speaking truth to these issues, like, we have a voice too.

Lisa [: 00:15:41

And that's why we have this podcast. That's why it's so important for our stories to be told. Because you're no longer guessing, Tom, what it means to be 70 or better. You now know. Right?

Tom Marks [: 00:15:56

That's right.

Lisa [: 00:15:57

And you're willing to help us understand. Let me shut up, sir. You go right on.

Tom Marks [: 00:16:02

Yeah. So I think you make a good point. Point, Lisa, and I agree with you. I mean, I, I prefer to see the good in people, and we all should. So I don't think it was malicious, but I think the intent is always profitability.

Lisa [: 00:16:18

Yeah.

Tom Marks [: 00:16:19

And, and I can't blame anybody for that.

Lisa [: 00:16:21

Right.

Tom Marks [: 00:16:23

If I didn't own and run a profitable business, I'd be, you know, doing.

Lisa [: 00:16:31

Something else, and we probably wouldn't be hearing your voice right now. So there's.

Tom Marks [: 00:16:38

Probably not.

Lisa [: 00:16:39

Right.

Tom Marks [: 00:16:39

And so anyway, I started putting a few things together this, and it just sort of resonated with me that we were, it was our time, and it was our time to be individualistic, and it was our time to not be part of this huge demographic of 55 plus, which is, as you know, is a marketer. That's, that's like 70 million people. But a 55 year old is not an 85 year old truth. And we're, we run through all these demographic groups, as you know so well, Lisa, whether it's Gen X or Gen Z or millennials or yas young adults, I mean, these aren't 50 year age gaps that, I mean, that's our group or 45 year age gaps. These are, you know, millennials are 16 years apart in age gaps. So it's just not fair putting us into this huge cohort. And so I just really think that now is the time for seniors to be as individualistic as possible. So the guy down the street from me, what I do in retirement, might not work for that guy.

Tom Marks [: 00:18:14

And the woman around the corner might have a whole different view of this than I do. And that's, that's wonderful because we need diversity in our cohort and we should be doing the things we want to do, not the things that ad agencies paint this portrait of what we should do or what we shouldn't do.

Lisa [: 00:18:38

Yeah, I mean, that, that's a beautiful point. You can't just assume everyone who is an older adult, however you define that. If you're in the ad industry, apparently that happens at 40. If you're in the Medicare business, it's 65. If you're, you know, I mean, wherever it is, it doesn't matter. You can't just kick us all over the hill and say they're all the same. No, we're not. We have generational differences and individual preferences and life experiences that vary based on when we grew up and who we choose to be.

Lisa [: 00:19:15

So what.

Tom Marks [: 00:19:16

You're right.

Lisa [: 00:19:17

What else did you discover? So, so I want to, I want to ask you about the shame piece because that is noted in several places. What kind of shame were you working through or were you confronting when you retired?

Tom Marks [: 00:19:35

Well, I, I'm not sure what I was confronting which might have been the issue. I really think, Lisa, that I was not able to identify with much of anything in my life, my retirement life. And I, I just, I was grasping at things that made no sense. You know, I get the fact that people, you know, want to play golf every day. You know, that that's fine. Although I don't understand playing at the same time with the same three dudes and on the same golf course, you know, that, that's not, that doesn't ring my bell at all. But I just, I can't. I wish I could answer your question better because it's so, it's so terrific.

Tom Marks [: 00:20:41

But I'm not, I just, I just don't know how to describe how.

Lisa [: 00:20:48

Sounds like you, you arrived at this intersection very ill prepared. Right. Not a lot of planning had gone into what was going to happen when you retired. We talk about planning all the time, but almost always financial planning that we get obsessed with. It's not the other stuff that really. Well, I'm not saying finances don't matter. We all know they do. But finances do not bring you happiness.

Tom Marks [: 00:21:16

I agree with you. And just so we can set the record straight for your listeners, I planned financially for decades, sure. And that wasn't an issue. It's everything but that. And interestingly enough, when there's software that authors use to determine if their book can become a bestseller and I found out that something like 89% of the books on retirement are financial.

Lisa [: 00:21:58

Yeah, I know, it's.

Tom Marks [: 00:22:03

It'S, which sort of is interesting to me that, that number one, there aren't a lot of books written about other sorts of planning, non financial and retirement. But also you shouldn't be, you know, peeking into retirement and just starting a financial plan.

Lisa [: 00:22:24

Yeah, yeah. It's a losing equation in a lot of ways. And I mean, I must get 10 or 12 emails every week with People wanting to come on talking about financial planning for retirement. And I don't bring them on, not because I don't care about it, but because you're not. If you start that after listening to this podcast, you got bigger troubles than this podcast can ever solve, to your point. And there's been. There's all kinds of resources out there readily available. So we choose to talk about other things like your book.

Lisa [: 00:23:01

Now, let me ask you a different question. How is it that this book fell into this category of mental health?

Tom Marks [: 00:23:09

I have no idea, because it's not. When you choose your categories, you. You have the availability to choose three or two. You cannot choose four. And that's just the rules of the game. So it was very obvious that I was going to choose retirement and aging. And in the memoir part, because half the book is. But it ranked in mental health.

Tom Marks [: 00:23:53

And that could be for a variety of reasons, maybe some of the reviews, but I had nothing to do with that.

Lisa [: 00:24:01

Okay, well, I will say I like mental health, aging and emotions a lot better than gerontology. I'm just saying words matter here.

Tom Marks [: 00:24:13

Yeah. And that one is really hard to stomach, Lisa. I just don't like it.

Lisa [: 00:24:20

So what about this notion you also have on here that you talk about in the book or you share some lessons about trying too hard and letting go?

Tom Marks [: 00:24:35

Yeah. So I really think that what I have found is that I have let go of this pace I was on, which was a lifelong sprint to a finish line that never existed. So I've let go of this, you know, high energy sprint in retirement and just stopped and worked on breathing and breath work. And I. Meditation never worked for me. And, and I, I'm married to someone who's deeply into meditation and mindfulness and Buddhism and things like that. And I just, you know, I tried to meditate, but my brain just wouldn't. It wouldn't allow it.

Tom Marks [: 00:25:45

And so I started my own sort of meditation because again, you know, as we talked about individualism, I don't have to do something that everybody else is doing. And in fact, sometimes I think that we listen and read too much about retirement and retirement advice from people who shouldn't be giving it. So every morning, what I do in terms of letting go, I have this list of about 100 things that I am thankful for and grateful for for. And every morning I just think about four or five of them. And these are, I mean, these are things like my glasses, the desk that I work at, the view of the Catalina Mountains, which are almost 10,000ft from my backyard, my wife, hummingbirds who are in our garden, who remind me of my mother who was always bouncing from one thing to another. And as my father said about my mother, and they're both long gone, your mother would go to the opening of an envelope. And so I just, I mean, I take these little things that make me happy, my bicycle and the gym I go to, and I just think about them and, and what I'm grateful for. So I stopped the sprint.

Tom Marks [: 00:27:28

I, I practice every morning, or almost every morning, this form of meditation, which is just mine, of what I'm thankful for. And I want to tell you something, Lisa, that I've noticed myself, but, but my family has noticed and many people have commented on this. I'm a lot nicer guy. And I think the stress that goes with owning a multi million dollar business with a lot of employees and those employees have families and some of those families have families. It's just retirement is a great way to let go and find something new, you know, and, and that's what I did. I really let go. I mean, people email me and call me all the time, hey, do you want to do this project? And I said, no, I'm not in the, you know, I'm not coming out of retirement for this. That's what I left, and I don't want to do it anymore.

Tom Marks [: 00:28:40

So I don't know if that answered your question or not, Lisa, but I just.

Lisa [: 00:28:44

That was, that is wildly insightful. I mean, yes, that answered a lot of my questions. So you came to this intersection you had planned financially, but not emotionally. And one of the first things you realized you had to do, or eventually you realized was to let go of all of these constructs that you, you sort of had to reimagine what your life was going to be because it wasn't what they said it was going to be. And yeah, what you're really. I mean, what you just gave us was a how to. I know you said you didn't like this, but how to find happiness like this is a practical thing that you can do. We know that practicing gratitude is very impactful and your list was amazing because it was the smallest and the biggest and everything in between that you were being grateful for, from your desk to your wife to a hummingbird, to memories of your mother, who, by the way, I love your mom.

Lisa [: 00:29:46

I wish I could have met her. She sounds amazing.

Tom Marks [: 00:29:49

Amazing.

Lisa [: 00:29:50

Amazing. Yes. So are you happy?

Tom Marks [: 00:29:56

I, I am. And I just, I found that, Lisa, my path of happiness is writing. And there's a that that's just it for me. That, I mean, there are a lot of things that make me happy. I mean, I love to travel and I, I love to work out and be fit. But I really am so happy writing. That's my path. And my book before this book, which was called the second best business book ever written, which was a bestseller.

Tom Marks [: 00:30:40

When I accepted this bestseller award a couple years ago, the first thing I did was I apologized to my wife for writing between 1am and 7am every morning, but that it was my time. It was like I was brutal and, and I enjoyed it. And of course, I knew I could, you know, take a snooze at some point during the day. But in my acceptance speech, that was, I think it was actually for the best nonfiction book in 2024. But the first thing I did before I started talking about AI was thanking and apologizing my wife for letting me do this.

Lisa [: 00:31:36

And she forgave you? That's to be determined.

Tom Marks [: 00:31:42

I did not do that often in this current book. I didn't.

Lisa [: 00:31:50

Well, I understand why you did it when you were still working or before retirement. I do it, too. So much of what you are saying, Tom, I can see in myself because that's the only quiet time you get. So I suspect the book's available any place you can buy books, obviously on Amazon. What do you want to leave our listeners with? This has been delightful and very insightful.

Tom Marks [: 00:32:18

Oh, you're so kind. And thanks for the very nice words. Yes, it's available on Amazon and it comes like in two or three days. So there are other places to get it. But, you know, Amazon obviously is the place. But I just really wish the best for everyone who's in retirement or taking a look at it. And I'm not going to give advice because there's so many people that are doing that rather than me. But all I can say is find your groove, your mojo, and do what the Buddha said.

Tom Marks [: 00:33:02

Find your path of happiness, not the path to happiness, because that will never happen.

Lisa [: 00:33:10

Wonderful. And I just want to say the book is recommended for and I'm reading directly from something you sent me. Overachievers, late career professionals, and anyone secretly dreading what happens when the job ends. And I know that does describe some of our listeners and maybe even your host. Till next time, listeners, thank you for listening. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be forever at your back.