How To Thrive After 65 Without Shrinking Your Life with Ande Lyons

Reimagining Aging As Possibility

What if aging wasn't something to resist, but something to expand into? This is a conversation about possibility, identity, and choosing to stay fully alive no matter your age. In this episode, I am joined by Andy Lyons, entrepreneur, podcast host, and a passionate advocate for redefining life after 65. We explore what it means to break free from age-related expectations, why staying engaged and connected matters more than ever, and how small, meaningful steps can reignite purpose at any stage of life. So, welcome to Connect, Inspire, Create, a podcast exploring meaningful conversations about life, work, and creativity and the ways we can grow. Let's slow down the conversation just enough to notice what inspires us and how those insights can help shape what we create in our lives. I'm Carol Clegg, your host, a gentle accountability and mental fitness coach, inviting my guests from around the globe with a wide range of backgrounds to share insights on how they live, think, and navigate the wonderful challenges of just being a human in our world.

So, welcome, Andy. Oh, Carol, I am so delighted to be here. And hello to all the listeners. I'm thrilled that you're tuning in for this delicious conversation. Isn't Carol the best host ever?

Andy’s Founder Story And Granola Business

I have a lot of competition here. I'm going to have to share with you because let me introduce Andy to you. So Andy Lyons is a four-times founder, a formal global startup mentor, and a longtime podcast host with over 900 episodes to her name. Today she is the voice behind Don't Be Caged by Your Age. I absolutely love that title. I could just visualize a lioness in a cage. But it's a podcast dedicated to helping people thrive after 65. Hello, myself and Andy both here, by challenging age-related expectations and just reimagining what's possible later in life. And I know, Andy, you call these and delicious conversations. And she highlights stories of individuals who are living with purpose and clarity and curiosity and proving that life doesn't slow down unless we decide it should. And she's also the founder of New England Podcasters Group. I think that's absolutely awesome. Oh my goodness, I wish we could have something like that to put us in person. So that is that is wonderful. And let's talk about that in a little bit. But Andy, other than this official introduction and all the wonderful things that you're involved in, I'd love to start with just a little more personal question, if I may. Bring it on. All right. So when people first meet you, what is one thing that they are super surprised to learn?

Super surprised to learn? Oh my gosh. Wow, I don't even know where to go with that. So it's at this age and stage, right? Yeah. When people go, wow, I didn't know that, or wow, you do that, or you know, they often did not know that I had all the businesses that I've had, but in particular my food manufacturing business. You know, a lot of times you think of launching a business, it's usually a tech business or a service-related business. But rarely do people imagine that one has actually had to produce a product that has an expiration date and scale it.

Tell me about the food business quickly. I'd love to know what what tell me more.

Well, it was after 9-11, and Martha Stewart had said, go back in the kitchen, right? To to get through this period. So I developed this granola recipe and I couldn't stop eating it. And I shared it over the holidays, and everybody couldn't stop eating it. And someone said, You have to turn this into a business. And so I put out some, you know, threw down the gauntlet, so to speak. Well, if this happens and that happens and this happens, I'll do it. Most importantly, if I can find a licensed bakery where I can produce it, I'll do it. And honest to gosh, Carol, everything came together. Boom, boom, boom. Licensed, I mean, with no effort at all.

Right.

It's fantastic. And it was fun. And I scaled it nationally in less than two years because I didn't focus on getting on shelves. I focused on taking advantage of my women-owned business status because you are a minority vendor then for the big food service companies like Sedexo, Amarok, and Compass and places like that. So it was wild. And I in hindsight would never have done a food company in my life. Well, congratulations. But we had a great five-year run, but Mother Nature shut me down. And that's all part of the journey.

Don’t Be Caged By Your Age

Absolutely. Part of the season, right? We have to welcome those in and take that learning experience. So I'd love to just dive in, starting with your podcast. Don't be caged by your age. What does that mean to you? How do you put that across?

Oh my gosh. Well, you know, I was, of course, multiple founder, but I became a startup mentor in 2016 and I joined accelerator programs that help mentor. I'm judging panels. And then in 2018, I started a monthly pitch event in Boston for founders to pitch their value prop. It was all live. And I kept seeing the ageism happening, especially when, in the nicest of ways, investors and other mentors would suggest a founder share your business as if you were telling your grandma. And to me, that was double ageism plus gendered ageism because I never heard grandpa. But I would jump up and go, just a reminder, we started tech companies in the 70s. We were doing everything. We are not tech challenged, we are tech legends, us boomers. So, and I kept seeing it, but also I knew and it was told all the time, people all thought I was in my early 50s and I was in my 60s. And I thought, what do I do? I mean, I've got 30-year-olds who can't get enough of me. Wait till they find out I could be their grandmother, right? And I said, when I turned 66 in 2022, I said, I have got to come out about my age. And so I wrote a post on LinkedIn called Don't Be Caged by Your Age. And it was because I felt that the internalized, indoctrinated, ageist beliefs I held that it and biases that I didn't even know. The fact I I questioned how can these, you know, 20-somethings think I'm wonderful because I'm over 65 here. And I I couldn't get across that bridge. The bridge, right? Link it together. Yeah. And I saw that it was really caged by my age, because what are you going to do next? And I started the post off by saying when I turned 50, I thought that's it for my entrepreneurship days. That's a younger person's game. I can't do that. Fast forward 16 years, I've had two more businesses, right? So let's talk about shattering that ageist belief. And so the post went viral, Carol, and the comments were either heartbreaking because of the ageism people were up against, or exhilarating because folks figured out how to thrive and still bring their joy, fully expressed selves in all new ways to the world. And I just said, okay, I have to start doing this podcast. I've got to figure out how I can share this pro-aging message to the world. And you know, I took a photo of myself, Carol, for that post holding up the US Route 66, which is a really well-known route here in the US, because I was it's about five minutes from me. Yeah, right, exactly. And so I and you the look on my face clearly says, Will you still love me now that you know I'm this friggin' old? That's how worried I was. But I knew I had to be out in the world aging out loud and proud to set the example. And I've had people who have invited onto the podcast who have said, What? I have to age out loud on the podcast. Yeah, I go, it's the first question I ask. How old are you? Or how long have we had the gift of your presence? What is your age and where do you live? And they're like, Yeah, no, I can't do it.

So, you know, it's but isn't that funny? Because you know, I think about it as you're sharing that. And it's yes, you kind of you don't brag or broadcast your age. And why not?

Why not? We have so much lived experience, and today, where it's so turbulent in the world, our grounded wisdom from decades of lived experiences, from surviving the 70s, 80s, 90s, the aughts, right? We have been through it all. We've had to onboard new clients in the worst conditions. Right. We remember the Vietnam War. We remember the civil rights movement in the late 60s and how horrible it was. We remember the AIDS epidemic. We have been through challenging economic times. Our wisdom is needed more than ever now. And that includes in corporations that that institutional knowledge that we bring, that the 30 and 40-year-old, who are very innovative, very, you know, ambitious, all the good things, they need that guidance that we can bring. And also, by the way, innovation and ambition does not have an expiration date.

So the other thing that it brings makes me think of is also that you know, we we learn how to give ourselves permission now at this age. And it's quite sad when you think of younger folk who don't give themselves permission. And it's such a it's a beautiful gift at this age.

It really is. And also managing what one of my guests, Judith Koenig, said our energy portfolio, right? Where do we want to expend our energy? Right. How do we want to be in the world? Because wow, we only have so much time left. We do not know. It could be another 20, 30 years. Absolutely. It could be a few weeks, we don't know. So we get very clear and very discerning, right? About how we want to spend our time.

Ageism At Work And Lost Talent

And you talk about ageism wasting a generation of talent. What does that look like in real life?

Oh my gosh. So you okay, New York Times, a 52-year-old Yale professor wrote the most awful post in the New York Times, article in the New York Times, about how folks 55 plus need to get out of the way, especially the boomers. They're hugging the wealth, they're hogging the houses, they're hogging this, they're hogging that. Get out of the way. And I thought, what the heck are you talking about? And we, a lot of us in the pro-aging world, pushbacked big time. Any of the listeners want to find that article, it's under Janine Vandenberg, is her name. She shared the article and she went wild and she did a great pushback to the New York Times and to that Yale professor. Because you stop people from working after 55, you consider them permafrost at 60. You are wasting generations of talent because you need, and I say you, the institutions, the corporations, a small startup, you need the seasoned person on your team bringing their thoughtfulness, their understanding, and their empathy.

I'm just gonna say compassion. Right. I mean, wow, where was that professor's compassion with the way he was a she.

It was a she. And on top of that, you know, one of the biggest side effects or side benefits from the podcast that I've had are the 40 and 50 year olds who say to me, Oh my gosh, you mean I can pursue those dreams then? Because right now I'm so overwhelmed with kids, taking care of my parents, doing all these things, working, trying to keep the roof over my head. I have dreams inside of me and I live under this constant pressure. If I don't do it now, I'll never have that real that fulfillment. And now they go, okay, so this is what I'm doing for the next 20 years, and then I'll do that for 20 years. You know, I'm pulling that to the end. Yeah, it's liberating.

Oh, uh yeah, that's so I'm just saying that, and you're thinking some of there's some quiet beliefs that people carry around, and that it holds them back, and they haven't even realized that. So, how important to listen.

Right. And and you know, the World Health Organization came out in 2021 saying that retirement was an epidemic causing societies billions of dollars because you kick somebody out of the workforce, and not all of us have that internal drive to keep going, right? They end up on the couch and they become old and it's indoctrinated in them about what does old look like, okay? And they start taking and embodying all of those things. Well, then they start getting the health issues and become a burden to society and their family as a result.

Positive Aging In Daily Life

And I, you know, just what as you're talking about, that that whole scenario just it feels so depressing. Right. And so then you add to the mental health problems of um of age. So what does positive aging, what can it look like on a day-to-day basis?

A day-to-day basis is really embracing this age and stage of life. So I tell folks, okay, you made it to 65. Think back 20 years and what you did, right? Oh my gosh, the life you lived. Well, if you've made it to 65, there's a good chance you're gonna make it to 85. What are you gonna do with those 20 years? How do you fuel your passion, your purpose, and your pocketbook? Because you still want to keep earning if you can, if you're not set up with a you know, trust fund or whatever, right? Many of us are not, and so we need to find ways to combine all of that. And so part of the pro-aging is not only recognizing that you want to embrace these years as possibilities and potential, but you also want to embrace your age in a way that you walk into the room and you're like, I am so okay being the oldest person in this room. I think one of the fastest ways to dissolve ageism is to show up in intergenerational uh groups and meetings and places and spaces. And so they get to see, wow, well, she's got barnacles and brown spots and wrinkles and you know, and all of that, but dang, she's alive and thriving and doing all these things and she's contributing and very visible. Wow, I want to be like that when I get that age.

I love it as you're sharing that. I'm sort of thinking of situations because I I have my daughter and her husband staying with me until the end of this year, which is fabulous to just walk with me in my journey of being a new widow and just giving me support. And they go to a game night in town, you know, every night. And I've often said, Well, yeah, I'm gonna come with you one night because it's all their young friends, they're in their 30s. And she's like, You must come, Mom. Somebody else brought their mom.

So, first of all, I am just I just love your daughter and son-in-law. Is that what his daughter and son-in-law so much, Carol, for being with you and walking through this time with you? Wow.

And we have a beautiful relationship, so I'm grateful for that. But I I I hear what you're saying about showing up in the room and just being you, just claiming you, the the the sticker of the age or the route 66 that we could hold up. And I love that because a friend of mine did something similar when they turned 66 and was like, under a root 66 sign. So 66 is my year this year. So I'll just walk down the road and uh that's right.

You'll be aging out loud and proud, and you've got decades ahead of you, Carol. And the other thing I want to remind folks is remember the beauty brands, they're not selling you youth, they're selling you shame and they're making you feel feel badly, like it's your fault that you're aging. It is just please ignore all those messages. And if you can purchase from brands who are about, hey, let me just, you know, make sure your skin is feeling good when you wake up, right? Let's make sure the makeup isn't making your eyeballs tear and you know, and face breakout. Let's say, how do we enhance you to be the best you you want to be?

And it's interesting because you say that. You know, we talk about exercise and importance of exercise and getting out and walking and et cetera. And you know, just the same way, our face can take a little exercise. It doesn't have to have all the beauty products, you know. So, one thing, I mean, both you and I love smiling. Uh, but so yeah, for people that perhaps don't get to see this, yeah, those are the important things. Forget about the wrinkle that it's gonna cause on the forehead.

Oh my gosh, Carol, there's a great actress, Andy McDowell. I don't know if you know her. Four Weddings and a Funeral was her breakout movie, but she was being interviewed, and beautiful woman was a model, was being interviewed. She's 65, 66, I think your age, and uh, she's being interviewed by an Italian journalist. And the person said, So what is basically, what is life like now that you're no longer beautiful? And so Andy shares the story. She goes, Well, at first I thought, did I have a translation problem? And but she went on to share, and this is the point I wanted to make, is that your beauty comes out through your eyes, the sparkle in your eyes, and the smile, the brightness of your smile and your warm heart. That's your beauty in the world.

And the words that you choose to use, your kindness. Oh my goodness, if we could all just add a big dose of kindness stuck to our conversations. But radical self-love. That's like right, right. So why is staying engaged and learning new things important as we get older?

Learning New Skills And Brain Health

Oh my gosh, the brain is a beautiful thing. I learned from another one of my guests the fact that, and she's studied the brain big time as it ages. And a lot of times we think that we're forgetting things, and oh my gosh, here we go, memory loss is happening. She says, No, by the time you reach our age, our brains are like the Library of Congress versus a small bookstore like in our 30s. When we go to find information, we have to go deep and pull it out. So that's why it usually takes us to really a long time sometimes to retrieve, but it also means that we need to have a little more patience with ourselves. We can learn new things. In fact, from the same person, I learned that our brain doesn't actually fully form until we're 59. That's our peak at 59.

Wow.

So learning new things gets the synapses going. And boy, it brings me right back to the fact that boomers are tech legends, not tech challenge. Think about what you went from the manual typewriter to the computer, the dial phone to the smartphone, you know, the answering machines with cassettes that we used to have to wrangle with, all the things that we photocopy machines, everything, printers that we have had to learn and evolve and then train people how to use. Our brains love learning new things, whether it's maybe learning how to write a book or take on a new project. I just interviewed a guy who was a public radio legend, but he was always the producer of all these incredible programs. He knew how to slice maybe a piece of audio film tape and put it together. But when he retired at the age of 70, he went on to want to produce podcasts for people and learn all this digital stuff. He had to teach himself how to use all the tools we have today for recording. No problem. He just had an award-winning 13-episode series about Billy Holiday that was carried on NPR stations, you know? Amazing. Yeah.

So those stories are so important to share, to inspire people to write.

And my husband, 74, he just was using Perplexity, which is an AI platform, to build a model. So he created the foundation of the model. Then he hopped onto Lovable and created the app based on that financial model. But guess what, folks? He knew what a financial model needed to look like. He knew because of his institutional knowledge of decades. We're going to go back to don't waste these generations of time. So he knew the right questions to ask AI and to tell it, no, you're off the on the wrong track because he had the decades of experience. Bring it back.

Building Community Through Podcasting

Yeah, bring it back to that. Wow. So we I wanted to, in the beginning, we spoke about your podcast community. And this ties into the role that community plays when people find their people again. Yeah, I've I'm jealous that you've got a podcast community because I'd love to have one here that's live. But talk more about this role of community and finding finding your people.

Well, Carol, yeah, I woke up in January of tw 2024 and I said, Look, I need local. People. I had a rich and vibrant online community, but I love hugging in real life. I call it hurling. And so I thought, well, who let me go check up meet, check on Meetup and Eventbrite, see what's going on. I didn't see anything that really resonated for me. And again, we go back to the being discerning about where we put out our energy and time. And I thought, well, who do I love to hang out with most? Independent podcasters. They're all passionate about what they're doing, whether it's paranormal or Italian cooking, right? Parenting or growing a business. They're talking about things that really matter to them. And I thought, well, I love going to our annual indie podcaster event, Podfest, but that's only once a year. What if I were to set up a community here in New England? And I didn't want it to be Boston or Massachusetts, where I wanted to, I wanted to really reach out to the six states. And so I did a quick check with a Zoom call with a bunch of folks that I knew, about 10 or 13 folks, and said, What do you think? They're all like, Oh, please, dear God, yes, we need it. And I knew from having a monthly pitch event for founders that being at the same place at the same time consistently really helps folks. So I set it up to be the second Saturday at 12 noon. And it had to be a Saturday, which is really a stretch to if you're going to set up an in-person event. But if you're driving from all over New England, you're not fighting traffic. Okay. So Saturday. That's important. Right. And then and then to make sure that I didn't throw a party and nobody showed up, right? I made sure I had a featured speaker. You know, Frank, can you talk about monetizing monetization with podcasts? She's like, absolutely. And then I said, and Lou, can you just be there as my wingman? And he said, yes. And then one of the folks on that initial Zoom call said, Have I got the place for you to host this event? And it was a local cable access TV station. And it was right off one of the major highways that people would easily get to from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. And so the first event, we had, I think, 15 people show up, and that was in May of 2024. And two years later, we have a thriving, vibrant indie podcast community that is rooted in New England, but it's open to all. So I set up a virtual pod garden for community podcast garden, pod garden, so we can all collaborate virtually. And then also because it's at a TV studio, we have a great cameraman. And those who tune in virtually, you usually have about five to ten folks who tune in virtually from around the world every month at our meetup. They get to participate and see and network and do all the things. And so we're getting ready to celebrate.

Isn't that beautiful?

And what did I know about setting up an online platform? But you know, I did the research and I chose circle.so and because it was most like a Facebook group feel to it. And boom. Yeah. So, and now I have a membership. And so for a modest fee a year, people are now members of the Pod Garden and we stay connected. And I have featured speakers that come in on the virtual end as well. But that level of community and support, honestly, I'm not a talking head, I'm just the steward. Everybody else is building the rich relationships and collaborating and bringing their expertise or asking their important questions. We've helped more people launch and grow their podcasts over the two years. It's been wonderful.

One Small Step To Start Today

Wonderful. So, Andy, if someone feels a spark listening, which I hope they do to everything that we've been talking about, but they feel a little hesitant, what is one small step that they could take this week and go, okay, I'm going to embrace this. I'm going to try.

It's a privilege to be able to move your body. It's not a chore. So if there's anything that you can do, is to get out into the world. One thing where you can be in an intergenerational room, community event. Get out there, find a way that you can go and have conversations with people. Get on Meetup or Eventbrite, see what's going on. Maybe there's something that will pique your interest that you can go. It'll be scary the first time you walk into that room, but the world needs you. They're not done with you. And we need your beauty. We need your fully expressed self. And you are a valuable contributor to our world and society.

Where To Find Andy And Carol

What a beautiful message to end our conversation, Andy. But before we go, I'd love for people to know where to find you. So what is the best place? Where do we send people to connect with you?

Well, Andy A N D E Lions, you're going to find me on LinkedIn and all the social media platforms to tune into the podcast, which I hope you do. Please visit don't be caged by your age.com. And when you click on the episode, you can see that you can easily watch via YouTube or listen from all the podcast links. You can just click your favorite and tune in and just let me know what are your thoughts about aging and how are you making out. And and I'd love to hear from you.

Andy, this has been a wonderful, fabulous conversation. So inspiring for me sitting here at 65. So I do hope that everybody else who's out there and listening that you just you feel the big warm hug around the journey that you've still got ahead of you. And I just invite you, if you are listening, to share this episode with a friend because you just never know. Everybody else needs to know about this. And so by you sharing and spreading the word, somebody else might be inspired and just get to live the best next season of their life.

Thank you so much for having me, Carol.

Absolutely. And so thank you to those listening. And if you're a woman coach or a business owner craving focus, connection, or just a gentle bit of accountability, there are a couple of ways that we can work together. You can join my monthly mindset to Momentum Complimentary Accountability Circle for support with your goals and challenges in life and business. Or you could explore my 90 day accountability package for more personal support. You too can connect with me on LinkedIn, Carol Clegg, or you'll find me at Carol Clegg.com. So until the next time, may your choices bring you ease and flow.