During recent interviews I’ve been challenged to more clearly define the market for career reinvention.  Is it:

• mid-career executives?
• moms re-entering the workforce after an extended stay at home?
• people who have lost an old-school manufacturing job?

When I answered the question, I felt like I wasn’t explaining it correctly. “Reinvention is for everyone!” I would proclaim. In a world where branding and positioning and advertising is so laser-focused at one specific niche audience, claiming universal appeal and interest seemed hype-ey.

But it’s not. The answer to these questions is yes. We have ample evidence that rethinking what one does for a paycheck is for everyone, no matter your age.

I stumbled upon this tremendous article in The Bold Italic blog about losing a position at one of the Bay Area’s innumerable startups. Many of these fledgling enterprises employ the youngest of the young; the CEO might be 22. There are almost zero “old” people inside these companies.

Article author Lauryn McCarthy wrote, “Dating a tech start-up can feel like dating in San Francisco. Don’t be surprised by the noncommittal relationship.”

McCarthy details the stages of dealing with being let go by a startup:

• shock
• denial
• isolation
• sadness
• depression
• upward turn
• rebuilding

Sound familiar? These are the feelings Mom and Dad have had to process when their working lives were upended.

When you are young, you probably don’t own much, and not much owns you. Recovery is simpler when there aren’t children and mortgages and grandma to consider. But it still sucks, and finding the next path to walk can be as agonizing as it is for that sacked mid-career regional manager.

Here’s the good news – better days are ahead.  After we get a handle on our place in the world, we can forge ahead to the next thing, whether we are 25, or 50.

John Scott is an instructor, online learning coordinator, and the career services manager for the School of Multimedia Communications, Academy of Art University San Francisco.  His book “Destination:Reinvention” is on sale now in the Amazon bookstore.  

Discover your daily reinvention tip at destinationreinvention.com.  

@ReinventionBook