I ran my fastest mile this morning. I’m 68 years old and not ready to “retire,” whatever that means. I think we’ve been sold a lot of BS when it comes to aging, work, retirement, and what it looks like to flourish at every stage of life.
For me, anyway, I am called to be a teacher, leader, and change agent. The next chapter of my life includes building a movement, a business, and a way of life that brings wisdom into the conversation precisely when it seems needed the most. That work requires being a digital entrepreneur at a time when that world is being turned upside down and inside out. And I have a lot to learn on the fly, in real time, as I go.
The best way to do that, for me, is to be open, vulnerable, and “public” about the learning process. That way, I get feedback as I run the reps, gain insights faster from market response, gather a team and community of like-minded friends for the journey, and hold myself both accountable AND capable of leading in this world, just like I have in many others before.
My fastest mile this morning was the result of putting in the reps over the past two years, since I started running at the urging of my performance coach, Danielle Beardsley from Center for Creative Growth. Even though separated physically by about 50 miles, we run together weekly, attached only by voice through Bluetooth, and the experience has been transformative.
There are a variety of performance psychology and neurobiological dynamics that make this very effective for mental AND physical performance that I will certainly talk about in coming posts and videos. For now, though, the connection is in doing the work, showing up, and learning to run while building the identity of a runner.
When I started, it was a walk-walk-walk-walk-jog…walk-walk-walk-walk-jog kind of thing. But that has changed over the past two years, and this summer I went from walk-run-walk-run to, one day, just continuing to run. I covered 3.5 miles at a 12:30 pace. I was elated and surprised. That was two months ago.
This past Saturday, I ran the Naperville Trails 10K. I did that in an official time of 1 hour, 10 minutes, and 31 seconds, which is apparently an 11:22-per-mile pace. That is wonderful for me.
That was Saturday. Then Sunday, I did a 31-mile bike ride at about 19.5 miles per hour. Glorious morning. Then I took Monday, Labor Day, off. Then Tuesday, September 8, and I went out for a two-mile run and ran my best mile ever. It was really phenomenal. I ran a mile in 9 minutes and 53 seconds. That is the first time since my 30s that I’ve done something like that.
That’s the way it’s going to go with me as a teacher, content creator, thought leader, intellectual property master, executive coach, entrepreneur, lifestyle entrepreneur – all the titles and buzzwords that are out there.
I am a teacher. A leader. Teacher. Change agent. That’s the way I see myself. That’s the way I show up in the world. That’s how I help my corporate clients, and it’s how I’ve helped individual clients. It’s how I’ve helped organizations. It’s how I’ve helped churches.
But I’ve not been an expert at being online and doing that. I’ve been like a lot of other people. I’ve had social media followings, with groups of people who know me as a pastor or diver or grandpa or what have you. But I’ve never really done that intentionally.
So I will be creating content, thoughts, ideas, and perspectives on a variety of topics that are of interest to me. They will show up first on my YouTube channel and here at GlenWagner.com. From there, some of them will find their way into FinishStrong Group, which is my executive coaching, leadership coaching, and mental performance coaching practice. Some of those thoughts will show up in Missio Selah, which is my online church and spiritual community. Some of those thoughts will show up in interesting new ways for ideas that we’re developing. And some of them will just be Glen being Glen. If you’re interested, great – follow me. If not, that’s cool too.
So this is me building in public.
Now, what I need to do is riff a little bit. I had a great working session with ChatGPT, and I use AI as a partner – a thinking partner, a brainstorming partner. I come up with the ideas and I say, “What do you think?” I ask it to red-team. I ask it to push back. I ask it to find the flaws in my thinking.
I did that this morning when I was talking about how I need to become a content creator first. And so that’s where this article came from: Reinvention at 68. What happens when you just aren’t ready to be done? And that’s this.
So I am going to riff now a little bit. Some of the things I need to do are pretty potent.
I’m not starting over. I’m building forward. I’m carrying decades of stories and mistakes, relationships and questions, the wisdom of failures and transformations that I’ve lived through, into a medium that I am learning to master.
I am becoming a creator, teacher, and change agent – someone who turns lived experience, disciplined thinking, real-time stories, frameworks, tools, and practices into things that will help people learn to flourish, learn to change, learn to grow, experience this world in all of its fullness, and get out of it what they want.
It’s not happening in a nice, clean laboratory, though. I’m 68 years old. I’m a husband supporting my wife through stage 4 cancer. I’m a father of three and a grandfather of nine. I am navigating significant family change, grief, and financial and legal stress right now that lots of people go through at different ages.
I’m building several lines of business and communities. I’m training seriously as a masters athlete in running and will be starting triathlon training soon. I’m developing Finish Strong. I’m developing Missio Selah. I’m learning an entirely new media discipline.
I continue to work out what faithfulness, calling, joy, and human flourishing mean in this season. I’m thinking through theological problems that I see in the world around me. I’m thinking philosophically. I’m thinking about NOI and EBITDA and go-to-market strategy. I’m thinking about reinvention and recovery and what my red-light therapy and infrared sauna are doing for me.
Those are a handful of things that I want to talk about on GlenWagner.com. I’m planning another set of dives with my good friend John. We’ll be going to Tiger Beach sometime next spring to dive with tiger sharks. I love to take my camera down there and capture some images, some of which you’ll see on this website.
But the realization came to me that I need to be a creator first. Social media is not the work. It’s just a distribution system. The real work, for me, is creating original thought and expression. Not something that AI generates and then I post. Not some AI slop, but something that originates from my heart, mind, soul, body, strength, and lived experience.
I want to tell the stories, create the stories, and build the stories, ideas, questions, frameworks, tools, and practices that help me; that help me help you; that help emerging leaders; that help overcomers; that help senior executives; that help entrepreneurs; that help legacy builders continue building until they take their last breath. That’s what I want to do.
I’ve spent decades creating transformation in rooms and relationships, through sermons, coaching conversations, funerals, strategic planning retreats, meetings, and moments. What I’ve not done consistently is capture that work and give it a digital life. That is what I’m doing now.
So my first creative responsibility every day is to make something exist that did not exist before, at least not from me.
I could actually call this section of this article “All the Things,” because my brain is filled right now with dozens, maybe hundreds, of synapses firing and sparks firing in my brain. Once you become a digital creator, the internet is absolutely overjoyed and delighted to inform you about the approximately 57,000 things you now need to learn – and the 57,000 experts you can learn them from, even though there are 57,000 different ways that each of those experts does it. And each way is different from the other guy’s. At least that’s my experience.
Some of the things I need to learn: how to make sure that my camera and gear are set up down here in my content creator laboratory so that the workflow flows. I don’t like sticking points, and I’ll tend to avoid little sticking points. I don’t want to do that.
How to shoot B-roll when I’m out running, when I’m out working, and when I’m out doing the things that I’m doing. How to tell the story while I’m living the story. How to tell a compelling story in two minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes.
I need to learn how to open strongly without being manipulative. I need to learn how YouTube works, how Instagram and LinkedIn differ, how to write for digital readers, and how to record good audio and video.
I need to figure out how to create repeatable series and stories. It seems to me that that’s the way the world is moving, at least in my experience of the internet. I tend to engage with those creators who tell a story, whether it’s a two-minute version or a 22-minute version. I want to see a beginning, a middle, and an end so I can see the messy middle. Because, as a coach with wisdom, I know that the messy middle is where stuff happens. It’s magical.
So I need to figure out how to recognize what resonates with the right people, do it consistently, and not just obey the algorithm. Everybody will tell me what I need to do with the hooks, the lines, the copywriting, the funnels, the leads, and the lead magnets. And you know what? They’re not wrong. But they’re also not ultimately right.
I need to learn how to develop my own unmistakable and unshakable voice. How to invite people into community. How to create consistently without reducing everything to content.
Things I’m working on building: a story bank. I’ve got about 78 stories listed that are relevant to people at various stages of their lives. And I need to tell them so that those things become powerful tools.
An idea-capture system. A weekly creative rhythm. How to work with Monday.com or ClickUp.com, whichever tool or platform we decide to finalize. A recording workflow. An editorial calendar. A YouTube library. A newsletter. A useful presence on LinkedIn and Instagram.
How I can build those presences and let my virtual assistant make sure that the identity is authentic to me, respects the algorithm, but doesn’t bow down to it. A process through which my VA can turn the source material into multiple expressions. A system for tracking what has been created, published, learned, and reused. Clear relationships between GlenWagner.com, Finish Strong, and Missio Selah. And a pathway from public media to deeper community and transformation.
Some of the actions I need to take: I need to write. To record. To practice. To publish. To stumble. To review. To learn. Improve. Respond to people. Repeat myself. Tolerate small numbers. Stop confusing planning with creating. Allow early work to look like early work. That’s what this is, for sure. And then keep showing up.
I can’t master all of that this week. So the next article I’ll be writing is what my ideal content creator, teacher-creator week might look like.
But for this article, I’m stopping right here. This is what I intended to do. This is my first act of building in public. This is what I think I’m going to do. It’s probably too long, too mushy, but I’m literally getting my thoughts out of my head.
And let me just finish with this. I think the core of all of this is going to be the way of excellence. My core values are: Be Bold. Be Intentional. Be Kind & Fierce. Be Excellent. Make an Impact. Own the Day. Reality Test everything.
“Be Excellent” used to be “Be Productive.” But productivity is just an outcome of living the other values. And excellence is different from perfection. Perfection is never going to be helpful to me. It gets in my way too often.
I want to be excellent. Excellence is doing the absolute best that I can with the best resources that I have, as of right now, that are available to me – and then learning from that and being a little bit better tomorrow.
I love what Brad Stulberg, author of The Way of Excellence, said in a recent Instagram post. He said, “Excellence is this: Show up on good days. Show up on bad days. Show up when you want to. Show up when you don’t want to. Show up when you’re hot, when you’re cold, when you’re energetic, when you’re tired, when there’s a crowd, when nobody’s watching. Show up for others and show up for yourself. Show up when it’s a struggle. Show up when you’re having fun, when you’confident, when you face doubts, when it’s easy, and when it’s hard.”
And that’s what I intend to do here, friends. The first place I intend to do it is GlenWagner.com, because I can say anything here, and hopefully you’ll give me some feedback. No hate mail. Just feedback is good.
But this is it. This is what it looks like to reinvent at 68. Because I absolutely refuse to be finished.