INC:
Forget shuffleboard and croquet. With Americans living longer, a growing number of people are embarking on entrepreneurial second careers - well into their 80s. Indeed, for many, running a company has become the new retirement. So what are the real secrets to longevity, in business and in life?
At 85, Bob Galvin was recently sidelined by eye surgery. Although he’ll now require custom-made glasses, the former chief of Motorola still expects - as he does every year - to hit the ski slopes this winter in Vail, Colo.
It also won’t keep him from ‘calling the shots’ at the pair of research and development ventures he launched in recent years, each seeking to revolutionize part of the nation’s aging infrastructure - from revamping the power grid to wiping out big-city gridlock. ‘I had to live long enough to be able to make a contribution without worrying about losing my investment,’ Galvin, who helped build Motorola’s revenue from $216 million to $6.7 billion over 30 years before stepping down as CEO in 1986, says about taking on such ambitious and time-consuming projects so late in life. Besides, some people just aren’t cut out for retirement.
84 year old Phyllis Apple agrees. The CEO of the Apple Organization, a North Miami Beach, Fla.-based public-relations firm, Apple says she’s in great health and has plenty of time for golf and needlepoint on the weekends - despite working full time. ‘I have everything I want,’ she says. ‘Why should I retire?’
Galvin and Apple, like the other members of Inc.com’s 8 Over 80 list, are in good company among a small but growing number of unstoppable octogenarians (and older) who are spending their twilight years presiding over new and old ventures alike, rather than hitting the shuffle board courts or joining the bridge club. If this eclectic group had an honorary chairman, it would be Jack Weil, the 106-year-old CEO of Rockmount Ranch Wear, a Denver, Colorado-based apparel firm, whose cowboy shirts were popular with former President Ronald Reagan and were more recently worn by the cast of Brokeback Mountain.
What keeps these new old-timers going?
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