Midlife MavericksWhen I was a little girl and something didn’t go as planned, I would complain to my mum and she would always say, “Don’t worry, that’s human capital.” Over the years that got shortened to “it’s human capital” and it’s still a running joke between us.
My mum is an economist through and through. Human capital is the name economists give to the idea that your skills, knowledge, and experience compound over time.
The interesting thing is that my mum was never an entrepreneur. But she always had this “try it” attitude. And so did my dad – he was a serial experimentalist at heart. So maybe I got the bug from them.
So why on earth am I talking about this today?
Because when I started this newsletter, I didn’t really have a clue. Not a f*cking clue.
I didn’t know where it was going or what I wanted from it. And gosh, it was painful to write it.
One day, I called one of my best friends and said: “You know what? I haven’t a clue where this is going. I don’t know what the objective is. But I’m just going to write. If I fail, I fail. And I don’t even know what success is in this case.”
As I’m preparing to do a webinar for a bunch of Gen Z professionals in London, this really got me thinking about my life and my career. How much have I got from this “it’s human capital” approach?
My outlook has always been: if I win or I lose, I always win. Typical me – I refuse to leave an experience without squeezing a lesson out of it.
And when I was looking at quotes for this week, I found one from one of the most amazing people on earth, whose work and legacy I so admire (“Long Walk to Freedom” is one of the books of my life).
Quote of the Week
“I never lose. I either win or learn.”
Nelson Mandela
What Perfectionism Actually Costs You
You know what happens when you treat every outcome like a final verdict? You replay conversations endlessly. You freeze before taking action. You assume one mistake defines your competence. You let your entire identity ride on whether something worked or didn’t.
And the worst part? You waste hours ruminating when you could be moving forward.
I see this constantly with women in their 40s and 50s. We’ve spent decades in environments that trained us to obsess over outcomes. But there’s another way to look at this.
When you start treating experiences as information instead of identity, everything shifts. And this is where being 40+ becomes your secret weapon. You’ve lived enough to know that resilience matters more than perfection, even if corporate never rewarded that.
Stop Learning from Success
Bram Stoker said: “We learn from failure, not from success.”
Success feels great, but it teaches you almost nothing. Failure is where the real upgrades happen.
Sara Blakely tells this story about how her dad used to ask at dinner, “What did you fail at today?” Failure wasn’t shameful in their house. It was proof you were trying.
So instead of asking yourself “Did I hit the target?” after something doesn’t go to plan, try asking: What did this teach me? What will I do differently next time?
It’s a simple shift, but it changes everything. You’re no longer in the courtroom waiting for a verdict. You’re gathering intelligence.
Your Decades in Corporate? That’s Compound Interest
Economists have a term for this: human capital. Your skills, knowledge, and experience don’t just add up over time. They multiply.
Oscar Wilde put it perfectly: “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
Every redundancy, every toxic boss, every stalled promotion, every failed side hustle. Those weren’t wasted years. They built something that no 28-year-old LinkedIn influencer can replicate: judgment, pattern recognition, and resilience.
Think about one painful moment from your corporate life. Now write down what it actually gave you. I bet you can find at least a few assets hiding in there.
Nothing Gets Wasted
There’s a principle in chemistry: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” This one is from Lavoisier, and it’s another running joke between me and my mum.
It applies to midlife reinvention too.
Johnny Cash said: “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone.”
All those hard chapters? They were compost. Raw material for what you’re building now.
But Only If You Reflect
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t actually learn from experience. You learn from reflecting on experience. John Dewey said that, and he was right.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. A 5-minute debrief after a meeting. A quick note about what went sideways and why. A running list of “things I’d do differently.”
The women who make the biggest shifts aren’t the ones who move fastest. They’re the ones who pause long enough to extract meaning.
Why You’re Not Behind
Albert Einstein said: “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
This is why midlife women have an unfair advantage. We’re not here for surface-level learning. We’re here for evolution.
You’re right on time.
You’ve already survived harder things than entrepreneurship will ever throw at you. Now you get to choose how to use everything you’ve learned.
Talk To Me
So tell me: what’s one thing from your corporate years that felt like a failure at the time, but looking back, actually shaped who you are now?
Hit reply. I read every response.
And for now, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving if you’re celebrating it
