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For Life on Purpose Episode #67, my guest is tailor made careerist Julian Mather, who says he wasn’t at school the day they taught conventional career planning. A chronic truant, he self-educated and read between the lines to find the secrets to turning his obsession into his profession.
From high school failure to Army sniper to globe trotting TV cameraman to kids entertainer to online entrepreneur he really hasn’t felt he has a worked a day in his life. And at 55 he says he’s only just beginning to hit his straps.
Julian joined me for a high-energy chat about realizing your career potential after age 40; as well as how to use your own life experience/journey to create content that others can benefit from; shifting from an hourly rate model to charging for value; and tales from his own unique life story.
“The day and age of the massive corporations that take care of us from beginning to end are over. That’s just a reality. Workforce change is upon us. It is time to look for alternatives. As a 40+ worker, you must expand your options. Allow me to show you the way.
In the decade or so that I’ve been earning income online something struck me along the way. The 20 to 30 year olds are taking the lead with this but they have relatively little experience to impart. 40,50,60 year olds don’t even know about this and they have rich experience that is going to waste.”
About Tailor Made Career:
This is the best time ever to be over 40. Never has it been so easy to leverage your life experience, your hard won knowledge, your relative financial stability, your wits and your deep down belief that you have more to say, more to give, more to ‘be’, than just a cog in the big post industrial workforce.
Your guide Julian Mather wasn’t at school the day they taught conventional career planning.
A chronic truant he self educated and read between the lines to find the secrets to turning his obsession into his profession. From high school failure to Army sniper to globe trotting TV cameraman to kids entertainer to online entrepreneur he really hasn’t felt he has a worked a day in his life. And at 55 he says he’s only just beginning to hit his straps.
And he wants you to realize your potential too.
Whether for income or just for fun, creating your own career is possible, it’s very real and it’s the best time history to do this.
350,000 hours in the making, Tailor Made Career gives you tools, resources and roadmaps so you don’t go to the grave regretting the job choices you made.
To learn more about Julian and his work, visit: https://www.tailormadecareer.com/.
More About Julian Mather:
My life as a child was unremarkable. Except for one thing: the pages of our family photo albums seemed to belong to someone else. I had an uncle in the Spanish Foreign Legion. Another uncle was a game hunter in India. My grandmother had been governess to the Maharini of Mysore during the days of the Raj in India. This was at odds with the suburban life I lived. It’s only now that I can see how these stories influenced my own stories and the path I took.
It’s only now I see how they have prepared me to maybe help you. What are your stories? They do not have to be exotic. They only need to be authentic. An authentic life oozes hard earned wisdom. Wisdom is more in demand than ever. Extraordinary things usually happen to utterly average people.
I did so poorly at school I had to repeat my final year at high school. I was doing worse in my repeat year so I became a chronic truant and self educated myself at library. I wanted to be a photo journalist. Months and months of poring over photo books and I learned to read between the lines – which is where you always find the true secrets – and realised I needed to have a camera in my hand at all times and I needed to be where the action was
At 17 I jumped into the fray between police and protesters and got my first taste of photo journalism. I was blooded. The world beckoned. I saw an army recruiting poster and I went in and asked if I could be a photographer in the Army. Certainly sir, sign here. To my naive surprise that’s when the yelling started .. and it didn’t stop. They put me in the infantry. I’d been duped.
A dissatisfaction with being yelled at drove me to find peace and quiet which I found in the role of a sniper. Never did I imagine my job description would read … ‘must have a personality which allows him to kill calmly and deliberately’. So there I was , lying in wait, looking through cross hairs but still dreaming of my mistress – photo journalism. I discovered that looking through my telescopic sight was like looking through a camera so I started a process of making imaginary movies. Essentially I self educated myself in film making.
I went from being trained to shoot people with a rifle to shooting people with a camera … much more socially acceptable. I then joined ABC-TV .. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation that specialised in factual storytelling. In a nutshell, documentaries. For over 2 decades they put a plane ticket in one hand, money in the other and kicked me out the door and said go document people’s stories. This whole story has been documented in a memoir published by Harper Collins. It’s called the Second Best Job In The World
It was a great time of travelling the world getting a ringside view of life and after 20 years I had met so many VIP’s … very inspiring people and they were out there making a difference. I wanted to do that too. And even though I was doing little projects here and there, nothing gained traction and I started to think it was just me … maybe I’m just not good enough to do the things that all these other people seem to be able to do.
Turns out it was because I was behind the camera and all the real action was in front of the camera. I had to make a choice. I couldn’t be in two places at once. So I left. I cried. It was like I had betrayed everything I had stood for. Being a photo journalist was the very fabric of who I was. But mourning my career was the best thing for me. It was letting go. A new chapter could begin.
I now invested myself into competing passions of magic and juggling and teaching philanthropy to children. I set out to change the world and make a difference. I planned on going into primary schools, working with 10 year old kids, teaching in simple terms that philanthropy is smarter than charity, teaching a new generation that prevention was better than cure.
Watch out world, here I come. I launched this program to deafening silence. Though lauded for its intent it was a commercial flop. Experience taught me I can’t live on air alone, so through necessity I reinvented myself as a children’s and family entertainer. With life experience under my belt and opinions on how I could improve some aspects in the world of magic I started sticking my head up and making my opinions heard. Behold the turtle he never moves forward unless he sticks his neck out.
As a 48 year old I went onto Youtube and made videos that elevated the story and presentation of magic. It’s called Julian’s Magician School. No one was more surprised than me when this took off. It now has about 140,000 subscribers and 30 million views. I never expected that sort of interest.
Here’s the thing, a third of my audience was adults and I started getting emails … here’s one verbatim: ‘Julian’s magic tutorials saved my life. A few months ago I was on the brink of suicide’. Huh? Unwittingly I was making a difference that deep down is a real need for me. I applied myself to online business and now run the world’s #1 online training Academy for children’s entertainers. It’s called Kids Entertainer Academy.
My career now is a patchwork and it comes from zig zagging happily through life. I know I can help you if you are 40-60. There are no gatekeepers. You don’t have to ask to do any of this. You just DO. No doubt you are a big ball of doubt as to whether you could stick your head up and share your knowledge online.