Best-Selling Author Michael Clinton on Launching the Next Phase of His (and Your) Life

Michael Clinton has redefined the midlife crisis. A 50-something without basic science experience can decide it’s time to go to medical school, he says. The first 100-year-old man can cross the marathon finish line. A 60-something can take their next 30 years to start a business. Pushing 70, a former sales and marketing executive can pen a batch of mystery novels. And, after 40-plus years in the publishing business, he can start the movement for the new longevity as Clinton did when he retired from a top executive roll at publishing giant Hearst.

“Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It’s Too Late)” became a recent, unexpected hit for Clinton, and the best-seller just entered its fourth printing. Clinton, a veteran of the New York media landscape, found inspiration for a career change after growing tired of the societal implications of his age. In the book, Clinton outlines the steps one must take to disengage from a concept he calls “self-imposed ageism” to launch a new life direction, regardless how much time you have left.

Now, at 70, the former president of marketing at Hearst Magazines is a multi-marathon-running, continent-hopping entrepreneur teaching others that age really is just a number.

“It really came out of my own personal interest to do many more things in the second half of my life,” he said. “I found that there’s a whole tribe of people who are similar in mindset and attitude.”

In our first careers, he said, we’re taught to follow the signs from strong influences in our lives like family, education and economic stability. Then, your kids leave the house, your job subsides and you’re in search of “new identities.” The second career offers a newfound joy or passion that wasn’t once there—and affords one the opportunity to embrace it.

“What happens when you’re in your 50s and you begin to see that you have a much longer runway? All of a sudden, it allows you to start thinking about things in a different way because you’re in a different life cycle,” he said. “People who are in that age cohort right now are aware of this, and are completely creating new second-half-of-life ‘scripts,’ as I like to say.”

Clinton realized that despite the cultural zeitgeist of the “okay, boomer” generation—“We’re supposed to be winding down and stepping back”—he wanted to do just the opposite. “I wanted to wind up in new ways and do new things.”

Interested in the science behind his motivations, Clinton became a “Re-Imagineer,” as he calls it, and dove directly into thought leadership and the study of the life course. He joined the board of the Stanford Center on Longevity, learning 50 percent of five-year-olds today will live to be 100 years old.

This, he said, is why “Roar” is not just for the boomer crowd.

“As I set out to uncover more people like me, I found that we’re in the middle of a major social movement of many people redefining what the second half of their life is going to look like,” he said. “They’re creating role models for themselves and their peers, but more importantly, creating role models for future generations.”

If you’re 60 and you’re healthy, he said, you’re going to live until you’re 90. That’s 30 years society hasn’t prepared you for.

The Roar Forward movement, founded in 2021, invites people at this fork in the road to find their “labor of love,” the thing they’ll get to do for the rest of their lives.

Clinton went back to school at 65, hoping to study nonprofit management and philanthropy. But as his next phase in life unfolded, the book garnered enough attention to kickstart a new role for Clinton: an entrepreneur, crafting a business around his longevity message.

“It wasn’t necessarily the plan, but it was a topic that was exciting to me,” he said. “I think entrepreneurs have to be happy about their topic.”

Roar Forward’s framework centers around their three Ps: Partnering, Parenting and Profession. According to Clinton, people’s identities revolve around at least one of the three Ps their entire first half of life, and he encourages those people to find new personas that reflect who they really are, not their role as a partner, parent or professional.

Society slams everyone with so many labels that people develop their own self-imposed barriers as they age, he said.

“We get so many cues from culture that we’re not supposed to be doing that because of our age,” he said. “People start to say, ‘Well I can’t do that because I’m too old. I can’t go back to school, I can’t start a new career, I can’t learn how to play the piano, I can’t run a marathon.’”

Clinton, who recently completed his goal of running seven marathons on seven continents, said anyone can do anything at any time in their life. Roar Forward likes to stray away from stale terms like “age-appropriate” to focus more on more dynamic ones like “person appropriate.”

“Time is something that is our own to control,” he said. “Break through that barrier and be creative about what you want to do next.”