I’m about to make a powerful point that has been germinating for some time.
Probably since I started the business that is now Owings LLC 5 years ago.
I have had vague memories of my Mom talking about Grandma Moses’s career as an artist with admiration for many years.
The remarkable thing is she took up painting at 77.
At 77. Years old.
Eddie Van Halen, revolutionary lead guitarist, died at 65. Neil Peart, revolutionary drummer and inspired lyricist at 67.
Pretty much my age, in both cases. Within a decade of it, certainly.
Anna Mary Robertson Moses grew up on a farm in upstate New York, where she worked as a hired girl, helping neighbors and relatives with cleaning, cooking, and sewing.
She was born in 1860. That’s just before the Civil War started. Married at 27, had five children, enjoyed embroidery throughout her life until arthritis made it difficult.
After her husband died, she took up painting, at 77, reportedly “to keep busy and out of mischief.”
Two years later a collector saw some of her art work in a drug store window in upstate New York, got directions to her house, drove out there and bought 15 of her paintings on the spot.
She became famous in her corner of the world at 79, and ended up painting over 2,000 pieces.
Sotheby’s, the high-end auction folks, place a value on at least some of her paintings at over a million dollars each, today.
She died in 1961 at 101 years old, leaving behind more beauty in the world than she found, but she left something else as well.
Something I have no difficulty picking up, dusting off, and holding out for display for you this fine spring morning.
The simple idea that it is never too late to follow your passion.
Or to find success doing what you love.
You’re only dead when your heart stops for good, okay?
Between now and that point you are a functioning part of an expanding universe.
This inspires the living hell out of me.
I’d like to go into why, which will require me to talk about myself just a bit here.
I discovered fairly late in life that I am really not cut out to be an employee.
Oh, I’ve done it, and with a measure of success in some cases, but there was always a kernel of unease inside of me.
Knowing that my worth was being limited by someone else’s perception of that worth.
I thought that returning to college, and getting serious about a degree the year my Dad died and I turned 50, would change my life.
I sought out a coveted role as a CPA’s apprentice for several years, until my home state of Colorado changed the law that currently requires a CPA to have 30 graduate school credits at the end of 2015.
In my 50’s I searched for a way to make a living from a home office.
I had several slips and outright falls, and even as came to begin daydreaming about opening a tax and accounting firm in 2017 I had no idea what the future held.
One of the things I would say to myself is, “Grandma Moses.”
She came into her fame and fortune just a few years before the actuarial mean year of an American life expectancy, which is about 83.
She defied the odds, and I like to think she did it because she didn’t waste a lot of time worrying about whether she could or couldn’t.
Now, I have loved to read for years, and as the business grows and our valued and well-loved clientele base grows with it, I am hooked on business and self-development non-fiction.
I haven’t read a fiction novel in years, in fact. I can enjoy a good story with my wife watching a movie, you see.
One guy who I mostly like quite a bit gets up on a soapbox about the subject of getting wealthy via the fast lane, and not banking on a 401k to make you wealthy when you’re the age that I am right now, about mid-60’s.
Even though he does have a point this part pisses me off a little, and I’ll tell you why:
I ain’t dead yet. I consider 63 to be young. Plus…
Grandma Moses.
Here’s a little exercise you can do, and I’m going to be honest and tell you this is not my idea. I’m very happy to spread it around and share it, though.
Write down your age now. Then, right down how old you believe you’ll be when you die.
Then, subtract the difference.
For me, that number is 38 years.
There are enough people in my family tree that lived into their 90’s, coupled with the fact that I love cardiovascular exercise, and have a strict supplement regimen.
I can be like Grandma Moses, at least in this way.
101, here I come.
Plus, there is a reason I love, admire and work well with people in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s.
I refuse to pick my cemetery plot early.
I ain’t dead yet.
And I just don’t, or can’t, think of myself as “old,” or “aging.”
There’s a whole mindset thing going on here, you see.
A similar pattern of mindset adjustment and adaptation that can make a person of average means wealthy.
By the time I’m 77 you’d better believe I see huge hairy changes for the better in the world of profitability, growth and accounting for the American business-person.
This is largely because I am inspired by the legacy of Grandma Moses.
I hope you have found this inspiring, too.
Live long and prosper abundantly, fellow entrepreneurs.