Welcome back to The Earned Edge.
Pour the coffee and settle in.
Today I want to look at something that quietly discourages a lot of thoughtful people, especially those with decades of experience.
How can the very experience that one market discounts become the thing another market is willing to pay a premium for?
The answer isn't your age.
It isn't your relevance.
It's the market you've been asking to value your experience.
A Tale of Two Markets
Leslie Sonnenklar is 55.
After being laid off in early 2025, she submitted more than 300 job applications. She's a communications professional with over three decades of experience, yet she described the search as one of the most defeating experiences of her life.
One sentence stayed with me:
"I never expected my 32 years of experience to work against me."
Now hold that beside someone like Oliver Browne.
Oliver plans adventure expeditions for ultra-high-net-worth clients. A single trip can cost around $100,000.
His clients aren't paying him because he knows how to make reservations.
They're paying him because he already knows what goes right—and what can go terribly wrong—once you're actually on the mountain.
Both Leslie and Oliver possess the same asset:
Years of hard-earned experience.
One market discounts it.
The other pays a premium for it.
The Big Idea
Here's the thought I'd like you to carry with you today.
The highest-value clients rarely pay for information.
They pay for judgment.
Information has become abundant. Judgment remains scarce.
Anyone can search for instructions.
What can't be searched is the calm confidence of someone who says,
"I've already made that mistake. Here's what I'd do differently."
That's not information. That's discernment. And discernment has to be earned.
Leslie and Oliver aren't separated by experience.
They're separated by the marketplace evaluating that experience.
Looking More Closely
Let's slow down here, because this may be one of the most important business shifts you'll ever make.
The traditional hiring market often treats experience like a cost. It compares people against less expensive, younger, or more current alternatives filling the same position.
In that environment, thirty years can be viewed as higher salary expectations, greater risk, or less flexibility. That's the market that convinced Leslie her experience worked against her.
But there is another market operating by entirely different rules.
In this market, someone is standing at the edge of a difficult decision.
Launching their first business.
Making a career transition.
Preparing for retirement.
Recovering from failure.
They aren't looking for another résumé. They're looking for someone who's already crossed the bridge they're about to step onto.
Someone who can point to the loose boards before they discover them the hard way. That's what creates value.
Oliver's clients could plan their own trips. They choose not to.
They value the years he spent learning expensive lessons so they don't have to. Those lessons became the product.
The same principle applies far beyond adventure travel.
I know a retired operations consultant who experienced something similar.
In the corporate job market she was considered "overqualified"—a polite way of saying she had become too experienced for the role they wanted to fill.
Instead of continuing to compete in that market, she began advising small manufacturers. Today they gladly pay for one simple reason.
She's already broken the systems they're afraid of breaking.
She doesn't sell manuals. She sells judgment.
Nothing about her changed. Only the market changed.
Which leads to a better question.
Perhaps the question was never: "Am I too old?"
Perhaps the better question is:
"Which market have I been asking to value my experience?"
Because if you've spent years offering your wisdom to a market designed to underprice it, it's understandable that you've started questioning its value.
But another market exists.
One that's actively searching for someone who has already walked the road they're just beginning.
Experience is one of the few assets AI cannot manufacture overnight.
It still has to be earned. And many of you have been earning it for decades.
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Your Earned Edge
I'd like you to try something simple today.
Take out a sheet of paper.
Not your phone.
Not a notes app.
Just a blank page.
At the top, finish this sentence:
"The hard thing I've already crossed that someone else is standing at the edge of is..."
Don't choose the most impressive answer. Choose the truest one.
Think about the mistake that taught you the most. The challenge you eventually figured out. The season you would never want to repeat, but wouldn't trade because of what it taught you.
Write down three or four possibilities.
Then ask yourself one question:
Which one could genuinely save someone months—or even years—of unnecessary struggle?
Circle that answer.
That isn't just part of your past. It may be one of your greatest business assets.
Until Next Time
Leslie's experience wasn't the problem. Yours probably isn't either.
The years always counted. They were simply being measured in a market that wasn't designed to value them.
You're not too late.
You're not obsolete.
You may simply be standing in the wrong marketplace.
Hit reply and tell me:
What's one hard thing you've already been through that someone else is facing today?
Keep it to two sentences.
I read every reply.
— Debbi