A new start after 60: I left marketing to be a barber – and I almost cried when my dad gave me his blessing
Phil Yates had never cut anyone’s hair before he decided to retrain at the age of 60. Yet inside the dissatisfied executive a ‘rocking barber’
Phil Yates had never cut anyone’s hair before he decided to retrain at the age of 60. Yet inside the dissatisfied executive a ‘rocking barber’ was waiting to emerge Phil Yates was nervous about telling his dad he wanted to be a barber. “Get a trade! Don’t leave a job unless you’ve got another job lined up!” were his mantras.
Therefore, he says: “I was expecting the worst.” But when Yates plucked up the courage to tell him: “I’m kicking marketing down the road. I want to do this,” his dad replied: “That’s fantastic. Life’s so short.” Yates was 60. Did parental approval really matter? “It almost made me cry,” he says.
His father, a fishmonger turned factory worker, had lived on the streets as a child. “It was huge for him to drop the whole thing about being safe and secure and say: ‘Go and do what you really want.’” Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?
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