Gen X and Mid Career Mastery with Adrion Porter

Adrion Porter

Speaker. Founder of Mid-Career Mastery (MCM). Age Inclusion Advocate. Podcaster. Brand Builder. Gen X Superfan.

What is the best thing that happened to you in the 80s?

That's easy. It was me winning my 1989 high school talent show when I choreographed a whole dance to Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative.” Obviously, I took cues from the video, but I had two guy dancers, two girl dancers. 

What is a book that changed your life?

I was actually really little and I loved reading, and I used to read Judy Blume books. I would say Superfudge and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.

What’s the weirdest thing in your bag?

The April 1997 issue of Ebony Man magazine. It was a derivative of Ebony magazine, and I'm in the article titled, "Harold Ford Jr. A member of Generation X in Congress." I worked on his campaign and there is a picture of people who were volunteering for his campaign. So I keep this in my bag, which is for nostalgia, but also reminds me of where I was.

Amplifying Gen X exceptionalism.

I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee—a southern gentleman. I stayed there until I went to graduate school at Vanderbilt. I always wanted to perform in some way—creating things that inspire and motivate, whether serving as a politician or creating an organization.  

I went to church all the time, and they asked me to do a little speech for Youth and Young Adult Day. I talked about us being Generation X. I said something like, "We, as a youth, they call us Generation X, where X means the unknown. And we are surrounded by all these vices." And at the end of the speech, closer to the end, I started saying, "So it's up to us as the youth to change that negative connotation to something more positive, like generation exuberant, generation extravagant, generation extraordinary, Generation X….” I really embraced my identity as a member of Generation X.

Fast forward 20-something years, when I created a podcast called Gen X Amplified, which embraced my generation for different reasons. Now we’re in our middle age. We're the creators of all these things. We're leaders. And we're going through this malaise, trying to figure out how do I pivot or what do I do? I always remind people: Connect the dots. Take some time to unpack and reflect those things that energized you, and you'd be amazed how all the dots in your past will lead you to your purpose. I was inspired by my own mid-career malaise. I got laid off in 2011 after I was a marketing director for Cartoon Network in Atlanta, Turner Broadcasting. And I turned 40 that year. "Oh, my god. Just turned 40, I'm in a funk." It was a combination of malaise, plus looking around for inspirational content to help me. I'm looking, and I see "Millennial this," and "Youth that," and on the older end, baby boomers. I’m thinking, "Who's speaking to me?" I saw a void. I'm passionate about podcasts, so I'm like, "Well, let me be the change I wish to seek." That sparked Gen X Amplified. 

There’s an unfortunate narrative, or lack of narrative, out there about our generation. I'm always rooting for the underdog, and I think people misunderstand us. Yes, we're smaller relative to the 80 million millennials and the 77 million boomers, but 65 million Gen Xers are nothing to sneeze at. And we pack a powerful punch. We’re actually more influential when it comes to pop culture. Take the Super Bowl halftime show, the music everyone listens to, the internet. We can go on and on about who actually created these things. We experienced our coming of age navigating both analog and digital. We had to adjust and walk further to elevate us to where we are as a generation. People associate lack of numbers and the lack of identifier—the “X”—with lack of meaning and influence. But that's why I say we're generation exceptional. 

When I got laid off, it took me a while to find my footing. A good friend of mine gave me the push to take my experience with great companies—HBO, Cartoon Network, Citigroup—and start consulting. So I did. It took time but became a full-time stint. I was consulting for a tech startup here in the Atlanta area and they wanted to bring me on as a full-time CMO. I had just had my second child so I took it. It ended up being a great opportunity because I learned a whole side of start-ups and technology I didn’t know. Although I left after two years, I still use those skills—and my passion grew for our generation and being in this midlife, mid-career phase where I feel so energized.

So I crafted a concept called Mid-Career Mastery. I wondered why we feel this malaise when we turn 40. Then I learned about the u-curve of happiness. It’s an actual thing: When you turn 40, your self-reported level of work satisfaction and happiness tend to plummet, and you go through this U. I realized it’s really a sense of malaise, which is so funny because the term used for midlife is “crisis,” but crisis over-dramatizes how it happens for most people. It's not an overt crisis but you know it when you feel it, and a lot of times it's where you lack direction. Your mindset is basically fixed. The goals, the ideas, the things that you set in stone years ago—you may feel that you're not achieving that. I thought, how do we transform malaise to mastery? 

My workshops are based on the Malaise to Mastery Map, with three pillars for getting unstuck. First, it’s reframing your mindset, reimagining what it means to be 40-plus. Understand there is a path to mastery and reflect on how you can connect the dots of your past to your professional goals. Second, identify your meaning, your purpose, your why. A lot of times at this age, we're still trying to find our purpose, or our purpose has been defined but we don't know how to uncover it. So it’s understanding what motivates you at the stage of your career and your life—what type of impact do you want to make? The final pillar is milestones. When you're younger you have big ones—you graduate, you get married, you have your first child and so on. Then when you're older, you retire, maybe you have grandkids. In this middle period, there’s an absence of milestones. It's like one long, run-on sentence, no periods. I encourage people to establish new micro and macro milestones. What are those moments of markers for success? And then once you develop and reframe your mindset, define your meaning, establish new small and large milestones, that accelerates your path from malaise to mastery. 

My vision for it is really a movement. I'm trying to build the most powerful, meaningful professional growth community for people, 40-plus. A lot of us have so much to give at this stage of our lives and careers, but maybe we can't see it. I feel called to help usher in and amplify this movement, and join hands with other great creators. This is the time when we have the experience, we have the tools, the community, the platforms, the perspective. We have the relationships we've built. There's so much room and opportunity for us to thrive and create impact.