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’ 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? Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here Continue reading…