Who Are You Without the Career? Reinvention After 50

Welcome And The Reinvention Question

Announcer 0:02

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach, and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer 0:19

What happens when your career and identity disappear overnight? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverly Glazer, a transition coach and reinvention strategist for women over 50, helping you turn a lifetime of wisdom into your most impactful next act. And you can find me and this podcast at reInventimpossible.com. These episodes share raw, real stories from women who refuse to shrink, settle, or fade away. We don't sugarcoat our challenges here. We rise from them. And you'll leave with a stronger belief in yourself and clarity about what's possible for you. Dr. Angela Mulroney is a former dentist and serial entrepreneur. She's a global speaker, a best-selling author, a personal brand expert. And after losing her ability to practice dentistry overnight, she faced financial uncertainty and the collapse of an identity that she built around her work. What followed was a profound reinvention that took her from dentistry to dance, coaching, branding, and ultimately to helping accomplished professionals build lives that reflect who they really are. If you've ever had to ask yourself, what now, this conversation is for you. And make sure to stay right to the very end when you're going to get tips and actions for what you could do for yourself too. So welcome, Angela.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 1:56

Thanks for having me, Beverley.

A Childhood Dream Becomes a Dental Career

Beverley Glazer 1:58

Angela, take us back to the very beginning. That little girl that grew up in Saskatchewan. What was going on there with you?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 2:07

I didn't actually grow up in Saskatchewan. I grew up all over Canada. My dad was an RCMP, so we were migrating.

Beverley Glazer 2:15

Everywhere, yeah. But you went to the University of Saskatchewan, is that right? I did.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 2:19

Yes, that's correct.

Beverley Glazer 2:21

Okay. And um tell us about that. You decided to study right away. You decided to study dentistry, or did you do a few things before you did that?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 2:32

So since I was two, I was obsessed with playing with people's teeth, and I was good at charming people to lay down and open their mouth for me. So that teeth were always my destination. Um, it was in you, it was in high school that I decided that I wanted to be a dentist specifically. And then I did the minimum and got in after the minimum, luckily. Um, so I only had to do two years of arts and science before I got into the program.

Beverley Glazer 2:59

Terrific. Usually people don't go into teeth. It's like, let's play doctor, but it's more medical doctor.

unknown 3:06

Yeah.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 3:07

No, I didn't like playing doctor. I was like, that's boring. I want to look at your mouth. And ballroom dancing, when did that come in? So that was actually at the University of Saskatchewan when I started there. The biggest social club there was the Ballam Dancing Club, and it was actually the biggest social ball and dancing club in North America. So everyone was doing it, and I was like, well, might as well try that, and it'll be a good way to meet people and have some balance.

Beverley Glazer 3:34

Yeah, for sure. And it's a lot of fun. Yes. Yeah. So you were doing that as well. And then you started your dentistry practice. That's not easy to do. So, how did you do that?

Rebuilding a Struggling Practice From Scratch

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 3:48

So honestly, after when I graduated from dental school and became Dr. Mulrooney, I also became a professional dancer the same day. So I had those two things happening at the same time. And when I was practicing as an associate, I had no intention of ever being a practice owner. I was like, you know what, this is I can do this forever, dance I can't do forever. So I'd go to the studio in the morning, practice dentistry all day, and then go back to the studio at night. So I was kind of a 24-7 worker because I was just passionate about both. And then when I bought my practice at 28, I really, I kind of stepped, I walked into it. And what happened was the dentist that had been working at the practice was dying of cancer. So I came in as a locum. So I was meant to be there and replace him until they knew what was happening. And I walked into that practice, and it was the most broken down practice I've ever seen. The carpet was black when it should have been beige because it had never been cleaned and you know the chairs didn't recline properly. Patients knew they had to hold the x-ray head to their face because it would go and then go, but there was something about it when I walked in there that I went, I can do something with this place. And I had primarily worked with children until I walked into that practice, and that practice was full of terrified adults. So I had to take my child-friendly skills and transfer them to scared adults because they're the same thing, except scared adults say way meaner things to you as a result. And so that was that set me on a different path in my dental, my dental practice as well.

Beverley Glazer 5:32

So did you continue in that practice? Did you just put in an awful lot of money and clean it up? Uh, what happened there?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 5:39

Yes, a month into it, I shut it down and renovated the whole thing and brought it up to standard. And then I started switching the kind of practice that it was because it was very much bread and butter because the location that was in, it was a low-income area and turned it into a high-end practice where we stopped taking insurance or focus on people who were afraid of the dentist, because a lot of them, when they get to the point of actually coming to the practice, they're so broken down that like you're not doing a tooth at a time, you're rehabbing their whole mouth. So I went and took extra courses. I spent about a half a million dollars on my education after I graduated to actually get the skill set that I had, including IV sedation and sleep apnea. So I uh I figured out how to really like arm myself with the skills to be able to serve this population and then put my skills out to fellow dentists because most dentists don't like dealing with people who are afraid of the dentist. And so they happily referred me their phobic patients every month.

Beverley Glazer 6:39

Okay, so you built up quite a big practice. Yes. And then what happened?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 6:45

Then I ended up in the middle of surgery, my hands stopping working. And for a few months before that, I was having muscle pain and like I couldn't even type my notes at the end of the day, my hand would be like a claw. And so we thought it was just, you know, overwork because I was doing a lot of surgery, especially with IV sedation, you're doing a lot of heavy work. And when I went to the doctor after my hand stopped in the middle of surgery, he told me you can't touch another patient until we get this figured out. Fast forward six months later, we finally got it diagnosed. In that time, I ended up on bankruptcy's doorstep and almost lost everything. And it was um, it was pretty brutal, honestly. And I had no idea what was what I was gonna do because suddenly my financial future was gone, my legacy, my place in the community was gone. Nobody knew what to say to me because I was a puddle of tears every time someone looked at me because I was scared. Like my whole identity, my whole world seemed to burn down overnight. And I had this massive responsibility with my clinic. I felt responsible to my team members, so I kept them on full time, even though one of my team members had told the patients, you know, and for sure is going to be back in a month. And because they were phobic, they waited. And it wasn't until about nine months in that they started to come back. Um, because like I kept telling them, I the doctors have said I'm done, you know, and they they were like, Oh, just just hope. Hope we'll get you there. And I'm like, no, they've told me I'm done. Like my hand doesn't work properly. I can't be, I can't do dentistry anymore. So it was that was a really hard time in my life because everything, it honestly felt like I was standing on top of a mountain and everything was just crumbling underneath me. And I had no idea how to save myself.

Beverley Glazer 8:35

What happened when you reached the bottom of the mountain?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 8:40

I well, the clinic started to recover about that nine months after when they started to come back. We had dentists in their place, but the dentists who were in their in my place didn't want to work with phobic patients because nobody wants to work with them. So we had to revert it back to a very different kind of practice. And then in 2015, the oil crisis hit, and I was in Calgary. So our economy, global financial crisis, is when I bought the practice, and it had done this. The oil crisis in Calgary was like a straight-down nosedive. So I decided to fire sell the practice because I was like, I can't, I can't go through another economic crisis when I'm not the one doing the dentistry. And I was every time I worked walked into the practice, it was like someone ripped a scab off my heart. Um, so I was like, you know what? I need to get rid of this and move on with my life and start building a new identity because I was stuck. I was really in identity fracture because I was caught between this thing that I want to be since I was two and not knowing what my future was. But by still being stuck in the past, I couldn't move forward anyway. Um, and there was so much responsibility with the practice that it was hard to live to do anything. So yeah, yeah.

Beverley Glazer 9:54

So you had to make that decision. And now there's no practice. Now there's no identity. Where did you go? What did you turn to?

Helping Fearful Patients and Becoming the Expert

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 10:04

So I went back to full-time professional dance because I just needed to get away from the dental world because because I was known, anytime I ran into someone from the dental world, they're like, oh, I heard what happened. And I was like, I just I don't need to talk to you about this. So I hid in the dance world, um, built my professional dance company, and spent the year just doing that and started to like tell the stories of what had happened through my my physical body instead of verbally speaking it. And then at the end of that year, I was like, you know what? I spent a lot of money on my dental education and I've been through some really strange things in my practice and done some things that everyone said was impossible for my age, for my gender, for the area that I was in. Like, so I was like, you know what? I want to help other dentists to do what I did because people put so many restrictions on themselves, and it doesn't have to be that way. So my goal was to help dentists find their passion and then be able to build their practice around that because most dentists don't really love being dentists. I was a weirdo who loved teeth. Most dentists don't feel that way. So I wanted them to be able to build their business around what they were actually passionate about and let go of the things that they weren't passionate about so that they could actually enjoy it because that transfers to the patients as well and the kind of patient care and how you work with your teeth and everything.

Beverley Glazer 11:26

Yes. And and so you became a coach?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 11:30

Yes, inadvertently.

Beverley Glazer 11:33

Yeah, sure. And there are a lot of um dentists that suffer problems with their hands, problems with their backs. It's it's not an easy profession. You're standing there, you're under particular positions, you're working your hands, is it's an awful lot of work.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 11:50

So you did that, and then and then a about a year into that, people had seen how I had taken that consultancy from zero to 12,000 followers on LinkedIn, and it was global. Like people in Australia knew who I was and were hiring me to consult on their practices. And so people started being like, Okay, I'm watching what you've been doing. Uh, can you do that for me? And so I was like, Well, I don't know if what I did was a unicorn situation or if it's replicable. So I started dabbling with a few of my friends' uh profiles on LinkedIn and helping them to achieve the same results, and then decided to launch a full-blown social media agency two months to the day before the pandemic. Shut down Canada. So perfect timing.

Beverley Glazer 12:38

Once again. Okay, but that didn't stop you. And then what?

When Her Hands Stop Working

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 12:46

And then, well, the pandemic shut down the dance company, it shut down the dental company. And so my social media team, they all came to me and they're like, you know what? We know you're really good at saving people. If you need to lay us off, though, like everyone is getting laid off right now. And I like, buckle up, we're gonna take this thing to the moon because we can all we can focus on is this company right now. So by 10 months in, we were at 14 full-time team members. We had exploded because a lot of my circle, I was a professional speaker as well. They didn't know how to speak to the little hole, right? They were used to having a thousand people in front of them. So they have, yeah, they had to learn to present, they had to learn to network without being able to just like walk in, and it was already built into their conferences that they were speaking at. So we exploded with that. And in a year after that, I was like, you know what? I've been grounded here because I can't go and speak in person. I get to speak to the little hole. So I was like, this is an opportunity to be geographically wherever I want to be instead of being on someone else's schedule. So I bought a one-way ticket to Nicaragua and moved there.

Beverley Glazer 13:56

Really?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 13:57

Yes.

Beverley Glazer 13:59

That's awesome. So, how long were you in Nicaragua?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 14:02

I was only supposed to be there for two weeks, but five days into arriving there, Canada canceled all the tropical flights because they were trying to contain the pandemic and cancel spring break. So I was like, oh shoot, I'm stuck here. And I got a little bit scared about going to other locations because I'm like, well, at least I know one person here. So I decided to stay put until the uh the cancellations were lifted. And then I ended up there for three years.

Beverley Glazer 14:30

Yes.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 14:33

And then you came back. Uh nope. And then I left and spent a year circling the globe. So I lived in Paris, I lived in Greece, Nepal, and Bali over the year after that.

Beverley Glazer 14:45

Okay. And were you dancing during that period?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 14:49

No. Um, once I when the pandemic hit, honestly, I was going through some stuff with the dance company, it was had been five years. And when the pandemic hit, the first thought that I had when we were told we couldn't gather, I was like, oh my God, thank goodness I don't have to teach rehearsal right now. So I actually sold the dance company before I left for Nicaragua. And then once I was in Nicaragua, I was working 100-hour work weeks, realizing I was geographically in paradise, but not actually living. So about six months into that, I sold off my other two companies and then went all in on the identity architecture work that I do.

Beverley Glazer 15:26

Okay. And let's talk about that. Today you help seasoned professionals and you help them own their own expertise. Yes. Why does that matter so much to you?

Letting Go of the Career That Defined Her

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 15:39

Because I've been working with seasoned professionals for a long time. And suddenly in the last couple of years, I'm seeing them being sidelined. And there is this massive body of work, body of knowledge, wisdom, insight that is being sidelined. And these people have so much to contribute. And like at 55, if they lose their job, they're not getting another job. And yet they feel like they're just getting started. They feel like they finally have the confidence to be like, don't care what you think. This is what I know, this is what I want to do. And I want to create impact. I want to create a ripple effect in the world. And the mechanism that they were used to being in, which was corporate or working for someone else, is suddenly gone. It has been burned down around them. And so they're having to learn how to actually reclaim their relevance with themselves because the external accolades, what has reinforced them, which was the game we were taught to play, is gone. And so, unless they figure out how to get centered with themselves and own that knowledge with themselves and get confident to put themselves out there in a new way, which again, they weren't taught ever how to be visible, then they are going to let this rot. And I've had over 200 conversations in just the last quarter of a year. And what is happening is we're seeing financial black holes. Their future is gone, just like mine was when I lost my ability to practice. There's psychological issues starting to happen. We're seeing anxiety, depression, people just giving up. Um, and it's understandable because it's confusing where they are, because they have this history, suddenly it's not being recognized, and they're going, I don't understand why it's happening. And there's also the legacy black hole is happening now too, because they have impact that they want to create, and they don't have a mechanism to do it within the framework that they relied on for the last few decades of their life. So they're I just I think it's disgusting that they're being sidelined, to be honest. Um, and I think it's I think we're doing the world a disservice by sidelining them. So we need to reverse very true.

Beverley Glazer 17:45

Very true. And tell us about unleashing influence. That's your platform. Yes.

LinkedIn Growth And The Pandemic Pivot

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 17:51

So unleashing influence, the starting point of people coming into that, we do something called a relevance quiz. Then they can come to the relevance workshop, which explains, you know, this is the game you used to play, this is why it doesn't work anymore. This is the new game. So it gets people understanding, okay, this is what I can do, and it's not my fault, and I can do something about it. Um, from there, if they need help with actually creating their visibility, I have something called the own and package your genius lab. And before they do that, they go into a diagnostic called the unleashing influence system, which they talk to the machine for a couple of hours. It gives them a hundred-plus page guide all about them, gives them their identity architecture so they understand what their genius is in this world, how they operate, how that is their strength, how they can apply it to get to whatever endeavor that they told the machine that they're trying to get to. So it gives them an adductive framework about who they are, and it also gives them an education how to apply it and how to evolve it. And then from there, if people are wanting help with building a business or productizing their genius, taking the beautiful things happening in their brain and turning into a product that works without them, we also have that. So we have a pretty comprehensive um company to get you from just trying to figure out where your relevance is to actually scaling it and creating massive impact.

Beverley Glazer 19:08

Exactly. What do you want women to know about reinvention? Older women.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 19:15

What I want them to know is if you feel like you're stuck right now, this is an awesome opportunity. Because if you are like hitting a brick wall over and over and over again, the universe is trying to tell you to stop it and take a step back and look at what you actually want. So figure out, you know, where do you want to be living? What kind of home do you want to be living in? What kind of day do you want to be having? What kind of clients do you want to work with? What do you want to be doing with your free time so you actually have a life? And take the opportunity to reinvent because no one is going to do it for you. And when you keep hitting those walls, whether it was a layoff, it's health like I had, or whatever is stopping you from what you thought your life was going to be, take a step back and figure out what you actually want your life to be and boldly move forward with it and find people to help you to do it because it's trying to, it's really scary to try and figure it out. And especially in later life, it feels like you don't have enough time to make mistakes. So if you can find guidance to help you to reclaim where you want to go, it'll get you there so much faster and with so much less pain.

Beverley Glazer 20:25

Terrific. One final word. What would you like to tell everyone? What do I want to tell everyone?

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 20:36

That the chaos that the world is in right now, it feels awful. And it is an opportunity. And you need to get through the muck to get to the other side to the opportunity. And when you do, you're gonna see that this was happening for a reason, even though right now it feels so murky. So terrific.

Rebuilding Identity, Relevance, and Influence After 50

Beverley Glazer 21:01

Take the steps. Take the steps and stay positive. Thank you. Thank you, Angela. Dr. Angela Maroney is a former dentist turned serial entrepreneur. She's a global speaker, a best-selling author, a personal branding expert who helps accomplished professionals turn their expertise into intellectual property, influence, and scalable assets so they can start building something that's truly their own. Her work is rooted in resilience, clarity, and helping people create businesses and brands that reflect who they are and where they're meant to go next. Here are some quick takeaways from this episode. Reinvention can be a strategy for growth. Your identity can always be rebuilt, and your next chapter can finally be the one that is yours. If you've been relating to this episode, here are a few things that you could do for yourself right now. Stop tying your identity into your role. You are more than that. Own the visible person you are, and you have all that lived experience. And stop thinking you're starting over. Just move on to what's next. For similar episodes on rebuilding your life after 50, check out episode 175, The Retirement Puzzle, and Episode 178, When Life Breaks You Open on Aging with Purpose and Passion. And if you like podcasts for older women, Women Over 70 is a powerful force. Their compelling stories shatter the myth that we become irrelevant as we age. That's womenover70.com. And so, Angela, please share your links. Where can people find you? All over the web.

Dr. Angela Mulrooney 22:49

So if you go to unleashinginfluence.com, that's the main base for us. If you're interested to figure out how to diagnose what your genius is in the world, go to app.unleashinginfluence.com. And of course, you can always check me out on LinkedIn. I put out regular content there to help move you forward.

What to Do When Reinvention Finds You

Beverley Glazer 23:05

Wonderful. And those links, all Dr. Angela's links that she just mentioned, are in the show notes and they're on my site too. That's reinventedpossible.com. And so, my friends, what's next for you? Are you ready to move from stuck to unstoppable? Well, download my free roadmap. That's in the show notes. And please add us to your playlist, share it with a friend, and remember, you only have one life, so live it with purpose and passion.

Announcer 23:35

Thank you for joining us. You can connect with Bev on her website, reinventimpossible.com. And while you're there, join our newsletter. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep aging with purpose and passion. And celebrate life.