A personal letter from Katie Mehnert, CEO & Founder
There’s a date stamped on your back. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. I’ve felt it too. They call it a “corporate expiration date.” It’s the moment when everything you’ve built—your experience, your grit, your talent—suddenly gets viewed as a liability. When your ambition starts making people uneasy, and your salary becomes the shiny red target on a spreadsheet.
I’ll never forget my own moment. I was 39, surrounded by everything conventional success was supposed to look like—big titles, big meetings, big responsibilities. On paper, I had made it. But there was this unspoken deadline. A chill in the room whenever I brought my whole self to the table. I thought, “I can leave and come back anytime I want.” Turns out, I couldn’t. It took me a long time—and a bit of pain—to see that for what it was: the unavoidable point where corporate stops being the place to grow, and starts being the place that holds you back.
Leaving wasn’t easy. It felt reckless. Some called it “brave.” Most called it “crazy.” But I knew I needed to own my future, not wait for someone else to decide when I was finished. That’s the truth everywhere: the corporate ladder isn’t a career path, it’s a conveyor belt. At some point, it dumps you at the end, ready or not.
The 40-60 Window: Where the Game Changes
If you’re in your 40s or 50s, I know you feel this too. You’ve earned your stripes. You’ve built teams, products, and entire companies. But suddenly, the narrative shifts:
- Experience is “expensive.”
- Your insights are “old-school.”
- Your steadiness becomes “complacency.”
I watched it happen to friends, to mentors. I had meetings where I felt invisible—eye contact passed right by me to the flashier, newer faces. My name was quietly left off the next big project. If any of this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Corporations love to talk about experience—until it’s time to cut costs or “think differently.” Somewhere along the line, “different” stopped meaning “better” and started meaning “cheaper and younger.” That was my line in the sand. I had three options, and you have them too:
- Pretend nothing’s wrong and hope for the best.
- Stay and fight for relevance in a system built to move on without you.
- Take control—and start building something new.
I chose door number three.
Why I Became a Builder
I didn’t just want out. I wanted to create. I wanted to build. Not just for me, but for all of us who were told we’d peaked when we were just getting started. And I figured if I sucked at it, I could just go back to corporate. (Except I've got 11 years of failure and success to share with you so NONE of us have to go back.).
A builder, to me, is someone who turns vision into reality. Builders don’t wait for assignments—they make their own. Builders don’t just lead teams—they inspire movements. The rules don’t apply to us, because if we don’t like the rules, we write new ones.
Here’s what I learned:
- Every time I built a new community, I discovered people craving the same freedom I craved.
- Every risk I took unlocked something the corporate mold never could—real impact, real relationships, and real innovation.
- Every “loss” in my old world gave me fuel to create something better in the new one.
I left because I was tired of fighting for scraps. I wanted to set the table. I wanted to take people like you with me—men and women with decades of grit who still have a fire that the world desperately needs but corporations refuse to see.
Turning 50—and Turning Up the Volume
I’m almost 50 now. And I see it so clearly: the old economy will keep cycling people out, but our future is what we create. That’s why I built this community, for every professional between 40 and 60 staring down that expiration date. Whether you’re feeling it, planning for it, or have just lived through it—I’m here to tell you:
You are not done. You are just getting started.
The world is hungry for what we have. It needs our experience, our resilience, our imagination. Corporate won’t always value us—but that’s not the end of our story. It’s the beginning of the next one.
Your Move—And Your Story
If you’ve sensed the expiration date approaching, if you’re in the middle of reinvention, or if you’ve already leaped, I want to hear from you.
Share your story. Tell me what made you take the leap (or what’s holding you back). Let’s build this next act together. Because none of us should face this season in silence—and together, we’ll prove that our best work isn’t behind us.
It’s what we build next.
— Katie Mehnert, CEO & Founder
