A Conversation about Embracing Aging, with the HSN “Queen of Jeans,” Diane Gilman

Hello and welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast and another premium episode. Thanks to all of our dedicated listeners for tuning in. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Casciani, and here's today's episode. Well, hello to everyone joining us today on our program. You're listening to one of our premium podcasts on the Living to 100 Club, and I'm your host, Joe Casciani. Each week, our conversations educate and inspire, helping you get the best out of all the years we're given. Regardless of what obstacles come our way. Premium subscribers have access to all episodes, including 2 exclusive episodes per month. Thanks for being a subscriber. Your support allows us to continue this mission without sponsors. We hope you're receiving value from every conversation with our experts, presumably much greater value than the price of a subscription. Today's program is all about embracing aging And not fighting it. Diane Gilman is the guest. Diane had the number one best-selling brand of jeans in tele-retailing history on the Home Shopping Channel and became known as the Queen of Jeans. In today's podcast, we discussed Diane's inspiration for women who are embracing their third act. From Diane's history designing a brand of jeans suited for the 50 and over age group to her recent book Too Young to Be Old, we explore the need to eliminate the stereotype views of aging, reframing aging from a time of decline, sickness, and frailty to a time to celebrate new opportunities and harnessing our own power towards self-fulfillment. So sit back and join us in this conversation with Diane as she shares her inspiration and charisma with our listeners. Diane, welcome to our program.

Thank you. That's a really good buildup. I love that.

Great. Yeah, no, you're welcome. You're most welcome. I always like to open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to you are today. You've been on a fun ride, I can tell, over the years, and you're opening some new doors today.

Tell us about it. I made it fun. So I was one of those kids that was born— and I'm not saying I was a childhood prodigy, but I certainly, from the time I could pick up a pencil or a crayon and start drawing dresses, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a fashion designer, but I had a set of parents who were very, very settled into old country ways. Uh, they were from Ukraine, came over to America as infants around 1900, and they absolutely forbade me to work. So I graduated from high school in 1963, went on to UCLA. LA was wild, and UCLA did not have a fashion department to study in. I think I did most of my studying shopping and hanging out with other fashionistas. And we got together, we formed a collective, we sewed our own dresses, we opened a store called I'm a Hog for You Baby because we thought that was the first rock and roll song ever recorded. And one day in walked Cher, looked around, all the dresses were $10. Cher walked out and we thought, oh, and she scream for Sonny, who was outside in the white Rolls-Royce. And they took every rack with every dress and threw it in the back of the Rolls-Royce. And so my burgeoning career really began with embellishing, hand painting, jeweling, slashing, patching, embroidering denim for rock and roll stars like Gracie Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Deep Purple, Deep Purple. I mean, I was so enmeshed in that scene. I remember when they wrote Seamstress in the Band, one of my favorite songs ever, for a very good friend of mine from UCLA who was the seamstress in the band for Deep Purple. And then also my friend who I opened the store with became Jim Morrison, The Doors, his boyfriend. And then he introduced me to a million people in the business. So So I did that. Then I thought, "Eh, you know what? Every party comes to an end. I'm in my late mid-20s. Mm, I think I better get serious." I knew one person in New York. I bought an airplane ticket and pulled up stakes from San Francisco, where I had moved along with the music scene, and came to New York. Now, I believed in my talent. Nobody else did. I had no education in fashion. I knocked on 1,000 doors and I got 1,000 nos. So I took a job at night being a cocktail waitress, worst cocktail waitress ever in the history of cocktails at Max's Kansas City. And then I went on to meet Andy Warhol and all of the Factory gang. And in the daytime, I thought, oh, I've really aced it. Bloomingdale's has hired me. Until they told me they were putting me into the old ladies' girdle department. Oh my God. That was like the low point of my youth. I thought, really? I know I've got this talent. I can't convince anybody. What is the story? And coincidentally, out on the floor one day comes a woman who I recognized from Women's Wear Daily as fashion coordinator of Bloomingdale's. I said, hey, hi, I'm a designer. I've got a collection. And she's looking at me like, "Yeah, really? You and a million other kids." But they saw the collection. They loved it. I couldn't afford to buy the fabric. I thought, "Okay, they're gonna order like 3 dresses and 1 jacket." But they ordered $100,000 worth. And when I said I couldn't afford to make it, Bloomingdale's funded me. They paid for the labor, they paid for the fabric, they paid for 2 double-trunk cars Sunday New York Times full-page ads. They gave me all the windows of the store on 59th Street. It was unbelievable. And that was it. And I was off and running.

And these were the jeans designed for young adults?

No, no, these weren't jeans yet. No, these were not jeans yet. These were just what was happening at the time. Just, you know, bomber jackets and cute little A-line Twiggy dresses. Okay. Then we fast forward.

Yeah.

And my name is known and I design a blouse that has nothing to do with jeans that turns out to be a million blouse seller. So now every department store in New York, spring of 1985. So let's say spring merchandise hit April 1st. Every department store of New York City has my Cabal shirts in their windows and every ad in the New York Times week after week in April is my brand. Okay, this is good, but I'm still underfunded. My dream is to go very big. I know someone who knows someone who knows the guy that actually discovered Gloria Vanderbilt, built it into a jeans a phenomenon, and they sold Gloria Vanderbilt. So now he's in between companies. I hound the guy. I almost stalk him. It was sick. So anywho, he finally says, "Okay." And they want to take my name with a Hong Kong consortium who's going to do all the production and go public on the Hang Seng Index. Well, one small issue. Oh, and we introduced washable silk to America, and it's huge. Everybody's getting rich but me, and I want out. I want to get to someplace where I've got more freedom and I'm actually gonna make money. I sue them. They say, "That's fine. We're worth millions. We'll just bankrupt you and you'll starve to death and we'll still be okay and we'll still be suing you." But long story short, in the meantime, I could not work. Didn't have my name. Couldn't be on a label. One day I get a phone call. Hi, I'm a talent scout for QVC. Would you be interested to going on air? And I said, come on, this is a joke. Who is this? No, no, it's not a joke. We're looking for big name designers from department stores to come on to television and sell your designs. And I said, I can't do it. I'm in a lawsuit. I can't use my name. And they said, oh, no problem. We'll just call you Diane. Yeah. And that's how I got on TV. I didn't seek it out. I didn't particularly want it, but I got it. Okay. We're doing washable silks for TV. We're happy, but it's getting a little bit old. And around 2006, the network I finally wound up on, HSN, gets a new CEO, a brilliant, brilliant woman named Mindy Grossman, who actually had been there at the inception of Ralph Lauren and had spearheaded Ralph Lauren jeans and made a fortune for everybody around her. All right. In the meantime, I become a widow. I am very, very upset. When I'm upset, I eat. I gain a ton of weight. I can't fit into anything anymore. I'm miserable. What do I want? I want to look younger again. I'm 58 years old. I don't like where this is going. I want to wear jeans again. Jeans are super happening at the time. I can't find a jean that fits. They're all too tiny in the waist, too tiny in the hips, too big in the legs. And so finally I just said to myself, hey, you're a designer, you've got a sewing room with professional sewers and professional machines. Go out and buy 3 yards of denim, take your own measurements, which were a little depressing, and create a jean for yourself, which we did.

Wow.

And I remember walking down 34th Street to work. I'm now almost 60 years old. It took a while to get this happening. Two guys, young guys, cute, in a manhole cover for Con Ed. One guy looks up, looks at me, points to me and says, "Hey, lady, you got it going." And I thought, wow.

There you go.

I'm not invisible anymore. And I thought, The more I wore the jeans, the more people treated me differently, treated me like I was younger, hipper, more relevant, more involved. And I thought, if this could do all of this for me, what could it do for millions of women? We all go through the same hormonal changes. So I brought it to the CEO, Mindy Grossman, who was very supportive of women and creativity. But she's also smart. We were geared to do maybe $350,000 to $500,000 in any one primetime hour. She wasn't gonna put me into primetime with an idea like this. Nobody had ever created a jean for a chubby around the waist, let's face it, bigger hip, middle-aged woman. And nobody, not even my business partner at the time, thought this was even a relevant idea, much less a great idea. So she said, "Okay, no problem. Of course we'll buy the gene and we're gonna give you like February 5th at 5:00 AM," which was a Sunday morning, bitter cold. Who gets up in the dark to watch a TV show? Well, guess what? Women did. We sold 5,000 jeans in 3 minutes. We had nothing left to sell for the rest of the hour. Just talk. Oh, and by the way, I had a large-size host who hated jeans and was screaming and crying before the show began, like, "I'm not wearing those! I'm never gonna wear those!" But she wound up wearing them later. So that's how my career really began to take off. And I was already 60 years old in an ageophobic, really truthfully misogynistic set of career paths, which was fashion meets entertainment television. But I'll tell you what, it was a lightbulb moment. It was a golden idea. And it was all about the baby boomer being ignored feeling invisible, feeling underused, underappreciated, and taken for granted. And, you know, it made no sense to me. I started talking to the customer in a way nobody ever had on TV. It was a very personal and emotional selling technique about going through the middle stage of life and where do you end up on the other side. And you're not going to end up looking 20 again unless you want to fool yourself. How can you be the best you can be in the moment? And I connected wearing a sexy jean again, getting your sexy back— wow— to the age you were at so that you had a more of a life flow going. And I garnered a fan club at the height of the brand that was over 650 thousand women who said, "Thank God for you and your gene, the DG2 gene." I never expected it. As a matter of fact, at 58 years old, there was nobody else in my industry who had lasted that long or who even wanted to last that long. Illogical. I felt like the Benjamin Buttons of fashion, you know? But it just goes to show you, first of all, You can't win it unless you're in it. And second of all, believe in yourself.

Sure.

Because you may have an idea or a direction you want to go in that is so new, that is so contradictory to what the norm is that nobody, no one recognizes it but you. So you really, I think to age well, number one, you really have to Trust your inner instincts and feelings and go with them.

Yeah, so you— that's an amazing story. What a roller coaster ride.

Yeah, it was.

Love that story. And sticking to the guns, I mean, persevering, that tenacity and pushing through those hurdles, then that's, that's what success is all about, I think. Just believing in yourself and yeah, you keep pushing forward. Keep pushing.

It's not so easy though, you know, when nobody else believes in you. And certainly my— actually, my business partner, who was a very overweight gentleman for his age, said to me, who wants to see old fat chicks in tight pants? And I thought, well, millions of other old fat chicks. And then I thought, okay, if this is working in America and females, no matter what language you speak or what continent you're on, If we all go through the same hormonal changes, then wouldn't it be logical that you could sell this gene globally? And so now I started knocking again on QVC's door that had an international television business. And I said, here are the numbers from HSN, Home Shopping Network. It's— we're the number one fashion vendor of all times. Give me a chance. And so we went to Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, and the UK. And I was commuting back and forth to Europe. It was hideous, like once a week, seriously, once a week. But you know what? The thrill of connecting with all my fellow baby boomer sisters, it was just an unbelievable feeling. And then when I thought, you know, You know what? Life is going pretty good. I'm liking this. I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer because, of course, first of all, I always want to do everything myself. Control freak, quadruple-A personality. And second of all, I just— the excuse was always, I don't have the time. I'm getting on a plane this afternoon for London or Paris or Munich or wherever I was going. Okay, so now I had to go on air, say goodbye for now, not forever, and was very difficult, and go into treatment ASAP. The next day my assistant called me. I, I had one more day before I went into chemo. I was terrified of chemo. My husband had had cancer, was on some horrendous schedule of chemo, and I'm not going to lie, it was awful. And so my biggest fear in life was the fear I had to face, which was going through chemo. And she said, oh my God, Diane, you know, your page on HSN Facebook has 135 posts. And I said, 135? Is that good for Facebook? She said, no, Diane, 135,000. Wow. In a day and a half, 135,000 women who related to me, who I had brought joy through getting them into a pair of jeans again, and who had certainly in some aspect of their life been touched by breast cancer, reached out to me.

Wow.

And that was my family. And that was who kept me relatively sane. And then 9 months later, I told them I was taking a year off, but 9 and a half months later, I got off of a cold radiation table in the basement of Mount Sinai Hospital. Had schlepped my suitcase to the hospital with me, went out to LaGuardia Airport, and with about a quarter of an inch of hair and just feeling really fragile, went back on television again. And it was overwhelming. We set an all-time sales record. You're used to selling 30,000 jeans, 50,000 jeans, maybe 75,000 in a day. We sold 225,000 jeans in a day. That's how happy, how loving, how loyal my sisterhood was. And so I knew I had tapped into something so valuable in this age group. And the other thing I would say, as crazy as this sounds, but it's completely sincere and true, cancer woke me up. Cancer made me understand how precious time was.

Sure.

That time, in fact, is our greatest and number one commodity after a certain point in life, after 55 or 60. What are you doing with your time? Are you using it wisely? Do you love your life? If you don't, can you change it? So I'm just going to fast forward to now. So chemo, I went ahead and started doing TV again, but it was easier because COVID, we were all doing it from home on Zoom. I loved it. I sat in my own little studio. Sales were good. Everybody was home in a captive. And then when they announced we had to start traveling again and they gave me my own weekly show, first time ever for anybody on HSN to have their own weekly, I was doing 2 or 3 round trips a week. And you know what? Physically, chemo had so wiped me out, I just sort of couldn't do it.

Yeah.

So I thought—

When was this, Fran? What year was this?

Oh, last year.

Last year. Yeah.

So I ended my career on TV with my big Thanksgiving show, 2022 Thanksgiving weekend. And I thought, oh my God, what have I done? Now I look at the empty, dark tunnel of retirement and, oh no, oh no, maybe I made a huge mistake. No, you didn't. Yes, you did. No, you didn't. And I wanted to do my own podcast and I wanted to use my communication skills, which I honed with 30 years on TV. And do you know, within 7 weeks of retiring from Teleretail, somebody came to me and said— I had done a podcast with them. They called me up afterwards and said, I know this sounds crazy, but I want to set you up to do your own podcast. Weekly. And so after just 7 weeks, I was already back in the game and loving it.

So much for retirement. Yes, sure.

Well, didn't really want retirement, but honestly, quite frankly, when— and you know this— when you're in something for so long the way I was and it's comfortable and you're number one and you've been there forever and you know that place inside and out, you're loath to leave. I mean, the outside seems cold and dark and Unpredictable. And guess what?

Unfamiliar.

I am now happier by far and busier and more productive than I was my last couple of years on television. And I would say I am completely rebranding myself visually, mentally, emotionally, verbally. And I'm having a blast. And I'm 78 years old. And I look forward every day is exciting and I'm learning something new. And I, you know, I would say to anybody out there, if you can, if you have a little bit of the financial freedom and you can say to yourself, you know what, there is nothing inspiring enough about the situation I'm in right now. I'm just scared to leave rather than it's so wonderful. I want to stay here. Try it. Step out of your comfort zone.

Wow.

I am I'm just amazed how, you know, that old— and I kind of never use these sort of phrases because they're so hackneyed, but close one door, another opens. So, so true. And so I think living to 100, this is a good way to live to 100. Challenge yourself. Make it all new. I mean, I feel in my heart of hearts, my energy center internally, I feel like a 20-year-old again. Like, oh my gosh.

Mm-hmm.

So exciting.

You reached a whole segment of the population in their 50s and over that had been maybe struggling with what aging meant. Maybe, um, looking at the anti-aging, you know, mindset. Well, what, how can I avoid looking older? How can I avoid feeling 55 and 65? So you tapped into that whole mindset about people that, oh yeah, wanted to accept who they were and adapt to the changes. And that's what I call it, adapting to the changes, because we can't, we can't stop a lot of these changes. We can't.

You know, if you, if you see— and believe me, a great artist and a brilliant woman— but if you want to know a lesson in what not to do, look at Madonna today, who has obviously had work, quote unquote, done and is trying to look 18 again. And it's scary at 65. Frightening. You can't do that. You have— that's why when I say I'm rebranding myself, I stopped coloring my hair. I let it go natural. I'm lucky it went, you know, white, white, pearlescent white. And I started crafting a whole new personality around that. I'm not trying to be something I'm not. I'm just trying to be the I can be in the moment and maybe show my baby boomer sisters and those right below us that this is actually a beautiful time in your life. A time when you really savor life, when you really appreciate the small things. I mean, I can tell you that I have been happier in this last year than possibly any other year of my life. How crazy is that? But true. And if I can do it, anybody can do it. Seriously.

Yeah. It's the shift in our perspective, isn't it? I mean, it's accepting that, okay, I might have a few things that are wrong or gone wrong, but I've got so many things that are still right. I've got so many things that are still good. I got so many pluses in my life and so many strengths that I can continue to grow and I can continue and not dwell on what's wrong because we all have some things. We all have those disappointments.

You know, chemo left me. Chemo and surgery left me. With lymphedema in one arm, lymphedema in another leg. But I even took the time I spent going through treatment, which was long and arduous, but for some reason my body really took chemo well. I never even got nauseous. And I wrote my new book, "Too Young to Be Old." Yes. Which I always feel I'm too young to be old, which you can get on Amazon. And I had an incredible experience today. So in the hairdresser, 'cause I have to get ready for my podcast tomorrow, which is Ageless. Aging with Grace 55+, Diane Gilman, and we'll start to get published. And it's visual as well. It's video on my YouTube channel, March 4th. So I'm just sitting there, you know, waiting to get my hair done. And a woman walks up to me and she taps me and she says, "Hi, you know, I watch you all the time when you come in here." I guess we come to the hairdresser on the same day. And I'm going like, "Oh." You do? Like, what? Why? And she said, you know, I was watching you one day and I heard you talking about your book. And she said, I went out and bought it. She said, I love it. I live by it. And she said, I just want to tell you, you've got to go on writing. You've got something to say for women. And she said, now every new female employee I hire, I give them this book as a present. Every new female client And I get— I send them this book as a present. And I thought, wow, there are those moments, especially as you get older, and I think you recognize them, that are affirmation from the universe that you're on the right track. Sure. And yeah, today was just crazy that way. So yeah.

Yeah. So what happens when someone hits those roadblocks? When they hit the barriers, maybe a real severe medical setback, not cancer necessarily, maybe a hip fracture or maybe a stroke or some major setback, maybe a loss, maybe loss of a spouse.

I've dealt with a lot of women that have gone through some of those.

What do you say to yourself? You gotta grieve, you gotta go through it. You can't dismiss it. You can't overlook it, but you have to process through it. Right. What do you say to yourself?

Yeah, I didn't process through my own widowhood very well. And that was a long, long long 7-year battle for him with cancer. You know, I don't ever want to take anybody off their track or off their course.

Sure.

But my advice would be focus on yourself. And as much as you could take even one segment of that pain away, do something that's fun for you. Like, I had a friend who broke their and they used that time as rest time and actually wrote their book. And they were very occupied, brain occupied. I think, you know, I'm someone and people say it all the time, but I don't particularly feel it. They always say, "Oh, Diane, you make lemonade out of lemons." But I will always look for the bright spot in life. And as a matter of fact, my breast cancer surgeon, Alisa Port, who's now the head of all breast cancer surgery at Mount Sinai in New York, actually said, Diane shows women how to face life's toughest challenges with honesty, strength, and optimism. That's one of my number one talents. Her positive attitude and unfailing belief in her healing were inspiring to me as her doctor and all those around her. So here's what I did. I walked into the waiting room for my first chemo treatment and I saw nobody was talking at all and the room was full. I saw women sitting there silently weeping. I saw women with their heads in their hands and I just thought to myself, damn it, I am not going to go through the toughest period of my life. I can't. I'll die. I have no family to support me. I've got to make everybody Everybody in my circle loved me. I'm going to make these chemo nurses love me so much and be so happy to see me that that's the best day of their week. And then they're going to take better care of me and they're going to be nicer to me. So I guess my advice is whatever phase you're in, and most of them, believe it or not, are temporary. Even if it takes a year or a year and a half, you come out of it. 2 years. Put light all around you. It may sound stupid, but I'll tell you what, it truly works. And I had a much better experience. And they were so happy to take care of me. And that's something we have to think about as we get older. You know, you have to think about if you are going to need assistance.

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Who are going to be the people that take care of you and how are they going to feel about you?

True.

So I think my thing is always not only optimism, but putting out a very positive energy so that the people I surround myself with, whether it's a doctor or a hairdresser or a nail tech or another designer or a best friend or somebody— I just did a speech in front of 200 women at the Cosmopolitan Club in New York. You put that positive energy out, you are going to have a sphere of love around you, and that will help you heal no matter what. I guarantee it. I did it. I had never done it before. I was 72 when I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed Christmas Eve. Naturally, I would have to go for the drama. Christmas Eve of 2017. And those were the conclusions I came through, and they carried me through. So life is not easy. I had a very difficult life, very difficult, very violent childhood. Had to leave home to get my head on straight and get anywhere and succeed in life. Never went back to my family. I mean, I had from everything around me, very little emotional support, absolutely no financial support. And I think the best thing you can do, don't Don't look, especially as a woman, don't look to other people for permission to live or change your life. You're the boss. You're in charge. What do you want? I think too many people bypass happiness to make other people around them comfortable or happy. Now it's your time. These are your precious years. Your most precious moments. You do what you want to with them.

Wow, great, great advice. Great words of wisdom. I love that. Yeah, yeah, to believe in ourselves and to continue to open new doors. I mean, you've been on such a, such a wonderful roller coaster ride. I admire you and your accomplishments. And you— oh, thank you so many.

Great, thank you.

You're continuing. That's the best part. I think you're continuing to open new doors. You're continuing to see what else am capable of? What else? What other potential? What other strengths do I have? Who else can I reach? Who else can I reach out to?

And yeah, and bring people around you that are positive and that are going to help you grow. And, you know, the other piece of advice I would give would be if you've been in— I was very lucky, as tough as my life was and as many ups and downs as I had, and I didn't always love my circumstances or my business partners. I always loved my craft. I lived, I breathed, I inhaled fashion design. So in that respect, I was lucky. And my other thing that was very lucky was teleretail was always for an older customer. So when I joined in, I was almost 50. The customer average age was 48, 50, and it grew with me and it got older with me. So I would honestly say if you have been in a in a corporate position all your life and for some reason you stop work and you think, oh, I should get back into the game again. Don't go someplace like corporate where your age and your accumulation of knowledge is never going to be appreciated. At best, you're going to get offered a salary of a 20-year-old, only they're going to prefer the 20-year-old. We have got to, past a certain age, if you retire and you say to yourself, I'm not ready to do nothing yet, I'm not going to go on a million cruises, find yourself something entrepreneurial, something one-on-one, something where your age is not going to be a detriment but might actually be a plus. And that's all part of my rebranding issues. If a big corporation came to me and and said, here's what we wanna do with you, I would probably say, I'm really flattered, but no thank you. Because even the company, I was lucky enough after all the years and hours I put in to be able to sell my name and sell my brand to a corporation. The first thing they said was, we don't want a 55-year-old customer for these jeans anymore. We're changing the fit. We want a 20-year-old. And I thought, naturally, of course you do. 'Cause nobody ever wants us, the middle-aged woman. But, you know, I leave you with this. We are the spending power of America. We are the ones that come out and vote. We're the voting power of America. We are the wealthiest generation the world has ever seen. And we need to stand up on our hind legs and get a lot more respect than we're getting. And I'm here to do it.

Yeah, I'm here to be a spearhead. I applaud that. Yeah. It is time to celebrate aging. It's time to embrace aging. It's time to recognize all the pluses, the wisdom, the tolerance, the humor, the perspective. It's all these positives that we have that comes with our age. Yeah.

Yeah. It's amazing for me to look back on my career. It's so surreal in a way to look back and say all the scary times, all the times I thought I was going to starve to death, all the times I thought nobody's going to want me, you know, I got through it and I did okay. But that was then. How's now going? Well, frankly, now it's going pretty great.

Yeah.

So that is the advice I give is the Yogi Berra, my, one of my favorite sayings, it ain't over till it's over.

Sure. Yeah.

Go for it. If you have something you love to do and you believe in it and you believe in yourself, yourself and don't depend on other people to believe in it. To go for it. What do you got to lose? Nothing but gain there.

Thank you for that inspiration. That was so, so wonderful, Diane. You made my job very easy because I was enthralled with your stories.

Yeah, thank you. Great, great.

So looks like we're out of time. I just want to remind my listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, sign up for my email list, and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. And finally, thank you again for being a premium club member. Your support helps us keep the program going. I believe that the messages we share each week, like we had today from Diane, can lift our spirits, help us to stay engaged, and look forward to getting older no matter what gets in the way. So Diane, thanks so much for being a guest on our show. For those who might want to contact you, how can they do that? Do you have a website Yeah, you can definitely go on Instagram.

You can go on my Facebook page, thedianegillman.com, all one word, all in small caps, and leave a message. We really try and get to each and every person.

Terrific.

We love hearing from you.

Terrific. And your book again is Too Young to Be Old. It's available on Amazon. I've got to pick that up myself. Well, thanks so much. Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. I hope to see you next time.

It's time to rethink, renew, and reimagine retirement. Hey everybody, Jared Sylvester here, host of Retire Repurpose. Now, this podcast is about the non-financial parts of retirement, which many times can be even more challenging than the financial. We believe retirement is not the end, rather the beginning of what could be the most impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling season of a person's life. So, don't retire, become repurposed. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.