Freelance Stories: Turning Passion Into Innovation At Thegerontechnologist.com

One of the less discussed but particularly challenging aspects of career is the wide range of choices available to young professionals. Technology has created vast new opportunities for creative and talented people to create their own business. For example, consider the enormous growth of interest in creators and influencers, made possible by platforms like Facebook and TikTok.

According to Linktree, there may be as many as 200 million creators globally. A new report by MBO Partners focused on the under 10m US based creators, noting about a third or 2.6 million creators are working full-time, while two-thirds are part-time.

Too often, the focus on creators emphasizes what Influentials calls “influence marketers.” But creating-the-new-and-now has many aspects. Consider another category that is yet to be named explicitly, but is the extension of what Steve King of emergentresearch.com calls “passionistas.” These are creators that one pundit described as “pursuing their passion as a career with a thirst for continuous growth and a desire to serve.”

Let’s call these individuals not content creators but category creators. These professionals are motivated to envision and grow a new category of work and value creation, and participate enthusiastically with others in doing so. Their driving force is a passion for solving the problems that preoccupy them, that benefits people and society, and converting that personal journey into a career.

Some category creators, of course, eventually become extraordinary entrepreneurs to broaden their impact or paint on a larger canvas. People like Jobs and Gates in computing, Musk in electric cars, Zuckerberg in platforms, and Bezos in global supply chain management. But others choose a solo or small team path as a freelancer or creative, enjoying the work itself. An example from a prior edition of freelance stories is Kiki Callis, an event planner and sustainability expert.

It’s exciting to share stories about new categories and their creators, and another example, in a completely different area is Keren Etkin, a gerontologist who was among the first to chronicle the contribution of new technology to elderly quality of life. Her invention of thegerontechnologist.com is a prime example of how freelancers and other creators are inventing new career pathways and encouraging other solopreneurs to do the same. An earlier piece described the field of agetech she and others were helping to name and grow. The field has grown tremendously since that article, and Etkin deserves much of the credit.

Almost five years after that article was published in Forbes, it seemed a good time to follow up with Etkin. And she has made considerable strides in creating a meaningful and successful career for herself, as well as moving the field of agetech significantly forward through her website thegerontechnologist.com.

For those interested in the career arc of a category creator, Etkin is representative of the “follow the problem” type of creative: in her case, she found herself increasingly attracted to assisting the elderly. An Israeli, as a student she worked as a volunteer with Holocaust survivors, all over 65 at the time, and found it a compelling space. That led to work in a non-profit which led to a degree in gerontology. Taking time off after her degree, she took a job as employee number one at Intuition Robotics, makers of ElliQ, the first social robot, as a User Researcher, which meant, as she put it, “Fairly continuous ongoing conversations with older adults.”

At the same time, as a side project, Etkin was playing with and eventually created thegerontechnologist.com website. As she put it, “I realized we were part of this growing ecosystem and saw many, perhaps hundreds, startups around the world using tech to handle challenges of aging. I wanted to know about it, map it, and let others know about it.” A particularly powerful moment in the development of Etkin’s creator category building was her map of the ecosystem in 2018. It was the first time an individual had documented the growth of agetech in real, practical, terms. It generated a “tremendous, and unexpected, response” she said when asked:

By 2019, when the website and map began to catch on and generate activity, Etkin began to add more features and ways of reaching an audience. She began podcasts on an occasional basis with thought leaders, inventors, and investors moving the agetech space. She offered reviews of key events and happenings in the agetech space (“The best aging and agetech events in 2022”), started to offer market reviews and interviews in a range of areas, and reported to her readers on the results of significant conferences like the recent Tokyo conference.

At that time, Etkin had also begun to see her passion project as having significant business potential, but was unsure in what direction to take it. She decided on a plan:

“I was offered consulting and writing offers and decided I’d do one of each and see what I liked. I found out that what I really liked doing was building stuff, so after taking a break I got sucked into startup world again.”

But not for long. Etkin decided to accelerate the commercialization of thegerontechnologist.com by challenging herself to write a book. It was an area of talent she discovered, and the book The Age Tech Revolution has been a success in two respects. As she explained, “First, it helped me to be ready to make this a success. And, it gave me a pathway. I realized that I saw myself as an educator and advisor. It had taken several years, and several iterations, for her to clearly articulate the MVP and brand that would guide her next steps.

That recognition – the brand that articulated her passion – has led to a clearer business plan incorporating three parts:

● Advisory roles in selected companies and think tanks

● Thegerontechnologist.com website, map, and book

● AgeTech Academy

AgeTech Academy is Etkin’s newest effort, and she believes it is both true to her goals and commercially viable. It offers online courses on demand for startup teams and entrepreneurs in the agetech space, and elder care professionals who understand the potential value of tech in caring for elders. Attendance has been strong, and the curriculum is steadily growing.

I asked Etkin about her philosophy of career, and the influence it’s had on her choices and ambition. Here’s how she responded: “I like to make 5 year plans but life happens and I try not to let my plans get in the way. So far its worked out for me.” Said as a true category creating solopreneur would make the case.

The motivation behind thegerontechnologist.com is similar to many successful category creators and creations. They are attracted by seemingly intractable but personally meaningful challenges. When presented with that assessment in our interview Etkin laughed and responded, “Basically I keep pulling on a string, expecting there’s a balloon at the end.”

In doing so, she might be channeling this bit of career advice by Confucius, the Chinese philosopher: “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

Viva la revolution!