Learning to Thrive on a New Frontier
The doctor’s office form gave me four options:
🔲 Unemployed
🔲 Employed
🔲 Self-Employed
🔲 Retired
Clear options. Simple to answer, right?
For most of my life, I checked either “Employed” or “Self-Employed.” As I slowly moved through my early sixties, the choice became harder. Then, while visiting a new doctor recently, I checked the box “Retired.”
I thought I would experience relief. I finally owned up to it. I am free. No more struggling with this stage of life. When I finally checked the box, I hoped it would be like walking through a door into the light. It wasn’t like that at all.
My first thought was my career as an angel investor was over. It is now official. The box is checked. I am outed. I owned up to it. And now I can tell others without stuttering. What I say and what I do are in alignment. I am not waking up every day thinking about angel investing. My thoughts are now focused on something else. But what?
So what is this stage called retirement?
I was talking to my former business partner, Bob Lasher, who is retired. Even though he is a few years younger, he retired after we sold his company in 2014. He was sixty years old. He struggled with his retirement for a couple of years, and then everything changed. He found his rhythm. He was at peace.
I watched as he aligned his values, priorities, and behavior. His life changed for the better. And so did the lives of those around him.
His initial struggles with retirement scared me off. He told me, “If you ever want to become instantly uninteresting to younger people, tell them you are retired.”
He explained, “ When I attended social gatherings while working, people always asked me what I did for a living. I would tell them, 'I’m an entrepreneur. I founded an analytics company serving the insurance market.' This would always start an interesting conversation.
“After I sold the company and retired, I was at a party. A young executive introduced himself and asked what I did. I told him I was retired. He smiled and congratulated me, then found a reason to leave our conversation as quickly as possible. His behavior bordered on uncomfortable.”
I’ll never forget this story. When he told me, I laughed, but inside I thought, “I won’t let that happen to me.”
I recently talked to Bob and told him, “I checked the box.”
Bob said, “You finally did it! You are now retired. Right?” He knows me well and wanted to make certain.
I repeated, “Yes. I am retired.”
And then Bob said something that helped me begin to put retirement into perspective.
“Most people think retirement is sitting at home without purpose, lounging around in pajamas, doing crossword puzzles, watching TV, and reading the paper if we are ambitious. But for people like us, this is not retirement. At least, this is not my experience.
“We have places to go, things to do, and people to meet. We are surrounded by people we love and people who love us. These include people from our work-life who believe we can help them.”
He got me thinking. He’s right. I have so many people in my life. Some very important people got little pieces of me while I was grinding it out daily in pursuing my career.
People like…
My wife, my children, my grandchildren, my sons-in-law, my daughter-in-law, current and former business partners, entrepreneurs I’m invested in, angels I partnered with on deals, VCs I invested in, my church community, my high-tech prayer breakfast community, new people who contact me through my writing, speaking, and teaching, and lastly, my neighbors.
And then there are the places Kathy and I have yet to visit. These experiences will open the door to new relationships.
This realization got me excited. But what about purpose?
I reviewed my calendar from this past week. I wanted to discover my purpose by analyzing where I spent my time. I was busy. But I was meaningfully engaged.
Time with God
Time with family and friends
Time with entrepreneurs
Time with those serving or interested in serving God
Time with those serving entrepreneurs
This is my retirement.
But here is what my retirement is not. I am no longer leading organizations.
At the end of last year, I transitioned from my leadership positions. These included being an active angel investor, board chairman for a nonprofit, and leader of an angel community organization I founded at Georgia Tech’s ATDC.
Leaving these organizations impacted me. Organizations have a mission. As the leader, I was on that mission. This was my purpose. The missions of these organizations set my priorities. And these priorities dictated my day-to-day thoughts and activities.
No more leading organizations. I’m retired. But being retired is not simply the end of a career. It is the beginning of a new career.
Retirement is my new career.
This new career is focused on people, and my purpose is for us to live better lives. In some cases, I will serve. In others, I will be served. But in all cases, there will be mutual benefit. And success is measured in this new career by the health of our relationships.
Seeing retirement as a career completely changed my perspective; instead of seeing retirement as being all about me, I now see retirement as all about us.
I am going on a bit long here, so I will stop. My next article will dig deeper into what I am learning as I live this new purpose.