“What’s Next?” – Creating a Fulfilling Life After Retirement

As you get ready to ramp down from your full time business role, many start to ask the question “What’s next?” While everyone has ideas about how they would like to spend their next phase of life, the reality is that few actually know how their time will truly be spent. Generally speaking, most people want their lives to be purposeful and meaningful, and retirement is no different.

Establishing a plan about the goals and aspirations you wish to reach during your golden years is a great place to start to help avoid the emotional loss most owners feel as they ramp down or exit their business. Sitting down and truly thinking of what you would like to do and what kind of an impact you want to make, is important to do well before you actually exit. Of course, our life priorities change with each life experience, and it may be hard to know exactly what we will want in the future, but creating a basic framework is important so you live the life you have dreamed of living.

According to multiple studies, most retirees are concerned first and foremost about having enough money to get them through their retirement in a joyous and comfortable nature. A study done by the Bureau of Labor, which was published by the Wall Street Journal in 2014, asked pre-retirement Boomers what their top concerns after retirement would be. Of course “having enough money” was at the top of everyone’s list, but after that came:

1. Health

2. My partner’s health

3. Will I need to work?

4. Where will I live?

5. Will I be bored?

The concerns are general, yes, but important to think about nonetheless. The second part of their survey asked what the vision of their post retired lives would look like. The top five came out to be – Joyous, Purposeful, Inspiring, Educational, and Strong. So, looking at the common concerns and aspirations, the question still begs to ask “What is next for you?”

Although most professionals look forward to retirement, the loss that comes with exiting a business can be traumatic. Careers give us a sense of self-worth and belonging in a community. Once you’ve left that ‘community’ of work, it is extremely important to continue to actively engage in some meaningful way. Without doing so, both mental and physical health may suffer. It’s easy to get stuck sleeping late and watching lots of TV. According to the Bureau of Labor survey, the most time consuming activities of the average retiree are sleeping, followed by watching TV/movies. Activities like eating, socializing, reading, cleaning, and exercising were significantly less time consuming on a daily basis. We cannot stress enough how important it is to stay active in your community, revisit or start new activities that are meaningful, and exercise.   

 Living a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life can be tricky at any age. If your top worry is your health, join a gym, start walking, take tennis lessons, explore different forms of exercising. If your top worry is boredom, identify your strengths and passions and network with people to find meaningful ways to contribute. If you are worried about losing your community connections, plan to travel, join a club, get together with colleagues over lunch or drinks. The possibilities for involvement and entertainment are endless! It really is just up to you to decide which would contribute to helping you feel happy, healthy, and fulfilled.

Work Up the Nerve to Play

When did work and play become such epic rivals?

First of all, it’s not a competition.  Don’t get me wrong, working hard can be very rewarding! And playing hard is its own kind of fun. 

It’s not a matter of either/or. It’s a matter of both/and.  So all work and no play …well, that’s not going to work! 

So what am I playing at? I’m still working up to it…

It’s great to have fun at work…. We can still be taken seriously without having to take ourselves so seriously.

How?

One small grammatical shift can allow a huge paradigm shift to occur in your life and your company culture.

Right now we treat both ‘work’ and ‘play’ like two verbs in competition for our actions.

However, in terms of the way we actually live our lives…work is a noun!  Because it’s not only a thing…it’s a thing we all want and deserve to really embrace!

Look at all the other things you love in your life: your children, your pets, your partner, your hobbies...don’t you enjoy them and show them your love by engaging in play? Why would you approach work any differently?

By letting the verb act on the noun, we invite ‘play’ to transform from a rival force…to a reviving force.

Finally, a play on words that actually…works.

How will you incorporate play into your work today?

Grooming the Next Generation

As you’ve built your business over the years or decades, your fondest dream has been that your children will one day take over to continue your legacy. Now you are ready to retire, but they’re far from ready to lead.

Uh oh.

Is this really the right fit for your son or daughter? Do they really want to do it? Do you really want them to?

Without open and honest conversations, many families fall into the obligation game; children think they are expected to run the business when they grow up, whether they want to or not, and parents think they owe it to their children to pass it on.

But as you would expect, some adult children’s passion is anywhere but the family business. Those successors aren’t going to be ready to lead for a long time – their hearts just aren’t in it – or they aren’t a right fit.

And some parents realize deep down that their children would be better served over time in a different career than their own.

Assuming the children want to run it badly enough and you want them to run it badly enough, it’s time for another important conversation: the right role for the adult child, based on their strengths and experiences, and the complements that need to exist within the leadership team.

In some companies, the son or daughter is a great visionary and strategic thinker but doesn’t really have the skill sets to manage at a high level (cue the executive team). Or perhaps the adult child is a tremendous manager, but their ability to set the vision and strategy isn’t as strong.  

You must figure out the right leadership role for this individual and the development they need to get there. This may include skill gaps that need to be filled in or experiences to put on their plates over the next few years to make sure they are ready.

Likewise, you will want to develop the rest of your management team for their ultimate roles so that the company will be profitable and sustained over time.

You may find that some highly driven and successful employees resent a succession plan that puts a family member they may perceive as less qualified in charge. Talk with them. Acknowledge that you realize they have strong skills and important experience to contribute, and there is a key role for them at the management team level, and you want them to be a part of the ongoing success of the business.  

By acknowledging the critical role these employees play in the company’s success, and putting together a compensation package and meaningful work package that shows them they are valued, they are more likely to want to be a part of creating the future. If you create a set of expectations of how employees will work together and build the relationships across the team, you can create a powerful integrated team.

This won’t always work, and high performers may not stay. If your son or daughter is smart, they will replace them with team members who are even smarter than themselves.

It really gets complicated when you have multiple adult children in the business. Even if they all want to be part of the business, you still have the difficult job of discerning who is the right one (if any) to run the business and what roles the others should play. How can they be complementary to each other? How can you structure the ownership model to be fair, whether or not they are at the top?

A fatal flaw in family businesses can be their tendency to approach business decisions first in terms of what’s best for the family. Sacrificing the business’ success to appease complicated family dynamics isn’t good for your family members and it’s not good for business. If the company shuts down, everyone’s out of work, including non-family employees. That’s a lose-lose-lose.

When you can’t figure out how to pass on your company without harming your family or the business, it may be best to sell it to a strategic third party and allocate the return to your adult children. You may even be able to write a provision into the sale documents that allows them to continue to work there, as long as they perform against a set of expectations.

Have the courage to look through the dual lenses of doing right by your business and doing right by your family. It may take require fierce conversations. You may have to make very difficult decisions, and you may ruffle family member or employee feathers – but if you approach it with a long term view of what is truly best for all concerned, in most cases you can create a viable win-win path forward.