Episode 09: Repurposed NOT Retired

In this conversation, Brent shares his experiences and challenges faced after retirement, particularly around identity and purpose. He discusses the awkwardness of answering the question 'What do you do?' and the discomfort that comes with losing a professional identity. The dialogue explores the journey of finding new opportunities, the importance of experimentation, and the need to create a balanced portfolio of skills and activities that bring joy and fulfillment. Both Rob and Brent reflect on their transitions and the significance of taking time to discover their next great act after a long career.

Topics we are covering in this episode:

• The question 'What do you do?' can be challenging post-retirement.

• Finding purpose after retirement is a common struggle.

• Exploring new opportunities can lead to unexpected paths.

• It's important to balance activities and not overcommit.

• Experimentation is key in discovering new passions.

• Creating a portfolio of skills can provide fulfillment.

• It's okay to take time to figure out what's next.

• Lingering in discomfort can lead to personal growth.

Transcript:

Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Lena: If you've ever fumbled through, so what do you do after leaving the grind, you're not alone. In this episode of Midlife Circus, Rob and Brent share the honest, funny side of finding purpose without a job title and how to build a life that feels full without filling your calendar. This is Repurposed, Not Retired.

Rob: Alright, Brent. When you first retired, how did you answer the question, what do you do?

Brent: I have a really funny response to that question. So I was playing golf with a colleague of mine, who's the CEO of a large corporation. And this was a bit after I retired or left my part of my last company. So he and I were trying to connect to play golf and we decided to play. And I know him quite well.

So everything was all good there. He sends me an email like a day or two before he said, hey, I've invited two bodies to join. Hope you don't mind. Like, hey, no problem. So he sends he's like, you really like them.

So I look up their profiles and I was instantly intimidated because they're very experienced in their craft and they were both very deep into philanthropic work, but also really seasoned private equity investors. So I knew I could talk about those things because I came from that space, but I looked at their accolades. I'm like, wow, these are, you know, they've accomplished a lot in their lives. So we show up at the golf course and we go to the first tee and one of them asked me, so Brent, what do you do? And I literally went silent.

I had no answer, Rob. Nothing to offer. I just did an, and I've never been short of words. I was like, well, yeah, you know, I'm doing a few things. And then I just sheepishly kind of just went into my little cocoon.

I didn't really answer the question well. And then for the rest of that golf round, I just was kind of like wandering through the conversations. I just didn't have a lot to add. And I'd never been intimidated by anybody. I've never had this, feeling of imposter syndrome around people like that.

And it was the first time I didn't have something to go back on. Like, Oh, I work at so and so, and this is my overinflated title. And then to top it off, we went to lunch afterwards and a couple people stopped by to say hi to the people I was with. One of them, I didn't recognize him. But then when he had left, he was an older gentleman, like, probably in his early seventies.

And when he left, one of the guys at the table looked to me and goes, do you know who that is? I'm like, I have no idea. And he goes, oh, he ran sports programming for one of the largest networks for thirty years. And I'm like, Okay, I didn't know that. Not that I would know that, but I was like, Okay, here's another accomplished individual.

And then another gentleman came by who I actually knew, but he's one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the world. And they're talking about, yeah, well, next fall, we're going to bring out some royalty from The Middle East and we've got to figure out ways to entertain them. Then one guy's like, oh, yeah. I had a really good experience years ago when princess Diana came to my house with prince Charles and all these things. And I am so out of place at this moment in time.

And it all started at the first tee when they just asked what I did, and I just didn't have a response. So as I'm leaving this golf outing, I'm driving home and I'm just like really hard on myself. I'm like, You got to have a better answer than that, buddy. I didn't have anything to offer. And it was so strange for me because I was so used to my fallback.

I had left this private equity firm that I landed so I could instantly just say, Yeah, I'm leading this private equity firm and here's what we're working on. But I didn't have that. So to answer your question, Rob, is what do you do? I completely vomited on that question shortly after my retirement, because I didn't know how to answer that question. I spent thirty years of answering that question because I could always say the company I worked for and the role that I had.

But I didn't have either of those, so it was a very strange thing for me.

Rob: Would you have been able to recover though? Let's say let's say you were still working, though. I mean, someone dropping that they were hanging out with prince Charles and late Diana, princess Diana. Would you be able to handle that directly? Because I don't know.

Would have been intimidated by that comment. Like, oh, wait. What? You hang out with royalty. I hang out with my friend Brent.

That's how I would have been reacting to this because you're definitely not royalty. You would have been able to handle that though just because you were working?

Brent: Probably not very well. But I was used to it in my private equity space because I was working with really high net worth individuals that had all sorts of stories like that. So I was a little bit more seasoned to respond to it. I was like, that's really interesting. How was that experience?

I always had some sort of response to it. But the key or the challenge that I had that day was, as I just didn't participate at all in the conversations because I just felt out of place because I didn't have like, I dropped an identity. Like I just didn't have something to fall back on. So yes, it is intimidating when somebody says I'm hanging out with royalty, but usually I can pause and really relate it back to something else. Here, I just was already out of sorts.

I was just, by that time lunch was, you know, several hours after us teeing off and I just kept on shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. And I just felt so awkward. But it was a good learning experience for me, Rob. That's what I can take away from that one.

Rob: Sounds like you learned a lot.

Brent: I did. I sure did.

Rob: And I asked that question because I struggle with it early on when I retired and especially having retired young. And answering that question, people ask what I did. I say, I retired. And I felt pretty proud when I gave that answer. Oh, I'm retired.

But it always followed up with the, oh, you're young. Well, what do you do with your time? And that's where my answer started falling apart. Well, I run. I work in the garage a little bit.

I kind of putz around. I'm doing a little consulting work here and there, but never really felt like I was accomplishing anything in that answer. Actually, it left me empty in terms of I felt like I was empty and not maybe fulfilling, my purpose or my opportunity, and that's really what today's episode is about. It's about what happens when our identity goes away because many of us put a lot of our identity into the work that we do. It's one of the common questions you get at Christmas parties or holiday parties or barbecues when you're hanging out with strangers is, Oh, what do you do for a living?

When you don't have an answer, that can feel a little concerning and empty for some people. And so that's really what today's episode is about. It's about, one is navigating that change, and the second part is helping people think through the process of finding out what's next. And it is okay to try things out and to try and figure out what your identity is going to be going forward as we enter middle age and to the best years of our life. So, Brent, how did it feel early on when you retired and you really didn't know what was going to be next?

What'd you do?

Brent: I was really uncomfortable. Because you go through this period of time in your life where you're very busy and you're very productive And you can use productive in many different ways. So me productive was lots of activity with my work and it was always very all consuming. And so when that went away, that's thirty years of buildup. And when that went away is all a sudden I felt just incredibly unproductive.

Like, what am I doing every day? And you can do these quick replacements, which I did. So I started out exercising a lot more. I got involved in endurance events and I just filled my time with things that I enjoyed, which was great. But what was missing for me was that intellectual stimulation, that sense of purpose.

Like every day when you're in the workforce, there's a tendency to wake up and be like, I have something to go to. I have something to do today. And typically our to do lists in work are full, if not boiling over, especially as you get further along in your career and you're in these executive roles and you're just being pushed and pulled in so many different directions. I thrived in that environment. I liked that type of chaos.

But when you take yourself out of that chaos, which I did, all of sudden it was, well, where am I? Like, what am I up to? I mean, how did you like, when you were navigating that, because I was about I think I was like about a year or so ahead of you. About a year. Yeah.

Plus or minus. Yep. And so I just was just, I was like semi treading water, not drowning. This sounds really strange because this is a weird experience to go through because some people might respond to this like, Oh, poor And it's just a weird feeling. Like you're just so busy, then you're not.

And then it's like, Well, what's my purpose? What am I supposed to do? And people are like, Go find your purpose. And I'm like, What is that? Which book should I read?

I don't know.

Rob: Is there a workshop I can go

Brent: to figure out my purpose? Exactly. And there's tons of books and you do it and they all kind of started to sound the same. And I was just like, Okay, and what's your calling? I'm like, well, I was a great worker for a long time.

That felt like my calling. So then I didn't have that. Was like, oh wow, what am I going to do now? I don't know. So it's a tricky kind of unproductive feeling that is hard to navigate from my own personal experience.

Rob: Yeah, as I answered earlier, as I mentioned earlier, I felt empty. It felt empty as I was giving that answer. Like I was, you talk about lack not productive is that I was not contributing to anything in society into the world. So I had I had my identity around work, and I was contributing at work. I was a big contributor into the projects that were being done.

And once that went away, it's wasn't even me trying to figure out what was next. It was me just not knowing what my identity was anymore. It kind of just it disappeared overnight. And answering that question, I thought, you know, I'm retired would have answered the question and it would have been fun. But then trying to follow-up was how was I filling my time?

What was I doing with my time? And that's where I started to feel that gut churn of I'm not productive. I'm not doing as much as I can be doing for myself, for my family, for society, for friends. That, you know, going for long runs and going for hikes and traveling in the van wasn't a big enough answer. And I'm not sure if it's a generational thing.

I know when my parents retired, they were very happy and very content not doing anything all day. They watch grandkids maybe putt around the yard a little bit. My dad has to do a bunch of yard work because of the honey do list that always exists from my mom. But, I think our generation may be approaching this a little bit different, really tying our identity to the work that we did for so many years.

Brent: And that is something that is a really hard thing to unwind because it's your identity. It's easy to say, this is my title. I'm the VP of sales. I'm the CEO. I'm the head of customer service, whatever it may be.

That's a starting point to say, what do you do? Then you can say, and I work at company X, and you may work at a company that's well recognized. You may work at a very small company, but you can start to create a relatable conversation. And then identity is, let's think about our daily lives when we're working. Is if you've got twenty-four hours in a day, you may be working a third of that or more every single day.

If it's an eight-hour day, that's a third of your day. And so it is a big, and then you're probably sleeping roughly a third. So you start to see this unfold. It's just a big part of your DNA. And when you use the word unproductive, that is so common because you feel like, Oh, what am I doing?

Because as you said, you can wake up and you can exercise and you can read and you can do all these things that you felt like this is what my retirement's going to allow me to do.

Rob: I've earned this. I've worked so hard for a I long saved money. I've earned the privilege of relaxing and not doing anything.

Brent: Yeah. And for me like, oh, can go play golf more. I can fish more. All these activities. And then I turned into my own camp counselor.

I'm looking at this going, wow, what activities am I going to do? And I'm building a calendar of activities. But then there was a void. And the void is, for me was the intellectual stimulation associated with my work and having to figure out ways to pivot that into believing that it's okay not to be fully consumed or fully over scheduled in work. And there's still ways to find purpose in work, but maybe at a different pace, a different scale, or maybe even completely different focus.

And that's a unique experience to go through. And it takes a bit of effort.

Rob: And time. I think it takes

Brent: a little bit

Rob: of time in the space of not having the what's next to actually linger there a little bit to identify where you want to go. So early on, how did you fill your time? So I think where you're at today is not where you were two years ago. So early on, what did you do to fill that time and fill that intellectual void?

Brent: Well, I started with creating a list of all the things that I was curious about. And what was interesting about my list is I actually narrowed it down. This is strange to say this in hindsight, but I narrowed it down to 18 items or 18 things that I could do. And what I kept on feeling is I wanted to do it all. And I was like, okay, these are my top 18.

I'm like, 18 things? And these aren't small things. So as a couple examples is I could sit on nonprofit boards. I could be on for profit boards. I could write a book.

I could start a podcast with, hence we're together doing midlife circus. I could launch another investment firm. I could be an executive coach. I could be a professional speaker. So all these things were coming up and it was a bit of a laundry list that I've been accumulating over several years at the latter part of my career, because I was thinking about what's next.

So when I was occupying my time, I just started to explore each one of them, not diving in the sense of I'm going to do this, but asking the question, what does this entail? And it was actually pretty cool to go through that experience because some of them I ruled out pretty quickly. And a few of them on my list where I call them, did it done it. You know, I could have been a management consultant. Why did that for a number of years in my career?

I don't need to go do that again, unless I'm forced to do it. But in this case, I wasn't forced to do it. So I kind of scratched that one from the list. And then writing a book, I actually pivoted in writing a book to writing a blog. Maybe do it at a smaller scale to see if this is something that I want to do.

So I did spend time exploring those on the list to say, what does this entail to be a little bit more educated? But it was funny because it started out as, I just want to do everything.

Rob: We have all this time, now you can do everything, right?

Brent: Kind of. That was the weird thing is what I learned Rob, is I was starting the process out is I was literally just trying to fill up my schedule the exact same way my schedule was when I was fully in my last company.

Rob: Complete So you retired looking forward to being able to relax, do the things you wanted to go and do. Go for runs, go fishing more, play golf, hang out with the kids. Right? That's the reason why people retire to do all the things they want to go and do. And then you're telling me now that you pretty quickly went back to filling your schedule with all those things that you did similar things that you did when you were working?

Brent: Well, that's what it started to map itself to. That's what was happening was I was now doing more physical activities. So I filled up some time there, but then I wanted to fill up every minute of the day. So I said, Wow, I could start writing a book. Oh, I could start this consulting company.

Oh, I could do this podcast. And I started coming up with this list and then I'm like, Wait a minute, time out. Like, am I trying to make my life eighty hours of work again? I clearly was, but then I had to ask myself, why am I trying to do that? The reality for me was that was my comfort zone.

My comfort zone was to be as busy as possible because I just had to fill the void. But then pausing that, so then I actually narrowed it down to five things.

Rob: So 18 now to five, okay. Progress.

Brent: Now down to five. Progress. Do you want to hear some of the five? Yeah. So this was actually very thoughtful.

I laugh about it, but I was actually like, okay, what I'm going to do is I always wanted to launch a foundation for philanthropic work. So I committed to doing that. So that was one thing. The second thing was I really enjoy writing. So I wanted a platform to write around leadership.

So instead of writing a book, I committed to writing a weekly newsletter on leadership. So that was the second thing that I was doing. The third thing was, is as a natural transition from my last company where I was in private equity, I actually had a big curiosity around advising people who were selling their companies. And I had a lot of colleagues and friends that were at the stage in their lives where they were ready to exit their company so I could help them doing that. So I went all in on that opportunity of exit planning and really helping people exit their companies.

So that was one of them. And then another thing that I focused in on was really the strategic advisory work, because that was something that I was very curious about is how can I help companies with strategy work at the board level? So I started doing some of that work. And then I needed a hub to bring all these things together. And so I created that.

So I was meeting with the website developer and I'm like, I'm going to do all these things. And the individual on the other side said, Okay, are you talking about four or five different websites? Yeah, totally. Five, and I need to figure out a centralized way to show this off. And they came back and said, So are you launching separate companies for each one?

I'm like, No, it's just me. They're like, Okay. And then it dawned me.

Rob: Don't you get it? I had 18 on this list. There's only four now, five now. I could totally, totally do this. What's this web developer asking all these stupid questions for?

Brent: Yes. And he was actually like the secret coach. He was asking me these questions. And what was interesting was in my past, I always had a team and my team could help me go execute all this, but now I'm a team of one.

Rob: And you had to delegate to yourself.

Brent: And I, so who's going to do all the work? Me. And it was really interesting to go through that process because I have, like you just said, I was proud that I narrowed it from 18 down to five. And then, oh, and by the way, I still wanted to do some investing. So that was going to be a part of it as well.

And so that kind of rounded out the five. It was just like writing, investing, philanthropic work, exit planning, strategy work, and then just a hub to a bow to put the whole thing around it. And it dawned on me. I'm like, okay, this is setting myself up for misery because I'm going to be so busy. And the reality sets in is I'm going to do all of these very poorly because I'm only going to dedicate a little time here, a little time there, a little time here.

And I'm not going to actually take any of them seriously because I just won't have time and I'll burn myself out. So I had to pause and I had to make some tough decisions and ask myself, what do I really want to do? So it was an interesting time for me. And this went on for several months and the web developer was kind of going crazy through the whole process, but they signed up for it and we ended up figuring it out. But it was a unique experience that I hadn't been through because I wanted to do so much.

But then I realized, like I was just setting myself up for being A, super busy because that's what I was used to being doing. And B, is I wanted to explore so many different curiosities. And I was just like, I want to do it all right now, right now, right now. Everything has to happen simultaneously. Not kind of staggered, just do it all right now.

That's Well,

Rob: you could have answered the question of the golf course. What do you do? Right? Now you would have been able to answer that question. It's like, we'll have this hub and this hub has five arms in it.

One's an investment arm, one's a foundation. I do have a leadership blog that is part of this hub. It would have immediately filled the response to that question,

Brent: right? Totally. Yeah, I had a purpose. I had a Purpose is a stretch here. I had an identity.

I could lean on something and it also made me feel like I was really important because I had all these things going on, or I would have had all these things going on. But at the end of the day, it was just a facade to chaos. I mean, it was just really like, what am I trying to do here? But I didn't know what to do. That was the reality for me.

I was scratching every itch and just trying to say, well, what do you want to do? And I think what I learned through the process is there's a bit of experimentation as you transition into your next great act, is there's this experimentation. Now, what I'd been used to in the past is it wasn't as much experimentation. It was go do and take it to the finish line. That was what the success was rated on.

Now it was experimentation is the ability to pause and say, is that really what I want to do? And maybe stop something. Hard to do. Like I've never really, that's, I'm always one of those that's like, get it to the finish line no matter what. And this was a chance where I could pause and say, well, maybe the finish line is now.

And it's better to stop something before the momentum gets too big. So it was something that I had to think about.

Rob: So where do you sit today with all five of these initiatives? Now the podcast, Midlife Circus wasn't part of this list you share with me. So that's now a whole new thing. So was there six things or where do you sit with the original five?

Brent: So I made a few decisions. And the first decision was the foundation was really important to me. And so the foundation still exists, but I ended up using a medium that makes it really easy for me. I set up a donor advised fund and that's where you send money into the administrator. So in my case, Charles Schwab has a really nice platform and it's easy to administer.

So that was simple for me. And we've made three donations and I set it up as a family foundation and my kids are involved and so forth. And we've made three donations in the last six months, really easy to do. So it's not like a foundation. I didn't need to set up a nonprofit and build a staff.

It was really easy to do. So box checked there, not a heavy lift, and it feels like it's moving in the right direction. The writing is something I have continued. I paired it back a little bit. I was doing weekly.

I recently paired it back to doing a monthly newsletter and I made some space for, and I'll get to midlife circus. The strategic work, I've done a workshop with an executive leadership team aboard. I really enjoyed the work, but I'll be very, very selective. I've turned some opportunities down, just got to be the right fit. So I'll keep that in my back pocket.

The investing work, I've always learned as an investor, you can be passive. And that is something that I will always take into consideration. In my past, I was always very active and I'm talking more on the private investment side. So I would take board seats and things like that. But there are ways where you can be an investor and be in a passive position, and I have to learn how to do that.

So that is something I'm super curious about. But the one I will share of my entire list is I removed the exit planning business entirely. And that was so hard for me to do. Because here I built a company, You set up your LLC, the website, the right credentials. I actually went to training, got certification from an exit planning advisory capacity, And I decided to turn it off.

And it was hard for me because I like the work. I like helping people navigate their next great act through selling their companies. And I felt really good about it. I'd helped three companies and these were friends of mine that were selling their companies. So I helped them through the process.

So was like, oh, I can do this. I can help them successfully navigate the sale of their company, because it's usually really complex. The challenge I had with that business is I received a phone call from a colleague of mine and said, Hey, I've got He was an investor because I have two companies that I want to introduce you to, and they're both planning to exit their companies, sell their companies within the next year. And I just said to him, let me think about that. And I got back to him shortly after that and said, I'm going to pass.

And I realized my heart wasn't in it. And the challenge with that business is once you take on a client to do it well, you got to go all in and that could be super consuming. And I just felt like now is not the right time for this. So I actually shut it down entirely. And that was something that I've never done before.

It was emotionally challenging for me to do because I set out to do something that I learned there was two things when I started that company, you know, you're familiar with the financial services space as well, because you spent a career in it. It can be incredibly lucrative. Very lucrative. To actually, you know, support people and advise people in selling their companies. So I started this out and I'm like, this could be a great money opportunity from a wealth generation standpoint, but it didn't have the meaning that I wanted.

And the meaning was, how am I helping a broader audience? And hence the evolution of midlife circus. That's where you and I came together because we started to talk about how can we help people transition through one of the toughest transitions that you'll ever go through in your life is going into retirement or semi retirement or your next great act. And so we've started to talk about that and also my energy just got really high and I'm like, I need to let something go to be able to do this. I'm going to let go of the one that probably will suck the most energy out of me, which was the exit planning.

Hard to do, but I also realized, well, if it needs to come back into my life at some point in time, it can. But today, it just didn't feel right. Hard to do, but I'm glad I did it.

Rob: Well, I imagine it could have been it was really hard because of you created the LLC. You've done a couple of those transactions already for friends. You got training on it. You did some specialized training to be ready to do it. It can be incredibly lucrative, and it's mentally stimulating.

So all those things you were wanting to check the box of finding purpose, you saw this as an avenue that would actually help you do this. Having done it a couple of times, then you stepped away. It had to be incredibly difficult to step away from that given all those parameters involved.

Brent: Yeah. And it's great golf course conversation. I can easily tell somebody, what do you do? Oh, I help business owners transition and sell their companies, or I'm in mergers and acquisition advisor. It's something relatable to the business world.

And I was like, that would have been an easy no brainer. And people will instantly lean in and be like, oh, give me an example of companies where So the conversation can go on and on and on. And I let that go. And then it's weird to let something go that you invest two types of resources, financial and time. And I put a lot of time into it, but I just knew this wasn't the right time.

I had to experiment. Didn't know that going into it. I really didn't. I really felt like this is my next great act. I'm going to do this and I can manage it really successfully.

And I already had clients lined up and working with a few of my friends and it was natural, but then it just started to fall to the wayside. So tough decision, but in hindsight, I'm super glad that I did it because I'm doing something now that I'm super passionate about.

Rob: And on a similar vein, you're helping people find their what's next. The next great act because you've said now even like just a couple times. Right? As you're finding what's the next option, what's the next opportunity, where are they going to have purpose? I know when you and I started talking about this, the idea we had was we had a lot of learnings that we had as we went through our retirement.

And not a lot of people are talking about the things that we had learned, personally learned. We had navigated successfully and navigated unsuccessfully, and we hadn't heard anybody talking about this yet. I know that's where I got excited was, wait a second. I can actually help people navigate some of the challenges I faced that nobody mentioned to me. Actually, I got lucky.

You mentioned a couple of those things to me and prevented a couple of mistakes. The big one was, you know, I did I didn't go back and start consulting with my prior company right away. That's a mistake that I avoided. I could have easily done it. And one of the things you suggested when I was leaving is just take three months, Rob.

Just take three months. And if they need you to help them down the road, they'll call and ask you. You can always go back. You're leaving on a good note. You can always go back.

You're not stuck needing to jump right away. And it would have been easy for me in as with that gap of purpose, right, not having the identity of work to fill that void with what was comfortable and what would have been easy would be to say, hey. I actually do some light consulting, which I'm doing right now for some individual clients, not for my old company, which I do find joy in helping advisors grow their businesses, which is something I did, I don't know, fifteen, twenty years ago was when I actually did that work, and I'm finding joy in doing that again. But you helped me not jump right back into what the easy path would have been, the very lucrative path would have been, mentally stimulating path that I could have had, and helped me avoid that step because it helped me find this. If I had been consulting my prior firm, I wouldn't have had a chance to actually start a podcast like this.

And this is really the new purpose. Right? Is I'm happy to say that now nine episodes in, I can say I'm a podcaster when someone asks me what I do for a living. That's kind of fun. Now I got to follow that up with a whole big story about our the midlife circus and what that means and how we're impacting people, which is even more fun.

Brent: Absolutely. I don't know if you recall this. So one of the most exciting kind of proud moments in time was you and I were mountain biking, and it was about two or three weeks before you left your last company to go into semi retirement. And you said to me, I have a favor to ask. Will you not talk or engage with me about business for the next three months?

I'm going to completely disconnect from the working world. Cause you and I have this tendency when we get together, we're going to talk about different business ideas and investments and whatever it may be. And you intentionally said to me, while I love those conversations, I need a break because I've got to honor this commitment that I'm going to make to myself to not get excited about my next great act. I need some space. And I remember how excited, how proud I was for you because you made that declaration.

You wanted to honor it, and you did. And I did, I believe. Right?

Rob: You did. You definitely did not bring we talked about podcast, but not how we were going to apply the podcast to work. And we learned something from a health standpoint. We talked about it. Yeah.

We were reading good books, and so we talk about the book, but not where we were going to take the book and what we were going to do with it.

Brent: Yeah, that's right. Were kind of sharing ideas back. Well, we were doing a lot of health and nutrition podcasts and preparing for our next big adventure. So it was more of a activities based. And then we would have the self help or the personal development podcasts that we talk about and what are they saying and stuff, but it was never related to let's go build a business.

It was more just, this is an interesting topic. Did you come across this one? So it was fun, but it was, I find that if you have that moment in time where you can pause and take three months. I mean, I just went through this with another friend of mine who retired a few months ago and he was freaking out. He's like, I've been asked to join, not freaking out in a negative way.

He was excited about getting all the phone calls. Like people know I'm leaving, so they want me to do some consulting work here and some board work over here. And I really think I'm going to get involved in this nonprofit. He had it all mapped out. And I said to him, I said, so you've got one of your kids is in college.

One just graduated from college. What do you do in the summer? He goes, Well, I'm trying to figure all these things out. I said, What if you actually put all your energy just towards your family and enjoying the summer? How will that feel?

And he goes, I'm so glad you said that. He's like, I've been putting myself through the gauntlet here of just trying to figure out all these things. I need some time off. And I said, take three months. And he's like, yes, I'm going to take three months.

And he paused. And I said, if the people are serious on the other side, those opportunities will most likely still be available three, six months from now. But won't be available is you want to commit to those just to say, Oh, just kidding, I need three months. Start and stops are really tricky. So take the time, step away from it all and go enjoy yourself and take advantage.

And then he started to say, You know what I'm going to do? We're doing this trip to Europe, and then I'm going to go do some golfing with one of my kids, and then we want to go explore this other part of the country. And I'm like, that's what you should do. And he felt so good. It wasn't like I gave him the license.

I just gave him the nudge. I'm just saying, why don't you pause? Because he was financially fine. Like he was set. He'd worked an entire lengthy career and he was very good about putting money aside.

So it wasn't a money thing. It was just purely fear of the unknown, and you wanted to fill it up instantly, which we all do, and which I talked about I did. So what a learning experience.

Rob: You gave him permission, though. And that's the thing, Brandon. You gave him permission for ninety days at a and it is ninety days at a minimum. I ended up taking five months, I think. So three to five, six months.

You gave them permission, though, to not have to come up with an answer. What do you do? Right? And be able to say, try I'm figuring that out. I'm taking three months away.

And any employer, any consulting firm, any place you might go end up will honor that ninety days as well. They say, oh, I need to take three months for myself. They may fill it with somebody else. Right? But there will be opportunities that do present themselves if you're leaving on good terms from a prior employer or you're valuable in the community in which you came from.

They'll give you those three months. You'll have the ability to go back. There's always a chance to go back, especially if you're retiring at a little bit young age.

Brent: And for you, I just remember you before you asked me to pause on the business stuff. Your former employer was already talking to you about doing consulting work. Or they're already talking to you because you were a great leader for the organization and you were creating a void for them. So then they started to float. Well, you could come back to us with this different role and take three months, take six months, or you could consult with us.

And my guidance to you at the time was don't say yes to anything, say thank you. Say thank you, I really appreciate it. What I'm going to do is take some time off just to decompress. This has been a twenty-five plus year career of everything is already figured out what's next. I need to honor this process of just decompression.

And guess what? Life is so kind to you when you allow it to decompress because the ideas will come, the opportunities will come, but if you don't give it space, then it's just kind of goes by the wayside. So it was really cool for you to see they wanted to rope you back in because that's the easiest thing for them. But you were like, No, I'm good. I just need to pause.

And you never, you did in such a graceful, respectful way. You didn't want to burn any bridges. You didn't say anything negative about which you didn't have any reason to about anybody. You just said, no, I'm going to take time off. And you did, they honored that.

And then you kind of had a better sense of what you wanted to do five or six months later.

Rob: I would have had my next act, but not a great act potentially. Right? That would have moved on to what I really found passion around doing.

Brent: Yeah. And think about this, Rob, like you would have had your next title. You would have had your next identity. And that's where you started this conversation. Like with the question to me is like, what did I, when somebody asked, what do you do?

Oh gosh, it's so great to have that answer. It's not easy to say, I'm trying to figure that out. Because then people look at you a little differently. Yeah. They're like, well, is he just wandering aimlessly?

Well, yeah, actually I am.

Rob: And it's okay.

Brent: It is okay. But that's the thing that you did a good job of just, you went through it, I went through it, hopefully we're going to help people get through it and get to their next great act. I like how you put that, you had had your next act, but it would have been great. There would have been something missing.

Rob: The next act in retirement's going to look different for our generation. Why do you think that is?

Brent: Think of our parents and our grandparents. So definitely with our grandparents, there was a structure set up for retirement and it was very age based. So when you get to a certain age, you retire. There were pensions, there were retirement plans that were established. Most large organizations, even going back twenty years ago had pensions in place.

Pensions somewhat disappeared in our generation. So they had something to go to and that was the plan. You're going to sail off into the sunset and you may play some golf. You may do some activities with your friends and stuff, but it was a very prescribed what's next. And that's what was accepted.

And the same for our parents. They kind of teeter totter a little bit, but it was very ingrained into the DNA of you work this long, then you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor and go figure out what that is at that point in time. But it was a prescription and the path was very similar for a lot of people, time based, and then you just go off and you're not going to work again. You're going to do it. You may volunteer, there's plenty of activities you can do, but it was much more of a formula.

Today's formula is very, very different. It looks very different. We're the first generation, generation X that looks at retirement, just from my perspective and what I've read and what I've experienced, it looks at it through a different lens because we don't have pensions. We don't have that prescribed what's next in front of us. It's more or less go figure it out.

Rob: Well, we're healthier. Retirement's likely going to be longer for us than it is than it was for our parents or grandparents even. Right? It's we're going to like, ideally, we're going to live longer on average, healthier as we enter retirement because we've been more active during our working years. We've had more resources around us, and we grew up differently.

And we were we were raised differently. We're the latchkey generation as well. We had to figure stuff out ourselves. We had to fend for ourselves and do things ourselves. And as we get to that place where we have a void, we'll figure out a way to fill it.

We didn't get bored. We didn't have video games. We didn't have smartphones to look at all the time. We got comfortable. We dealt with being bored.

Either got comfortable being bored or we figure out how to fill the time and be productive and do something during that time. A lot of times you got in trouble with that filling that void growing up. I know a lot of instances where I'm glad there was not a cell phone around to capture imagery of what we were doing back then, but we found ways to fill that void. And I believe we're going to continue to find ways to fill the void and stay productive as we move forward, whether it be something that generates income or something that just creates value for other people.

Brent: Yeah. And that's it's interesting when you we were we were taught to go figure it out. Our generation was taught to go fill the void. And so we filled the void with various activities. We filled the void with sometimes taking on multiple projects at work, kind of over committing ourselves in many different ways, but we were filling the void by being busy.

So now this generation, why would we do anything different when we go into retirement? We'll fill the void, but how we fill it will be different. And I see more people today taking on a different type of role from a work perspective. They may work part time, they may be a coach. I mean, coaching didn't exist thirty years ago.

Our generation for the most part built the whole coaching. I'm talking about like coaching in the workplace. Mentorship is much more accepted. Boards are definitely prevalent. Even smaller companies have boards because it's all about that knowledge share.

Nonprofits, there's a lot of nonprofit. There's so many things you can do. And what I see is our generation is doing more of a portfolio approach to say, I'm not going to just do one thing. I don't have to declare one thing. I may have a portfolio of things that I'm going to do.

Rob: Portfolio of skills that we can now deploy.

Brent: Yeah. You've learned so much.

Rob: I like it. What are you

Brent: going to do with it? Yeah. And so that's a piece where you may be a mentor. You may be a part time worker that's just an advisor. You may be a consultant.

You may not do anything tied to your previous professional endeavors, but you're using your leadership strengths to lean in and go work at that nonprofit where you may help them go from point A to point B in a more efficient way because you had skills of building something in your past. So there's a lot of things that our generation will be doing that previous generations didn't. And I think it's an incredible time to go create your next great act. It is incredible because there are so many opportunities. But I think the key here is not to get overly fixated on one thing versus another and making it very like, this is the only thing I'm going to do.

Sometimes it's okay to try a few things and maybe they don't all work out. I can speak from firsthand experience. As we discussed earlier, I tried a few things. I'm like, wow, this can be too much, but not even too much. Is that where my energy goes?

And that's what I'm trying to do myself, and I hope others take advantage of that as well.

Rob: And it's okay to take the time to experiment and figure out which portfolio which skills in the portfolio are going to bring you the most joy and satisfaction as you move forward. I really like how you said the portfolio of skills. I really like that.

Brent: Yeah. Think about your coaching as an example where you could have easily taken on a coaching assignment for a large organization where you're just almost like an employee. And you're going to coach multiple different practices and their evolution versus now you said, you know what? I actually like coaching. It gives me joy.

I remember you telling me that one day you're like, I really enjoy coaching. It goes back to when I used to be a ski coach and working with kids and so forth. You're like, I like that. So I'm going to apply the coaching mentality to the work I'm doing, but I'm going to be selective in the practices or the people that I work with because that brings me joy. And I'm not going to also feel the pressure of saying I have to fill up my plate 100% with coaching assignments.

I may take on a few because it gives me that intellectual stimulation and that joy that fuels me. And that's what's really cool. But then also you and I are doing, we set up a group of friends locally and we're doing trail maintenance as an example, where we adopted a trail. Because we like that to get together. We're on the trails all the time.

So we're getting together with friends to help fix some of the trails that we abuse on a regular basis, just from mountain biking and running and so forth. But we're out there, but that's just coming together with friends, but that's we're working technically for a nonprofit right now. And we signed a commitment to do X amount of hours per year in trail maintenance. So that was something that's part of our portfolio now. And it's fun because we get to do that.

Rob: Yeah. You just want to build up go back to your big hub, Brent. We're going to go back to your first answers. You had a hub of things and five different things, and you're trying to make me build a portfolio of things now. That's what I'm hearing from you.

Brent: But not an over committed portfolio. That's what I made the mistake was it was like each one of those was a large commitment versus you and I doing trail work is what do we have to do three trail days a year? It's not like a huge commitment. So that's the thing where you can put things in that bring joy to you and give you a sense of purpose and not feel like you got to just find that one silver bullet that's going to occupy all your time. It doesn't necessarily need to be that way.

Rob: And the trail works nice because it finishes with beer in the back of a truck, which is a nice way to finish a day out in the dust and Absolutely. Any final thoughts on our discussion today?

Brent: I feel like everybody has this opportunity to go create their next great act. And from my own experience is the formula to do that is you have to be willing to explore your curiosities. Try things and be willing to turn things off when they're not clicking with you, but also have the patience when you're trying something new, that it may take a little bit of time to get in your rhythm. So to me is take advantage of your next great act. Try a few things, be willing to push your boundaries a little bit on what you think you're capable of doing, and know that it's okay to turn a few things off that maybe just didn't go as planned, but be patient with them at the same time.

Rob: This transition's going to feel awkward. It's a it's a major life transition like getting married. It's going to feel awkward at first potentially, and it's okay to linger in that awkwardness. You spent thirty years doing things a certain way, twenty, thirty, forty years, depending on how long you worked, doing things that gave you purpose and filled that void of answering the question, what do you do? It's okay to take the time and linger in that discomfort to really find what's next.

And it's absolutely okay when someone asks you after you retire that you're trying to figure it out, that I don't know what's next. I'm trying to figure that out right now because you might just find the great thing that's been awaiting for you your whole life.

Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an update. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Before we go, a quick reminder.

The opinions and stories shared here are just that, personal reflections and perspectives. We're not legal experts, medical professionals, or therapists. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only, so please seek the right professionals when you need guidance. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.