Retirement – Yes? Or No?

I was sitting at my kitchen table this morning thinking about retirement.

Not my own, particularly. I don't think I've ever been terribly good at the idea. I'm one of those irritating people who takes up a hobby and then can't resist turning it into a business, and I suspect I'll carry on doing that until I no longer can.

But I was thinking about how many people, who know they still have so much to give and to discover, glide towards retirement imagining that not working is the place they are destined to be.  We are living longer, our wisdom is accumulated over years of just being here and yet for most of our lives we're encouraged to believe retirement is a hugely desirable place to be. You work hard, put enough money aside, collect your pension and then what ?  You spend your afternoons babysitting grandchildren or discovering an unexpected enthusiasm for begonias?

For many independent professionals, however, retirement isn't a destination at all.

It's a cliff edge.

I've spent time recently working with psychotherapists, teachers, dentists and other specialists, and despite their very different professions, the conversation eventually wanders into the same territory:

"What happens if I can't work?"

Not because they dislike what they do. Quite the opposite. They've spent decades becoming exceptionally good at it, escaped office politics, built businesses around their own values and enjoy choosing the clients they work with.

It sounds wonderfully free until you notice one awkward little detail.

The business only earns money while they're sitting in front of another human being.

Take two weeks off... income stops.
Become ill... income stops.

Decide you'd simply like to slow down after forty years... income stops.

Running a professional practice is a bit like riding a bicycle. To keep it upright and moving forwards, someone has to keep pedalling.

Forever.

Now, before someone writes to tell me that's simply how professional practice works...

Yes. I know.

But that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

One of the strange things about getting older is that your greatest asset slowly stops being your energy and becomes your experience. Experience isn't the problem. The problem is that many professionals only ever sell access to that experience rather than turning it into something that can exist independently of them.

Every consultation, assessment or meeting draws on years of accumulated knowledge, judgement and instinct. Yet once the client leaves, the value has been delivered and tomorrow you start again, selling another hour.

"If I wasn't charging by the hour, what exactly would I be selling?"

And that's where things get interesting.

Most professionals know far more than they think they do. They may have developed an assessment method nobody else uses, a system refined over many years, or a way of solving problems that has become so instinctive they no longer recognise it as valuable.

That knowledge could become training, a workshop, a book, a membership, a specialist resource, a licensing opportunity or even a physical product.

The possibilities are often sitting quietly under their noses. They simply can't see them because they're too busy doing the work.

And this is where my own work has quietly changed.

Increasingly, people come to me with a question they struggle to put into words:

"I know there's more in me... but I can't quite see what it is."

That's the conversation I love, because I'm rarely starting with a blank sheet of paper. I'm helping someone uncover assets they've been carrying around for years without recognising their commercial value.

The irony is that the knowledge that feels most ordinary to us is often the very knowledge somebody else would gladly pay to learn.

I've built businesses all my life. Some sold wool. Some sold soap. Some sold words.

Now I spend much of my time helping people realise that what they really have to sell isn't a product, or even a profession.   It's everything they've learned becoming the person they are.

And strangely enough, that usually turns out to be worth far more than they imagined.

If this resonates and you would like to have a conversation about how you can make your business less dependant on you, book a free 20 minute Discovery Call with me and let's see if I can help you.  

https://www.melindacoss.com/discovery