How much time would you like to devote to your new entrepreneurial endeavor?
How much income do you need from your efforts?
These two questions will give you a great starting point for your post retirement career journey. It can be challenging to know how long it will take to see results. People overestimate how much they can achieve in one year but underestimate how much they can achieve in three years. When plotting your future consider how long you want to work towards success. If you can’t commit to a multiyear effort, focus on an area where you already have a lot of experience. Know this, you are an expert and someone will want to know what you know. How you choose to serve your client base will depend on how you visualize your efforts unfolding.
You’re an expert-use it
Let’s say you worked all your professional life as a cashier in a grocery store. Share your knowledge with people in a variety of ways. It could be you’re an expert in food storage or the seasonality of produce. Are you a customer service expert? Share that. Do you have a massive knowledge base of tips and tricks that will help shoppers understand how to make the most of their hard-earned dollars. Write a book, start a face book group, create a social media channel. Build a client base.
Have you worked in construction? Share your knowledge with homeowners on how to build a fence, how to negotiate with a contractor, and how to design a proper patio or deck.
If you worked in a restaurant you can share food handling tips, freshness tips, recipes, and more. No matter how you earn a living, you can convert that knowledge into a business others can learn from. The key is connecting with like minded individuals and learning what they need. Once you know what they need you can create a business around that need. Assume you will need at least three years before you see monetary results, and then grow your monetary results from there. Three years is a long time if you’re hungry or can’t pay your light bill. You’ll have to decide how to handle your finances in the interim. Not having the finances to begin a new adventure shouldn’t stop you from considering what’s possible and how you will go about realizing your vision now. The more you consider your encore the more understanding you will have when the time comes to take your first step. Think about anything you learned as an adult. Were you significantly better at what you learned three years later? If you continued on the path you got better. This is evident when you teach someone how to do what you are now an expert at. They will have lots of questions you may not have considered because your knowledge is so ingrained.
Define the time commitment that makes sense to you
The second time component is day-to-day time. How many hours each day or week do you want to commit to your post retirement career? A quick internet search will show a wide variety of answers. The responses range from 16 hours a week to 80 hours a week. How much day-to-day time you put in will depend on where you are starting and the nature of the business you’re in. Tim Ferris famously mentioned the “4 Hour Work Week” in his book of the same title. If you are doing what you love the hours you spend may not matter, but it’s a good idea to get a feel for a realistic time commitment. Consider the best and worst-case scenarios. If you can only commit to 20 hours per week, create an opportunity that requires 20 hours or less. Spending more time doesn’t necessarily mean more money; check out the book by Tim Ferris I mentioned above. Of course, Tim Ferris is an outlier, like Martha Stewart or Stephen King. Not everyone is going to have massive financial success, or be able to get away with a four-hour work week. That said every successful person has experience they draw from. Consider what you already know and consider how you can convert your existing expertise into an entrepreneurial endeavor. The other day I was in a meeting with a former colleague and she said she thought I would become a consultant. I never considered working as a consultant. I always believed that I would be a writer. Could I be a consultant? Of course, I have a strong background in sales and hospitality.
Do you have an interest in consulting in your area of expertise? That would be a smooth transition from what you are currently doing and you may already have a built-in client base. You could begin offering consulting services while you are working so that when you launch your post retirement career you have a head start.
Plan for setbacks
I love what Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” He’s right. What you will do when you hit a wall, or take a stumble. Visualizing success is a great way to start your journey, but also to consider pitfalls.
What will you do if you have a setback?
What will you do if it takes longer to reach your initial goal than you planned?
What if you can’t get financing?
What if your launch is amazing and then sales stall?
Considering challenges that will come up can help you better estimate how much you want to pursue your idea. You will have challenges, and most of the challenges will be unforeseen. But you will also have unforeseen successes as well, you can’t plan for everything.
Examples of pivots
When I get punched in the mouth, I look at what led to that unforeseen circumstance and what steps I have to take to prevent that from happening again. Sometimes unforeseen circumstances will lead to opportunity. I have two examples of businesses that had to change during the pandemic, which has been a huge challenge for most of us, business owners or not.
- Joe is a personal physical fitness trainer. He rented a facility and sold his expertise to clients on-site. When the pandemic hit, his business folded.
- Kathy owns a speaker training company called “SpeakEasy” (fictitious name). They stopped providing in person classes at their expansive offices when the pandemic struck. They shifted to online courses and increased the number of students they can serve because they could expand their offerings to individuals from a broader geographic location. By recording their offerings they were able to offer webinars as well as web-based live classes which also helped expand their client base. They grew and scaled their business during the pandemic.
Could Joe have pivoted during the pandemic? Yes! Everyone has a vision of how they want to work, web classes weren’t for him. Not every person will have success. Fortunately Joe also has a background in food service and was able to start a highly successful food cart that served people at the height of the virus.
Now take a moment to visualize a day gone wrong
- What can go wrong?
- How will you handle bumps in the road?
- Will your commitment change if you do run into a wall?
I’m a big believer in planning. You can’t plan for everything, but when you step into the ring, if you visualized that things will go wrong, you will be able to stand up and keep going after you take that punch.
Would you like to learn more about post retirement careers? Buy my book, “Your Golden Ticket Years: Find Your Passion on a Post Career Entrepreneurial Ride”
