AIIP Blog – Retirement Series
By Jan Knight
Editor’s note: This is part of our “Retirement” series to address challenges and opportunities many of our members facing retirement are experiencing.
Off-ramp to Where Exactly?
A couple of years ago, I mentioned to a client that I was starting to think about retirement, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it as an independent consultant. What were the pros and cons of ‘going cold turkey’ versus just slowing down? Would my personality allow me to “just slow down”? She coined the phrase “off-ramp” that day at breakfast, and I’ve been using it ever since.
For me, this would be a way to just start thinking about it without making big decisions and to let things unfold. As someone who tends to go with the flow and not be goal-oriented in my business or personal life, this really resonated with me. My off-ramp, it turns out, had no assigned length or destination, but here’s what it looked like for me.
What’s First?
First, I started telling people I was starting to retire! Well, that’s not quite true. First, I wondered, do I really WANT to do this? My primary impetus was two-fold. I wanted to spend more time with my husband, who had been retired for a long time, and secondly, I wanted more flexibility in my schedule than I already had. I realized I could still have both of those things while making some money and working on some interesting research projects, so I added into the equation the question of “is this (that is, working) how I want to spend my time?”
Listen to your Body
As I had no answers to that last question, I started listening to my body when opportunities arose. Many of you will recognize the subconscious reaction, physical or mental, when something comes up. During this time, I had an old client come to me for a project. I told him I was only really working on projects that were interesting and for people I liked. I should add that I hadn’t planned to say that at all. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision, and I just blurted it out on the phone! As I DID like him and it WAS an interesting and somewhat lucrative project, I said to myself, why not?
Then another former client, who wasn’t that much fun to work with, came to me, and I felt my body slump in my chair as I talked to her. That’s literally how I chose what to take on and what to say no to. I listened to how my body reacted. As I’d done no marketing or networking since COVID times, no new clients were seeking me out, so that part was easy. In fact, in my networking circles, many people assumed I had already retired; I thought that was amusing!
Transitioning
As I began to enjoy slow mornings, afternoon coffee before a trip to Costco, and a walk at the drop of a hat, I found myself with just one client left. I loved the team I worked with, and it was hard to give up the relationships and friendships I’d forged. The research work for them was mostly interesting – working with technology startups to obtain federal funding for their innovations. When THIS client called me, I acknowledged that I did not slump in my chair, so I continued.
After about a year, though, I realized I started to dread the interruption of my quiet schedule for a kick-off phone call. I found that I wasn’t particularly fond of deadlines any longer either. As I had informed this last client of my off-ramp a year or so before, the team had been flexible because earlier in this period, I had enlisted another AIIP member with a similar background to work collaboratively with me. There was no way I’d leave this client in the lurch, so getting a new person to replace me was about the only, but essential, planning I did.
Once I realized this client was in good hands and that I could remain friends with these people after working with them on over 130 projects, I decided to call it a day. Phew! It was a long off-ramp of about two years. I didn’t know how long it was going to be or where and when it would end, but I’m here now.
This blog post may suggest to some that I’m a bit touchy-feely, not strategic enough, and not a planner, but for me it worked. Clients were kept informed, work was done when it had to be done, the transfer to a new person went smoothly, and I’m now free of deadlines.
What’s Next?
Now, the next part. How do I still feel productive when I don’t seem that interested in the things I thought I’d do when I retired? What happened to my plan to draw more? What happened to my ideas for volunteering in the community? Argh. But guess what? Now I give myself time to sit and read in between cleaning out client files and my office. I give myself time to take a nap after a walk before I start to shred those old documents. I guess you could call it an on-ramp to somewhere else! Again, I don’t quite know where it’s going, but that’s ok with me.
Jan Knight was President of Bancroft Information Services, a research and information company based in Tucson, Arizona. For over 24 years Jan specialized in providing research, analysis and research-driven writing services to companies in all industries. Much of her work helped to shape business plans, marketing plans, commercialization plans and business development efforts for companies ranging from start-ups to “grown-ups”.
Jan has an M.A. in Information Resources & Library Science from the University of Arizona.
