The purpose of this blog is to help you plan for what you’re going to do when you retire. As a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks, of course I never planned for my retirement. In 2000, at age 55 and as part of my divorce settlement, I sold my moving company and was immediately out of a job. And my reason for getting out of bed every day! With nothing to do and no need for income, I took a (mandatory) leave of absence for the next few years. What did I do during those years? I honestly don’t remember. I’m sorry to report that I apparently vegetated and didn’t do anything. I don’t recommend this strategy!
By 2006 I couldn’t stand the boredom and loneliness anymore—I needed to add meaning to my life. I found purpose by creating a goal—to try to raise the quality of service in office moving worldwide. I hoped to capitalize on my extensive career experience and decided to expand what was really a very part-time business into a full-time operation.
In the past I had taught one or two office moving seminars a year to movers who wanted to diversify into office moving. But as a part-time endeavor, it was never a significant income source.
By then I was 61 years old. With a dream and vision, I contacted the largest moving companies that had multiple branches and offered them my IOMI® Certified Office Mover® training seminar. A year later I signed up the largest privately owned moving company in the USA—GRAEBEL. For the next two years I traveled all over the country teaching their employees at their 30+ branches my office moving seminar.
After completing the Graebel training, I was hired by two other national moving companies and that kept me busy for two more years.
I was overwhelmed with joy because for the first time in my life, I loved my job. My “retirement job” gave me more satisfaction than any job I ever had before. I could also see positive results of my work. My IOMI® training and certification programs were making a real difference by improving moving practices, which reduced worker injuries and accidents, and better protected customers’ property. My moving company clients appreciated my training and their customers loved the higher quality of service.
Being “street wise,” I planned for the next chapter in my life. When I saw the economic downturn coming in 2009, I planned for another possible forced retirement—this time from my IOMI® training seminars. I figured that if companies were trying to survive and struggling to make payroll due to the recession, the first thing they’d cut would be training, and I was right. I went from teaching three seminars a month to two a year. BUT…before I could fall into another ‘vegetated’ state, this time I planned for my second post-retirement job.
While I was working fulltime teaching my seminars, I dabbled in residential rental property, and I liked it. I took a real estate investment seminar with John Adams, a famous real estate guru in Atlanta (https://money99.com/1-2/about/ ). Shortly after my fulltime IOMI® “roadshow” ended, I found Pam Rogers of RE/MAX® (https://www.remax.com/realestateagentoffice/kennesaw-ga-30152-pamelarogers-id11093132.html ), one of the best short sale real estate brokers in Atlanta. We looked at what seemed like more than 100 houses. I bid on many of them and ended up buying several—not to flip but, instead, to invest and get income.
By 2013, at age 68, I was getting bored again because rental property management is part-time. Fearing a return to my wasted retirement of 2000, I launched my biggest project ever—putting my 3-day in-person office moving seminar online. I spent the next three years writing a script for the entire seminar, reorganizing everything, updating the pictures, and doing the voiceover. In 2016, I rolled out the only interactive, online office moving training seminar in the world. (https://www.officemoves.com/training/index.html )
Even though it has become very successful, it, too, is part-time, so I’m now writing a nonfiction business book. With all these part-time jobs, I keep busy by exercising six days a week and seeing a personal trainer twice a week. I also mentor (for free) several of my younger seminar clients on a regular basis. Many of them love to learn from my experience and think my advice is “gospel.” I’m grateful when they adopt what I “preach” and see how I change their lives and make them better.
So, after reading my retirement history, what are you going to do? Are you going to drift into retirement without an action plan or become proactive and take control? If you do, your post-career life can give you more satisfaction than your present job. All you have to do is start thinking about it; find your personal purpose and explore all the opportunities that await you. I promise that if you follow this business model, you, too will end up like me—wanting to work until your dying breath.
Be sure to join our Group at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12060567
For more information on our online office moving training, please visit
https://www.officemoves.com/training/index.html or call Ed Katz at 404.358.2172.
