Tom is one of the most successful I know. He is my mentor and a friend and lives a life that very few will ever experience. He can do this because he understands and successfully navigated the three stages of life successful. Those stages are: Learning, Earning and Retirement. Tom is well educated and worked hard throughout his life, he continues to work hard even in retirement. After school he started on the ground floor of an insurance agency and later leading much of the entire corporate operations. Later he served as Chairman of the Board for two major wealth management firms and is a leader philanthropically and in his community. Tom is an inspiration to those he worked for and those he works with. His is not an overnight success story; in reality he has always been successful. Success is a mindset and a journey, it is not a destination. Tom excels because he takes no shortcuts and has mastered each stage before moving to the next. To live successfully, your journey must have a learning phase, an earning phase and finally a retirement phase.
The 3 Stages: Learn Earn Retire
As suggested by the late Stephen Covey in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, let’s begin with the end in mind- retirement; often seeming an elusive goal on the horizon just out of reach. If that is where I want to end up, the preceding 2 stages need to send me in the right direction.
Stage 1: LEARN
I am a huge advocate for education. It has been very important in my life and I have a MBA and a law degree as evidence. I look at the opportunities that I have been given in life to grow, excel and succeed and they all stem back to the decision to pursue as much education as I could. But the learning stage continues beyond formal education and is more dependent on the informal life experiences. During this stage you show up to work and put your head down and make mistakes, learn better approaches and re-attack.
It is during this stage that persistence and determination play an important role. It may require some late nights and early mornings but it lays the foundation for the rest of your life. How long does this stage last? It really depends on the complexity of the learning needed. Different career aspirations and desired outcomes may require differing lengths of time. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”, the discussion revolves around a minimum 10,000 hours to master anything.
Culturally we tend to seek after the overnight successes. Media is replete with stories of college kids turned billionaire overnight. Intuitively we all know this is the exception not the rule but we yearn to be another exception. There is no shortcut to success only misperceptions of the successful. I feel like I am still in this learning stage because I have reinvented myself so many times over the years I keep starting this phase (and my 10,000 hours) over. Once you have mastered your trade you move to the next stage: Earning
Stage 2: EARN
This stage is the largest and longest stage for most people. This is where you begin hitting on all cylinders in your career. You know and understand your job so well people come to you with questions that are routine to you. Earning does not necessarily refer to financial success. During this stage you earn the respect of colleagues, the reputation as a leader, and increased managerial responsibility. You may still have to answer to superiors and cannot just take off when you want to but you have earned a degree of autonomy. You have become a trusted and reliable asset. Finally you are ready to retire.
Stage 3: RETIREMENT
As you read the word “retirement” what image crossed your mind? Was it a 62 year old ready to take the next few years off and travel? Unfortunately, the retirement that we have been taught is a myth.
So, what really is retirement?
First let’s talk about what it is not… I cannot picture myself sitting on a porch swing in the late Georgia summer sipping on an iced tea. Firstly, I’m not an iced tea drinker but more important I have too much energy and drive to find myself with “nothing” to do. I am too passionate about life and living, I need to do something. But isn’t that what we are taught about retirement during our lives? Get a good education, work hard, buy the house with the picket fence and then, at 62, cut the cake, shake some hands, thank the boss and spend the rest of your life playing bocce ball and eating dinner at 4:30. No thanks.
Well, if that is not the retirement for me than what is? Is it possible to charge hard all the way to the end? Reaching stage 3 really requires a redefinition of what retirement is. For me, retirement is the ability to do the things I want to do when I want to do them. Let me emphasize the “I” -the things I want, when I want. It means the ability to take the morning off to golf when the weather is just right, to leave early for the big game to miss traffic and avoid the rush and to spend the day with my grandkids when they come around to visit. Retirement is more “freedom to choose” than it is “no longer working”.
So how do we get there? That takes us back to the beginning and stage 1. The retirement we want is available we just need to set ourselves on the right path by learning and earning, putting in the time to reach the retirement we deserve.
Question: What does “retirement” mean to you? What stage are you in? Leave your comments below or by clicking here
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