When the Career Ends, Who Are You?
When the Career Ends, Who Are You?
For many professionals and executives, stepping away from a long and respected career isn’t just a financial decision it’s a deeply personal shift. The meetings disappear. The urgency vanishes. The inbox goes quiet. After years of operating at full tilt, you have nothing but time.
After years of being the go-to person the expert, the leader, the one others rely on, it can be jarring to suddenly have no meetings to lead, no patients to advise, no clients to serve. Even when retirement is something you’ve planned for, it can leave you quietly asking:
Who am I, if I’m no longer that person?
The Hidden Challenge of Professional Transitions This stage of life can be unsettling in ways you didn’t expect. There’s no roadmap for how to replace the meaning, identity, and structure your career once provided.
You may find yourself missing:
Without something meaningful to step into, even the most successful transition on paper can feel flat… or worse. Whether you’re leaving medicine, the law, corporate leadership, or any profession you have put your heart and soul into, your next chapter deserves the same level of intention and clarity you’ve applied to every other major decision in your life.
But life after your career is more than just strolling on beaches and taking an extended vacation. Living a fulfilling and purposeful new life requires planning and building a clear vision that is meaningful and stimulating.
Your financial advisor manages your money through a financial plan. To successfully manage your time in this next chapter, you need a lifestyle plan. Lifestyle Planning is a collaborative process in which a trained advisor guides you to envision what you want this new chapter to be like and plan it. We call your lifestyle plan Your Happiness Portfolio®
ROBERT’S STORY
The Benefits
Unmoored to Reengaged: A Life Reimagined OR Charting a New Course: Robert’s Story
You may be looking ahead to your “next chapter” and wondering what it will look like. Will you be bored? Lose your sense of purpose? Struggle to find your footing without your career identity?
The Importance of Your Happiness Portfolio®
The Importance of Your Happiness Portfolio®
Your Happiness Portfolio ® is your vision and action plan for flourishing in your next chapter. It needs to include how you want your everyday life to look beyond your bucket list though your bucket list is an important part of your plan.
It is your plan for how you want to live the next 25 or 30 years of your life. It describes the kinds of activities you want to include in your day-to-day life. Too often people simply fill their days with whatever comes along. They end up feeling that they are busy but not really doing things that are meaningful to them. They feel lost.
Deliberately choosing how you want to spend your time increases the likelihood you will be happy and feel that your life is fulfilling.
Developing Your Happiness Portfolio ® requires taking time to reflect on your:
For many of us, our purpose has been defined by what we did for a living. When that is gone, it leaves a big hole that needs to be filled. Having a sense of purpose and feeling that your life matters in some way is a very fundamental human need. It shouldn’t be all consuming, but it needs to be clearly present.
Just as your financial advisor guides you in the management of your financial portfolio, we guide you to design and build your Happiness Portfolio®. Like your financial portfolio, your Happiness Portfolio® needs to be balanced and diversified. It needs to be filled with activities that you enjoy and that make you feel like you and your life matter
Your financial advisor will ensure your Happiness Portfolio ® is integrated into your financial portfolio.
Our Gameplan Process
Our Gameplan Process
The Next Chapter Gameplan is a structured, proven, 5-step process that helps you move from uncertainty to clarity.
Before you decide to move forward with us, we have a free Discovery call for us to understand where you are on your journey, explain our process to you in more detail, and mutually determine if we are a match to work together.
1. Success Finder Assessment is a time-tested assessment tool based on 40 years of research and development which helps you understand what drives your behavior. It provides a clear and deep understanding of yourself so you can make choices about your future. You receive insights into your motivations and lifestyle priorities.
2. During the Deep Dive Discovery, you complete a series of exercises to stimulate your thinking about what you really want in your life. We guide you through a series of conversations and exercises to:
Then you clarify your vision for your next chapter and develop a picture of who you wish to be now.
3. The Clarity Matrix integrates the first two steps. It helps you get in touch with a sense of what your purpose is now, so you feel things you do matter, and you are making a difference in this world in some way. It helps you see who you are now and what you vision for your next chapter is.
4. Then, you Build Your Happiness Portfolio® which is your guide to allocating your time as you navigate a successful next chapter.
5. Rewirement Check-in this is the accountability step. Every 2-3 months we check-in to be sure you are living your Happiness Portfolio ® and if not, why not.
The Benefits
The Benefits
Professionals who go through our Gameplan process often say:
“I feel more grounded and excited about the future.”
“I didn’t know how much I needed this.”
“This gave me a vision of what my new life can be like and a way to move forward.”
What other Professionals and Executives have said
What Other Business Owners Have Said…
“You were right on with your recommendation of Next Chapter Lifestyle Advisors for guidance with my retirement planning. Susan and Marianne have been outstanding in helping me to create the roadmap for as you mentioned, ‘a fulfilling, balanced and purposeful life in retirement’”
Former Dentist
“Marianne is a great coach. She helped me realize what retirement would be like and what is important to me. She also made me accountable.”
Former Business Owner
“This was a very good investment in our time, money, and the effort we put into it. It helped us clarify how we could implement our dreams and desires.”
Former Financial Advisor
“Working with you has improved my life and especially helped me make the transition into the next phase of my life very smooth. In fact, by working on a plan with your help, I am more excited about life in this next
phase than I have been for years. You are a true professional who provides objective guidance and an individual who cares about the people you are working with.”
Former business owner