I’d never really thought of retirement other than to make sure I was putting away pension contributions but one day I was in the doctors surgery about something minor and the nurse said “When do you retire?”

I was only in my mid fifties, working flat out on my business with 2 young kids and adventures to enjoy – “WTF retirement, are you joking”.

I was totally appalled, gave her a dirty look and went on my way, but strangely the thought stuck. A few months later I ended up in hospital with an blood infection, only a couple of days but it gave me a bit of time to think, and one of those thoughts was “What would happen to the company and my family if this was serious”.

So the first thing I did when I got out was to get BUPA, so at least if something happened, it would get fixed quickly. I also made a promise to myself that I would be finishing at 65 and wouldn’t become one of those people that worked till they dropped.

As the company reached a stable state I cut out working at weekends as a habit, and made time for the gym during the week and Friday afternoons became mountain biking or a run so slowly took control of my life.

The moment arrived

A couple of years ago we had a mega year, work, we were overloaded with work and had a very profitable year, and I remember thinking that I might not ever see this money in my pocket unless I paid best part of 70% tax, I was working hard for my family and staff, but what was in it for me.

My eldest daughter was getting married in May and I was worrying a lot about the speech. I wasn’t really enjoying the client assignments, I always have such high hopes for the organisations we work with but in the end they rarely grasp the opportunity and just carry on being what they have always have been, but at least we are normally richer.

That was the big moment. I was 63 and a couple months off 64 and realised that I wasn’t handling the pressure quite so well, the adrenalin was diminishing and I realised I was ready to change, it happened almost overnight.

The announcement

I sat down with my wife (who runs the company with me) and said “I’m done”, and after the wedding, I’ll be getting in my camper and heading off to Scotland with the dog. I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me, but that’s what happened.

The journey from there wasn’t quite so simple, but the lesson here is, when you are ready you will know, its then about making it happen which brings challenges of it’s own.