In this edition of Living The Retirement Lifestyle Podcast we chat with Bob Clarke about why it’s important to have choices when you get older, why age 50 was pivotal for him and his wife Rosemary and what he discovered in his foray into the online world

Its a fabulous story and we know you’ll have lots of takeaways from it so listen in and hear what he has to say

Like so many of us Bob loved his job working as a health care professional running infertility laboratories up and down the East Coast of the USA but retirement was on the horizon and like so many of us he didn’t want to be dependent on the government or to potentially outlive his money. He wanted to be in control and have choices when he got older

And it’s at that point you start looking (usually while you are still working at your job) and then the shiny objects pop up and because you don’t know any better at this point (been there and done that!) one thing leads to another and you find yourself one of the ‘dabblers’ making a little bit of money but not enough to write home about.

But then something happens…

There’s a a ‘trigger point’

For Bob and his wife Rosemary it was a change in Bob’s job combined with an unexpected heart problem and a lot of stress… and that led to the decision that this online thing could be the answer but that it would require an investment into learning how it all worked and then being able to focus on it part time until they (well Rosemary actually) could see it working for them

The key word as you will hear Bob say was FOCUS. When you sit down to work on your business you can’t go jumping around all over the place because suddenly that 6o minutes you had planned to use is gone in an instant!

So you decide you’ll retire and then you’ll have the time to do this “thing” and that’s when the realisation kicks in that you have to make it work and that requires discipline and the activities you are involved in have to be results or income producing activities. When you focus on that and have a good mentor to help and guide you then you can start to achieve your goals

Bob told us he was working now because he wanted to and he was having fun doing it but that the danger was loving it so much you lose track of time and end up compromising your lifestyle and that’s not how it should be so you have to set boundaries. Time in the office for work. Time in the home for relationships, family and fun.

I want to be that person just like you and Susan where I can say I’ve been in the trenches and because of that can help fill the gaps for others because of what I know that they won’t have to spend endless hours and days trying to find out.

We know from our own experience that self belief and ‘will it work for me‘ are the conversations that go on inside the heads of people looking at this entrepreneurship thing so we asked Bob how he approaches this. His answer was quite interesting but actually really sensible. “We become their role models” he said. “Almost but not quite like their parents LOL