IAM1306 – Authors Help Readers Build Lives of Contribution and Joy

Gail M. McDonald and Marilyn L. Bushey are executive coaches who have helped thousands of leaders make significant improvements in their ability to lead, build relationships, deliver results, and enhance their sense of self-fulfillment. In Retirement Your Way, Gail, and Marilyn turn their attention from the world of work to the world of retirement. There, they apply their expertise and innovative thinking to help their readers make changes and build lives of contribution, vitality, and joy.

• CEO Story: The deepening friendship that is passionate about the ability of people to live with vitality, contribution, and joy. This led them to do research and interview people, lo and behold they found out that almost all of them would like to contribute and have joy – just like them the retirement rebels.
• Business Service: Products and services that would help individuals see retirement not as an ending but as a beginning. Through a book and online course.
• Secret Sauce: 6 Lifestyle categories of retirement: Traditionalist, Altruist, Lifelong learner, Stair stepper, Boomeranger, Reinventor.

The choices map. Culture: Assumption of how we should retire. Hurdles: The stories we tell ourselves. Options: Lots of choices that we have. Inspiration: The things that will make your life worth living. Experimentation: keep exploring. Self-fulfillment – how to stay true to your passion.

• CEO Hack: Creating a network like business organizations. Creating micro-moments of transition between one activity to another. Apps like: Insight Timer, Calm, and Breathe.
• CEO Nugget: Sweet always looking at the intersection between your passion, talent, and your ideal environment. When we are at that intersecting circle – we are at our best. Mantra – let go of your stories, add your dreams, and keep exploring.
• CEO Defined: The ultimate opportunity to create -the chief creator. The world of possibilities.

Website: retirementyourwaybook.com

Facebook: retirementyourwaybook

LinkedIn: RetirementYourWay

LinkedIn: Gail McDonald, Marilyn Bushey

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Transcription

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00:19 – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, start-ups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless 

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have two very special guests on the show today. I have Gail M McDonald and Marilyn L Bushey of retirement your way. Gail and Marilyn, super excited to have you on the show.

00:58 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

You too. Thank you. Glad to be here.

01:00 – Gresham Harkless 

Absolutely. I'm super excited to hear about all the awesome things that both of you are working on. But before we do that, I wanted to read a little bit more about Gail and Marilyn so you could hear about some of those awesome things. Gail and Marilyn are Executive Coaches who help thousands of leaders make significant improvements in their ability to lead, build relationships, deliver results, and enhance their sense of self-fulfillment. In Retirement Your Way, Gail, and Marilyn turned their attention from the world of work to the world of retirement.

There, they apply their expertise and innovative thinking to help their readers make changes and build lives of contribution, vitality, and, of course, what's very important, joy. Marilyn, I appreciate you and Gail for taking some time off. Are you both ready to speak to the IAM CEO Community? Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I know I touched on a little bit when I read both of your bios, but I wanted to hear a little bit more of what I like to call your CEO story. It will let you both get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

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01:54 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

Well, thank you. And thanks again, Gresh, for inviting us. Our CEO story began with our friendship. We were both CEOs of separate our own companies, which are, focused on consulting and executive coaching. So we've known each other for about twenty-five years, and we really enjoy being together. And one day, we were having lunch together. We started talking and sharing about what we really cared about these days and what we were passionate about.

It turns out we were both as we got older and thought about retirement, we realized we were very passionate about the ability of people, ourselves and others, as we get older to live with vitality, contribution, and joy, and to retire or not retire based on what we felt was right for us, not necessarily on what we felt we should do. And in fact, we laughed and we called ourselves retirement rebels. So we said, okay. Let's see what other people think. And we went on a journey to interview over sixty of our contemporaries.

We did some research and lo and behold, we found that almost all of them also were retirement rebels, that they were looking for a different way to do this time of life. Nobody wanted to continue the old twenty-four-seven rat race, but we wanted to still be able to contribute and have joy. And so that is where our story began.

03:24 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that, and I love the retirement Rebels. I feel like you definitely have to get T-shirts or something with that on there, bumper stickers or something, because I think there's so many people that feel like there's a better way or they don't feel like they fit into that round hole, so to speak, and they feel like they wanna do things in a different way. So I love that you all, first of all, have done the research but had that realization amongst yourselves to be able to create that lane for so many other people.

03:50 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

And it's the passion behind our business. So the business we have together, we really care about. And we find that it's a very emotional time. At this time of life, people are uncertain about what to do. Also, don't always look at retirement with enthusiasm, sometimes with dread or concern. So we just felt that this is something that's really of shared interest.

04:14 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. That makes so much sense, and I appreciate you for kind of I always say we forget about the human aspect of business, but I often think we forget about the human aspect of life as well too, and just the probably mixed emotions there is around that time and probably uncertainty about what to do, what's going to happen, how to make those things work. But I think so many times we could say, okay. Well, you're this age, so you need to be over and done with whatever it is, but there's so much that I feel like that's probably attached to work and how we value ourselves and so much that's kinda deeply intertwined, within making those decisions.

04:47 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

We found in our research, though, and in addition to these wonderful interviews, we did lots of research. And one thing that came up and it just echoes what you just said is we read a survey done, a study done by the University of, or the New England Medical Journal of Medicine. I wanna be sure I got that correct. And it said that the most productive time of life for an individual is between sixty and seventy. The second most productive is between seventy and eighty, and the third is between fifty and sixty.

So, we wanted to create our products and our services around things that would help a person continue to see retirement, not as an ending, but as a beginning. And so we did that. We have a book. We have an online course coming out. We also have a wonderful quiz on our website that helps people determine what their primary lifestyle might be in retirement. This has been a wonderful journey for us, and we wanted people of all ages to realize that this can be a great time.

05:59 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. That's so powerful. And would you consider that that's a be what, I like to call the secret sauce of the book and everything that you're doing, the thing you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:09 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

We do think it's our secret sauce. We also, think another component inside of the book that Marilyn mentioned at the very beginning is, something that we call the six lifestyle categories of retirement. And we built these from talking to all of the contemporaries that we talked to. And what we kind of identified and it's just a fun set of categories, and we have a quiz around it that's on our website now.

And those categories go from what we call, traditionalist to altruist to lifelong learner, all of which are kind of not work. And then we have Stair Stepper, Boomeranger, and Reinventor, all of which involve some continuing work. From those choices, people can create how they want to approach their retirement. And that's why we called ourselves retirement ripples. We didn't wanna go the standard route, but we believe everybody should have a choice to create the retirement that they want.

07:13 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. That’s absolutely powerful to be able to, again have that understanding that there's not one way, and kind of in a realization and the choices map to be able to take those steps in order to do that. So I'd be kicking myself if I didn't hear a little bit more about the acronym and what each of those kind of, you know, meant and how they kinda define those. So could you please kinda break down the choices and what each of those aspects is? So I think the readers and listeners would love to hear that.

07:42 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

So choices. C is for culture. That's the way we were raised. Those are the people we see around us. Those are the assumptions about how we should retire. H are the hurdles, and this is a huge one because these are out of what we are the culture that we were brought in. What are the stories we're telling ourselves that limit us and are creating hurdles for us? And those two make up the let go of your stories.

Then the next three, and I'll hit the first one and turn it to Marilyn and to hit the others, around add your dreams. So the first one in adding your dreams is options. And this is where we really get into the fact that there are a lot of choices that we all have. It's where we present the six lifestyle categories. And it's the idea that it's like there's a world there's a candy store out there for those of us as we're getting older.

Going from options, going to inspiration, and inspiration is the things that inspire you, the things that will make your life worth living as they do now in retirement. And the last two, add your dreams and keep exploring. It's keep exploring is the last one, and it's experimentation and self-fulfillment. And experimentation is that wonderful thing that encourages people to keep exploring and to try new and different things. So they work, so they don't work.

But be open to them. Be open to all that. What is the old song? Life is a cabaret. It's a cabaret of choices. So we encourage that. The last is self-fulfillment how to stay true to your passions, and how to live in a way that you want to in your retirement. We give exercises and some inspirational type things for the person who is looking to retire or thinking about retiring.

09:50 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you both more effective and efficient?

10:01 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

One thing, of course, there are lots of great books. There's certainly and we hope ours is considered one of them. But, one thing that for me has been a hack is creating a network. You know, it's a practice. It's a hack. And one of the things that allowed me to do that was become a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners or NABO. And there were organizations for men also, but this was a place where I made wonderful friends. I made fantastic contacts that I still have, twenty-five years later from the time that I was in that organization, actually, it's where I met Gail.

So to me, networking, and I know it takes time, but find the kind you like to do, whether it's in an organization or for a good cause, maybe a nonprofit that you want to volunteer for. Gail? There are so many wonderful hacks. One that I would like to mention is, that it relates to an app. It's a couple of apps a lot of apps actually now. It relates to the idea of creating little micro-moments of transition between one activity leading to another, and I find that's where I fall down. I often don't do that, but it's very, important. And, they're wonderful apps. I like Insight Timer. There's one called Calm. There's one called Breathe.

11:29 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a little bit more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you mentioned in your book or it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:46 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

Well, I'll begin this, and then Marilyn will add as well. One thing we do have in our book, and yet I've used it in some form, for many, many years, is something in our book we call the sweet spot. It's always when running a business or running anything, always looking at what is the intersection of our passions, our talents, and our ideal environment. And that's when we're at our best.

That's when we're in that circle, that intersecting circle, we are at our best. And I found that one of the things that mean is for me to realize when I'm not at my best and when it's important to bring resources, people, various services around me who do the things that I don't really like to do and I don't do well so that I can have more time to do what I love to do and what I do well.

I have to echo what you said last. Anytime I start a new company and I've actually had four businesses. The first thing I do is find a good accountant because I do not like to do accounting-related things, and that frees me up to do other things. And to me, kind of a nugget would be our mantra. Let go of your stories, add your dreams, and keep exploring. Because really, when you are a new business owner, you're thinking about starting a new business, that old doubt sets in.

Instead of saying, Oh, I can't do that. Ask yourself, why not me? Why not me? I can do this. And then let your dreams come out. Being a business owner, and being a CEO to me is one of the most creative opportunities you have in your life. And to be able to bring in dreams maybe that you've had for a long time and to see it come to tuition is just one of life's precious gifts. So that would be our mantra and why not me?

13:46 – Gresham Harkless 

I love each of those nuggets just because it gets back to staying true to you, staying true to your mission and your goal, and leaning more into that rather than doing what the person in the next lane is ultimately trying to do.

Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, unquote CEOs on this show. So, Gail, and Marilyn, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:09 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

Well, being a CEO to me means the ultimate opportunity to create, and it just opens you up to what I call the spice of life, which is creation, which I absolutely love. And you get to try your own ideas, your own thoughts, and put your your special sauce into it. So that's what it means to me. Because you could say I might instead of CEO, it might be chief creator.

I'll tag onto that because Mel and I are a lot alike. So, you know, we kind of have similar views. To me, it's just a world of possibilities. There we really chart our path with the freedom to, more or less, chart our paths. And it's just a world of opportunities and possibilities, and it's up to us to make it work.

15:03 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, truly appreciate that definition, and I, of course, appreciate your time even more. What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best people get a hold of you, get a copy of the book, find out about the course, and all the awesome things that you both are working on.

15:21 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

Well, we certainly would, love to share with our readers our website where, as Marilyn said earlier, they can go on, they can find out about our various offerings, as well as take a quiz that's really just a lot of fun. And our website is www.retirementyourwaybook.com. And we probably, Marilyn, I'm sure we would end with our mantra. We have one final statement to say. Let go of your stories, add your dreams, and keep exploring.

16:01 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I absolutely love that. We would definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for reminding us of that, of course, for being chief creative officers as well too in everything that you're doing, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:15 – Gail McDonald & Marilyn Bushey 

Thank you. Thank you so much.

16:17 – Outro 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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