Retire without falling into emptiness

Businesswoman Marilou is known for Three Times a Day, her recipes and her songs. Guest director of the section Businessshe entrusted our journalists and columnists with the mission of answering her questions as an entrepreneur.

Marilou is very young and it is obvious that she likes to build her business, but that does not prevent her from having the wisdom to plan for the future. In the post-Three times a day. As she reflects on her retirement, she wonders if she will be able to avoid that feeling of falling into the void that she has heard so many times.

“A lot of people around me tell me about men who were depressed after selling their businesses,” she told me.

This is why the thirty-something with many hats – entrepreneur, singer, spokesperson, mother, presenter – is already looking (!) for a way to avoid this transition. Rightly, she wonders if it is possible to give her heart and soul to her business without her business completely defining her.

Lise Watier is well placed to understand the concerns of Marilou, whom she knows a little since they spent a weekend together for the show The true nature, VAT. The businesswoman who turns 81 in early November gave her time, name and face to her cosmetics company for almost four decades before selling it.

The aftermath of the transaction was not as easy as expected, she told me. She thought that she would be consulted, that she would perhaps have a seat on the council. But no. “So I really fell into retirement,” she recalls.

Even though she was around 70 years old at the time, the idea of ​​doing nothing with her days didn’t appeal to her. She traveled extensively and took on a host of projects to continue to exercise her creativity, such as renovating and decorating condos in Florida, in order to resell them.

Emotionally too, there was a void.

Lise Watier felt that she had abandoned her team that she had cherished so much, which weighed on her. Besides, he still misses these people, after all these years. She also feared that the new owners would “do stupid things” that would harm what she had spent a lifetime building. “There were small clashes. I even called a few times. But it was resolved. It’s like giving your child up for adoption. You always wonder how he’s doing…”

The more you invest yourself in something, the more difficult the renunciation is.

But Marilou and the other entrepreneurs can rest assured. There are ways to lessen the shock… while remembering that it is normal to feel a significant void. What is abnormal is that this emptiness makes us sick, insists the president of the Order of Psychologists of Quebec, Christine Grou.

How to have a happy transition? You have to make sure you have “built meaningful connections” outside of your work, of the company you have built, answers M^me Grou. When you stop showing up at the office and having professional interactions, it is important to compensate by seeing your grandchildren, members of a sports club, friends or volunteers.

The variety of interests, projects, hobbies and passions will also make all the difference.

The entrepreneur also has the responsibility to ask himself what defines him. You have to be able to identify with something other than your company. It is also important to realize that what we have built “is part of our social status” and our successes, even if we have passed the torch. All this helps maintain self-esteem, which is one of the “protective factors” of the future retiree.

The parallel with the retirement of professional players and Olympic athletes is obviously obvious.

When you have constantly been in a group, with a coach, teammates, professional support, finding yourself alone at home every day inevitably causes a shock. Never mind the millions in his bank account. Having the means to travel, go to the spa every week and eat at a restaurant daily does not erase the dizziness caused by losing your bearings. The rhythm is different, the dynamic at home too.

In retirement, the feeling of being useful, so rewarding, disappears. The intellectual stimulation of problem solving is gone. You have to find a purpose in your life, as Robert Meunier, founder of the company Maestro Technologies, specializing in software for the construction sector, told me.

At 58, he accepted a purchase offer that arrived earlier than expected. He then found himself wealthy and… unoccupied. “At first it was fun, but after a year I couldn’t take it anymore. I was bored! » After “a lot of introspection”, in the middle of a pandemic, the entrepreneur realized what he was missing: a goal.

Wrongly, Robert Meunier had anticipated that his investments as an Angel would keep him quite busy. He had also underestimated the impact that the end of his professional social life would have. “I was very involved in the whole construction ecosystem. And there, there was no more golf, CA, conferences, fundraising dinners, trips. All of that disappeared overnight. »

Three years later, the businessman regained his enthusiasm. He is increasingly busy “giving back to society”, as a coach and mentor for young entrepreneurs. A new role that does him the greatest good.

To give meaning to her life, Lise Watier devotes herself to her foundation, she takes Italian lessons, plans to start playing the piano again, “perhaps online with Gregory Charles”, and will do volunteer work starting in the spring. She makes sure to have one goal per day, otherwise it wouldn’t be “sustainable,” she tells me with a laugh.

Shows that happiness after entrepreneurship exists. But the road to get there may be long and steep if preparation is lacking. It is better to show foresight, like Marilou, to avoid pitfalls.