I am in the final stages of my teaching career. I’m not done yet, but I am close. When it is all said and done I will have spent over 34 years in the classroom. That is a good run.
What I’ve come to understand is that transitioning from one stage of life to another doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a process. An era winds down gradually, while a new one takes shape in its place; one prepares to end something, and to start another. There is a spectrum between excitedly entering the workforce in youth and eventually moving out of it later. This change at the end, called RETIREMENT, has strong emotional, financial, social, and health implications which unfold over time.
Such a big change, even when welcome, will bring challenges. For those who are involuntarily retired without time to prepare for it, outcomes are not so great. For others who prepare and have a plan for retirement and leave on their own terms, it goes better. Your whole identity and purpose changes when you retire, or at least much of it does; that is no small thing. I’ve written about this at length, and now that the end date is closer, those ideas feel only more real. I have laid many plans for my next era of life and they continue apace.
Here is one of them:
I am starting a small business! I want to have a part-time job after I retire from the public school system. I thought about maybe teaching high school in a private school, but I am so done with teaching that I cannot stomach the thought. I have seen many retired teachers return to the classroom as substitute teachers. They want/need a little extra money, and they are a bit bored. It is kind of sad to see. I have been in the same 75 by 50 feet classroom for 26 years. I want to do something else, use a different muscle.
So I am going to start working as a personal trainer. I am going to specialize in working with older tennis and pickleball athletes who wish to remain healthy and vital on the court. Why? Because I have spent decades trying to keep myself healthy and vital on the tennis court. I have researched and learned enormous amounts about physical injury and eventual recovery because it was happening to me. It seems as if I have had almost every injury a serious tennis player is heir to. I have been to physical therapy time and time again. I have met good PTs, and not-so-good ones. I have recovered from all these injuries and learned so much. This knowledge comes from books and research, but it mostly comes from my own long experience. “Write what you know,” they say. Teach what you know, I might add.
So last fall I decided to put all this to a different use. Instead of only working with myself, I want to work with other athletes in a similar situation. I want to help aging athletes in the way I wished someone would have helped me 15 years ago. This is a business plan with a target audience in a community of athletes I have happily lived in for decades. I know almost all the serious high-level tennis players in the area, and I know many of the pickleballers also. More importantly, I know all the best connected ones. I can leverage my connections in the local racquet sports community to get access to clients. Especially in the pickleball world, where elderly competitors are in the majority, I can find clients. I can help those who are in pain to get out of pain. I can help other aging athletes to keep themselves strong so they never do get injured. As my motto goes, “To prehabilitate yourself in the gym so you hopefully never have to rehabilitate yourself in the doctor’s office.” I can help older individuals to continue to be active and enjoy the benefits of regular exercise and companionship. Aging athletes involved with racquet sports are my target demographic: I am one of them, every inch of me.
This is appealing. And I can get paid for it. Working as a personal trainer will serve as a “bridge career” where I can make up some of the yearly wages I lose when I retire, and that will help me to pay for my daughter’s college tuition. Furthermore, I am not ready to do nothing. In my early 60s, I want to work part-time for a few years until I am completely done with the world of work. My dad retired at 56-years old and did nothing for thirty years. That did not serve him well, in my opinion. He laid around doing a whole lot of nothing. In his late 50s my father still had something to offer the world. He stopped too soon, in my opinion. I intend not to repeat my father’s mistake. Maybe not a full-time job which grinds you into the dust, but why not a part-time job for fun? Then you can fully retire in your 70s or whenever. That is the plan. Surveys show that the #1 activity for retired folks is watching TV. I’ll be damned if I labored for decades in the classroom to earn a pension so I could sit around and watch TV. I shall use my time.
So last November I signed up with the National Association of Sports Medicine in their Certified Personal Trainer program. I carefully studied the course material for over four months. I made flashcards and crammed for the final exam. The test was comprehensive; I did not take it lightly. There were many questions I immediately knew the answer to, and there were others I had no idea about. The exam was so designed that they cast the net widely, and there was no way I was going to memorize everything. But I was pretty sure I knew all the most important concepts. I passed the test. I had learned the core material thoroughly; I took the exam seriously. Here I am relieved after having passed the two hour test:
So I am a certified NASM CPT.
I am now taking a second and final certification. Building on the preliminary CPT license, I am working towards one for Corrective Exercise Specialty. By the end of this summer I should have passed that test, too. I am on it. Here is a diagram I made last week to help me process and understand the class material –
But passing these big tests and earning these professional certifications is only the first, and not the most difficult, stage of this process. The hardest part will be actually building the business and getting clients. I have to get the word out, become known. I have to build a reputation. Word-of-mouth is how this business will grow. That will take time. We shall see. I will either make it work or not. The opportunity is there. This business, if it thrives, will do so not “top down” from social media attention. It will happen “sideways” – person-to-person, by word of mouth, inside the community.
The process is already underway. Immediately after I passed the CPT exam, I filed the paperwork with the County of Ventura to establish the business entity “Second Serve Strong.” I paid a local newspaper to run the information in their pages over four weeks, as required by California law. I still need to get a city business license. I also need to start a bank account in the name of my business. I need to design and distribute marketing information and promotional materials. Business cards. I need to go out and speak to my racquet sports contacts in the area – make an intentional visit to old friends. I will continue to use my teaching skills honed over decades in the classroom, but just in a different forum. I can do this.
This will happen. I will make it happen. It will take a year or two. A lot of work. Me shaking the bushes for business. Putting myself and my services out there. Earning trust and results from clients. Making money from older athletes whose lives improve, and thereby having more money available to help pay for my daughter’s university education. Something between being fully-employed and fully-retired: a part-time job, a passion project.
So wish me luck, everyone!
It is both exciting and a bit scary.
But I will get this off the ground.
Back in 1993 when I first decided to become a teacher, I was also starting from scratch. Over many years I built a successful career through my own ambition and effort. I did not come from an education family which knew the system and boasted of its connections; nobody helped me or handed me anything. I figured it out myself.
I shall do that again with my “bridge career” – Second Serve Strong.
So help me God.
