Retirement part 3: IDENTITY

If I'm no longer an athlete or a founder... who am I? Do I still matter? How do I even introduce myself? Am I a failure because I gave up? Here's how others are grappling with finding a new identity.

This is blog 3 of a 6 part series on retirement. You should read blog 1 and 2 first :) 

1. Decision: How to make the decision to retire

2. Unfinished business: Coming to terms with not achieving everything you could have

3. Identity: Grappling with who are you now

4. Mastery: Going from being world class, to being a beginner again

5. Emotion: How to fill the void and find fulfilment elsewhere

6. Aftermath: What comes next and lessons from looking back

The athletes and founders featured are:

Athletes:

• Matt de Boer - AFL player (GWS), now Founder of Athletic Ventures

• Cale Hooker - AFL player (Essendon), now Head of Talent and Partnerships at One Future Football

• Luke Mathews - 800m and 1500m runner (Olympian), who is taking a pause from elite sport and working as a Valuation Consultant at EY

• Me - Trampoline, CrossFit and Beach Volleyball athlete (Australian representative in all 3), and now an Investor at Blackbird Ventures

Founders:

• Rod Hamilton - Co-founder of CultureAmp, who stepped down from the Chief Product Officer role and is taking some time to focus on family and decide what’s next

• Vaughan Fergusson - Founder of Vend, who sold the company for $500M and is now the Inventor at the Institute of Awesome and deciding what’s next

• Megan Bellish - Founder of Bellish, who shut down her company due to burn out, then worked as Head of Founders at Startmate and is now exploring options

• Kate Glazebrook - Co-founder of Applied, who stepped down from the CEO role, and is now Head of Impact and Operating Principal at Blackbird Ventures

‘What do you do?’

It’s one of the most common questions in the world. And for someone who has just stepped away from their sporting career or startup, this is a terrifying question. 

We stumble our way through the answer. Should we say ‘I used to…’? It feels awkward trying to hold on to past achievements. Or is it better to say ‘I’m exploring options…’ This feels like what an unemployed person says, which we are, but not exactly for the same reasons. Or perhaps it’s better to focus on what’s next: ‘I’m aiming for this role.’ 

‘What do you do?’ is a question that brings our loss of identity to the forefront. 

‘I’m so used to saying: ‘Hi I’m Megan, founder and CEO of Bellish.’ That is so ingrained in my mind. It’s automatic. I’ve found myself saying that a couple of times since I moved on and I have to catch myself. That’s not who I am anymore.’ ~ Megan

‘When I was travelling and filling out ‘occupation’ I’ve put ‘athlete’ for the last 14 years. Now it’s ‘Venture Capitalist’... A few people have introduced me as an athlete and I’ve had to correct them: ‘It’s ex-athlete now’.’ ~ Matt

‘If someone asks me what I do, ‘Hmm, I'm retired, I guess.’’ ~ Vaughan

‘There's often times when people are ‘Luke's an Olympian’. And I say, ‘no, I'm a former Olympian’. ~ Luke

‘I basically say I'm on extended leave or I'm taking a career break. I'm not focusing on work. I'm focusing on family and friends and community and me. And I don’t know what I'm doing next. I'll figure that out in time.’ ~ Rod

Identity is broader than just our jobs, or former jobs. However, not only do we conflate the two in western society, but for founders and athletes our jobs are so all-consuming that there isn’t a lot of space left over for other identities. 

‘The company was me. And I was the company.’ ~ Megan

Yes, we are also daughters and sons and friends and mentors and parents and experts and leaders. But ‘I am an athlete’ or ‘I am a founder’ dominates our thoughts of who we are. 

Creating a new identity is the greatest challenge of retirement. 

Who am I, and do I matter?

Wrestling with the question ‘who am I now?’ is hard by itself.

‘So much of my identity is attached to this thing. Like how will I feel about losing that? During pre-acquisition, going through the process of the acquisition and even post-acquisition, wrestling with that was actually quite hard.’ ~ Vaughan

‘I’ve been working through separating me and the company from having the same identity. Coming back to ‘I’m a person, and I’m separate from the thing that I do.’’ ~ Megan

But, so much of our self worth, of the value that we believe we bring to the world, is also gone. There is a quiet but persistent voice in our minds that asks, ‘do I still matter?’

Being an athlete or a founder sets you apart from others. Your identity is distinct. When I confessed to Megan that ‘I feel ordinary, like I’m a regular person’ (a statement that feels both true and arrogant at the same time) she had this beautiful response: 

‘Are you ordinary, or are you just taking a moment to figure out what’s next? Because you’re still extraordinary. You’re still the exact same person you were 12 months ago, and 5 years ago. In fact you’re even better as you have so much more experience and so much more success behind you. You are extraordinary, you’re just taking a break from externally doing extraordinary things.’ ~ Megan

Step one is saying goodbye to our old identity

For all of us, there is some usefulness to our former identity. It can open doors for the next opportunity. It can imbue us with confidence as we try and figure out what’s next. We can transfer some of the skills and credibility over to our new careers. Yet there is a recognition amongst this cohort of elite achievers that that usefulness only lasts for so long. And the quicker we can let go of our old identity - the sooner we don’t need to rely on it - the better. 

‘I straight away committed to putting things in past tense. ‘I used to be an athlete.’’ ~ Cale

‘I found it intimidating to think of no longer introducing myself as Founder and Chief Product Officer at Culture Amp. My coach helped me accept though that Culture Amp wasn't who I was, Culture Amp was something I did, and something I'm super grateful for.’ ~ Rod

‘There’s a question mark on when does the identity stop. Like you're not the runner or the sports person anymore. You’re Luke, the bloke that lives in Yarraville and does valuations for Ernst Young.’ ~ Luke

‘If you have a gap before you start the next thing, you won't be like ‘I'm gonna swap out that thing you know me to be and give you this other thing’. You're just gonna be like, ‘I am no longer that and I'll let you know when I'm something else or let myself know when I'm something else’. ~ Kate

I asked each person: ‘At what point do you think that no one cares what you used to do?’ Matt made me laugh when he said:

‘Probably now.’

He was just 4 weeks into retirement. He followed it up with:

‘When round 1 of the AFL happens next year I’ll be sitting in the stands. That’s the moment where no one will care that I used to be an athlete… I was always aware that we are all passing through. It’s something AFL players talk about. They aren’t going to retire my jumper. Games don’t stop if you are injured or retired. The industry rolls on. It’s your world, but the industry doesn’t care and that’s fine, the game doesn’t owe you anything more, it’s on you to use your experiences and relationships to help you in your next adventure’ ~ Matt

Overall, the consensus seems to be about a year. After that, who you used to be isn’t relevant. Better to say goodbye to that identity ASAP.

‘I used to have people sort of hunt me down at events and ask for advice. It's like, ‘oh you’re Vaughan, you’re the founder of Vend’. But that doesn't happen anymore because that story has kind of moved on, it’s not really current anymore.’ ~ Vaughan

The world moves on quickly, and it’s natural to fret about our relevance going forward. But why does this matter to us? The people who care about us as humans will still care about us, why do we worry about those who only knew us from afar? 

‘People don't care in a year… Why does that matter? Is it because you really need that thing you did for the next thing you’re moving on to? Or is it because we need to feel important? Is it because we need to feel like we mean something?’ ~ Rod

Finding another identity

Every single athlete and founder said identity was difficult. I think perhaps those that had another path already lined up, found it slightly easier. I know having started my role at Blackbird Ventures 6 months before I retired gave me the beginnings of a new identity before I had to let go of the athlete one. 

‘Athletic Ventures has been helpful in having something else I can identify with and continually improve.’ ~ Matt

Still, I admire the bravery of those who leaped into the void with nothing to hang onto. 

‘I’m waiting for the next thing. It has to kind of come from your belly. I can rationalise a lot of things that I could go do. It's like, I could invest in things. I could go be a professional director. That all feels like the path. Well trodden, kind of like textbook thing. You sell your company and then you invest in startups. But that all feels like kind of boring and it doesn't really light my fire. So I'm just waiting for that thing.’ ~ Vaughan

‘I took a whole year off. I got this advice from another player about the power of ‘no’ when you retire. I said no to lots of things. I want to keep my flexibility until I find the thing that I want to dive into.’ ~ Cale

Is it ego, or is it identity?

We’ve demonised ego in our society. To have an ego is to be cocky, arrogant, focused on yourself over others. Interestingly, everyone I spoke to had a far more nuanced definition of ego, and it tied closely to identity.

‘I’m an athlete’ I would tell people.

‘Are you good?’ I’d sometimes get asked.

‘Yes. Very good. I play for Australia.’ 

Most people are taken aback with this type of answer. Some people will gently mock you (‘Modesty is clearly a strength of yours too…’) To me it’s a statement of fact. I am good. And I know I’m good because I’ve earned my skill with decades of work and tested it against the best players in the world. 

For others less skilled to say the same would be egotistical - in the negative sense of the word - because they haven’t reached the same level. For elite athletes and founders it’s not so much ego as it is confidence, developed from competence: ‘I can do this difficult thing. I have done it many times before. And I can do it under pressure when others are trying to beat me.’

But as we step out of our sport or startup many of us question where the line between ego and identity is.

‘Saying ‘I’m the co-founder of CultureAmp’ is shorthand for ‘I'm ambitious, I'm entrepreneurial, I focus on things that are high performance’. And when I can no longer lead with that, even though I’ve made the choice, I have to fill in all of that shorthand somehow. Maybe it’s my ego wanting to explain that to people, but actually, you don’t need to communicate it. You don’t need to get it across. When I talk about that, that’s for me.’

‘I didn’t think I had much of an ego, but I’ve spent so long running my own company and making my own decisions. Your role as a founder and CEO is to hold all of the company’s problems in your head. Your role as an employee is to only hold your problems in your head. But my ego is like: ‘I can see those other problems, and how we might solve them.’ But you’re no longer the CEO and that’s not your job.’ ~ Megan

‘A part of me, the ego part, still misses the adulation and all, which was never real. It was never real. I think it's that inspiration thing. People get inspired by you and you become a reminder to them that ‘Oh yeah, the thing I believe, I can totally achieve that because here are all these inspirational people with inspirational stories who have done it.’ ~ Vaughan

Being defined by your decision

The journey of an athlete or a founder is a long one. And the vast majority of it happens in private. In training sessions with your coach. In meeting rooms with your team. In the late hours of the night when you are studying your competitors and creating your strategy. 

We all know there is no such thing as an overnight success. 

But in the moment of retirement, it can feel like there is such a thing as an overnight failure. 

‘Quitting is such a public decision. Everybody judges you for that single moment. But they don’t see the decade of decisions and work and building the team that came before that moment. In our culture, quitting is the same as failing, but you’ve achieved so much in the years that came before this decision.’ ~ Kate

‘Quitting feels super public. Especially when you’re backed by people like Skip and Blackbird they will tell people about it. It’s not just your story, it’s other peoples’ story as well and you can’t control the narrative, or what people think, or what they’ll say, or what they want to share.’ ~ Megan

‘You always get defined by the headline. Every amazing success usually has like a 10 year, 20 year backstory to get to that success. The other version of it that founders face is getting defined by your failure. This thing massively crashes, the founder loses investors money… That also can be a defining thing. And then the other one that I experienced was when I stepped out of the CEO role and I brought in a professional CEO. That became a defining thing as well because people were in both camps. They were like, ‘wow, that's really awesome, you get to spend more time out of the business and focus on the charity and other things’. And other people were like, ‘whoa, why'd you do that? Were you pushed out?’’ ~ Vaughan

‘Never give up’ or ‘winners don’t quit’ are phrases that are part of our collective beliefs. Retirement is a type of quitting. And athletes and founders have to fight this narrative that their career was a failure, or their identity is somehow less, because they have stepped away. Instead, we need to embrace a mindset that making the choice to retire is both victory on its own, and our next challenge.

‘I'm not sure if it's changing the narrative or if it's actually realising that the decision for me to move on from that role is actually an ambitious decision. It’s challenging decision. It is in some ways that next level thing to step up to. It's a different trajectory. It's stepping into the void not knowing what comes next. I’ve never done that.’ ~ Rod

I’m just me. Do I even need a label? 

Identity is a tricky thing. It’s a concept larger than labels, and yet labels are the best mechanism we have to express it. I say ‘I am an athlete’ but that means many things: I have the discipline to train every day, I am competitive, I am physically fit, I make sacrifices to pursue this career, I value coaching and feedback… all of this and more wrapped up in a single label. 

I noticed in these conversations that people were trying to untangle these labels. To take some of these traits wrapped up in their athlete or founder identity, and to separate them out so they could use them as building blocks for their new identity.

‘Paid does not equal professional. The hours you train, the character you display, that’s what makes you pro.’ ~ Matt

‘People remember how you played, and how you were as a person - not how many championships you won.’ ~ Cale Hooker

‘I’ve developed this work ethic I’m really proud of. I'd run 140kms a week and do that back to back to back… week on week, month on month, year on year. It's so tough. I remember when I told my mates they were like, ‘I don't even drive that much in my car a week!’’ ~ Luke

‘Associated with that identity of being a founder is a ton of largely positive stuff. From the outside, we venerate founders. They are micro celebrities amongst our business community. To turn around and be like, ‘I am not that person’ and to separate yourself from that identity can be really, really hard. You need to ask yourself what were the other things that I learned regardless of the success of the business? What are the things I can be proud of regardless of whether they show up in an article or not?’ ~ Kate

Ultimately, the label that wraps up everything we are is the one we are born with. Our name. And going back to this identity and rebuilding from there, is a step we are all taking. 

‘I'm trying, I guess, to figure out what my new identity is. I'm just Vaughan. At this moment I'm just me. I don't have any other label really. ~ Vaughan

‘I’m trying to detach from my past role, from my current role. And to think: ‘I’m just a person first. I’m just Megan.’ You’re still you. I’m still me even though I’m not running my company anymore. I’m a whole person outside of whatever I choose to do.’ ~ Megan

Final thoughts on identity

For every challenge that retirement - from sport or from startups - brings, identity seems to be the most difficult. Every athlete, and every founder spoke at length about it. It’s certainly been the most difficult for me. 

If I am not an athlete, then who am I? Do I still matter? How do I even introduce myself? Am I a failure because I gave up? Was my identity real, or just my ego? 

Saying goodbye to our identities is tough. But we can’t hang onto them for too long - the world moves on without us. 

How do you now finish the sentence: ‘I am…’?

Because on the inside, you are still the same person.