Cara Gray

Special Offer for My Listeners:

As a gift to my listeners, I am offering a free 60-minute zoom session with me to chat about where you are at and do a bit of dreaming about your next chapter! You can book time with me via: https://CaraGray.as.me/60minutes. I will also put this link in the show notes or reach me via email at [email protected]. I love this work. I love helping people discover how to live inspiring lives. And I look forward to meeting you and hearing about your journey!

Transcription of Episode:

This is episode 24 of the Act Three podcast, the final episode of Season 2 and I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my previous guests for their time and thank my growing audience for their support. If you are enjoying this podcast, please make sure you are following it. And if you are really enjoying the podcast, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. That would mean the world to me.

Today is going to be a solo podcast. I realized that while I have been busy interviewing others about their Third Act, I’ve never taken the opportunity to introduce myself.

So here I am! My name is Cara Gray and I am a certified retirement coach - which means I help my clients plan the non-financial part of their retirement. I assume clients that come to me have worked closely with their financial advisors over the years and have planned well for their future. But I do find that the focus has been on money and not about how they are really going to live their lives. I look at these years as an incredible opportunity to design what you want your life to look like. When has there been a time where you have the freedom to make decisions and actually thoughtfully plan how you want to spend your time. Who you want to spend it with. Where you want to live. We’ve often been constrained by the limitations of our careers in terms of time and geography and now that is over! 

You should also know that I struggle with the word “retirement”. I’ve even chosen to call this podcast Act Three as an alternative. But using the word retirement helps my communication -  it’s more clear what I do - which is a relatively new field. And when I use the word retirement, think of Serena Williams. Think of Tom Brady. Think of younger people who are obsessed with the concept of FIRE which means they have reached financial independence and can now choose how they want to spend their time. That’s the vibe I operate from.

I look at this time in your life as a beginning. What have you always wanted to do, but haven’t had the time to explore? It’s possible that you haven’t even let yourself have those thoughts and dreams because you’ve been so busy with your life and your job over the years. You may want to start a new venture. You may want to try on another totally different career. You may want to be a mentor for the next generation and work part-time at a startup. You may want to travel the world. You may want to learn about and become an expert in a totally new field like artificial intelligence or wine or horticulture. Or maybe you want to write a book and launch a speaking career. The point is that absolutely anything is possible! And what I do is help you uncover the possibilities and start dreaming them into your reality.

We are also going to talk about the very big word that is PURPOSE. Some of you have been lucky enough to have had careers that gave us a sense of purpose and fulfillment. Others of you can’t exactly use that word to describe your life’s work, but you did feel needed and essential and those concepts are similar and need to be replaced as you transition to our next chapter. Now that you are going to have the opportunity to choose how you spend your time you can intentionally choose to live with purpose and that, my friends, is a gift. I also want to share that this work is my purpose and I feel grateful to be helping others discover theirs.

In my client work we also look at things like your health, both physical and mental, and make sure you have a plan to optimize both. We also will spend some time talking about your relationships and social networks that become more important as we age and often need to be replaced when you leave your main career. My work is holistic in scope. We want to have a plan for all areas of your life so that you continue to grow and thrive at this time in your life where you also can experience a vast amount of freedom. 

At the end of our work together, I put together what I call Your Retirement Blueprint. This document is full of all the things we identified for you to explore, some short and long term goals that we agree on together,  plus a ton of resources that make it easy for you to start exploring and prototyping some of the possibilities that are exciting for you. Your work with me is just the beginning of your retirement exploration. The last Blueprint that I put together was nearly 30 pages to give you an idea! This is a document that you will reference long after our time together. But if you want some additional time with me to hold yourself accountable as you dig into the Blueprint, that can be arranged.

You intuitively know that transitions go more smoothly if you have a plan and some goals and accountability that align. When the transition happens well, awesome things follow. But if there is a poor transition, years can be lost. Let's make sure you don't lose any of your hard-earned time.

As a gift to my listeners, I am offering a free 60-minute zoom session with me to chat about where you are at and do a bit of dreaming about your next chapter! You can book time with me via: https://CaraGray.as.me/60minutes. I will also put this link in the show notes or reach me via email at [email protected]. I love this work. I love helping people discover how to live inspiring lives. And I look forward to meeting you and hearing about your journey!

Until then, be well. And thanks for listening.