For most of your career, your phone hasn’t stopped ringing.

You’re the person who knows where the bodies are buried. The one who gets the 7am text when something goes sideways. The institutional memory on two legs.

In conversations with leaders nearing the end of their careers, I hear a lot about retirement worries. Not having saved enough. Whether the team will hold together once they’re gone.

But there’s something else lurking in the shadows. They’ve watched peers retire and simply… drop out of sight. The most important people in their professional lives disappeared almost immediately — because without the work as an excuse to call, nobody called. No more hallway conversations. No more networking events. Just silence.

And they’re quietly terrified the same thing will happen to them.
Which, honestly? Makes sense. Being the person everyone calls feels good.

Meaning Beyond Employment

If this sounds familiar, here’s one practical place to start.

Make a list of people who used to be on your speed dial — colleagues, mentors, peers — who you haven’t called in years. Then call them. Ask them for coffee. Find out what they’re doing now.

Three areas of questions you could ask them are:

1. Where they’re finding meaning now that the job isn’t providing it.
2. Who’s actually showing up for them — and how they found those people.
3. What they wish they’d done differently in the transition.

I’d bet you’ll hear more possibility than you expected. And you might start seeing openings — for mentoring, for advising, for being the person someone else calls now.

Your wisdom shouldn’t retire when you do

You still have time to start building your next chapter before this one ends. And the best part is you don’t have to leave your wisdom at the office.

It came with you. It always has.

The question is just whether you’re going to use it.