Episode 2 - Retirement can be whatever you want! If at first you don't succeed, try again.

In this episode, Dennis Marr, a research and product development leader with a doctorate in chemical engineering, talks about his first attempt at retirement and his decision to go back to work full-time.  He shares his journey and the purpose he's found working at an exotic animal rescue.  Anything can happen in a second act!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the next chapter Conversations, a podcast about real life stories from people designing a meaningful second act or retirement. My guests will talk about inflection points and the paths they took to their next chapters in life. The goal for the podcast is to create more dialogue and build community around the R word. A word that was really hard for me to wrap my head around when my own journey into my next chapter began. My guest is Dennis Maher, a research and product development leader. We worked together at a medtech device company where Dennis was responsible for class three implantable devices for people with advanced heart failure. The devices helped patients who need a bridge to transplant. In other words, patients that were waiting for a human heart. They were implanted with our heart pump that allowed them to live while they waited. One of our notable patients was Dick Cheney, who lived on the LVAD device for two years as he waited to get a new heart. Dennis is known for his dedication to quality and not shying away from asking and solving hard business challenges. He and I aligned on how to drive innovation and change. I've asked Dennis to join the podcast to share his thinking process and the questions he's asking himself to create his next best chapter. I'm curious to hear what he's learned and can share with our listeners. Welcome to the podcast, Dennis. Let's begin with you telling us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Well, I am 61. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan with my wife Pamela and my 14-year-old rescue dog. Her name is Ginger. I had been in the corporate world for nearly 29 years. I had gone to grad school first and gotten my doctorate in chemical engineering. Ultimately retired in 2021. So the last company that I had worked at was Torumo, and I had led one of their cardiovascular companies. I was the vice president and general manager. I had the privilege of running not just research and development and product development, but I got the opportunity to lead the company and being able to build a culture there. And it was a great way to end career.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

How about you share a story about you and me?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

I guess the the thing that jumped out at me was that, you know, we were in a medium-sized company and everyone was very much focused on making the best culture for our particular groups. I had thought one day that, you know, we all have to eat lunch anyway. We didn't have a cafeteria. So pull together some folks and say, hey, look, I'll pay for lunch and let's just get together and get to know each other. You were part of that, and you were so supportive of it and really drove people to open up, being able to sit back with a real partner and you know, thinking about the company, breaking down walls and talking about things outside of just business, partnering with you as we really tried to move the organization to a next level. Like I said, I really appreciated that.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, I did too. I I thought it was a wonderful idea for you to do that. And I was just learning med device. So for me, it was really great to sit down at lunch, understanding what everybody did. And then when we go to the staff meetings, and I would hear each team leader just talking about their own deadlines and nobody really understanding the connectivity. And you and I were like-minded on hey, let's all get together and come up with a solution, not going in and just putting a stake in the ground on this is the way it has to be because this is the way that my group operates.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

My group needs it.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Right, right. And so that's one of the things I really enjoyed working on with you, everyone seeing the collectiveness of what we were doing and coming up with ways that we could solve problems instead of working in silos. So that lunch was so simple, but I think it was so meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

I enjoyed that. I really looked forward to lunch.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Do you have a philosophy or beliefs that you rely on to guide your life?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

I really believe that you know, I need to have or people need to have meaningful values. What I consider to be meaningful values are ones that not only serve yourself, but also serve and affect others from a you know a beliefs standpoint. I do believe that your your life is shaped by your decisions that you make. So knowing that you should do your best to get the most information and data available that you can, uh, even though you might not necessarily get all the information that you want, but get as much information as you can, incorporate your values, and then make that correct decision and just go. You know, I I heard somebody say, you know, a right or wrong decision is something that you look retrospectively on. But a correct decision is doing the best you can with the best available information, making the best decision you can with that information. It may be wrong later, but you shouldn't regret that you made it because that was the best you could do at that time and you couldn't ask for anything more.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Tell us about the prelude that led up to your retirement.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

I knew that gig at my final company was going to be my last. I knew that. I mean, I had actually retired. I'm going to pause for a second. How did you know that? Well, I had actually retired in 2016. Okay. And failed. Uh it failed from the standpoint of I kept my phone turned on. And a recruiter ultimately called me about a challenge that really sounded interesting. My wife ultimately was willing to support me to come out of retirement and move to Ann Arbor because she was familiar with the area and loved it. And so I came out of retirement. But if you think about it, yes, it was an interesting opportunity, but that also must have meant, as I look back at it, it must have been more interesting than what I was doing at that time in retirement.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Okay. What were you doing in retirement at that time?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

I was working on a small company that I had started uh back in 2008 with a couple of friends, where we designed and developed uh inventions, um, not medical, because we didn't want to be in medical and compete with our day jobs. You know, we spent time doing that. I wanted to learn swing trading and day trading and things like that because it was just sounded interesting as far as analysis of uh companies. I was doing all that, but there was no common theme as far as what I was doing in retirement. I was trying different things, but there wasn't a common theme as far as why I was doing it. So I was I was busy, no question. I was busy and I was enjoying it. But like I said, the the challenge that was put in front of me by the recruiter obviously sounded a little bit more interesting than what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, so the opportunity resulted in a move.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

It did. The opportunity was you know, change a culture. This is a company that had uh gone through some issues and they need to bring in a an RD leader to get back into innovation, get back into the thoughts of launching products. And so that sounded really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

How was the conversation with your wife about okay, hey, I'm retired?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

We had already moved from California to the Cincinnati area. So we were already in the Midwest.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Okay, and when did we make that when did you make that move?

SPEAKER_00 8:00

I made that move back in 2015.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Was that a part of the retirement plan or was that just something that you wanted to do?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

No, I had left our company and was looking for a new opportunity and ultimately won in a similar vein as far as a company that I ultimately joined in the Cincinnati area, they were in a similar situation. And so that was interesting enough to move from California to the Cincinnati area. That was just a pure career change. And this was moving us closer to family who are all in the Chicago and Wisconsin area. So we've moved around a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Oh, that's okay. I love that. It's adventurous, right? So how was that conversation with your wife? Okay, you think you're gonna be retired in Cincinnati, you think this is where you're gonna be hanging. Now I'm coming out of retirement, and oh, by the way, we're moving. How did that go?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

I've been really, really lucky. The best decision I've made in my life is is marrying Pamela. And because she has been the most supportive person in my life. She understood what I needed and what I wanted, and she was willing to support it. Now she did say, you know, coming out of retirement, then we have to find the right place to go to, if that's what's forcing us to move. Ann Arbor was a place that she knew very well. She said, Yeah, if you're going to come out of retirement, then Ann Arbiter is a great place to go. So that kind of sweetened the deal as well. But she also knew that this was something that excited me and was willing to support it.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, that's great. I love that. What tools or resources did you use for retirement planning?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

You know, when I first retired, that company was great. And I was very fortunate because with the position that I had within the company, I had access to career and retirement counseling that was available, and I ultimately decided to take advantage of that. So that consultant helped me evaluate the idea of retirement and what my expectations of it would be. I mean, he gave me his observations on how I approached my career overall and how that actually could impact any next steps. So that was really, really helpful because he kind of gave me an outside perspective of what retirement really is and making sure that I would be comfortable. The other resource that I used was from a financial standpoint. I used my knowledge about business and management and budgeting to analyze what retirement would mean to my wife and me. Then, and only then did I share that model with our financial advisor, who would serve to ultimately validate assumptions and strengthen our analysis. And this gave us the confidence in moving into retirement. If we had just gone to the financial advisor and asked, could we retire? He would have said yes, but we wouldn't have the confidence because we didn't know what that analysis entailed. So it was really important for us to go through that analysis ourselves, think that, okay, this represents something that would make us comfortable, and then sit down with the expert and have us really refine what that was. And ultimately that gave us the confidence to say this is the right choice. We can comfortably do that without the fear of gee, we're gonna, you know, for example, run out of money when I'm 90. So we partnered with our financial advisor to really understand what that meant and what we would have to do.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Are you fully retired now? Are you still engaged in business or volunteer activities?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Yeah, that's an interesting question. Let's define fully retired. I'm really busy. I love being busy. I volunteer, for example, at a local exotic animal rescue and education center. And the founder and curator there, he's my age and we've gotten to be really good friends. He struggled with the idea of retirement. You know, he is up at, I don't know, 5:30 in the morning and he said, I can't think of retirement. I ultimately told him, look, retirement is not sitting on a beach engulfing, it's it's what you want it to be. More importantly, it's being able to do something without any real obligation. You can decide to retire, and what you decide to do in retirement is exactly what you're doing today. Exactly. You can still get up at 5 30 in the morning. You can still do all the things, all the construction, deal with all the animals. The difference is your mindset. You are not under any obligation to do these things. You've set it up so things will happen, even if you decide for the day, for the week, for the month, or potentially for the rest of your life not to do it anymore. That's your choice. And once you get to that, that in my definition is full retirement. So I am fully retired, but I'm as busy as all heck.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

The next question, and you've kind of touched on it already. You're using your passion and the craft that you have developed for yourself over your 29 years in business, and you're using it in other ways. And that kind of segues into the next question, which is your process to evaluate and pursuing new endeavors. Tell us about it because there's a lot of people that are listening that are thinking about retirement or are in retirement. People are asking themselves the question, what do I do with my time? How do I spend my time in things that are meaningful? So I think you've shared with me, you've really got a good handle on this. So share with us your process.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Well, my process is understanding what is it that makes me tick. What did I retire to? I retired to have the time to be able to learn new stuff and more importantly, apply that learning. I mean, knowledge for knowledge's sake doesn't tickle my bunny bone. The next question then is if it involves people, whatever that endeavor is, will I enjoy working with those people? That's how I'm going to spend my time. You know, for example, I loved working in the medical device industry. I love the idea that we were producing life-saving products. That's not why I was working. I was working there because I enjoyed working with fun, talented people on a common goal. And in the medical industry, you have to get everyone on the same page appointed in the right direction to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

This is a great segue to the next question about people. Have your personal and professional relationships changed since retirement?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, with your spouse, family, friends, community. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Certainly, the professional relationships are completely changed. I still have professional relationships because of my small business. The difference, though, is because I'm not in medical devices, which is highly technical and highly regulated, the professional people that I deal with now are just much more diverse technically, educationally, and in experience. So that's been a big change. It's a pretty isolated cocoon when you're dealing with folks in our case that have a very high level of education and technical background. That has been the biggest change as far as relationships go, because it's that diverse. Certainly, personally, within a close circle of folks, that really hasn't changed, other than the fact that most of my personal friends have not retired. So they have to go to work, they have to consider things that I don't. So that makes it a little bit tougher. That's one less thing that we have in common now.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Let's talk about that a little bit because I have that as well.

unknown 15:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

I'm finding the new activities and things that I'm pursuing. I'm creating new friends. But creating new friends later on in life, it's a whole different dynamic, at least it is for me. You don't have the history and it's a little bit slower. It's a takes a little bit more time because when you go to work eight, 10 hours a day, five days a week, sometimes six days a week for years upon years, you spend a lot more time with these people. Trust and relationships get built up. If you're working on a committee, or for me, playing tennis or whatever it is, it's a couple of hours, a couple of times a week. It takes a while to develop that trust and rapport.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

No question.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

And I also find that all the people I thought were going to be my friends in the workplace were going to carry through. And they've moved on and I'm moving on. So now I'm like, oh, I miss them, but it's like they're living their life and doing their thing. I'm doing mine. And so I find I wouldn't say lonely's the word, but I would say I'm in this transition phase of, I don't want to say feeling the loss of those relationships and just working together with those people.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

And then now creating a new ecosystem of friends. So I'll I'm I'm talking too much. I want to hear from you, but like tell me about that because I have the exact same thing. So I want to learn from you and how it's been for you.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

I don't know. I mean, the feeling of disconnectedness is absolutely real, and people need to prepare themselves for it. You take for granted the fact that you are forced in a good way, but you're forced into a situation where you're interacting with other people on a daily basis. You lose that. You lose the advantage of not having to force it yourself, but it's forced upon you as far as interacting with colleagues on a daily basis. Now I'm a social introvert, so making new relationships is really, really difficult for me. And I took full advantage of the fact that in the positions that I had in the company, people knew who I was. If we had outings or whatever else, people may not know each other. Well, they kind of knew me. And so that broke the ice automatically as far as trying to forge new relationships. Uh, my closest relationships right now, today, even in retirement, are ones that I had forged back in California. The relationships that I have today seem to be at this point a little bit more casual. It's not as in-depth. We haven't gone through the battles together, the trials and tribulations of whatever that is together. The exotic animal rescue founder and curator, we've gone through some battles. So he and his wife and I and Pamela, we're closer than we are to other people. But it's taken a lot of time, it's taken a lot of effort. And uh, like I said, it is different than before, no question. And it's difficult.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

I it is, and I also think about working and being in the corporate world. There's a lot that I miss, but there's a lot that I don't miss. There's some people that we had to work with, right? We don't have to name names, there's some people we work with, and you know, some of the politics, some of the bureaucracy that I don't miss at all. And so being in retirement, there's a lot of freedom. It sounds like you're enjoying it. I certainly am. I want to take a little bit of time for you to tell us about this business.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Sure. So, yeah, first, if you take a look at my time spent, first and foremost, it had been the exotic animal rescue. I mean, my first year of volunteering was we logged over 900 hours each, my wife and I, of volunteer work for them. So that was always number one as far as time and commitment. The next would be DHT Ventures. It's a small company that was started with some colleagues back in 2008. So DHT Ventures stands for Dennis, me, uh Hassam, and Tracy. So the three founders, we decided to start a company. So we had started that on the side as an evening and weekend business. We wanted to one work on a on a cool product, but also learn how to run a business together. And again, it was the learning piece of it that was the most interesting for me. That was always an idea that I wanted to pursue. It was inspired by my parents. My mom and dad's very first date was at a Milwaukee Braves baseball game. And he parked. And after the game, he forgot where he parked. And so they had to wait around for about two hours for the parking lot to clear before they could find his car. And that story, you know, stayed with me. And I was thinking, boy, if there was some sort of device that could actually lock down where your car was, and then when you're done, you just walk out towards it, it'll tell you the way. That's what I wanted to do. But I didn't have the skills to do that. But with my partners, one's an electrical engineer, the other's a manufacturing engineer and designer. Collectively, we were able to develop this product called the HomeStar GPS. So that was our first product that uh we developed and launched. We ultimately sunseted that product and donated our inventory to the Boy Scouts of America.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Wow. That's great. Are you are you working on anything new?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

We are focused right now on a product that we sell uh on Amazon, eBay, and on our website called the Home Star Safety Switch Guard. It's a patent product that initially was for parents that had toddlers that were getting mobile and they were flipping switches on and off. It was just driving people nuts.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Like light switches, they were switching. Light switches.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, actually, that the idea came from a uh previous colleague who had twins. One day during Thanksgiving, his wife asked him while we were there to invent something because every night when she would put the twins to bed, while she was changing the diapers of one twin, the other twin would go off and turn off the lights and giggle. It drove her nuts. So she wanted him to invent something that would produce. Prevent that from happening. Now he was a brand new manager and a new role, so he was busy. And I walked away thinking about it and thinking, you know what? I think I could come up with something.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

As a result, we developed the and designed Home Star Safety Switch Guard. There are convention centers and schools that need something specific, either for their switches or a very particular way to protect their switches. And so we provide customization as well. But um we have 12 different standard variations that are available today. And that's what we're focusing on selling and marketing and trying to make it as successful as possible.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

No, I can't wait to check it out. There was one time I was in a large auditorium and the lights went out, and it was somebody in the back that actually leaned against the lights and everything went out. And we thought we had a power failure and it wasn't. It was just like the poor person that was landing on that glitch.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Um really embarrassing for them. Yeah. So daycares, breweries, dry cleaners.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Do you get free beer or dry cleaning? Haven't yet. Looking back on it now, because you were retired, then you came out of retirement, and it sounds to me now like you're fully retired and having a ball. What three things would you tell your pre-retirement self now?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Oh, back to the future, right? And go back and try to tell yourself something useful. I guess the first one would be definitely tell myself, hey, look, cultivate whatever relationships you already have for later retirement, particularly the ones that you want to maintain. You got to make that effort to stay in touch and find different ways to stay connected because the vehicle of work to stay connected no longer exists. So be sure to continue to cultivate those relationships. I have some really strong ones today, but I've lost some as well, some that I really wish you would have maintained, not just for work and today, but for the future. The last thing I would tell myself would be, you know what, Dennis, you were right about how you approached your career. I mean, I didn't define myself by my jobs or the titles or work accomplishments. So when I ultimately left it to retire, I didn't really struggle with my identity that was based upon that career. You know, retirement would have been much, much tougher if that was how I defined and identified myself. And it was really, like I said, all the quote unquote accomplishments, they were just icing on the cake. The cake was being able to work with good people and having fun and learning something along the way.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

I felt the exact opposite. I had a hard time with that.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

And I I laugh at myself now for how incredibly self-absorbed I was about my title, my team, the things that we were doing. Whenever I went to a dinner party, I'd always lead with that. And then when I retired and people asked me, What do you do? I said, I I think I'm I couldn't even say the word retire. I said, I think I'm and my husband went. He answered the question. He's like, she's retired. And I was like, but I didn't know what I was gonna do next. And then I felt irrelevant. And then I had to reframe it in my brain, Lisa, you are not what you do.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

You are not what you do. And the more conversations I have with people about this, it's very interesting to talk to people that had my old mindset and then had yours. And it's such a better transition, I think. And part of me was ashamed about it that, oh my gosh, I was so wrapped up in my work identity. But it is what it is. I'm calling myself out on it. And I've I've unpacked it, but good for you that you did it. I mean, even to the heights and becoming vice president and leading teams, that you didn't have that.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah, I and that came from my dad. I mean, my dad, you know, he's a PhD in nuclear engineer, he's a internationally recognized poet and writer and painter. His day job was just a job, it was a means for him to get to do what his passion really was, which was the arts. And so I got that kind of mentality from him. On the other hand, my my mom loved her work, so she didn't retire right away when she could because she loved the work. And so, you know, that was what I grew up with was the idea that work at the end of the day is something that gives you the means to do what you really like to do. Now, bonus. If you really, really love the job and the stresses and everything else that come with it, then yeah, get paid. Absolutely get paid. It's worthwhile. Keep doing it and never retire. On the flip side, if you want to do something different and you have the ability to do it and you're not obligated to do it, then retire that way. But the title piece and everything else, yeah. But even my last gig, they asked me, do you want to have the title of president? And I actually said no. I said, I want to stay as vice president and general manager because that title within a large corporation meant different obligations, different politics. It was an international company, so that meant as a president, you would have to travel to a corporate headquarters across the ocean on a regular basis, and that's not what I wanted to do, so that wasn't worth it for me to have that title, just to have the title, because it meant also giving up things like time at home, not traveling as much. That was the trade-off. And gee, I missed out on a title. What does that get me now? Nothing exactly in retirement.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

It's all irrelevant. It doesn't matter. It's all irrelevant. I'm not in retirement. Right? It doesn't matter in retirement. It sounds like your dad was a role model for you in thinking about work and life and also retirement.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Role model is a correct term. I mean, he did it to an extreme, and I was never gonna do that. Uh so he he showed me where the boundaries are as far as how to approach the job and how not to approach the job. But you know, he would tell me as he saw me at work, you don't need to work so hard. It's like, yes, I do. That's just who I am. He can show me where the constraints are.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Anyone else guide you or anyone else that may or may not know that their example influenced you?

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Certainly, my wife. She is the let's try it, what you need to do in retirement. Quite frankly. I mean, that's that's your opportunity. You can try it and you can easily walk away from it afterwards if you don't like it. She's the one that gets me out. She wants to try new things, and that has been wonderful for me.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Well, that was a first for me. Talking to a friend that works at an exotic animal rescue. Holy cow! Dennis went from obtaining his doctorate in chemical engineering to becoming an RD leader and now a small business owner, selling a safety product that he created with friends on Amazon. What a story! It's a really good example that you can pretty much do anything you want in your next chapter. What are you thinking about for your own retirement? Send us your feedback and comments at next chapterconversations.com powered by GoDaddy. Until next time, remember, every day is a gift. Life is time and time is life. See you soon!