Planning to retire, with purpose, at any age

My Story

Hello. I’m Andrew Gordon, the founder of Action Mindset.

You’ve heard the old saying “Do as I say, not as I do”. This saying is the perfect embodiment of my ethos and purpose.

Below, I’ll give you some background on why I set up the business, how I reached this point, and how my experiences make me perfectly placed to help you.

But I want to avoid making this page read too much like a CV.

You need to know why and how my services are relevant to you, and how we can be a part of each other’s journey.

My vision and values

I set up Action Mindset to give people the tools to create a tangible, transformative plan of action which encompasses multiple facets of their lives.

You may not think you have a plan, but you do. It just might not be the right plan.

If you haven’t got a conscious plan, that’s your plan. You’re going to leave it to chance and hope for the best.

That could be a very dangerous strategy, but nobody around you is likely to sit you down and tell you that.

As an adult, you’re supposed to figure these things out for yourself, and your life is defined by your decisions.

I’m not here to tell you what decisions to make. But I am here to give you the tools to ask yourself how and where you could make better decisions — and then go out and make them.

I want people who are inquisitive, open-minded, and ready to take tangible steps to improve their lives.

Without wishing to sound foreboding, there’s a good chance some of you reading this might not make it to retirement.

Even the fortunate ones among you who do make it to retirement may not have the physical and mental acuity to live the life you want.

That’s why you need to start shaping your life now.

If I could go back in time to when I was working age, that would be the biggest piece of advice I’d give myself.

My story

I began my career in the electrical and electronic engineering industry, working for the Ministry of Defence.

I then moved to IBM, where I worked in customer support and sales-based roles.

For the rest of my career, I specialised in sales and sales management.

Towards the end, I provided training courses as a side hustle. There were two reasons for this:

I wanted to positively impact other people’s lives.
I didn’t want to rely on a single source of income.

It took years for me to come to this realisation, however.

In the early days of my career, I followed the same train of thought as most people my age — work in a job that you don’t enjoy so that you can get enough money together to get out of doing that job!

In hindsight, doing a job I loved would have perhaps been a more intelligent route to go down.

That said, my career was both challenging and rewarding. I was fortunate to hold some lucrative positions, albeit ones that required me to work 50 or 60 hour weeks.

When I turned 59, I reduced my workload to three days a week.

Then, at 62, retirement happened.

It felt like the right move at the time, but in hindsight, I should have put more thought into what retirement actually means in practice.

Two words entered my mind.

The dreaded two words which speak a million words.

What next?

It was as if I’d lost all sense of purpose overnight.

I spent the next couple of years wondering what on earth I’d done.

Fortunately, I found my ‘why’ again after spending a couple of years putting a plan together.

How I changed my life

The basis of my plan was to start asking myself some deep questions and working through the answers to each.

The first and most important question I addressed was, “When am I likely to die?”. And if I look at my health, what is the likely rate of decline between now and death?

These questions enabled me to figure out:

● What I wanted to achieve in that time.

● When I needed to get started.

● How I would get the timing right.

In other words, which doors were likely to close first, and how could I make these areas a priority?

It was classic project planning and time management. Only, this time, I wasn’t mapping out a project for IBM. I was mapping out the rest of my life.

[PHOTO]

When I was younger, I used to love riding motorbikes, but, as often happens, life got in the way.

So, when I retired, I bought myself a motorbike, which I love riding.

I also purchased a Jaguar XK8 convertible as a hobby car, and, at the time of writing, I’m reconstructing a 1966 Triumph Spitfire, which I bought 40 years ago.

Here it is in all its glory (it’s not finished yet, but watch this space…)

[PHOTO]

I’m renovating it from the chassis up — having said I would do it for the last 35 years!

What does all of this mean?

It means you shouldn’t wait to start living your life and doing what you said you would.

You should do it now and use your energy wisely.

As my business strapline says — ‘If not now… when?’