Going Back to Work
When people ask me if I’m retired, I usually start by saying yes, then I sort of hedge myself by saying that I keep active by teaching and doing expert witness work. I think I am done saying that I teach, but I am busier than ever with expert witness work, having, at least for the moment, a very regular flow of activity from a handful of cases. Since May of this year I have put in between 30 and 110 hours per month, which has translated into about ⅓ time on a normal 40 hour work week. I feel like that qualifies as “sort of retired”. It would be incorrect to say, as I did for teaching, that I don’t do this for the money, but really just to give back and stay active. The truth is that the money is pretty decent in the expert witness game and I have to be honest and say that its nice to have money coming in and not just going out, as it tends to in retirement. But there is another element in the equation which has to do with the general sense of feeling wanted and productive.
Like almost everybody in the professional realm these days, I am on the LinkedIn networking app to maintain current business relationships. I hesitate calling it a social media app because while it may function in a very similar way, I don’t very often use it to maintain social contacts, but rather business contacts. I am far less picky about who I am connected to on LinkedIn than I am on any social media system, which I mostly use just to stay in touch with what my kids are up to. Like many of these services that started as free networking services that initially sought to build their network by having as many users as possible, LinkedIn has a baseline service that is still free. For that very reasonable price, I can connect with and look at profiles for and even message an array of some 6,000 business connections. Like any of these services, a big part of their game is to entice the free users to revert to a premium or paid subscription by offering enticements. In the case of LinkedIn, one of the enticements is that they tell me weekly how many people have looked at my profile and how many job searches my profile has been included in. Needless to say, telling someone that 120 people looked at your profile this month makes you curious as to who finds you so interesting as to want to review your profile. To be able to see that information would require me to sign on to the premium service, which I did for a while and then let that lapse, since I had momentarily sated that curiosity. In fact, I found that while some of that information was interesting to me, some of it I would rather not have known. I imagine its like being a pretty girl who has the opportunity to get a list of every guy who has ogled her that day. Some would be pleasing and some would make her cringe.
The job search information is even more intriguing because it feels less voyeuristic and more serious. The truth is that LinkedIn is used by search companies to do broad-based searches of anybody who has a certain stated domain involvement. I say involvement rather than expertise, because I imagine that the screening process is all about separating that wheat from that chaff. I did not find so much interest in that job search information for two reasons. First of all, I am, indeed, retired, and I do not want employment per se. Secondly, the searches all seemed to be more junior than I would find interesting even if I did want a job. And lastly, the real joy in being approached for work is that someone knows enough about you to flatter you about being still in demand for your capabilities. Nothing about the LinkedIn searches said much of that to me.
But there are other outreaches which are much more interesting. Last year I got a call from an old colleague who I had once recruited out of business school and employed. He somehow had run across my expert witness profile on my firm’s website and called me to discuss my getting involved with him in an expert witness case of not insignificant profile. It ended up being a short-term gig of two months, but with 200 hours of work, it led to a not insignificant payday. It also reactivated an old acquaintance that I have stayed in much closer touch with since then. I recently heard that the case I had worked on with him resulted in a meaningful settlement, which I can now add to my list of expert witness kudos and my team has even published about in our monthly newsletter.
Today I have gotten an email from a professional search firm. This did not come through LinkedIn and it did not come through my company website since it was emailed to my personal email address. It was a personalized email that showed signs that the person sending it, who I do not think I know, knew something about my background. The person is a CPA, so is more than a search person just scratching around for a placement fee. This was an honest to goodness job solicitation for a full time position doing the equivalent of expert witness work in the commercial and residential real estate practice of a large, well-known accounting and consulting firm. They are looking for a Real Estate Disputes Leader in their restructuring and disputes practice. I had no real estate expertise per se prior to taking on the CEO job at AFI in 2008, which was a $3 billion distressed real estate developer. I had literally never done a real estate restructuring before that. Then, in the following two years I led the restructuring of 22 trophy properties and managed to salvage all of them from near certain foreclosure on almost half of them. In other words, during one of the worst real estate setbacks (2008 – 2010), I earned my chops in the arena and someone out there seems to have picked up on that and decided that I might be interested in getting into the dispute resolution game for other similar restructurings and disputes.
I was quite pleased with myself in having been able to learn and innovate in such a specific new area like real estate restructuring, and to succeed at things that others often considered a hill too high to climb. It was a very professionally rewarding time for me because it proved to me that I could turn my years of experience into a new expertise that quickly was recognized as world class. I spearheaded some of the most heralded deals in that space over those two years. And now, someone seems to have picked up on that and gone to the trouble of seeking me out for that expertise. I can’t deny it, that feels good. Now I need to decide what, if anything, to do about it.
I will admit that there are days when I feel that I am at loose ends and would like more purpose in my daily existence. But then, there are also days when I arise and an quite happy that nothing is expected of me and my only obligation is to do as I please and do things like go to the gym or get a stretch or massage. The solicitation letter said that location can be totally remote if I so choose and that the practice is national and the gigs can be anywhere. I suspect that they probably would want me to generate business through my contacts, which means I would need to go back to hustling business, something I am quite glad not to have to do, even in my expert witness business. There is also something unappealing about getting back into harness and having a boss to report to. Right now, I am a gig worker and my lead partners are just that, partners. They source the business off the back of my resume and I do the work, with them helping as needed. I never feel like an employee. I have solved the immediate issue of how to respond, by forwarding the email to my partners and will be interested in what they think. It occurs to me that in addition to full disclosure, that benefits me by reminding them that somebody out there still thinks I’m worth chasing. Even though I know that these outreaches are fewer and further in between, I’m afraid that as much as I am flattered by them, I am simply not ready for going back to work…but please keep asking…