A note from Hugh
I sat down with Dr. Greg Bourgond, and we got into something I did not expect to talk about on a podcast for the trades. Not margins, not hiring, not succession spreadsheets. Identity.
He is 78 and calls this stretch of his life the winter season. He has written a book about it. What struck me was how directly it lands on owners and leaders in our world, where the business is often the whole answer to the question of who you are.
That is the work this week. Look at the calendar and ask what is on the other side of it.
Hugh Hornsby
Blue Collar Smart
01 / The real problem
The exit nobody plans for
A lot of owners in the trades are aging out. They spend thirty years building something real, then the day comes to hand it off or sell it, and the calendar goes quiet. The plan was time with the grandkids, some travel, a better golf game. Dr. Bourgond points out how fast that runs dry. The grandkids are grown with families of their own. You see the places you wanted to see. The handicap does not improve. What is left is a question most men never sit with until it is sitting on them: what am I going to do with the rest of my life?
02 / What experience taught
Identity built on what you do disappears when the doing stops
Dr. Bourgond, who is 78 and calls this stretch the winter of his life, put it plainly. Men have a tendency to get their identity from what they do instead of who they are. When what they do is taken away, they do not know who they are. He splits life into four seasons. Spring is growing up and finding out what you are good at. Summer is building the career and accumulating things. Fall is when accumulation loses its pull and you start wanting significance and influence. Winter, he says, starts around sixty, and it arrives either by design or by something you did not choose, like a downsize or a health event. His point is that nothing you built goes to waste. The talents, the acquired skills, the values, the scar tissue from the bad years all become the raw material. He described moving from shotgun to laser beam, taking the whole composite of what you have become and pointing it at something that matters. Or as he put it, if you are not dead, you are not done.
- 01
Separate what you built from who you areThe company you grew is an accomplishment, not an identity. Dr. Bourgond's point is that when the work goes away, anyone who confused the two is left with nothing to stand on.
- 02
Name the season you are inSpring, summer, fall, winter. Knowing which one you are in tells you what the next decision is for. Accumulation makes sense in summer. In fall and winter, the question changes to significance.
- 03
Plan the last quarter like you planned the firstMost owners plan the exit and skip the entrance into what comes next. Dr. Bourgond's list ends with prepare a plan and execute a plan, including a timeline and a network. Vague good intentions are not a plan.
The conversation
Gregory Bourgond
Founder of Heart of a Warrior Ministries and author of The Winter of Your Life
Dr. Greg Bourgond served 29 years in the Navy, retiring as a naval intelligence officer, and worked in defense and commercial business, including a stint as a dealership general manager. He went on to serve as an executive pastor and as a dean and vice president at Bethel Seminary, and he has written several books on faith, leadership, and aging. He told me about his parents' divorce when he was 12, standing before a judge who told him to hurry up and pick a parent, then running outside and throwing his arms around a cement lion on the courthouse steps. In that moment he vowed no one would ever control his life again. He also shared that he never wanted to start a ministry. He ran from it. Thirty years later it is still going, in multiple states and countries, with close to 1,200 men through one phase alone, and he says he has never advertised.
Listen to the full conversation 03 / Your Yellow Pad challenge
One page. Nine honest answers.
Take out a yellow pad. Dr. Bourgond walked through a preparation list for the winter of your life. Write down four of them and answer them for yourself. One, consult trusted observers. Who has told you the truth about yourself, and what did they say? Two, evaluate your portfolio. What are your real strengths, your real limitations, and what potential have you never used? Three, conduct a giftedness audit. What are your natural abilities and the skills you picked up along the way, and where could they be applied next? Four, prepare a plan. What has to get finished before you can start something new, and by when?
Then pick the name of one trusted observer and call them this week. Ask them what they see in you that you do not see in yourself. Write down one concrete next step before you hang up.
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If the work stopped tomorrow, what would still be true about you?
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