Executive Retirement Coaching & Intentional Exit

Is Retirement Coaching Right for You?

This work is designed for executives, founders and business owners who are approaching a professional exit—or have already stepped away—and know the transition involves considerably more than replacing a paycheck.

You may be ready for retirement financially but still wrestling with questions such as:

• Who am I when the title disappears?

• How do I leave without abandoning the team, business or legacy I built?

• What will give my time structure and my experience somewhere useful to go?

• Am I truly ready to leave—or simply exhausted?

• What do I want the next chapter to become?

You do not need someone to hand you a list of retirement hobbies. You need a confidential thinking partner who understands leadership, identity, transition and the wonderfully complicated question of what comes next.

Discovery Call

Executive Retirement Coaching

Group of older adults chatting on a couch.

Founders and Owners

Before You Let Go

A guide for business owners navigating a sale — and everything that comes with it.

You didn't just build a business. You built an identity, a purpose, a reason to get up at 5am. Selling it — or handing it over — is not just a financial transaction. It's a reckoning. And most of the books about business exits skip that part entirely.

Before You Let Go is a three-part journal for the founder who wants to honor what they built, grieve what they're releasing, and step into what's next with both eyes open. It's the guide nobody handed you when you signed the papers.

Available for workshops or individual coaching clients.

Discovery Call

Executives and Team Leaders

The Intentional Exit

A workbook for corporate leaders and executives navigating a professional exit.

The title goes away. The team moves on. The calendar — which has defined every day for thirty years — goes quiet. And then someone asks what you do, and for the first time in decades, you pause.

The Intentional Exit is a five-module guided experience for the leader who wants to leave well — with clarity about who they've been, honesty about what they're letting go, and real intention about what comes next.

There is a difference between can't leave and won't leave.
Knowing the difference is leadership.

Available for workshops or individual coaching clients.

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What Retirement Coaching Helps You Do

The goal is not to keep you busy after retirement. It is to help you make a thoughtful transition from a role that shaped your life into a next chapter that actually fits.

Together, we can work on:

• Leaving well. Prepare yourself, your successor and the people who depend on your leadership.

• Separating identity from title. Decide which parts of the leader you became should come with you.

• Creating direction. Replace a suddenly empty calendar with meaningful possibilities, relationships and contribution.

• Protecting your legacy. Be intentional about what you leave behind without allowing the past to own your future.

• Building your next chapter. Turn reflection into experiments, decisions and forward movement.

You will leave with greater clarity about what you are stepping away from, what you are carrying forward and what deserves your attention next.

Movement matters more than magnitude.

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Why Work With Karen Grosz

Karen Grosz is a professional coach, TEDx speaker, leadership expert and author of seven books, including What’s Next? Retirement! The Art of Living Forward.

For more than 25 years, Karen has coached executives, business owners and professionals through consequential decisions, leadership challenges and major transitions. She also built Canvas Creek Team Building, bringing more than 90,000 people into collaborative experiences designed to change how they work, communicate and move forward.

Then retirement stopped being a subject Karen coached from the outside. It became her transition too.

Karen created Nexters and The Intentional Exit because financial readiness does not answer the questions leaders face when the title, team and full calendar begin to disappear.

Her approach is candid, practical and deeply human. No retirement clichés. No generic hobby lists. No pretending that leaving a role you spent decades building is simple.

Just honest questions, meaningful decisions and a plan for living forward.

Retirement Coaching: Common Questions

Please reach us at karen@nexters.life if you cannot find an answer to your question.

What is executive retirement coaching?

Executive retirement coaching helps senior leaders, founders and business owners prepare for the nonfinancial side of leaving a significant role. The work may include identity, purpose, leadership transition, legacy, relationships, time, contribution and designing a meaningful next chapter.

When should I begin retirement coaching

Ideally, begin six months to three years before your planned exit. Starting early gives you time to prepare yourself, your successor and the organization without making rushed decisions. Coaching can also help after retirement if the transition feels less satisfying or more disorienting than expected.

Who is the Intentional Exit Designed for?

The Intentional Exit is designed for executives and senior leaders preparing to leave a long-held professional role. It helps leaders examine what they are leaving, how to support the people who remain and what they want to carry into life beyond the position.

Can Karen Work with Founders and Business Owners?

Yes. Karen works with founders and owners preparing to sell, transfer or step away from a business. Before You Let Go addresses the personal transition behind the transaction—the identity, responsibility, grief, legacy and possibility that financial and succession plans often overlook.

Is retirement coaching the same as financial planning?

No. Financial planning answers whether you can afford to retire. Retirement coaching explores how you want to live, who you are beyond your title, what you want to contribute and what will give your next chapter direction. The two forms of planning complement each other.

Retirement Coaching