About the 4th Quarter

In January 2025, I did what a lot of people do at the start of a new year. I looked back at what I'd accomplished, and forward at what I still wanted to do.

Somewhere in that exercise, I realized I was entering my 30th year as a professional.

I thought, “Thirty years! If a career runs about forty before retirement, I wasn't starting anymore. I wasn't even at halftime. I was standing in my own 4th Quarter.”

I've been a sports fan my whole life, so the metaphor landed hard.

Games are often won or lost in the 4th Quarter, and not because the best players on the field in that moment are the fastest or the strongest. It's because they've seen the situation before. They know what matters and what doesn't. Experience is the advantage.

That got me looking at the people I admire most, people whose judgment, relationships, and experience had never been sharper, and noticing something that didn't add up. Many of them seemed less confident about their future than they'd been ten years earlier. Not because they'd lost anything. Because nobody had ever had a real conversation with them about what this stage of a career is actually all about.

A few months later, I woke up with Bell's Palsy. My first thought was that I was having a stroke. I wasn't, and I recovered in a few weeks, but it stayed with me. Not because it was catastrophic. Because it made the arithmetic real: there will not always be more time. I'd been telling myself there would be time later to write, to speak, to build, to take the risk. Later is not a plan.

That's why The 4th Quarter community exists.

This isn't about me

Every conversation I've had since points to the same thing: a lot of accomplished people are asking versions of the same question at the same time. Not "how do I retire?" Something closer to, I've done well, but I don't know if I want to keep doing this the same way. I have more to give, and I'm not sure where to put it.

If that's you, you're not early, and you're not late.

You're in your own 4th Quarter, and this is the part of the game where experience decides what happens next.

What we believe

Experience is not a liability. It's one of the most undervalued assets in modern life.

The most meaningful chapters of a career don't always happen first. For a lot of people, they happen here.

Retirement is one option. It is not the only one, and for a lot of driven, capable people, it's not even the interesting one.

What The 4th Quarter is, and isn't

The 4th Quarter is a community and a body of thinking for experienced professionals designing the final, most meaningful chapter of their working lives.

It is not a retirement brand. It is not self-help. It is not hustle culture with better lighting.

It's conversations, frameworks, and honest perspective on what it actually takes to build a next chapter on your own terms, whether that's consulting, a board seat, a new business, mentoring, or work you haven't figured out the name for yet.

Start here

If any of this sounds familiar, our newsletter is the best place to begin.
Every month, we send a recap of what we’ve covered and one article that is unique to the newsletter.