FREE NEWSLETTER

The Final Curtain Call: My Double Retirement

Go to main Forum page »

AUTHOR: Mark Crothers on 10/19/2025

As a business owner, I was constantly required to be in the customer spotlight, which unfortunately meant adopting an extroverted façade—a sharp contrast to my naturally introverted self. My professional life, with its constant interaction and performative elements, was the biggest stage for this alter ego. Essentially, I was an entrepreneur with a separate, exhausting full-time job: character actor.

My favourite part of the day was 5 a.m., sitting in the sunroom with a coffee while my wife Suzie and the children were still asleep—the calm before donning my character mask and heading out for the day’s business. It was the only hour in which I was neither selling nor deal-making, a precious, unburdened pause before the day-long masquerade began.

In many ways, I was a prisoner of my own making. I created and draped the persona over myself early in my career to maintain a high profile within the business I worked for; it was the easiest route to promotion, as quieter people simply didn’t get noticed. A shortsighted bias I endeavoured not to emulate when I ran my own company.

When I founded my own business, my customers came with me. They were the initial lifeblood, so I was forced to continue the façade; that was the person they knew and trusted—the persona they wanted, not the introvert me. So the greatest showman performed for his audience of customers. Character prostitution was the name of the game—it paid the bills.

The years rolled on, the performance persisted. For me, it’s a strange truth: I really don’t think I could have operated my company as effectively without the performance. It motivated staff and made customers want to do business; my persona lubricated the machinery of business. I was too nervous to be myself, the storyline worked—better not change.

Retirement for me, when it eventually arrived, was twofold with twice the relief. I sold my business, and on the final evening, with my staff and new owners watching on, I walked out the door and didn’t look back. My second, uncelebrated and unnoticed secret retirement happened in my car during the drive home. I cast off the façade of thirty years, and the final curtain call of a typecast amateur actor took place without an audience, a final bow, or an encore.

Should I really have made it so difficult to be myself? I could have changed, I never really tried. I have no real answer, save for the best I can offer: I was just doing business; nothing personal. But I’m glad it’s all over—the introvert has freedom and enjoys contemplating the clouds from the sunroom windows.

Subscribe
Notify of
9 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
bbbobbins
20 hours ago

I’d suggest that by your eagerness to tell us all about your retired life here you’re not as introverted as you might imagine yourself to be.

Edmund Marsh
23 hours ago

I get it. I flip a switch when I enter the clinic, slipping on my professional persona to serve my patients and earn my paycheck, no matter what inner trials I may be experiencing. But everyone has some challenges in life. Ours is just hidden.

Steve Cousins
23 hours ago

I get the performer concept. I was also an introverted person with considerable performance talent. But that’s not a fake facade, performer is who you were/are, who I was/am. Its not dishonest or disingenuous to use an innate talent to boost your success. Quiet people do not advance, and that is not unfair. Failing to sell your ideas is failure and it should hold people back in life. The idea that you freed yourself from what was actually perhaps your greatest talent is nonsensical to me. Embrace that performer inside of you, he’s gifted.

DAN SMITH
1 day ago

Mark, not everyone is able to successfully step out of their comfort zone. Perhaps that’s why some businesses fail. I’d say you were a professional actor, as you got paid handsomely for your performance. 
I used to think of it as wearing different hats. I put on my Budweiser hat when I was on the route peddling beer. I always had a joke or two at the ready in order to entertain the bar flies. I also was pretty good at reading the customers personalities; I got along well with some pretty difficult owners.  I represented the company well when I wore that hat. 
I put on my union hat when it came time for union business. Aggression is not my nature, still, I could venture outside my comfort zone when the situation was called for. 
Later, when I had my tax prep business, I was, thankfully, able to be myself, which was actually pretty much the way I was when I was selling beer. 
On a couple occasions, there were tax clients who, for different reasons, I could not bond with, so I fired them. I’ll expand on this in a separate post.

baldscreen
1 day ago

I read a new term of otrovert recently that is a combination of introvert and extrovert. Maybe you are this, Mark? And congratulations on your retirement. Chris.

mytimetotravel
1 day ago

As a fellow introvert I sympathize – and am impressed. I’ve always said that if I had to sell things to make a living I would starve. Life as a techie was much more relaxed!

Free Newsletter

SHARE