In this episode, Eleven Canterbury Consultant Bill Mayberry shares his experience of transitioning from a long, successful career at AT&T to building a portfolio of activities. He emphasizes the importance of pausing and reflecting on career achievements and future goals before making such a transition. Bill details his journey through smaller companies and consulting, eventually finding a fulfilling balance between part-time work and family commitments. The conversation highlights the challenges and opportunities of stepping away from a major corporation, the necessity of structured daily planning, and the significance of finding personal meaning and enjoyment in post-corporate life.
Video Transcription
Chapter Two: Creating New Beginnings
Episode 2: Opportunity Knocks: Navigating Career Transitions
With Eleven Canterbury Consultant Bill Mayberry and Dan Martin, Eleven Canterbury Program & Relationship Manager
Introduction
Dan Martin: My guest today is Bill Mayberry. He’s going to talk about the transition from full-time work into a kind of portfolio of activities, how that affected him, and how he approached it.
It’s a really important topic, particularly at Eleven Canterbury. We have a lot of people who have faced this kind of a challenge or, as Bill would say, faced this opportunity, and some might say an insurmountable opportunity. I’m looking forward to talking about this.
You left after a long career at a very large company, AT& T. Are there things that you wish you had known before you embarked on this journey?
Bill Mayberry: The short answer is yes. What I did once I left AT&T is I initially went to a smaller company and spent about two years there. After that, I went to another large company and spent about two years there. And honestly, what I learned is you just trade one set of problems for another, and that things that I was responsible for at AT&T, for example, big budgets, bill plans, network quality, you name it, and I went to a smaller company thinking that, it’d be more of a downshift, but there you’re worried about cash flow and RFP responses and being able to just keep the business going. And then I went to another large company, which was a vendor of AT&T, and saw that side of the equation.
So, what I wish I would have done, and this is the one thing that I would recommend to anybody in that situation, is hit the pause button. Hit the pause button and really take stock of what you’ve done in your career to that point. But more importantly, what you’d like to do next. Maybe some things that you’d wished you had time to do. Maybe spend more time with family. Maybe some hobbies, things like that. And even talk to some other people that have been on that path to really kind of shape what the next phase of your life and potentially career is going to be. Spend some time on priorities. Spend some time on honestly understanding what your priorities are. What are the things you really want to focus on? That’s what I wish I would have done differently to answer your question. I wish I had hit that pause button before I walked out the door at AT&T and really put some critical thinking into this. I think I would have gotten where I ultimately ended up a lot quicker if I had done that.
Dan Martin: Did you decide to retire from AT&T, or was there a bit of a push?
Bill Mayberry: There wasn’t a push as much as a realization that we were always doing mergers and always doing acquisitions and reorganizations. And generally speaking, living in Atlanta, Georgia, I would come out pretty good on that because we were the headquarters of Bell South and in Cingular Wireless, until about two years before I left and ended up on the other side of one of those acquisitions where SBC bought Bell South and suddenly everything was shifting over to Dallas, Texas. I realized that if I wanted to continue the kind of career that I would like to have there, I would have to move, and that just wasn’t feasible from a family standpoint.
Fortunately, I was eligible for early retirement. At the time, if you had a combination of age and service of 75 years, which I did by that point, you could take full retirement and take your benefits. In my case, I took my 401k and rolled it over to an IRA. So, it was really just time for me to go. And I’ll add one more point: when the momentum shifted over to Dallas, so many people that I’d come up through the business with on the Bell South side were leaving. And it just felt like, okay, it’s time. And so that was really it. I wasn’t really pushed, but it was time.
Dan Martin: We share some of the same things. I worked at Digital Compact and HP through lots of mergers. It’s always a bit of a mess. In one of the things they had, they made me an offer that was actually impossible to refuse, but it ended up with me leaving a little bit earlier than I had planned, and I did exactly the same wrong thing you did. I didn’t pause. I just said, I want something that’s completely different because I’m tired of dealing with giant bureaucracies that are half a world away, so I will find a small company. And you discover a giant bureaucracy of people telling you how to do something they don’t know how to do, is one problem. Worrying whether you’re going to make payroll on Friday is different.
Bill Mayberry: Absolutely, Dan. I used to tell people this: You haven’t lived until you’ve sat in a conference room on Wednesday, trying to figure out how you can make payroll on Friday.
Dan Martin: The theme of what you’ve said is, for some people, their sense of who they are is tied to their job title. Their social circle may revolve around their job title. Their sense of accomplishment and how their day lays out depends on the job, and it can be kind of a wrenching experience when you leave, but it seems like what you’ve said is to look at it as an opportunity.
Bill Mayberry: Absolutely. In fact, what I would tell people is – look, for the first time, probably in a very long time, you now have the control to define what you’re going to do next. Because, at least in my career with a large company, you were moving fast. They were moving to different cities, different jobs. If you look at this as an opportunity, then you really can shape ways that you will still be productive. Perhaps you want to work part-time but also incorporate the things you might have missed along the way. So that’s what I would encourage people to do.
Dan Martin: Of course, one of the challenges that might come up is you can get a little bit complacent when your day is planned by AT&T, or in my case, Hewlett Packard, and then you find yourself at home. I found that my spouse was running the place really well without my management assistance. But you’re at home, and I think you need to structure your day with what you’re going to do, or else you can find things going awry.
Bill Mayberry: Absolutely. What I would recommend to people and what I ultimately did was have a plan for each day.
Now, I don’t wake up in the morning and have a list of eight meetings I have to attend anymore, but I have things that I have planned for the day, and it’s got flexibility. If I decide I just as soon sit in the sunroom and look at the lake for an hour, I can do that. But I’m also conscious of the fact that you need to have things ordered, particularly if you’ve always worked that way. The initial phase of moving into that can be a little concerning. In my case, I ultimately decided to start doing consulting. When I was doing that on my own, many days the phone didn’t ring, and I had a lot of time on my hands.
So what I encourage people to do is plan for that and have hobbies or activities to fill in for those things. It takes a while to adjust, but after you start adjusting, I think you’ll like it a lot better. And that would be the message I would give you.
Dan Martin: It’s interesting. I remember talking to my mother right after my dad retired. We were talking about stages of life, and I said you guys seem really happy. And she said, Dan, life always changes, but it can always get better. It’s always better. I’m enjoying, we’re enjoying what we’re doing.
My dad took up ballroom dancing after 48 years at Delta Airlines, which kind of surprised me. I also learned that he won my mother’s heart right before World War II by reciting the U. S. states and their capitals in alphabetical order.
Bill Mayberry: That’s impressive.
Dan Martin: Are you happy now with the way things are going for you?
Bill Mayberry: Yes, and we spend a lot of time with our grandchildren. In fact, that was one of those things that I wanted to talk just a little bit about. Our first grandchild was born back in 2016, and that kind of led us to think that we want to be involved with our grandchildren. And that led us to a decision that we executed about two years ago to actually move out of Atlanta down to Columbus, Georgia, where our one daughter is with three of the grandchildren. They live 10 miles away, and we’re actively involved in taking them to their activities and things like that. But we also live only an hour and a half from the Atlanta airport, where we can fly up to Pittsburgh, where my other daughter is. That’s her husband’s hometown, and they have two daughters. And in fact, we’re helping them to build an addition on their house so we can have our own space when we go up to visit. So, we made a serious commitment to be more involved, and that makes us very happy.
Dan Martin: It sounds like the overarching message is that it’s an opportunity to take advantage of and figure out what’s really important to make you happy.
Bill Mayberry: And that’s key. You just nailed it down. Some people, like your dad, want to do ballroom dancing. Well, God, I’ve got two left feet; I would be clumsy if I tried to do that, or maybe golf. Well, my golf game is beyond help. Or running marathons. Well, I’m not built like a marathon runner. And so, I focused on our grandkids, and that may just totally be the opposite of what somebody else would want. I think the key is to do some thinking and end up in those areas that are your priorities, and I think if you do that, you can really maximize and enjoy this phase a lot.
Dan Martin: I think knowing what you enjoy. I think a key is talking with people to help you figure out what it is you really care about, what you’re good at, and what you enjoy doing. You learn from other people.
Bill Mayberry: You do.
I want to talk a little bit about how I ended up in consulting in parallel to being involved with our grandkids. I also felt that I didn’t want to have another full-time job. I didn’t want to be responsible for delivering products and services or networks or whatever. But I felt like I had a lot to offer, so I kind of eased into consulting part-time. I eventually connected with a group of other former high-level folks from wireless companies, and we formed a consulting group. We help companies who want to develop business relationships with the big carriers. It fits very well with the other priorities I have. It keeps me sharp technically because I keep up with things. And it’s been a really fun, interesting thing. And I’m still doing some of it, even though COVID hit our business pretty hard because a lot of companies shut down. And secondly, a lot of my contacts at AT&T have aged out now. But it’s still something I can do part-time, and I enjoy it. And so, that’s how I ended up here. And like I said earlier, had I put more thought into it with that pause button before I walked out of AT&T for the last time, I might have gotten to this point quicker.
So that’s the advice
Dan Martin: I think that’s good advice. It seems like you’ve got a whole lot of portfolio activities and live a very rich and rewarding life.
