Coaching with Chris is not an open-ended conversation that wanders until the hour runs out. Every session is built on something you did beforehand, and every session ends with something you are taking forward. You will always know what the next step is, because you will have helped choose it.
You describe where you are โ how far out you are from retiring, or how long you have been retired, and what is challenging you. Chris tells you plainly whether coaching is the right approach for it, and if it is not, he says so and points you somewhere better.
Nothing is signed and nothing is owed. If it does feel like a fit, you will know exactly what the next four to ten meetings look like before you agree to any of them.
Some people want a structured look at where they stand before deciding on coaching. The comprehensive Retirement Intelligence (RQ) Assessment is available on its own: you complete the online assessment, receive your own copy to review before the meeting, and sit down with Chris for a single results consultation โ $200 for an individual 60-minute meeting, $300 for a couples 90-minute meeting. If you continue into coaching, that reading becomes your first map.
Before your first real session you complete an intake and an assessment Chris uses called the Retirement Quotient โ the RQ. It takes about twenty minutes and it asks about the things a financial plan never touches: how much of your identity currently lives at work, how your wellbeing is actually holding up, who you are genuinely connected to, and how comfortable you are with the everyday technology your Next Chapter is going to run on.
What the RQ is not: it is not a clinical instrument, and there is no pass or fail. It asks honest questions about retirement and gives you a picture of where you stand โ including, if you want it, a rough sense of how your answers compare with other people approaching the same door. Think of it as the first map, not the verdict.
The first session is a thorough walk through what the assessment surfaced โ not a report handed across the table, but a conversation about what you recognised in your own answers and what surprised you.
By the end of it you will have named the goals that actually matter to you across four areas: personal, family, career, and wellness. Those goals set the agenda for everything after this.
Each session is built on an activity you complete prior to the coaching session, so the hour is spent on what you found rather than on getting started. There are three that nearly everyone does:
The Curious List โ everything you have ever been faintly curious about and never had time for. The Connections List โ the people actually in your life, sorted honestly. The Wellness Review โ where your health stands, where the opportunities are, and what you intend to do about them.
Curiosity feeds connection and connection feeds curiosity โ which is why those first two always travel together.
Retirement is not one decision. It is HR paperwork, insurance choices, Medicare timing, a will and a trust, a financial advisor, a primary care doctor, and the people who will still be in your life on a Wednesday afternoon in March. Each of those is a seat in the boat, and you are at the centre of it.
Chris has spent decades as an employee assistance specialist and an on-site benefits navigator, and that is the role he plays here too. He does not diagnose, prescribe, or give financial or legal advice. What he does is help you work out which question belongs in which chair, who to ask, what to ask them, and what to do with the answer โ and then he follows up with you on it. You are never handed a list and wished good luck.
The last meeting pulls everything into one document you keep: your purpose and what replaces the working identity, the people you are deliberately staying close to, the rhythm your week will actually have, the wellbeing habits you are protecting, the crew you have assembled โ and what you are doing about all of it in the first ninety days.
It is a plan you wrote, with help. That is the point of coaching rather than advice: the answers were always going to be yours.
Plenty of people come back โ when the retirement date finally lands, when a health question changes the arithmetic, or when a spouse's Next Chapter starts colliding with theirs. The five- and ten-session packages include check-ins along the way, and single sessions are always available for a specific question.
Most people picture a single Friday afternoon with a cake in the break room. In practice the transition runs for years, and each phase asks something different of you. Chris works with people in all four โ most arrive somewhere in the first two.
Phase model adapted from Merrill Lynch retirement research.
“Running out of money pales in comparison to running out of family, friends, good health, and time.” Chris Gomberg
The first conversation is complimentary, twenty minutes, and genuinely no-obligation โ that is where questions like this belong.
Schedule Your Consultation → Take the Pre-Retirement Quiz