Meet the (Un)Retirement Experts: Interviews with Joe Casey & Judi Nadratowski
Diana Landau | July 15, 2025
This is a special bonus episode where Carl interviews The (Un)Retirement Experts. First up is the GOAT of retirement podcasts, Joe Casey, who has hosted more than 350 episodes of "Retirement Wisdom". He's a true retirement pioneer. Before his first retirement at 52, Joe had a very successful career working as a SVP for Merrill Lynch. He pivoted to executive coaching and retirement coaching after going back to earn 2 additional masters degrees, in Executive Coaching and Gerontology. "I was curious how it all worked," he tells us. He is also the author of "Win the Retirement Game."
Although Joe loves exec coaching and as well as helping people design their new lives in retirement, he says one regret he has is that he jumped into full-time right away and didn't take off any time in between. "When I started out, (again), I said, I'll do it until I get it right. I'm still doing it!"
Joe's (un)retirement advice:
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"Embrace retirement. Try new things. Know where to draw the line. What pace of work works for you now?"
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"Two common missteps are 1) Taking on too much too soon, and 2) Treating retirement as a vacation for too long."
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"Be willing to be really bad at something as you learn. (Which is really hard for people who have been very successful in their careers.)
Carl also interviews Judi Nadratowski. Judi is a relative newbie to retirement. She retired from an international law firm six years ago. She had worked for her firm for 40 years, helping to manage 1,000 professional staff and 800 lawyers in 9 different offices. She says that when she turned 60, she started looking at her life as more finite. She is now a successful writer, blogger and contributor exploring modern retirement.
"I didn't do much planning at all," she says. "I should have given retirement more thought. But on the other hand, I'm not sure I really would have known who I was until I was in this (new) place." She wanted to do something new, something different and more creative with less stress. Judi looked for inspiration everywhere, including following retirement sites on LinkedIn. "That really got me writing about lifestyle, changes and growth in this phase of life. It's allowed me to work through some things, to see myself in a new way."
Judi's (un)retirement advice:
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"Learning to say 'No' was hard. You start to question yourself. Am I being too lazy? Am I not seeing this in the right way? It's about discernment and knowing what fits and having the confidence to walk away (from another work opportunity) to something else that you're going to build."
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"Let go of old definitions. I gradually started to see what served me well in my career was not going to serve me so well now. How do you define success now? It's more about enjoying the ride than the end goal."
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I Used to be Somebody World Tour: Croatia
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Diana Landau is the Content Wrangler for Pickleball Media. After 15 years in corporate marketing, in 2012 she pivoted to write and wrangle content for Niche Media's weekly blog. She now manages the "I Used to be Somebody" blog