Whether you are a serial entrepreneur or have spent a lifetime growing a business, there comes a moment when you pause and ask a deceptively simple question: What comes next

For many people, the default answer is retirement. The numbers are staggering. Millions of Americans are expected to retire each year, which works out to thousands of people leaving the workforce every single day. Some walk away after a lucrative sale of their company. Others step back because they want more time to travel, to be with family, or to pursue long-postponed hobbies. Still others are driven out by stress, burnout, or health concerns and feel they have no choice but to simplify their lives.

I understand all of those reasons. I respect them. But I have come to a very different conclusion about my own life and work

I never want to retire.

That does not mean I want to grind away endlessly at the same pace, in the same role, until I drop. It does not mean I want to cling to power or ignore the realities of aging. It means I do not aspire to a life defined by permanent leisure, by the absence of meaningful work, or by the idea that my most productive years are behind me.

Here are seven reasons why I believe never retiring — at least in the traditional sense — is not only possible, but deeply desirable.

1. The energy and thrill of building something never really go away

Running a business demands energy. Not just physical stamina, but a kind of mental voltage that comes from making decisions, solving problems, and moving quickly. There is a particular thrill in setting a direction and watching things happen because you willed them into motion.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners tend to be allergic to bureaucracy. We hate red tape. We hate meetings that exist only to schedule more meetings. We hate waiting for permission to do what we already know needs to be done. The pace of entrepreneurship is fast, sometimes uncomfortably so, but that speed is part of what makes it exhilarating.

Retirement, as it is commonly imagined, asks you to trade that sense of momentum for an endless stretch of unstructured time. For some, that sounds like paradise. For others, especially those who have spent decades in the arena, it sounds like a slow fade into irrelevance.

Wanting to keep working is not the same as refusing to rest. You can build in sabbaticals, vacations, and seasons of lower intensity. You can step back from the front lines without stepping away from the game entirely. What many entrepreneurs resist is not rest, but the idea of an endless vacation — a life with no real stakes, no real deadlines, and no real sense of forward motion.

2. Risk and reinvention are part of who we are

Entrepreneurs are, by nature, risk-takers. We are drawn to the unknown. We are willing to stake time, money, and reputation on ideas that might not work. That appetite for risk is not just a professional trait; it is part of our identity.

In sports, the most driven athletes are always chasing something — a faster time, a higher score, a tougher opponent. They are not satisfied with a single win or a single season. They are wired to push, to test their limits, to see what else they can do. When they retire, many of them struggle not because they miss the paycheck, but because they miss the challenge.

The same is true for many business owners. We are not content to simply maintain what we have built. We want to innovate, to launch new products, to enter new markets, to experiment with new models. We want to see if we can do it again, or do it differently, or do it better.

Retirement, in its traditional form, often asks us to turn off that instinct. To stop taking risks. To stop reinventing ourselves. To settle into a life that is safer, quieter, and more predictable. For some, that is a relief. For others, it feels like a kind of slow suffocation.

Continuing to work — even if the work changes shape over time — allows that risk-taking instinct to stay alive. It gives us a reason to keep learning, to keep experimenting, to keep stretching beyond what we already know how to do.

3. When you love what you do, it does not feel like work

People often tell me, sometimes with a hint of disbelief, that I clearly love what I do. They see it in the way I talk about my business, in the hours I keep, in the energy I bring to projects that others might find exhausting. They are right. I do love it.

And I am not unique. Many business owners wake up genuinely excited to get to work. They have taken a passion — for solving a particular problem, for serving a particular group of people, for building a particular kind of organization — and turned it into a livelihood. The line between “work” and “life” is not a wall; it is a seam.

When that is your reality, the idea of retirement becomes less compelling. Why would you voluntarily walk away from something that gives you purpose, joy, and identity, simply because you have reached a certain age or hit a certain number in your retirement account

This does not mean you never change gears. You might shift from running a company to mentoring younger founders. You might move from day-to-day operations to strategic advisory work. You might scale back your hours or your responsibilities. But if the core of your work still energizes you, there is no inherent virtue in stopping just because a calendar says you are “supposed” to.

4. Stopping too soon can make you sick — literally

There is a phenomenon known as leisure sickness, sometimes called vacation sickness. It describes people who feel physically ill when they finally stop working. They power through long stretches of intense effort, only to come down with headaches, fatigue, or flu-like symptoms the moment they take a break.