Hydrakos Consulting LLC is five years old this month. It has been an excellent, if very ephemeral, five years. This post is to commemorate the anniversary and so is a little more personal. I set up Hydrakos Consulting as a vehicle for me to ease my way from the frenetically paced financial services technology world I’d been in for over 25 years into uneventful full retirement which I knew I wasn’t yet ready for but would be somewhere in the not-too-distant future. As I look ahead from 2018, to my surprise that horizon of full retirement has receded further into the haze as I enjoy a work-life balance that affords significant downtime but also provides for a lot of intellectual engagement with challenging problems to solve and value to add.
Those challenges are provided by the clients who have given me the opportunity to work with them. I had expected a variety of short assignments from clients who were looking for insights I might be able to pass on from a long career but who would be happy to have the advice and be done with it. I’ve had some of those. But I also have clients who have made me part of their teams and have made me feel like I’m part of their success in a more integral way than I expected when I was planning how Hydrakos Consulting would attract business. Working with these clients has required me to broaden my areas of expertise. I expected to trade mostly on my financial services experience but with technology as the pivot point I have assimilated healthcare and education issues and trends, making this stage of my career even more rewarding.
And so after five years, Hydrakos Consulting LLC, which has been profitable every year of its existence, is going strong. My golf game hasn’t improved as much as it might have but I’ve learned a lot more than I would have guessed was possible at this stage of life. I can thank my clients for that and so I do: Thank you. Here’s hoping the next five years are more of the same.
