WHAT IS THE FOUNDATION FOR A SUCCESSFUL RETIREMENT? Executives who plan for retirement usually are happier than those who approach it without a plan or with only a financial plan.

Whether we like it or not, work gives us a reason to get going each day. Disengaging from work can leave an individual rudderless. In the article below, “Foundation of Successful Retirement: Five Keys to Healthy Aging,” Michael Burnham lists five practical, proven steps for tailoring a successful, engaging, energizing retirement.

Michael Burnham is CEO and Co-Founder of My Next Phase, a firm offering personality-tailored assistance to people entering the next phase of their lives. My Next Phase supplies resources for guided self-reflection, exploration, and planning to help people gain clarity about their futures.

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Our transaction process provides us with up-to-the-minute market knowledge in these sectors. Are any of them of corporate development interest to you? Give us a call or drop us a note.

Inquiries should be addressed via e-mail to info@focusbankers.com, by telephone to 202-470-1973 or by fax to 202-785-9413.

FOCUS Closes Twelfth Transaction of 2006:
The Bostwick-Braun Company Has Acquired Steel City Products From Sterling Construction Co., Inc.

FOCUS initiated the transaction, acted as financial advisor to, and assisted with the negotiations as the representative of Sterling Construction Company, Inc. The Bostwick-Braun Company, a wholesale hardware distributor, is the oldest and largest full service general-line distributors in the country. Established in 1855, Bostwick-Braun’s reputation extends nationwide. Steel City Products is a leading wholesale distributor of automotive, lawn and garden, and non-food pet care products primarily to supermarkets and other general merchandise retailers. Until its sale to Bostwick-Braun, Steel City was wholly owned by Sterling Construction Company (NASDAQ GS: STRL). Sterling is a leading civil construction company that specializes in the building and reconstruction of transportation and water infrastructure in large and growing markets in Texas. For more information, go to http://www.focusbankers.com/tombstones/deal_sterling.asp

Foundation of Successful Retirement: Five Keys to Healthy Aging

By Michael Burnham, CEO and Co-Founder, My Next Phase

What does it take to have a successful retirement? Start with a definition of "success." In the stage of life we traditionally call retirement, it has two elements. The first and primary success involves having a purpose – a passion or valued pursuit that offers the fulfillment you want from life, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Second – the foundation – consists of health sufficient to enable you to do and enjoy whatever pursuits you choose for your next phase. Good health represents the single most important foundation in the quality of life for aging adults.

So what promotes healthy aging? The Alzheimer's Association summarizes three of the most important keys to health in maturity this way: "Stay physically, mentally, and socially active." Research shows that health – and the quality of life – during traditional years of retirement hinge directly on these three ingredients supporting a passion or a purpose.

KEY #1: Regular, Physical Exercise

The first key to healthy aging, physical activity, translates this way: Get regular, physical exercise! Open practically any book about health at any age and you'll see this simple advice, because the evidence leaves no doubts at all. Good health depends on regular exercise. Period. And with advancing age, exercise becomes even more important. Natural processes of aging degrade circulatory systems, muscles, bones, and other systems much more slowly among those who do some form of regular exercise.

Research links regular exercise with both the quality of life and its length. For example, one recent study found that walking for 30 minutes per day, five times a week, can add one year of life. The same study found that more vigorous, aerobic exercise, like running or swimming an hour four times per week, can add an average of three or four years of life-span. Andrew Weil's new book, Healthy Aging, also recommends regular strength training, two or three times per week, to maintain muscle tone. Aging isn't for the faint-hearted! Get up off that couch!

KEY #2: Mental Challenge

The second key to healthy aging, mental challenge, consists of difficult, engaging pursuits that call for focusing the mind, concentrating, learning new things, solving problems, and thinking with agility. Examples include learning a foreign language, mastering a musical instrument, attending college, writing professionally, litigating, doing crossword puzzles, and playing competitive bridge or chess.

One study shows that elders who play musical instruments for symphony orchestras live longer than their peers – and usually don't develop Alzheimer's disease. Those who pursue challenging mental activity as they age may, according to some experts, develop a kind of "cognitive reserve" that protects against the ravages of Alzheimer's.
Elders increasingly choose to stay mentally active by continuing to work in their professions. Some research shows that professionals, who keep working beyond the traditional age of retirement – like doctors, dentists, professors, reporters, and writers – even part-time, tend to remain healthy as they age. Bottom line; find something to do in your next phase that keeps your mind active!

KEY #3: Social Connection

The third key to healthy aging, social connection, involves active ties with friends, family, and community. The most important social ties involve friends who voluntarily choose to maintain relationships with you. Research shows that those with close networks of friends, who spend time together, tend to live longer and stay healthier. Some research demonstrates that having a supportive network of friends can buffer the adverse effects of stress and may even reduce the risks of illness and speed recovery when illness does occur.
Relationships with family also can offer valuable social support, though of course we don't voluntarily choose any relatives besides a husband or wife. Because family ties can mix both support and conflict, they might not always prove as beneficial as friendships.

Greater benefits can occur from membership in a supportive community, a group of people who depend on one another from day to day. Community connection often means going regularly to a place where the "regulars" greet you by name, acknowledge you without prompting, and miss you if you don't show up – like a coffee house, church, gymnasium, or community center. The TV program, Cheers, depicts such a place, "...where everyone knows your name and some of your story." Recent research found belonging to a close-knit community, like a religious group or volunteer organization, correlated with health among elders.

KEY #4: A Passion

The first three keys to a successful retirement must support the important fourth one -- a passion, a reason to get out of bed. Replacing work with a passion is an important step. Disengaging from work can leave an individual rudderless. For most of us, work supplies a great deal more than money. Work provides many things, among them a professional identity, social interactions, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging, mental challenge, and the list goes on.

Moreover, whether we like it or not, work gives us a reason to get going each day. In order to have a successful retirement, we must find a motivating passion. An activity that energizes us. For some, it is a new work arrangement or perhaps a new vocation. For others, a different type of calling: volunteering, spirituality, community service, political action, sports, learning, travel, or a hobby. The nature of the passion is much less important than having one. Without a reason to get out of bed, retirement can be a depressing and isolating experience.

KEY #5: A Personality-Tailored Plan -- Incorporating the Four Keys into a Plan That Suits Your Personality

Ask yourself: How will you build a foundation for success in retirement on the keys to a healthy aging? One answer depends on your personality. For example, if you have a highly structured personality – if you like things organized and orderly – you'll probably find it easy to adopt a regimen of regular exercise. If, on the other hand, you have a more flexible, spontaneous personality – and you resist planned, repetitive activity – you'll probably find it difficult to sustain a habit of exercise.

For a sustainable exercise regimen that suits your personality and comes naturally, you'll need to find ways to make exercise interesting, like walking in new, different places, at different times of day. Or maybe you can join an interesting group of people who do a stimulating activity that involves exercise, like a cycling club.
Professor Keith Bender’s research (professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee) found that those who plan for retirement are usually happier than those who approach it without a plan or with only a financial plan. People who enter retirement without some kind of active, personally fulfilling pursuit face a harsh reality: a risk of shortening their lives. We know a few cases of retirees who died early in their rocking chairs, echoing a wider trend found in research by an insurance company: business people who retired to a life of leisure reduced their post-retirement life expectancy, on average, by 9 to 10 years!

Building the foundation for a successful retirement through the keys to healthy aging plus uncovering your sustaining passion, won't happen by accident! You'll need a plan – one that fits your personality! Start now. Take time to understand your personality and make a sustainable plan that suits your personal traits, and incorporates the keys to healthy aging: physical activity, mental challenge, social connection and a passion.

About Michael Burnham: My Next Phase offers a groundbreaking interactive tool that helps people retire their way. It assists people in working through the important aspects of non-financial retirement planning. Using a patent-pending personality-tailored process, My Next Phase guides members through the retirement transition helping them achieve a meaningful next phase in life. For more information, visit www.MyNextPhase.com.

TUNE IN! FOCUS Partner John Slater to be Interviewed on World Talk Radio

On Friday, November 24th at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, FOCUS Partner John Slater will be interviewed by Michael Yorba on World Talk Radio’s Commodity Classics show. Slater will talk about the current state of the merger and acquisition market and discuss issues faced by private companies in the acquisition process. Commodity Classics is part of the Portfolios in Progress channel on the Internet World Talk Radio. To listen to the show live, go to www.worldtalkradio.com/show.asp?sid=426 and click on Listen to This Show. Archives of this and previous interviews with Mr. Slater can be found at www.worldtalkradio.com/archives.asp?sid=426.

About FOCUS Enterprises, Inc.

Headquartered in Washington DC, with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco, FOCUS provides a range of investment banking services tailored to the needs of middle market companies. FOCUS specializes in serving businesses with revenue or transaction sizes between $5 million and $300 million, serving entrepreneurs, corporate owners, public companies, private companies or operating units, and various types of investors.

For 24 years, FOCUS has successfully integrated corporate development consulting and transactional expertise with its extensive research capability. The firm has long standing experience in completing mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, capital formation assignments, corporate development consulting projects, and financial advisory engagements.

Over twenty FOCUS Partners and Principals provide over two centuries of C-level operating experience in a variety of industries.

Please contact us at: info@focusbankers.com