My dad lacks purpose - need advice

· noise r/entrepreneur · ↑ 110 · 💬 142 · 2026-03-05 · kw: too much time · open on reddit ↗

Tool

none

Issue

Retired entrepreneur with passive income and free time lacks purposeful challenge after a year of leisure activities (monthly cruises, poker, cooking), experiencing motivation deficit despite discipline and capability.

Cost

unstated

Recommendation

Charity work, mentoring younger founders, startup investing, teaching, or community volunteering to shift from profit-driven to impact-driven goals

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

Hey everyone, hope all is well. My dad is a serial entrepreneur who's been involved in a ton of businesses over the years. Right now he runs some franchise businesses out of state with managers handling everything, so it's pretty passive at this point. He and my mom are both doing well, happily married, remote business owners, and they take cruises pretty much every month. The novelty of vacationing all the time due to lack of kids has seemed to have worn off slightly, and now that all three of his kids are in college, he has a lot of free time. He plays online poker, goes to the gym every few days, and cooks recipes he finds on Facebook. I know this all sounds great but he’s been doing this for a year and wants something more. My dad is disciplined too. He just lost a ton of weight and when he locks in on something he gets it done, no excuses. He's not the type to just coast. He needs something to work toward and it’s hard for him to find that. I want to help him find that again. Has anyone dealt with something like this, or helped a parent through it? What helped you?

Top comments (9)

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[score=100] d0ey

Focus his efforts on a charity. He can apply his skills, feel good about doing so, and can pull out if he needs to step back into business.

[score=31] stovetopmuse

It’s actually pretty common with founders once their businesses become passive. The thing that used to give them structure, challenge, and feedback disappears. What I’ve seen help a lot of people in that situation is shifting from building for money to building for meaning. Mentoring younger founders, investing in small startups, teaching, or even starting a small project where the goal isn’t profit but impact. Your dad sounds like someone who still needs a problem to solve. Cruises and poker are fun, but they don’t give that same feeling of progress. A lot of entrepreneurs feel better once they’re helping someone else build something or tackling a new challenge. It might be worth asking him what problem in the world still annoys him. Entrepreneurs usually rediscover purpose when they find something that bothers them enough to want to fix it.

[score=12] [deleted]

[removed]

[score=22] Made_invietnam

Nintendo switch 2

[score=4] Pretty-lollygag-7898

Do something or anything for the community!

[score=4] Check_the_records

Volunteer

[score=4] moscowramada

Your father has won all the prizes: money, business success, a wife, large family. There's nothing else for him to win lol. I am getting up there in years myself, and it might be time to think about the big questions: because death's not an an abstraction when you're old, and he's crossed off everything else. He could think about his legacy and what else he can do for his kids, or the world.

[score=3] d_luaz

I think he is doing well, with many things to do in the day with hobbies. When old people says "lacks purpose", what they usually means is they no longer contribute to others and the family. The kids doesn't need his help or support anymore.