They say life begins at 40. In fact, as former accountant Stephen McNulty’s experience shows, life can begin anew at any stage – to his complete delight.
Stephen grew up in Gormanston, Co Meath and lives in Dublin’s Malahide. He spent decades working as an accountant, specialising in taxation, first as an employee and later establishing his own successful practice with his partner in business.
After more than 40 years in his career, he transitioned into a part-time consultancy role with his firm, in advance of taking full retirement in 2023.
Like many people facing retirement, particularly those who are self-employed, the idea of staying on, on a part-time basis, had initially appealed. It seemed the perfect solution for someone who, like Stephen, wanted to keep busy but no longer wanted a full-time commitment.
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But that’s not quite how it panned out. “One of the lessons I learned about retirement is that it is hard to be ‘half in and half out’,” he explains. “You’re doing less hours, which is what you want, but work is still on your mind, and you don’t know when somebody is going to call you.”
It sounded great in theory but in practice it brought its own pressures, he found.
For a while he also thought of taking up a directorship. But as time went on that idea became less appealing too. “People say ‘Oh it’s only a day a month’, but I found I didn’t want to be looking at my calendar and seeing I’ve a meeting in three days’ time and was going to have to put my suit and tie back on,” he laughs.
So, in his mid-60s, he took the opportunity to reinvent himself completely, studying and qualifying as an official tour guide. He then set up his newest business venture, Stephen McNulty Walking Tours, offering a range of interesting, informative and entertaining tours around the capital city’s streets.
Unlike his previous business, this has a team of just one: himself.
He does it not because he has to but because he enjoys it. As a labour of love, it’s fitting that this whole new departure was genuinely borne of love – fatherly love.
It began when one of his three adult children was coming home from the USA to get married. They arrived with about 80 American wedding guests and Stephen decided to entertain them during their stay by taking them on walking tours.
“I’ve always had an interest in local history,” he explains. “So I organised a few trips into town where I gave them walks around the city. Some of them said I was really good at this, why don’t I do it as a hobby?”
He had never even considered it but he began Googling tour guides and ended up signing up for a professional training course, online, in September 2023, passing his exams and earning his badge as an official national tour guide.
He designed his own tours and brought friends and family with him “as guinea pigs”, he says. “And they enjoyed them.”
To develop his skills even further however, he signed up for a training course with Dublin tour guide legend Pat Liddy, “the guru”, as Stephen calls him. The months he spent on that course were transformative, he says.
‘I also love the fact that I’m doing something now that, four years ago, if you’ve had mentioned it to me, I wouldn’t have seen any possibility of happening’
— Stephen McNulty
Tour guiding requires an element of performance to keep it fun and engaging, and Stephen took to it like a duck to water, expressing himself in a way that, perhaps, a life spent crunching numbers hadn’t allowed.
Though in truth, the part of his former career he loved most was the people side. “Any family business is about trying to establish good relationships with people, both staff and clients, and I was always a good communicator,” he explains.
With the help of another of his children, he designed and built a website and launched his service officially. Even though it’s still a hobby in terms of the revenues it generates, “it’s pocket money”, for Stephen, the experience he provides for his clients is a very serious business indeed.
The result is glowing online reviews that have helped to build and maintain demand. “I have a constant, steady stream of tours now, and I love doing them,” he says.
Part of what he loves is that they keep him fit and moving, “and out and about”, after decades in a sedentary career.
“I also love the fact that I’m doing something now that, four years ago, if you’ve had mentioned it to me, I wouldn’t have seen any possibility of happening,” he laughs.
Though he has taken out groups of up to 18 people at a time, what he loves most are smaller groups, of all ages, for whom he can really tailor a tour to suit, whether historical, cultural, quirky or all three.
As they also say, if you love something, you never work a day in your life. For Stephen, that’s the new bottom line.
“As I’m walking around I don’t really think I’m doing a tour,” he says. “I feel I’m walking around the city with people, just having a chat.”
Second Lives, brought to you by Standard Life, explores the many different ways life can unfold in retirement, through the stories of people living it.
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