The Forty Plus Entrepreneur: How to Start a Successful Business in Your 40's, 50's and Beyond

How to Start a Successful Business in Your 40's, 50's and Beyond

Gary S. Goodman

• Publisher: G&D Media
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781722520823
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Activité entrepreneuriale

At age 90 Jack Smiley wasn't thrilled with the community in which he retired, so he built his own. Today it provides him with a net income of $40, 000 each month. Famously, KFC's 65-year-old Kentucky Colonel Harlan Sanders supplemented a paltry Social Security check by franchising his unique recipe for fried poultry. Past 50, McDonald's Ray Kroc made a similar trek in multiplying by many thousands a few popular, golden-arched hamburger stands from San Bernardino, California. Contrary to popular mythology, entrepreneurship is not spearheaded mostly by baby-faced, technology-savvy postadolescents whose brands include Facebook and Apple. According to a recent study, fully 80 percent of all businesses are started up by people over 35.Amy Groth of Business Insider cites these reasons that fortune favors the old: First, older entrepreneurs have more life and work experience. In some cases they have decades of industry expertise - and a better understanding of what it truly takes to compete and succeed, in the business world. Second, they also have much broader and vaster networks. Even if older entrepreneurs are seeking to start businesses in entirely different industries, they have deep connections from all walks of life - for example, a brother-in-law could be the perfect COO. Third, those over 50 have acquired more wealth and better credit histories (which helps with securing loans) and are smarter with their finances.In this book from best-selling author Gary Goodman you'll discover: Supporters are everywhere: Your age cohort is the wealthiest!Now is the time to cash in your wisdom.Overcoming false beliefs and self-sabotage: why the only person holding you back is you.The Giraffe Syndrome: why the first step is the scariest.Busting age myths: "Nobody will work with me at my age!", "My best years are behind me", "It takes money to make money", and more.

Chapter 1

There Are 50 Great Reasons To Open Your Own Business!

Starting your own business is one of the most exciting and liberating things your can do. It is especially rewarding for those over 40.

By 40, you have paid a lot of dues and have certainly learned some important lessons about how you’re wired, about the conditions in which you work best and truly excel.

I see starting ventures as one of the final steps in the maturation process. Newborns are completely dependent upon others for their support and safety. By the time we reach forty and beyond, we should strive to become ever more self-reliant.

Our personalities and family lives may be tame and settled, and this can be just the emotional foundation we need for spreading our wings, occupationally and professionally.

The unfinished business we have, emotionally, with regard to unrealized ambitions dovetails nicely with starting a business in the real world.

We enjoy that perfect mixture of patience because we are chronologically seasoned, having experienced several cycles and stages of life. Yet we’re also impatient in the most constructive sense, ready, willing, and able to make lasting contributions.

In this section, I’d like to share with you 50 great reasons to have your own business, especially as you mature.

1. Be your own boss because it’s wasteful trying to please bosses that are not you.

Between getting noticed, arranging to impress those you report to, seeming busy, pretending to care when you don’t, or better yet, when caring is irrelevant, all of these behaviors are a great diversion from doing what companies require: Producing results for their customers.

The more we focus on maintaining internal relations, the less attention we pay to developing and satisfying customers, said management great, Peter F. Drucker.

The phrase “internal customers” is one of the greatest contradictions I’ve ever encountered. The boss is not your customer. Customers are customers, and smart bosses do their best to get out of the way of their employees so genuine customers can be supported.

When you are the boss you can curtail wasteful apple polishing.

2. Be your own boss because you can give yourself a raise at any time.

Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Still, let’s say you need something in your personal life, ballet or piano lessons for your kids or grandkids, a better car to replace the clunker, even a larger house, and you need to qualify for a loan or put your hands on some cash.

No begging required, just ask yourself. You’ll know whether you deserve the spiff because you’re constantly tracking your profits, cash flows, and short and longterm prospects.

Plus, you can present your financial profile in a way that will be as attractive as it needs to be to lenders. Working for someone else, you are at their mercy to characterize your job in the most favorable terms.

Many of these folks simply don’t care if you get the goodies of life, and others are even hostile and jealous about witnessing you do it.

3. Down the road, your business will be a valuable asset that you can sell, borrow against, or leave to your heirs.

This is a huge benefit. When you work for someone else, you get a check each pay period, and generally nothing else. You cannot lay claim to future profits. In fact, you can’t assert the right to even be there as a continuing employee.

Sure, we’ve heard about start-up companies where employees get stock options that make them instant zillionaires when their firms go public. But they’re rare, and part of the deal might be working 18-hour days investing a lot of sweat, while the success of the enterprise is a remote possibility.

On the other hand, when you own an ongoing concern, one that has a stable or growing clientele, you have valuable equity. This wealth gives you choices and other opportunities, and you can leverage them in various ways.

4. Speaking of family, you get to hire the village idiot, also known as your brother-in-law.

You’ve heard that charity begins at home, right? One of the largest, best-hidden charities ever created is the business that awards family members with employment.

Often derided as counter-productive, nepotism not only keeps blood relatives and in-laws off the streets. It gives them a chance to find genuine security as employees, if they are not going to develop enterprises of their own.

It’s your call, if you want to open your business to your spouse’s brother or sister or to your first cousin.

Sometimes, they can make the most loyal employees. They respect the fact they are serving the greater good of the extended family. And sometimes it is actually their name on the letterhead, as well.

5. Your business is wherever YOU are.

As a professional consultant I’ve traveled the world, and the marvelous thing about this isn’t the fact that I have lived in London for weeks and months at a time, taking in the culture.

It is the fact that wherever I go—there I am, professionally speaking. I receive inquiries 24/7 from wherever and I’m able to respond, instantly.

For instance, I did scores of radio shows from my hotel in Hawaii, during one stint teaching seminars at a major university.

I even gave interviews from the parking lot of law school, where I earned a degree while still pursuing my consulting business, full-time. (More about consulting as a possible business for YOU, later on …)

My point is there is no separation between your everyday life or your physical location and your work.

To some, those that are doomed with a worker-bee mentality, this is nothing less than a nightmare. “You mean I get NO TIME OFF?” they wail. From a certain perspective, that’s true. As the boss, you are always responsible, whether the elevators in your building suddenly get a mind of their own—that happened this week, stranding some of my colleagues for a half-hour at a time!

Yet there something exciting about the FREEDOM—that’s what I call it—in being ready, willing and able to awaken at 2 in the morning to plan the next conquest.

My granddad, a Chicago entrepreneur, advised his kids to “Always keep your business under your hat.” By that, he meant use your intelligence to succeed.

But he may have also meant be portable, choose a career where you can use your head wherever you are. The best way to do that, as I see it, is in a business of your own.

6. Business is endlessly fascinating; create your own for the stimulation.

As I mentioned, I’ve earned five university degrees, all of them after I was working full-time. These courses of study, ranging from communications to management to law have been stimulating.

But nothing has ever rivaled the adrenalin rush of starting, growing, and maintaining a successful enterprise. Let me give you an example.

When you are the entrepreneur, you’re really a salesperson. You’re persuading the world of one sample proposition: “You NEED this!” whatever that “this” might be.

But you have to sell yourself, first, and that sale must stick. It has to endure countless second guesses by you, your family, friends, and above all, by your potential customers and clients. Observing yourself as you react to the ups and downs of business stewardship is fascinating.

How will you handle SUCCESS?

“Oh, that’s easy!” you might quip, but believe me, the grinding to succeed could be easier on you emotionally than the letdown you’ll feel after you have arrived at your goal.

It was the Oracle of Delphi that inscribed the words, “Know Thyself” at the portal of the temple of wisdom. This is a noble and important objective, and having your own enterprise will expose the “real you” to you, more than any other challenge I can imagine.

Struggle will be ongoing, emotionally, because the only enduring “solution to success” is achieving more, however you define it.

I’m sure you’ll find promoting your personal evolution is endlessly fascinating.

7. You’re free to set any goals you like and do any task that needs to be done.

When you work for others, typically a “position description” comes along with the job. I appreciate the role these narratives have in defining tasks and responsibilities, and they are purposely limiting.

Organizations don’t want, and certainly cannot succeed, when “Everybody does everything.”

You aren’t paid to do only that which you like. (You should be doing tasks at which you mainly excel.) There are divisions in most companies of any size, for instance, between the sales and customer service departments.

Good and capable communicators should be able to do BOTH. For example, I can, and perhaps you can, too. But doing both, on a day-to-day basis, is wasteful, and frankly, it is sub-optimal.

I find it exceedingly hard to go from making an outbound sales call, where I am painting a rosy picture to then taking an inbound call where an existing customer is thorny, confused, or simply nervous.

You might say “making” a customer is a very different challenge than “saving s customer.” Wearing a single hat is much better and more effective for everyone.

If you are “boss material,” however, you might relish cycling through various responsibilities, and you need to have “total enterprise vision.” This is the capacity to see how the entire drive train of a company meshes together, and the skill to troubleshoot frictions and breakdowns.

As the boss, you write your own position description, and it is fluid. Some people thrive on this capability, and accordingly, they bristle when others try to compartmentalize them. You might say they have The Entrepreneurial Personality.

8. You can locate your business wherever you want it to be.

I know a fellow from high school who runs his own investment company, a hedge fund. He isn’t in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. He operates from the south of France.

Because technology makes trading nearly instantaneous and possible from any locale, he decided to plunk himself down in paradise.

Bear in mind that his idea of paradise may be different than other hedge fund gurus. They might feel they MUST be in Gotham, because that’s where the credibility and perceived action, is.

I consulted for a major mutual fund company in Houston, a city that boasted only two major institutions of this type within its city limits. My client was housed in the tallest building outside of a downtown in America.

It reeked of financial sophistication, and it was very capable in earning clients a good return on their investments. (This made it an attractive takeover target.)

The founders liked Houston, so that’s where they opened their doors.

Another financial firm I consulted for is in the Seattle-Tacoma area, with very strong ties to that region. “Should” they be somewhere else? Not according to their founder’s heirs, who prefer making their mark from that environment.

Obviously, if you’re mining for gold or diamonds, you won’t choose Indonesia to do your digging. But given how many modern businesses are not bound by Mother Nature to certain areas, this enables you to open shop wherever the labor...