Starting a business over 40: why now is your best time to become a midlife entrepreneur

Did you know now is the best time for you to become a midlife entrepreneur? If you’ve thought about starting a business over 40 but you’re hesitating, here’s the push you need. Being middle-aged is not a hindrance to business success. On the contrary, midlife has handed you a few gifts.

It’s handed you the gifts of knowledge, resilience, and the creative push to birth something new.

You may not realize it, but deep down you’ve ached for this for far too long.

You see, for many of us over 40, our creative bundle of joy slept soundly in incubation.

Years of following the mainstream. Being good, obedient daughters, then girlfriends, then wives. Citizens. Members of the community. You did what was expected.

“Good girl.”

Maybe you worked diligently at jobs and built a career.

Maybe you worked diligently in your family and built a home.

But there’s another type of building waiting to unfold. And this one feels different. It’s not an obligation, but the product of your deepest self-expression. A business. And being middle-aged, means you’re on the right side of the odds.

Did you know statistics show the odds of startup businesses succeeding increase with the age of the founders?

Yes, wine isn’t the only thing that gets better with age.

Let’s go over why now (yes, now) is the best time to start your midlife business.

I also recorded a video on this topic if you’d rather watch the video instead of read this article.

1

Midlife entrepreneurs have odds on their side

Contrary to what might be rolling around in your head, it’s not too late. If you think most successful businesses are started by young people think again.

In the United States, per the Harvard Business Review, research shows the average age to be a successful founder of a startup company is 45. Experts think that their work experience and resilience play a huge part in their success. (We’ll get to the resilience bit in a moment.)

Now let’s cross the pond. In the UK, the average age to start a new business is 40. Additionally, an estimated 10,000 businesses were started by entrepreneurs over the age of 60.

Let those numbers sink in.

You’re older and that’s a good thing!

2

You know more

Being older, you’ve gathered years of experience and knowledge. You’ve also honed many skills.

Not convinced? Grab a pen and paper and do a quick run-through of the skills you have now that you didn’t have when you were 20.

It’s a lot. And I’m not just talking about job skills. These could be repair skills, household skills, crafting skills. Everything is fair game.

You’ve

Got

Skills

!

3

You understand the value of time

Remember when you were 19 and you thought you had forever to do stuff?

As we age, our perception of time sharpens. We feel a deep sense of appreciation for life and every moment of it.

When you harness this well, you’re able to deeply focus on every task at hand.

You’re also more driven to make stuff happen sooner than later as you know you don’t have forever. This sounds negative, but it’s the opposite.

It’s an empowering concept!

4

You know what you don’t want

Do you know what happens when you have years of having to do what you don’t want to do (in your personal and career life)?

You gain a solid inner-knowing of what you do not want. Things you don’t want to do, tolerate, or withstand anymore.

This inner-knowing serves as a compass nudging you in the direction of which business to start (if you’re still in the contemplation stage) and which direction to take your business (if you’ve already started).

5

You’re ready for a big change

You yearn for a major shift in your life. A transformation of sorts. Not something minor like a new kitchen (although that’d be nice), but something big.

And business is big.

Starting a business is a significant new adventure. It isn’t something you can do half-heartedly, either. You’re either all in or all out.

If you’re feeling an ‘itch’, the desire to shift and change things in your life, starting a business can be the perfect scratch for that itch.

6

You’re less distracted

Remember the distractions of your 20’s and 30’s? The clubs, parties, and non-stop social events. Every weekend (and many weekdays) is filled with some activity. You didn’t feel pulled in different directions, you just went with it. It was ‘normal’ for your age.

The downside to that lifestyle is it’s hard to make room for something like entrepreneurship.

But, you don’t have those distractions anymore, do you?

Now, you make more careful choices about how you spend your time.

Less distractions means you can focus your energy on building something like a business.

7

You’re resilient

You’ve been through a lot.

Too much to name.

And the result is you’ve built resilience. Not by choice, but by necessity. 

You’re tougher than you were in your earlier days. Lived experiences build resilience and resilience is arguably the number 1 required entrepreneurial skill.

You’ve also made many mistakes, learned from them, and figured out how to get back up when you’ve been knocked down. You have to be able to go through tough stuff as an entrepreneur and keep going.

Bonus reason to consider becoming a midlife entrepreneur:

You don’t give AF!

Another crucial entrepreneurial skill is not being overly concerned about what other people think of you. That’s the polite way of putting it.

Real talk: to be an entrepreneur, to market yourself consistently, to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, to take on risk, you have to be willing to make a fool of yourself.

Yep, you read that right.

There’ll be people who’ll criticize, judge, and even laugh at you when you launch a business. But, guess what? At this stage of life, after all you’ve been through:

you

don’t

give

a

F*#$

Take Action!

So, it’s time to take action. Do your research, make your plans, find support, and get started! Starting a business over 40 is not too late. Now is the time for you to become a midlife entrepreneur.