When I first talk with a prospective 50+ business owner, one of the most common comments I hear is that even though they are often burned out emotionally from the demands of being a corporate manager for thirty years or more, they just don't have full confidence yet that they can find the level of work satisfaction and reward they are looking for at this point in their lives in running their own business.
In answer to their concerns, I bring up a life experience that is very common to many of us who are 50 and over - we were teenage entrepreneurs (although we didn't have the slightest idea what that word meant). I don't how it worked in your household, but throughout my whole childhood into my teenage years my weekly allowance was just $1 and that amount was granted only after I completed a list of weekly chores (plus the ones of my older brother he bribed me to do).
I usually received a birthday check for $10 from my grandma and as I got older my out-of-town relatives would send me a Christmas check.
But, by and large if I wanted to make a purchase that exceeded my accumulated allowance, I had to work to produce the money.
I was a bit of a shy kid, so it wasn't all that easy to solicit jobs from my neighbors but my burning desire to have the latest toy or a new pair of baseball shoes highly motivated me.
During the summer when I turned 10 (my birthday is in the middle of July - I'll be 60 this July), what had been a few lawns I mowed on my street exploded into a full-blown lawn service company, when as the result of my grandma's promotion among her bridge club ladies, I suddenly had 40 lawns to cut each week!
To this day, I remember the sense of pride I took doing the work just right and how I ended up with more than $2,000 in my bank account by summers end!
In fact, thoughout my 18 year corporate career whenever the going got rough (more often than I would have liked), my thoughts would return to my experience as a 10-year "entrepreneur".
When I finally stepped out of the corporate world at age 40 to start my first company, I was powered by the confidence that comes from having done the entrepreneurial thing before.
I bet that if you think about it, you'll realize also that by becoming a Boomer entrepreneur, you are "closing the circle of your life" as far as being entrepreneurial.
I am an early boomer starting my own business for the first time. I have little actual business experience but I've read many books and have been an armchair business critic for many years. I compare myself to a pitbull in tenacity and I bring ideas from sleepless nights to the my team where we try to make some sense (and hopefully profit) from my somewhat disjointed thoughts. But I have to say, it has been a really rewarding and exciting journey so far because it combines my knowledge and experiences from my realms of my life.
If you have a chance, check out my blog at http://50somethinginfo.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Sue | June 18, 2008 at 02:52 PM