There is a myth in en­tre­pre­neur­ship, sup­port­ed by sto­ries about how younger peo­ple start ven­tures. Mark Zucker­berg was 19 when he start­ed Face­book. Bill Gates was 21 when he start­ed Mi­crosoft; co-founder Paul Allen was 23. Steve Jobs was 21 when he co-found­ed Ap­ple. Yet they’re ex­cep­tions, not the rule.

A US study pub­lished by the Na­tion­al Bu­reau of Eco­nom­ic Re­search found the av­er­age age of en­tre­pre­neurs who start a com­pa­ny is 42. A study con­duct­ed by the US Cen­sus Bu­reau and two MIT pro­fes­sors found that the most suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs tend to be mid­dle-aged. What about you if you are old­er than mid­dle age? An ad­van­tage you have as a re­tiree is the ex­pe­ri­ence and tal­ent you have gained over the years; you are not start­ing from ze­ro!

Jerome re­tired af­ter a 35-year ca­reer as a mar­ket­ing lec­tur­er and quick­ly re­alised that golf and grand­kids weren’t enough. Some ex-stu­dents who are now en­tre­pre­neurs kept ask­ing him for help scal­ing their busi­ness­es, so he test­ed a sim­ple idea: “I’ll help you adopt a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy in 30 days.” He emailed 25 con­tacts and of­fered a low-priced pi­lot to three com­pa­nies. Two said yes. Us­ing Zoom and a few we­bi­na­rs, he showed how the pow­er of email mar­ket­ing, so­cial me­dia, newslet­ters, and e-com­merce can grow a busi­ness. With­in six months, Jerome turned his “re­tire­ment ex­per­i­ment” in­to a lean con­sult­ing busi­ness with re­peat clients.

Un­re­tire­ment makes sense

Se­niors have dis­cov­ered their pur­pose long ago and know what they want. Af­ter a few months of bor­ing stuff, they want a tran­si­tion to some­thing more mean­ing­ful. You want to solve prob­lems, seek op­por­tu­ni­ties and de­sign the fu­ture busi­ness around their lives.

It’s not on­ly about the mon­ey, as many re­tirees have un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the in­come stream they need. They may have chil­dren who, de­spite their qual­i­fi­ca­tions, can­not find mean­ing­ful ca­reers. El­der­ly par­ents who were salaried man­agers may want to leave their lega­cy in their chil­dren’s hands.

Un­re­tire­ment may al­so mean it is my last chance to start a busi­ness, as Jerome has found out. Maybe it is re­gret that ideas to start a busi­ness were left on life’s shelf, and see­ing oth­ers be­come suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neurs. In ad­di­tion, hav­ing paid off the mort­gage and the en­cum­brances of chil­dren is now past; the time is now.

In­ven­to­ry your tal­ents

You spent your life learn­ing from hun­dreds of books, dozens of work­shops, sev­er­al de­grees, and ben­e­fit­ting from men­tors and su­pe­ri­ors, and have cre­at­ed a knowl­edge­able pro­fes­sion­al with a sharp­ened axe. You are an ex­cel­lent prob­lem solver with turn­around man­age­ment com­pe­ten­cies. You rec­og­nize that start­ing from a clean sheet of pa­per is vast­ly dif­fer­ent from man­ag­ing in a large cor­po­ra­tion.

Of­ten, you for­get the skills you have. One way you think is to re­search a busi­ness idea and write up a short pro­pos­al for your­self, the en­tre­pre­neur. You might imag­ine you are launch­ing a new project for your old com­pa­ny, but you are the ‘boss’, and it’s your in­vest­ment. This fic­ti­tious as­sign­ment can re­veal sub­lim­i­nal traits you did not know you pos­sessed.

A com­pe­ten­cy that is of­ten ig­nored is your net­work. Why aban­don your link­ages? You know some ma­jor sup­pli­ers, you are fa­mil­iar with ne­go­ti­at­ing with ven­dors, you have in­flu­en­tial friends, and most of all, you know how to work the net­work. As the pop­u­lar say­ing goes, “Your net­work is your net worth.”

As an ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ec­u­tive, you have plan­ning, or­gan­is­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion skills. You are aware that plan­ning on pa­per is easy, but the proof is in the ex­e­cu­tion. Start­ing a ven­ture is a project and re­quires skills in cost­ing, sched­ul­ing, time and risk man­age­ment.

Solve a prob­lem

You need to fo­cus on a spe­cif­ic prob­lem and match that with your ex­per­tise. You may have recog­nised, like Jerome, that you need to ex­per­i­ment to find a so­lu­tion. “What can I do to help?” You might have iden­ti­fied that mid­dle man­agers in large cor­po­ra­tions are un­will­ing to move to se­nior man­age­ment. This lack of con­fi­dence can re­duce the pool of man­age­ment can­di­dates. So, you can de­sign a men­tor­ship pro­gramme for cor­po­ra­tions.

You may be a sea­soned per­son who knows the jour­ney and has iden­ti­fied a prob­lem for re­cent re­tirees’ tran­si­tion sta­tus. Since you have both a psy­chol­o­gy and man­age­ment back­ground, you can de­sign a train­ing and coach­ing in­ter­ven­tion prod­uct that can change their mind­sets. Maybe they want to be­come en­tre­pre­neurs too, and you know the path­way.

De­sign a busi­ness mod­el

Every start­up is look­ing for a vi­able busi­ness mod­el. A mod­el de­scribes how you will earn rev­enue, in­cur costs in pur­suit of that rev­enue, and man­age risk. You al­so need to re­mem­ber that your pro­posed ven­ture is a busi­ness ex­per­i­ment. Sup­pose your idea is to of­fer a train­ing pro­gramme for young build­ing con­trac­tors who want to de­sign homes that can cope with hur­ri­canes and earth­quakes. Giv­en your back­ground as a struc­tur­al en­gi­neer, you can de­vel­op a course. The con­tent for this course will start with the de­sign flaws and your ex­pe­ri­ence with the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Ivan in Grena­da, which gives you ex­per­tise that few pos­sess. The chal­lenge is to syn­the­size your knowl­edge in­to a train­ing pro­gramme with bite-sized week­ly mod­ules and a fi­nal cap­stone, in which each par­tic­i­pant will present their con­struc­tion plans with an im­ple­men­ta­tion sched­ule.

Sim­ple & low-cost mar­ket­ing

Mar­ket­ing to­day is not on­ly about dig­i­tal sell­ing. One way to start is to ap­proach for­mer col­leagues and clients for as­sis­tance. Pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions and alums net­works can ex­pand your reach. If you are an ex-po­lice of­fi­cer who re­tired to man­age­ment, you can ap­proach medi­um to large-sized busi­ness­es that need se­cu­ri­ty ad­vice. Large malls and re­tail­ers must deal with theft, and you have some friends in the elec­tron­ics busi­ness who can be key stake­hold­ers.

There are sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ty groups and clubs you may want to make a com­ple­men­tary pitch to, of­fer­ing a snack at their next meet­ing. Do not try to sell; in­stead, fo­cus first on rais­ing aware­ness of the prob­lems they face and, where ap­plic­a­ble, col­lect­ing con­tact in­for­ma­tion.

One of the ad­van­tages of the en­tre­pre­neur­ship route is that you can de­sign your busi­ness around your life. You set the work sched­ule, the type of clients, bound­aries of risk you will ac­cept, and bal­ance your health and well­ness. You can build joy in­to your ven­ture while re­al­iz­ing your full po­ten­tial, rather than just rust­ing away.

Saj­jad Hamid is an SME and fam­i­ly busi­ness ad­vi­sor and a Fel­low of the Fam­i­ly Firm In­sti­tute. He can be con­tact­ed at: en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com