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MBA2589 Which Age Is Best To Start a Business? Your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and Beyond?
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Omar Zenhom
What's the perfect age to start a business? Should you jump in during your 20s or wait until you're older and wiser and more prepared? Today, I'm going to break down the pros and cons of starting a business in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. And I'll be sharing real life examples and stories from my own journey, as well as other successful entrepreneurs who founded massive successful businesses at each stage. Let me tell you the truth right off the bat, there's no real bad time to start a business. Each stage is going to bring unique advantages, but also challenges. The key is knowing how to leverage where you are right now. Just being aware of these advantages and challenges are going to help you become successful faster. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm where I give you practical business lessons three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday to help you start, grow and SC your business. In today's episode, we're answering a big question I get asked a lot. What's the best age to start a business? Whether you're fresh out of school, you're thinking about, you know, moving into a second act in life and be after a long career or even after retirement, this episode will inspire you, but more importantly, it will help you take action wherever you are. I'm going to break it down. Let's start with starting a business in your 20s. That's when I started my journey in business and I was a teacher, full time teacher for over 10 years. I started around 21 and I continued to work full time until the age of 32. So I was side hustling for a very long time. But that's where I learned the skills of business and learned what kind of entrepreneur I was going to be. I wasn't really clear on what my pros were at that age. I wish I knew back then. Now it's super clear. It's clear as the sun, right? But the cons were pretty clear to me. I kind of knew my restrictions are. So I'm gonna go through some of the pros and cons of being in business at that age, in your 20s. Some of the things I wish somebody told me when I was in my 20s and I'm gonna pass that on to you if you are in your 20s. Let's start with the pros. And the first one is energy. Now when I say energy, I'm not talking about just your own physical energy because I feel like I have a lot of energy even in my 40s now and it's not about, like, how much power I have, how much energy I feel when I wake up in the morning. I'm talking about fire in the belly, right? I'm talking about hunger for success. I'm talking about somebody that is starving to win. And when you're in your 20s, you don't have a lot of wins under your belt, so you have that energy to make something happen. After being in business for over 20 years now, you know, I've had my share of wins and successes. I'm very proud of those. But after a certain amount of time, that fire starts to not, I want to say completely go out, but it's not as hot as it when you're younger or you have so much more energy, have so much more vigor for winning. And I even see it in the people that we hire that are a bit younger in their 20s. It's so hard to capture that energy. It's one of the most vital things that young people have, and it'll get you through some of the challenges you're going to have up ahead and the shortcomings that you have in your youth. The second pro or advantage you want to use in your 20s is the willingness to learn. You're less set in your ways, you're more malleable. You're able to learn things quickly. You're open, right? And you're adapting because everything's kind of new anyway in life in general. So you have more of a willingness to learn. And a part of that is that you just haven't learned enough yet because you're young, and that's okay. That willingness to learn and adapt it to become something new, that's huge. And you need that in entrepreneurship. I still flex that muscle to today. I'm constantly trying to learn. I'm constantly trying to change and adapt and improve. Because if I don't do that, I will get crushed by my competition. I'll get crushed by the market. I will get crushed just in general, because I'm not getting better. And in life, you're either getting better or you're getting worse. There's no Stacy's. There's no just staying the same. The third pro or advantage you should take advantage of in your 20s is you have time to fail. Okay? You're still early on. You're starting young means that you have time to recover from any mistakes that you've made along the way. And you could try again. Failure is feedback and is your friend. And you shouldn't be worried about failing because you have time to make up for it, even if you don't have any success for a decade, which was not so far from my story. You know, I had some successes, I had some wins, but I have some big flops. I had my biggest failures in that decade in my 20s, mainly because I was still learning how to do this thing called business. But also I was balancing my own day job. I was also growing up as a person and learning. I was also trying to also understand what kind of entrepreneur, what kind of business I want to get into. I had my own E Commerce store that was huge. And I had my own custom tailored clothing line in that E Commerce store. And I just folded that company because I hated that business. And that was a tough failure to swallow. But I'm glad I learned it early on in my 20s. It's an advantage that you have that time, that time to fail, because when you get older, the stakes are higher. You don't have as much time. It's just a fact of life. All right, let's start with the first kind of. The first challenge you're going to have starting a business in your 20s. The first thing clear as day, lack of experience. You're just young. You don't have a lot of experience. You haven't done enough in life. You don't even have enough experience to understand human nature a hundred percent, how people act, how people are. You might have a lot of experience in the industry or business, skills in general needed to make confident decisions. You know, you need those skills so you can feel confident about who you are as a person. You have to remember when you're growing and learning, you're also learning about yourself. And that's a part of that lack of experience, of not knowing really who your strengths and weaknesses are and where you can be most effective in your business. The second con or challenge you're going to face is limited resources. Now, for the most part, most of us are not inheriting a bunch of money from our parents. That was not my case. My parents were both immigrants from Egypt, came from the US they struggled to, you know, try to make sure that we had enough. But I did not come from means at all. At best, we were lower middle class. So one of the things you're going to have as a challenge, like me, is you don't have significant savings, you don't have capital, right? You're going to need to bootstrap or maybe even raise some money if you need to. But you do have time, and that's to your advantage. So let me give an example of a highly successful entrepreneur that built a successful, incredibly successful business in their twenties and short up some of these challenges that they had. Just mere fact that they're young. You probably know who this is. It's Mark Zuckerberg, the co founder of Meta or Facebook. He was just 19 years old when he started Facebook, but he leveraged his youth, his tech savviness, his ability to learn quickly and his understanding and landscape of what's happening in young people's lives on college campuses. But his lack of experience and lack of funding was a real thing. But he shored them up in a smart way. He first borrowed some money from his co founder, first, you know, about $10,000 to, to have enough money for servers. And then they got an investment from Peter Thiel and you know, kind of the rest is history. When it comes to lack of experience, Mark Zuckerberg talks about this a lot. When he was young, he surrounded himself with much older, more experienced people in Facebook. He made sure that he had people around him that have done this before. They know what to expect, they can advise him. He wasn't arrogant and said, you know, you guys are old, you guys don't understand anything. No, he knows like, we need these people, these people are smart, these people are experienced. So you surround himself in the business with those people. So in your 20s, it's all about learning, experimenting and setting the foundation for long term success. All right, let's get into starting a business in your 30s. I'm going to go through some of the advantages, some of the challenges, the pros, the cons, you get it. When I was in my 30s, I left my full time career as a teacher. I became a full time entrepreneur at 32. And I can remember it like it was yesterday because it was such a monumental leap for me and I had enough to make it happen. It wasn't easy, but it was definitely doable. Some of the advantages in your 30s is number one, a solid skill set. By the time you're 30, 31, 32, whatever it might be, you have gained some experience in work, in expertise. You've built a professional network, right? You know some people, right? You're an adult now, you have some skills, you have something to offer the world. This is not insignificant, it's actually quite important and it gives you something to offer in your business. The second thing that is likely to be an advantage is that you have some financial stability. At least you know how to make some money because you've had a career for some time. Many people in the 30s have more savings, they have more access to credit, they have an easier way to find funding for their business because they have a track record, they have some sort of record that they are good with money. The third advantage that you have in your 30s is that you have that balance. It's such a sweet balance of energy and wisdom. Remember that energy that fire was talking about? You still have it in your 30s, still there. It's still in your gut. Especially for me, because I didn't have a lot of huge wins yet. You know, I hadn't built my first, you know, seven figure business. That happened in my 30s. You still have that energy and it's coupled with this willingness to take a risk. But now you're more strategic. You have that energy, you have that fire and you have this willingness to take a risk because you're like, okay, I'm in my 30s now, I gotta make it happen now. You know, now or never, sort of. But now you're more strategic, right? You have some wisdom. You've been through a few reps before. You've seen a few examples ahead of you. Maybe you've side hustled for a bit. And in my experience, it's a good time to start a business because you have something to offer the world. But you still have a lot of time to experiment, to try and also to learn. Now, there are some challenges in your 30s. Let me give it to you quickly. One, growing responsibilities. You might start having a family, you have some financial obligations, maybe you've locked yourself into a mortgage. You have limited time because now you have to dedicate some time to some of those things that you committed to. The second challenge is pressure to succeed, right? There's more at stake now, and failure might feel riskier. You're not so willing to just go for it because you have more at stake, right? You have more to lose. What I would tell myself in my 30s is, no, you got time. It's okay to fail. You will fail. And that's okay, because every failure I've had was followed up with a success. I learned something and then I won because of that. One of my favorite examples of an entrepreneur that really succeeded in their 30s is Sarah Blakely. She founded the company Spanx, which is a billion dollar company that she owns a hundred percent of. She used her existing work experience in sales and her personal insights in shapewear, or the way women want to feel comfortable in their own skin. Today, I believe she's one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. And much of that success came in her 30s. Your 30s is about building smarter, leveraging your experience to creating something impactful and still being okay with risk and failure. What about building a business in your 40s? Well, I'm in my 40s now, so I could tell you firsthand that it's still great. Some of the advantages you will have building a business in your 40s is experience and credibility. By now, you've mastered some sort of craft, some sort of skill set. You've built a reputation in your industry. People know that you're known for something, you've done something for a long period of time. The second advantage is that you have some financial resources or a better understanding of finances. You've learned your way around finances even if you're not sitting on some money right now. You've learned some hard lessons in finance because you've lived life and seen what happens. I would say even the fact that you're older, you know, investors, even banks, are more likely to fund people that are a little bit more senior because they feel like they'll be more responsible with the money. Number three, huge. You have a stronger network. You have decades of connections that can help you open doors and get you started and get you rolling. You know people that can be your mentors, that can be your partners, that can be your first customers. And that's not true when you're younger. You just don't know too many people. You haven't had a chance to build those connections. Not only do you have connections, but you have deep connections that have been built and grown and cultivated for years. What about some of the challenges in your 40s? Well, you have some risk aversion. That's just the truth. Right. The stakes feel higher. You might feel hesitant to take bold risks. This is something I'm going through right now. Like, I've had my successes. I've built multiple seven figure businesses. In all honesty, I feel like, you know, I've done pretty well. I'm pretty proud of what Nicole and I have built and have done so far. But the flip side is, is that I'm not so eager to take a risk. Right. Right. I don't want to lose what I've built. But it's those risks and that willingness to try something new that got me where I was, is it allowed me to have some success. So I got to keep that in mind and balance that. The second challenge you're going to have is time constraints. Right. Balancing family, career, your obligations that you have in your life, maybe aging parents. It's harder to Dedicate time to a new business or a new endeavor. That's just the truth. It's not impossible, but that's going to be your challenge. Vera Wang didn't enter the fashion industry until she was 40. She proved that it's never too late to start something new and disrupt the industry. In your 40s, it's all about leveraging your expertise, your resources, your network, and building something meaningful. But you really need to start now, dedicating the energy and time to making it happen sooner than later. But Omar, I'm 50. Can I start a business? Yes, you can. And here are some of the big advantages you have in your 50s. Deep expertise. You have likely spent decades in your industry giving unparalleled insights. And you have an authority in your space. One that's unmatched. Most people will not have your experience. Most people are going to know less, have less skills than you do. You are going to be highly sought after in the marketplace because of those skills. Secondly, you're probably in a better financial position. Many people in their 50s have savings or assets or investments that are earning them money that they can then take that profit and invest it into their business. Another advantage that a lot of don't talk about. But people that are in their 50s that have some experience, that have been around for some time, have some clarity, right? You've had time to reflect and know exactly what kind of business you want and who you are and how you can contribute to that business. You have a better understanding of your likes and dislikes and you're unapologetic about it. And that's amazing because it's going to make it easier for you to make decisions and build faster. Like every age category, there's challenges and this is where we're going to start talking about health. Maintaining that health, that fire, that stamina to handle the demands that a startup can request of you. Right? Startups are challenging, right? Starting something from zero. Anything in life is hard because it takes a lot of energy to take a stationary object and get it into motion, right? So you really should be prioritizing your health if you have not already. Right? One of the things I really prioritized in my 40s is my health because I know that I'm going to need it in my 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, hopefully, if I make it right, you know, God willing. But my point here is that you really want to focus on investing in your health because you're going to need it because it's not going to be as good. Typically, if you're not really investing in it than you were when you're in your 20s. Right. So the second challenge you're going to have is a gap in where you are now and where you started. What do I mean by that? Well, the world changes quickly. And you know, what you learned and invested your Skill set in 20, 30 years ago is not the same thing the market needs today. So it's more than ever important for you to start learning as fast as possible. Anything that's happening in your industry that's new, whether it's technological changes, AI, whatever it might be. I'm not one to say that people in their 50s are like, not tech savvy. No, my mom is very tech savvy and she's in her 70s, almost 80. But I am saying that the skills you picked up in your 20s, 30s and 40s are probably obsolete by now. And you need to start replacing them with new skills that the market needs. One of the biggest franchises in the world is of course, McDonald's. And the founder, Ray Kroc started his journey building and franchising McDonald's at the age of 52. He took a small burger joint that he basically bought out from under the owners because he saw a vision. He introduced the idea of franchising to this model of burger restaurants. If you haven't seen the movie Founder with Michael Keane, it's the story of Ray Kroc. You should check it out. But the point is that Ray Kroc still had the desire, the fire, the energy to make it happen, plus the experience and the know how and the urgency to make something happen quickly, to build an incredible business at the age of 52. So your 50s is about building a business that focuses on impact and profitability. You want a high value business that can either give you some good cash flow or, or be able to be valuable enough to be sold at a great payout. But let's say you're in your 60s or even beyond 70s, 80s. Should you start a business? Can you start a business? I say yes. And you have advantages. And the first one is freedom. You have freedom, right? Without a career that pressures you or family obligations because, you know, maybe your family's growing up now and out of the house, you can focus entirely on your passion, on your business, right? You're maybe on the brink of retirement and getting your pension, so you have your, you know, your basic needs met and now you could just go all in on your business. What a huge advantage. Number two, you have wisdom and perspective that is way ahead of anybody Else, decades of life experience give you an edge, right? It gives you an edge in decision making. It gives you an edge in problem solving, in negotiating and understanding human behavior. You've been around the block, you've seen a lot. And number three, a lifetime of connections. You have a massive network of people that you've met along the way, people that you've worked with, people you've done business with, people you broke bread with. You have a reputation that is valuable. You have to understand, somebody who's got 60, 70 years of reputation is not something that should be taken lightly. You know, you could trust somebody like that over somebody you never heard of in their 20s. But like all of us, we have our challenges. Whatever age group you're in, and the first one's going to be your risk aversion, right? Starting a business later in life feels risky because you don't want to lose your savings, you don't lose your retirement, and you feel like, hey, I don't have much time. Maybe, you know, I don't have much time to make mistakes. But that's okay. Because the beauty of business is that you only need to be right once. Right? You only have to have a business that actually works once for you to be successful, to actually have a win on your hands, for you to make millions of dollars, to have that lifestyle and have that win under your belt. And the last gun I'm going to share with you in this age group is physical demands. Listen, I am a big believer in physical health, investing in your health. But, you know, we for the most part, have one body, right? And we are entrusted with this. And know the parts get old sometimes. And depending on the type of business you have, the physical demands might be challenging. Now, it doesn't mean you can't run a business because you can hire people, you can get people to help you out, you can have a business partner. You can have all kinds of different ways of shoring up these challenges. Hey, Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was 65 when he started his company. He showed us all that. Even in your later years, if you could start something massive and leave a lasting legacy, your 60s and beyond are about pursuing everything you've wanted, going for it, and leveraging your lifetime of wisdom and connections. So which age is best to start a business? Well, the truth is, right now, whatever age you are right now, because for now, we can't go in the past or the future. Let's take on the challenges and let's use our advantages at whatever age we are, whether we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s or beyond, and I'm here to help you along the way with our regular lessons here on the Hundred MBA Show. Now, if you want to go beyond the lessons, if you want to get a little bit more insight, a little bit more guidance, you should sign up for our weekly newsletter. Just go to 100- MBA-NET this is one of my favorite things that we offer because every week I send you an email telling you something to think about to change your mindset to help you become a better thinker when it comes to business. I give you something to do, an exercise to do to grow your business, and number three, I give you something to learn so that you can get better, skill up and be able to take on those challenges. It's absolutely free. Just go to 100nba.net give your name and email address in any of our opt in forms and you'll be part of our weekly newsletter. I'm Omar Zen Home thank you so much for being a part of this podcast, being a subscriber, being a listener. If you haven't subscribed yet, please hit subscribe is the best way to support the show. Make sure you follow us and I'll check you in the next episode.