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55+ Year-Olds Starting More Businesses than Us?

Have you read the July 2006 edition on Business 2.0? If you haven’t, you should because it’s an amazing business magazine – perfectly suited for young entrepreneurs such as ourselves. Ok, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this post, or should I say the tofu and carrots for all you vegetarians (like me)?

After reading the article titled The Gray Entrepreneur on page 34, I was left feeling a bit confused as to the purportedly “correct” statement in the article that stated: “ The 55- to 64-year-old demographic is most likely to start a company.”

Hmm… if that’s the case, then I must really be lost. From the life that I am living in, the majority of people that I see starting businesses are not
55+ years-old, but more like 18 – 34 year-olds.

In my mind 55+ year-olds are less likely to start a business than, say, a 24 year-old who has much, much less to lose. Heck, at the age of 24 you barely graduated from college and you still have your whole life ahead of you. At 55, you’re half-dead ( I kid… I kid…) and have much more to lose if your business fails… which it’s very likely to do.

I guess the question is….

What Does it Mean to Start a Business?

  • If you form an llc or inc. tomorrow by filing a few papers, then does that mean you have started a business?
  • If you get a few of your friends together and start selling T-Shirts around the neighborhood, have you then started a business?
  • Or what about simply having a plan on paper and a million ideas that you plan on implementing?

Well if it’s just a matter of filing some papers in order to become a business owner, then yeah… I wouldn’t doubt that the 55+ year-olds are trumping the young entrepreneurs in starting businesses.

But what about all the young entrepreneurs who haven’t filed their papers and who are out there everyday making money, building a list of clients, and networking up a storm? Those people are just as much business owners as anyone else out there albeit they haven’t “officially” started a business (and possibly not paying their taxes). Nonetheless, they are entrepreneurs in my mind….but maybe not business owners in your mind. Can that be the fundamental difference?

From what I see happening, there are a lot more young entrepreneurs starting businesses than older people. So what if they haven’t declared a corporation yet or don’t have a business bank account.

Sure, those are necessary components of building a business, but they are not pre-requisites to “starting” a business. Furthermore, a piece of paper can never decide whether you are an entrepreneur or not. Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, not a list of credentials and documents.

What do you see happening?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 9:44 pm and is filed under my thoughts. You can trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “55+ Year-Olds Starting More Businesses than Us?”

1

Well, it depends on how they are running those numbers. Remember, the baby boomers are in that age range, so there are alot more of them then us. Plus, many of them have experience, and they also have alot of free time. If they have structured their retirement well, they also have alot of money. So you put those things together, and I can definitly see why they would say that. Think of all the kids you know that are just coming out of college. What do they do? Start a business? Yea right. More like get a job.

2

Fair points. Yup, you are probably right. But the point of my post is how to you quantify all of these “student entrepreneurs” ? I don’t think that you can… and if you were able to, I bet that there would be more younger “entrepreneurs” that older “business owners.” Is this a semantics issue? Yes, it can be. But at the same time, it comes down to the way you define an entrepreneur to a business owner. Are they one in the same? I don’t think so.

3

I think the reality is that more and more people age 55 will be starting businesses in the future. Pensions are becoming lower, and redundancies are more likely in that age bracket too. Young people are often more scared to take the jump in my experience.

4

@David

True, that may be the case. Hmm… but I’m not sure if I agree with you that younger people are more scared to start businesses…. if so, that is changing FAST! But yeah, they definitely do have a lot more cash than we do.

5

Dave,

I see your point here, and yes, there are probably many younger people - students or otherwise - that are “entrepreneurs” and not accounted for. However, I think because you associate yourself with so many young entrepreneurs, you begin to lose sight of the fact that these types of people are only an extremely small fraction of all of the youngsters out there. There are many, many more 55 year-old entrepreneurs out there. Many of them, as suggested previously, have some money to burn, are sick of working for somebody else, and feel that the combination of their age, experience and wisdom can lead them to a successful business startup. On the other hand, most college kids don’t think that way. Even though you may be right in saying that many them have nothing to lose by starting a business, the reality is that most of them just don’t think that way. What may be a motivation to you is not for most others. They don’t want to think about becoming entrepreneurs - they just want to make their way through college, have a good time, and get out with a well-paying job. For MOST people, the idea of working for themselves doesn’t manifest into a reality until later in life.

And as a side note, I would have agreed with your theory 100% a few months ago. But after meeting many, many 55 year-olds in the last few months who are just beginning new business ventures, and getting a feel for their MO (described above), it’s become extremely apparent to me that there are way more of them than us.

Anthony

6

I can understand your disbelief at the statistic thrown off the page by Business 2.0 but consider this. You are probably not intermingling with 55 year olds or privy to their proclivities for starting a business. Baby boomers have become one of the biggest groups to start businesses due to massive layoffs. I have met many older people in my own city that have started their own business because they were sick of the corporate world. One of the big reasons Kiyosaki and other business/finance related books sell so well is because the boomers are hungry for informaiton about starting a business. Some will only dream of starting a business but many will and are starting their own business. The 55 market is a great market to dive into as well.

7

I also love the Business 2.0 magazine — it’s great and I very much recommend it! As to why Baby Boomers (the 55+ crowd) is starting businesses….. Have you heard about downsizing? Are you aware of outsourcing? and offshoring? I am an entrepreneur, over 55 ~ and launching a business I’d never formerly have conceived I’d be starting…always planning that at my age, I’d be nearing retirement and enjoying the grandchildren.

But my (former) employer downsized 5000+ folk and I was one of them ~ suddenly, unexpectedly out of a job {with a long history of superior performance reviews & awards, etc.}. Downsized why? So ‘they’ wouldn’t have the liability of my (& my cohorts’) full retirement & health benefits. Forty+ years of employment (with several different employers, 20+ at the last) rewarded by, at this age, a drastically reduced retirement & health benefits package.

Entrepreneur!?!?! You bet!!!! I -have- to work and I have to do something to provide for my future — but as a greyhead (under the Lady Clairol), it’s hard getting a decent W-2 job.

8

@T.Walsh

Yeah, Business 2.0 is a rockin’ magazine — love it!

Thanks for the great insight into why 55+ year-olds are starting businesses. It does make sense.

What type of business did you start?

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