Sustaining olderpreneurship.
A recent discussion topic on the CMI site questioned how much of a (business) start-up’s success is inspiration or perspiration.
As this is a signficant topic in its own right when related specifically to later life, “olderpreneur” start-ups, I decided that a blog post might be in order…
Research carried out by PRIME (the Prince’s Initiative for Mature Entrepreneurship) in 2009 showed that one in six new businesses in the UK is started by someone aged 50+, despite a systematic failure of business support providers to offer services to this age group.
Their ‘Generations Forgotten’ survey revealed that despite the needs of olderpreneurs being included in the government’s 2008 enterprise strategy, the main focus of business support services remains on younger enterprise.
This underlines clearly an issue which is largely overlooked by government, policy makers, and even those employers who see self-employment as a partial solution to the “problem” of older workers.
The issue isn’t whether people are ready, willing and able to start up their own businesses in later life, it is whether they have the requisite skills and support to sustain an ongoing and profitable enterprise that will generate a reasonable income for them for as long as they want or need to work.
This problem applies to entrepreneurs at all ages, but the particular danger it holds for older people is that once out of employment, they are unlikely to be able to get back in should their business venture fail.
Much is talked about the suitability of older people for entrepreneurship in terms of their skills and knowledge, perseverance, stability, and flexibility. And they can be highly successful.
Interesting results from the publication Management Today (January 2010) show a surprisingly high number of older people popping up in their list of the year’s Top 100 Entrepreneurs. “An extraordinary 58 are aged 60 or over. And no fewer than 11 have passed their 70th birthday”, they report.
On paper, starting a business per se is generally pretty simple. But in arguably the worst recession most people have ever known, our focus has to be on the “perspiration” aspect, helping older people to create low risk businesses that will actually make them money – and not just pin money, but a living wage.
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I would say this is more a problem of British culture in general. I dare say many potential employers will look more dimly on a failed business venture than a similar period spent in employment. This is despite the greater responsibility and variety of skills one is likely to pick up by starting your own business outside of the cushy walls of corporate life. I don't really think it's an older worker thing as changing the reaction to failing in business to being less critical of the failure and more encouraging towards the learning that results from that failure.
It's no coincidence that starting a business is much more popular in America because the reaction to failure is much more positive.
Maybe one option for 'older' workers would be to sit on the boards of start-ups? That way they wouldn't necessarily require a whizzy new idea, but start-ups could nevertheless benefit from the experience, contacts and know how that an older worker would bring to the table.