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Starting Your Own Business

Message from John Edmonds - Business Mentor

If you are over 50, there's never been a better time to start your own business.

The problem is that society has conditioned us to work for others rather than set up a business. It has also erected a mental barrier in our minds that tells us that by the time people reach 50, they are 'past it. So we run movies in our mind that tells us that maybe we could have run a business for the last 30 years, but 'now we are too old', so better buckle up, and work through to retirement and forget it. Nothing could be further from the truth. You only have to look at the Rolling Stones pop group, one of the world's top rock groups with all its members in their 60s, to realise we live in a different era nowadays.

Yes, being 50+ can be the starting point in your life rather than the finishing point. It can be the time to take a leap into business and it is easier than you think.

Another fact of life is that a large percentage of entrepreneurs started a business in their fifties. Ray Krok, the late Mcdonalds hamburger chain founder didn't start out until he was in his fifties, and eventually became one of the world's wealthiest men.

You see, when you get to 50, you have WISDOM and KNOWLEDGE. These will always out-run youth and energy any day, as the tortoise and the hare story tells us. You are more likely to calculated risks rather than jump into something foolishly. You are more likely to be able to see market place needs more clearly because you've been buying, selling and using businesses for over three decades and know what standards should apply in commerce. How many times have you seen the way businesses operate and thought to yourself, "I could do better than that!" You probably could, too, but when are you going to start to be a participator rather than a complaining observer?

I once heard a professor friend of mine at University once said something very interesting. He said that if you want to start a business, just think of something you are better at doing than 1,000 other people, and potentially you have yourself a business. If you are good at something and mostly better than those around you, then you might be sitting on a little gold mine. This 'something' could be anything, from mending football boots through to playing around with computer graphics or making digital photographs and selling them online. It might be making soap. It might be landscape gardening design. It might be something you've invented. It could be a hidden talent you didn't know you had. It might be opening a sandwich bar on an industrial estate. The list is endless. Only you know what your potentials are!

It is even possible to develop a business idea even though you have no idea what kind of business you could run. It's simply a matter of looking out there in the world and ascertaining:-

1. What's not out there that should be?
2. What exists out there that could be done better?
3. What is the public seeking?
4. What problems are people having and how can I solve them?

Business, after all is said and done, is simply someone providing products and services that people want or need - and that's all business ever was.

Information provided by John Edmonds - http://www.getaheadinbusiness.com