Email from a reader said simply:
…starting another new business at… 60??
My sweet friend, abso-blooming-LUTELY!
When is a better time to start a business? Your child-bearing days are behind you, which means (hopefully) you now have a lot of bandwidth freed up. And you have that glorious, golden, precious, irreplaceable thing – experience. You’ve seen things come and go. You know what matters to you. You’re past the point of trying to perform for other people’s expectations.
You’ve spent ages looking after everyone else. Now it’s time for you to get focussed on your own business, which should be the overlap of these four things.
- What you’re good at
- What you love
- What you can get paid for
- What the world needs.
If you’re not sure about how these things might interact, I recommend the most gorgeous and simple of all things: A LIST. Write it all down!
Write a list of each of those four things. Then go back and circle the items that appear on all four lists. You’ll see that like a venn diagram, they overlap – and the point at which they overlap, is your business.
Why does it matter if you do this?
The average life expectancy of a woman in the UK is 83 years. That means if you’re 60, you have (on average) TWENTY-THREE YEARS to play with.
What will you do, with your one wild and irreplaceable life? Are you really going to sit around and watch telly and take walkies for 23 years?
Do you have time to start a business in that time?
You sure do. My business has only been going for ten years. And in that time it has grown from a tiny kitchen table start-up to a multi-million pound enterprise.
So, here’s a limiting belief: “Because I’m 60, it’s too late to start a business.”
Let’s try flipping this one over, (I call this flip-process the “negative belief pancake”):
“Because I’m 60, it’s the PERFECT time for me to start a business.”
Why perfect? Because your have a secret super-power. You’re post-menopausal. That’s right girlfriend, this is your time! You have all the experience and fewer of the child-rearing responsibilities. This makes you a POWER HOUSE.
Menopause is a rare and wonderful thing in the animal kingdom – it’s only human beings and certain kinds of whales who survive past their reproductive years. The “grandmother hypothesis” suggests that this happened because the tribes lucky enough to have women who were past child-bearing age, but still around to advise, out-survived and out-competed tribes who lacked these grannies.
That’s right: POST-MENOPAUSAL WOMEN ARE AN EVOLUTIONARY ADVANTAGE.
Martha Graham said it like this: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it.”
You are a gift to the rest of us! So get proud, and get out there. Our civilization needs you to do whatever it is that you’ve spent a whole lifetime preparing for – gaining wisdom, experience and knowledge.
So look out, Greg Wallace – we’re coming your way!
Hugs,
Shann.x
Shann Jones MBE
Founder/Director Chuckling Goat
ps If you have any questions about your gut health that need resolving before party season, quick, there’s still time! Hop on live chat with one of our lovely Nutritional Therapists from 8 am to 8 pm weekdays for free, expert, personalised advice.
