Six reasons why mid-life entrepreneurship call is daunting LINKEDIN | 2 MAY, 2017

You are in your mid or late 40s, your career has stalled or your interest in the current field or occupation is waning. You are looking for a recharge. A good friend suggests the entrepreneur route and offers some ideas, even joining hands with you as a mark of assurance. You evaluate it for some time and decide not to move. Life continues. Will you come to rue the decision? What are some reasons why transition to entrepreneurship after success elsewhere hyper-activates your nerves?

Becoming an entrepreneur when you are young appears more logical –you have a long life ahead of you, you have youthful energy, you maybe unencumbered, you are stirred up to prove something, you want to embrace a crazy phase in life etc. However, the equation changes dramatically, if you encounter the prospect twenty years later in life. Let’s see why.

1. Financial insecurity: You have had a successful career so far, have ensured significant financial stability in life – bought a home, seen off most or all the children through school, gotten into an investment habit and so on. Entrepreneurship can upset this very edifice of financial stability. It will take away your savings (for investment), does not guarantee any monthly pay checks and may stay in cash burn situation for an indeterminate period of time. Too risky for many. Further, are you willing to travel by budget airlines or go carless for some time? Financial comfort also takes away any scope for an ultimatum to switch. If your switch horizon is a long five or ten years, chances are that your appetite is not compelling.
2. Loss of identity: In the corporate or academic life so far, you may have secured your identity and credentials. The society respects you, wants to befriend you, has attached a ‘success value’ to your career, is in awe of your title, envies your globe-trotting lifestyle and lulls you into an identity zone which seems difficult to get away from. The longer you have done what you have done, the deeper in the zone you get yourself into. When you switch to entrepreneurship (unless you become a major investor in a famous company), your identity is reset to zero or thereabouts. You need to earn the identity tag once again, by your success in the new pursuit. Without your realizing, you alienate yourself from the same society that treated you as a darling so far. Are you ready for a spell of anonymity?
3. Pressure from family or friends: Your success in the current pursuit is not only enjoyed by you, but by your family and atleast a few dear friends. The privileges go beyond monetized conveniences. When you contemplate a switch to run your own company, they feel the nervousness first. They may also think that you are not quite suited for doing what you are setting out to do and fear the worst. They would do their own research to counter your assumptions about the new venture, only because they want to dissuade you. It could be due to risk aversion, unwillingness to rock the boat or quite simply, cynicism about new ventures as a career option. The more you sound hesitant, the more quickly will their cadres swell. Pontification is the easiest trade.
4. Past experience of others: Even if you are contemplating to become an entrepreneur for the first time, your memories of others who started and ‘failed’ cannot fade. They haunt your gut, assumptions and courage. The real reasons of such failures may not even occur to you, but the bitter result is an inerasable recall. Many such people will also offer unsolicited advice, often to derail your idea (out of misplaced good intentions). The industries maybe quite different, the circumstances dissimilar and the scale smaller – yet history will deter you. However, there is nothing called a fail-safe business. This is where logic and instincts collide and you may have to choose one over the other.
5. Possible health hazard: Have you heard people, and maybe your own doctor, advising you that your mental peace and physical health could be compromised if you switch your career from working for someone to working for yourself. They completely discount the joy of working for yourself with such dire predictions. It is true that when the buck stops only with you, you take on more responsibility, including some unknowns. Long working hours and sleep deprivation are possibilities. But responsibility is ‘stress’ in the eyes of some. When they offer the chorus of health decline as a prospect, your family will not be far behind. They are genuinely concerned, but could be over-alarmingly worried. Faced with the emotional dilemma of this sort, will you still take the leap?
6. Laziness – to put it crudely: I know of some friends who would participate in serious discussions on turning entrepreneur but would not wet their feet and do the dirty homework. Their empty talk is often not accompanied by any action plan, even to go up to the feasibility stage. They do not like to have their skin in the game, even in preliminary activities like market research or a travel to meet some experts or engaging start-up consultancy etc. Some money on the table is a good sign of your will. These deskies tend to stay on the sidelines and wait for the boarding pass to be handed to them. Such people are perhaps more likely to regret missed opportunities as it seems they have a prima facie interest, but without any action momentum.

Some of us went through these hurdles in our mid 40s but pushed ahead with our ventures – mine was albeit a conventional one, but no less risky than any. I am pleased with its success but more importantly, derived greater satisfaction from doing it, learning many life lessons and tools in the bargain. People who made the switch to entrepreneurship in their 40s or 50s will attest to the fact that they did it for their own sake and to some extent, did not care about the above spokes. Some are adept at overcoming the hurdles through patience, articulation and the process of convincing. How strong is your inner calling makes a big difference too. So before you do a commercial viability study, conduct an emotional feasibility. Alone, if possible!