I have often heard people say that most men hit their mid-life crisis at 40. That’s when they run a marathon, try to reinvent their personal image or quit their job. Though, as a general rule, I do not believe in such lores, I must admit that it might have been true in my case.
I experienced my ‘Eureka’ moment when I was merrily ambling towards my 4th decade. Sainergie was thus, borne.
I am one of those entrepreneurs who believes that age is just a number. Because, my success is directly co-related to my idea, passion and commitment. I have learned hard lessons along the way and have developed a nice blueprint on ‘what not to do’ things for first generation entrepreneurs like me who might or might not have hit the ‘mid-life crisis’.
Not keeping an intent to learn
Irrespective of your long standing experience working to your advantage, you are still taking baby steps in entrepreneurship. You are as good and as bad as your fellow entrepreneur. Learning should be a continuous process. If you meet an entrepreneur younger than you, but with more ‘startup’ experience than you, there is no reason to feel conscious or disappointed. Rather, try to draw inspiration from people around you.Also, it doesn’t matter if you face an adverse situation. A smart entrepreneur learns a valuable lesson from a bad mistake.
Stop evolving and adapting to the changes
Right from technology to consumer behaviour, everything is dynamic and changing at a swift pace. You should be ready to embrace these changes in your product or strategy. Until you adapt to what customers are demanding, you wouldn’t be able to take the right course of action to achieve your vision. The bright side of things is that the smaller or newer your startup is, the easier it is to evolve.
Making a rush for seed funding
When I launched my startup, people would ask me, “How will run you the show?“. Well, my thought process was very clear that my startup will remain a bootstrapped company as long as I can manage. Of course, given my age, my risk appetite was comparatively lower than an entrepreneur in 20s or early 30s. I had my children’s education and other family expenses to take care of. But, I had a decent corpus accumulated from my corporate earnings and I had invested wisely to manage my personal expenses even if I wouldn’t be earning. So, I didn’t hesitate to invest my money as the ‘first capital’ in my startup.
When the initial risk has subsided and your startup starts doing well, you can bring investors on board.
Trying to grow too fast
I have observed that most new entrepreneurs prioritize on increasing the sales volume and the company size or diversifying the business. But, all these exhaust resources in terms of people, processes, time and efforts. Rather, you should focus on building a good company that creates value, even if it means being a tortoise in the startup race for the first few years.
Encourage the culture of innovation in your startup and groom your team for multi-tasking roles. This way, you can remain a lean company for many years and still drive your business in the right direction. Investors don’t look at how big you are, they see what potential you have to earn profits.
Making things complicated
“It was always very simple; I just made it complicated.” No matter how great your idea or product is, if it takes more than a few minutes for you to explain or for the customers to understand it, perhaps you have complicated things. It’s all about the basics, use all your career experience to plug the gaps and eliminate the barriers. You should keep things simple, smart and transparent so that your winning becomes simpler.
When deciding to become an entrepreneur at 40, remember that you have experience, network and maturity to back your vision and passion. All you need is to roll up your sleeves and take a plunge!
Your thoughts?