What’s the best business to start at 40? 4 ways to figure out the best business to start.
The best business to start at 40 is probably going to be easy on your knees, not too much heavy lifting, and if you have kids, let you have a nap in a quiet place at some point throughout the day.
Other than that, you could start any business at 40.
But you might need to figure out what good looks like before you launch into a business.
The best business to start at 40 is likely to be a combination of something you are good at, love doing, the world needs, and people will pay you for. In essence, work that doesn’t feel like work.
Are you trying to earn a little extra money, create a lifestyle business and or do something that you hope will scale into a big deal sooner or later?
Whether you want to employ people, have a physical or internet presence, use your existing skills or start something completely new are all key questions in setting up the right business for you at 40.
Find out below the things you might need to consider in choosing the best business to start at 40.
Is 40 too old to start a business?
No 40 is not too old to start a business or any other enterprise.
It’s just that when your reach 40, you have to balance the risks and rewards a little more clearly as you have probably realized you will no longer live forever, and there are people now dependent on you.
Some of life’s complications have caught up with you, like kids, ageing parents and a mortgage that may make you a little more risk-averse than before.
However, at 40, you do have a few things on your side that you didn’t have when you were younger (and full of hope)
You potentially have more personal, professional, and financial capital built up than someone younger does not.
You will have learnt a lot of ways to do something and many more about how not to. All of these skills will be very valuable in setting up a business.
Your age has very little to do with whether it’s the right time to start a business or not and far more to do with your patience, process and prioritizing the right things.
How can a 40-year-old start a business?
The key principle is to keep things as simple as possible but no more.
You can start creating a business by considering what you might do.
What are you good at?
- Skills and experiences
- In your past or current career
- OR in your home life like hobbies and interests.
What do you like doing?
- In your past or current career?
- In your spare time?
- If you had all the time in the world?
- There’s not much point in creating a business you hate!
What does the world need?
- What big problems are out there that need solving?
- Not just climate change but day to day challenges that people have that you could help solve.
What will people pay you for?
- Creating a business that people will not pay for has little point
- Solving a problem, they want taking away
- Or if you can help them move towards a solution.
In this process, you need the time to think about what you want good to look like.
You are probably not just trying to replace one 40+ hour job with another.
One way is to undertake mini-trial experiments.
Make sure the downsides are minimal, and the upsides are limitless.
The way to do this is to keep experiments low cost –
- Stop yourself from buying lots of stuff.
- Don’t spend lots of money on a website or other technology
- Find as much information about something for free as you can before buying a course.
- Use free or low-cost tools that already exist to create and market your offer.
- eBay & Etsy
- Canva
- Gumroad
Make sure you have a good safety net, i.e., if it doesn’t work out, it’s only your experiment money that was used up – money specifically for this purpose and not all your life savings.
Make sure you have the right business ingredients
In creating your own business, you will have to find out the right mix for your offer.
Is what you are offering valuable to enough people?
- It might be a problem you have or people like you have, i.e., you know it’s a common problem
- Several other people offer a similar solution – this may indicate there are a lot of potential clients out there. And show you what good looks like (or not)
Is the cost of your offering competitive?
- This doesn’t necessarily mean cheap, but is it value for money given what you are offering?
- The only way to find out is to see if anyone is willing to buy it – tests and adapt.
How easily will people be able to access your offer?
- Online or face to face?
- Which do you think people will prefer?
- What would you prefer to do?
How will people find out about you?
- More importantly, how will the right people find out about you?
- Through social media, blogging, videos, adverts paid or free.
Thinking through the above might help you set an action plan on what you need to learn about to understand what the best business might be to start and some of the options for creating it.
Build an asset and not just another job
The best business to start at 40 is one that creates an asset for you.
An asset that grows in value and cash that it creates.
All this so that you can live the lifestyle you want, achieving your work-life balance.
Even better would be to create a business that didn’t feel like work.
In the beginning, you might need to be more involved in the business, meeting clients face to face, creating, marketing and selling your offer.
If, however, you are directly involved in the business over the long term, you may have created more of a job than an asset.
Ideally, you can create something that makes you money while you sleep or passive income.
You might need to create physical or digital assets that people will buy or rent
- Courses,
- Ebooks, Workbooks or audiobooks
- Videos
- Property rentals
Building an asset is going to take time and effort but is well worth the journey.
This is where your patience, process and prioritizing of tasks will make or break your success.
You can only fail if you give up.
Create something you never need or want to retire from.
Spending your time doing something your love, are good at, the world needs and people will pay you for might well be work that doesn’t feel like work.
Maybe you feel the above is an unrealistic dream, but the closer you can get to it, the more likely it will be something you never want or need to retire from.
If you currently have a job or career that you cant wait to retire from, that might well be quite a long period of your life spent doing something you don’t like doing.
That doesn’t sound like fun.
Start creating something even small that can grow from a side hustle into something as big as you need to shift out of your current work pattern.
- From full time to part-time
- From employment to contracts
- From one career to the next through retraining
Is it too late to start a business at 45?
- Yes sorry, 40 is pushing it but 45 is way past it eeRRR no, 45 is not to late you have 5 more years experience than when you were 40 (which may feel like a lifetime ago now)
- Figure out what type of business you would like to do more or less forever. Then you will have something that doesn’t feel like work because you are good at it, you love doing it, lots of people need it, and they pay you for it.
By the way, if you think you might want to have a chat about creating your own side hustle, set up a free call with us to find out how we help people do this, we would love to help you create your financial freedom vehicle.
Feeling like its time for a big life change? Find out how we can help you here
FAQ: What a good business to start at 40
What’s a good business to start?
A good business to start is going to be one that plays to your skills, experiences, and interests. It’s going to be something that addresses these 4 areas.
People: are you able to solve the problems of a group of people you want to work with?
Purpose: will it provide you with a purpose and desire to get up in the morning?
Planet: WIll it have a positive impact on the world and your local environment?
Profit: will it make you enough money?
Find the right answers to thees and you will have found a good business to start.
How to figure out what business to start?
The way to figure out what business to start is to start looking around you for problems. Then look for their solutions. Would you be able to provide any solutions to these problems from your skills and experiences? And could you see yourself being able to stick with this business and solve these problems for a decent period of time?
What is the best business to own?
The best business to own is one where it can work more or less on its own allowing you to get on with your next project. It will obviously take time to set up systems or train staff to do the work for you but your free time is your most valuable non-renewable resource.
Summary: What’s the best business to start at 40? 4 ways to figure out the best business to start in your 40’s.
The best business to start at 40 is something that helps you spend your time doing something you love, you are good at, the world needs and you get paid for.
Reviewing your skills, experiences, and connections is a great way to start thinking about what type of business could you create.
What sort of problems do people like you or people you like have that you could help them solve?
Building an asset creates your own retirement vehicle or pension – especially attractive if you have no savings.
Something that will continue to create an income, and if you wanted to, you could sell for a tidy profit.
Creating something you never need or want to retire from will be a much more enjoyable experience and keep you active well into your old age.
If you never want to retire, this is the type of business you should think about creating.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on What’s the best business to start at 40? Let me know yours in the comments below.
Thanks for dropping by.
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