Big Benefits In Being Around The Block

Midlif­ers and Boomers are rein­vent­ing en masse into entre­pre­neur­ship after leav­ing their long­time cor­po­rate gigs. But sev­eral wor­ries  come with that kind of a lifeshift.

Mostly, these new entre­pre­neurs worry they may be “past it”. After all, isn’t entre­pre­neur­ship sup­posed to be for the young and reck­less? Cer­tainly not for the more mea­sured deci­sion mak­ing of the midlifer and beyond.

Then there’s that energy thing. While the young­ster might be will­ing to work 16 hours a day, the mature entre­pre­neur has prob­a­bly fig­ured out that work and life must be bal­anced better.

But increas­ing num­bers of these mature entre­pre­neuers are real­iz­ing that they have a pow­er­ful weapon that’s exclu­sive to them and gives them a strong edge in the increas­ingly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness landscape.

They Under­stand.

Younger entre­pre­neurs, dri­ven by pas­sion and a zeal to val­i­date them­selves, often want to push their vision onto the world, and by corol­lary, cus­tomers. Big com­pa­nies, often dri­ven by the same zeal to be val­i­dated, espe­cially by investors, act similarly.

But all of this push mar­ket­ing, as its called, is based on what the deliv­erer thinks the cus­tomer wants. Rarely is it based on an under­stand­ing of cus­tomers that comes from  long inter­ac­tion with them.

If you’ve been around the block a few times, as most older entre­pre­neurs have, you have prob­a­bly accu­mu­lated over time some wis­dom about people.

That wis­dom could come in the form of scars, where you were hurt because of your lack of understanding.

It could come in the form of a will­ing­ness to lis­ten, because you’ve dis­cov­ered over time that most peo­ple have some­thing to say.

Or it could sim­ply come from long expe­ri­ence with clients or cus­tomers in your pro­fes­sion or job.

What­ever its ori­gin, under­stand­ing is one of the most potent busi­ness tech­niques there is for the typ­i­cal ser­vice busi­ness oper­ated by most later life entrepreneurs.

That’s because these busi­nesses rarely chase the mass and are more com­fort­able with a small sta­ble of clients. Their busi­ness model is to know their clients intimately.

And that requires under­stand­ing them.