In a society where youth is worshipped, mature people can often feel like they are not valued.
But the truth is mature individuals often make the best business owners. All they need is to know the secrets to success.
At Silver & Wise, we interviewed over ten thousand business owners to uncover the barriers and challenges that get in the way of business success.
We then boiled all these interviews down to some key things you need to do.
And now we’re sharing these with you.
Don’t underestimate the value of your experience.
In a quarter of a century of more working, you’ve learnt a lot. No matter what your specific areas of expertise are, you know more than you think.
And your experiences are unique to you.
One of the main reasons that researchers feel that makes mature people successful as business owners is this mix of experience and wisdom.
Make sure you understand your ideal customer.
Nothing can replace understanding when it comes to customers. You might not believe this, but it is actually quite rare for businesses to invest enough time in surveying the needs and wants of their customers. Indeed, they often don’t know who their ideal customer is.
When we started Silver & Wise, we had not only interviewed ten thousand business owners, but we also had over 250 personal one to one interviews with people wanting to start a business. All of this led to a deep understanding of what business owners needed, but also the challenges and barriers they run into whilst running the business.
Our belief is you literally cannot spend too much time on talking to potential customers of your business.
Get your business model and value proposition right.
A business model is the way you deliver your product and service to the market. A value proposition is a statement of the value that your ideal customer will see in your product or service.
Both of these elements are absolutely and undeniably critical in the success of a business.
They determine not only how much of your product or service you will sell, but also the embedded value you’ll be able to realise out of these sales - in other words your margin and profit. And a business cannot survive if it doesn’t make enough profit to justify all the investment of time and money.
Take care of the money.
Speaking of money, more business owners identify Money and Cashflow as their number one problem or challenge in running a business.
Not only do you have to get your pricing right to ensure you make enough profit, but you also have to carefully manage the flows of money into and out of your business over time.
This requires - amongst other things - knowing how much money is yours, invoicing on time, collecting payment on time, managing debts and many other things.
Take care of the money, and the business will take care of itself.
Deliver on your promises.
If there is one thing that will keep you from growing your business over time, it will be delivering on your promises.
All the marketing and PR in the world won’t be able to save you if a customer doesn’t get what you promised or they expected.
Sure you’ll make mistakes and things will go wrong.
But do all you can to absolutely ensure that every customer gets at least what you promised - if not a little bit more.
Delighted customers refer by word of mouth. Upset customers can sink a business quicker than you can blink - especially in an interconnected, social media driven world.
Deliver on your promises and win.
So there you have 5 tips the Pros use for starting and running a successful business at 50.
My question to you is - are you going to be a professional or an amateur?
Good luck with your business ownership journey!
Hunter
