There’s a war out there. A war for jobs, space for new businesses and for confidence. For older women leaving the workforce, for whatever reason, their confidence in themselves as dynamic people with abilities and ideas has often been eroded.
That erosion has a particular edge for women like me, and for many of the women I now coach. Some of us were diagnosed with ADHD decades after school, after careers, after raising families, when the explanation finally arrived for a lifetime of being told we were scattered, or that we simply weren’t trying hard enough. Imagine carrying all of that, and then retiring.
We don’t realise it, of course. We drift into ageing without a backward glance. We’ve been so brainwashed into thinking that the third stage of life will be filled by lattes with friends, golf, bowls and the occasional shopping trip. Time to rest and relax the brochures say. Time to be yourself and get off the work treadmill.
But what if you don’t want to step off the treadmill. What if you’ve had dreams of running your own business, being entrepreneurial, independent and meaningfully busy?
I’m a self-styled Silverpreneur. I have grey/silver hair, am the wrong side of the official ‘retirement’ age for women and I’ve been running my own business for the past fourteen years – and very successfully too, thank you very much!
Being older and likely wiser isn’t necessarily an asset in starting or maintaining a business. It’s really a matter of opportunity. But’s also not a deal breaker.
Some of us take a step into the business world at the end of our working careers because we haven’t been brave enough to do this while we held down a full-time job. Becoming unemployed later in life, either through retrenchment or retirement gives us a chance to reassess what we want to do.
Often, we have held a long-time desire to work for ourselves, we’ve had an embryonic business idea, or have been working on a small business on the side and now we have a chance to try and fly.
Others of us, which included me, have no idea that we have anything substantial to offer in the realm of running our own businesses and fall into enterprise by accident.
I have had many different jobs but they have all mainly revolved around managing offices, marketing, event management and PR. My last job lasted me 24 years and was my favourite. I had become a journalist by accident – most of my life changes seem to have happened by lucky accident; right place, right time kind of stuff.
What I didn’t know for most of those years is that my brain had been quietly running its own agenda. I was diagnosed with ADHD well into my retirement years, and suddenly the whole shape of my working life made sense. The lucky accidents weren’t accidents. They were a brain following interest wherever it led, and I had been following it happily for decades without knowing its name.
More than two decades down the track of my last job I made a brave and perhaps rash decision to resign. Nothing on the horizon but I’d had been worn down to the point that I felt uneducated, unemployable and with no portable skills. After all who’d want an ageing journo in an industry which attracts the young.
But I was surprised. Within months of leaving work I had created my own media consultancy and had clients.
It was a huge surprise to me that I became successful with my first business following ‘retirement’ from my full-time career and this brought about a thirst for learning which I always had in moderation, but which was now on steroids!
There’s a name for that too, it turns out. When something interests an ADHD brain, it doesn’t do it politely. It takes over. I used to think my hunger for the next thing was a character flaw, the reason I could never quite sit still. Now I treat it as the engine of the business. If you’ve always learned the way I do, too much, too fast, you may be sitting on the same engine.
Part of the reason for the crazy learning I do now is that much of the space I work in is part of the rapidly evolving and always growing online marketing industry. The immediacy of news distribution which occurs in the online environment makes us all citizen journalists, while businesses have found and still find new ways of reaching their target customers.
Another partial pivot which came as a surprise to me was moving into the world of coaching and mentoring, something which has become the core of my business these days. I shouldn’t have been surprised as I have always been happiest when I can help others find solutions to their problems and coaching is part of that pathway. The fact that many of my clients have ADHD themselves is another indication of how like seems to attract like!
Being a Silverpreneur in such a time of change and evolution is exciting and stimulating and I don’t plan to ‘retire’ from my second life any time soon!
Why older is sometimes better
Many older women find they lack confidence by the time they finally exit the workforce, or consider going into business on their own after years of caring for their home and family.
But you don’t need to worry. If you have a passion for what you want to do, then you will find the opportunity. Find your niche and grow into it. Silverpreneurs don’t have as much to risk if their businesses are home-based and not much capital expenditure. Service business or online sales are best for this.
And if your brain has always worked differently, that’s good news rather than bad. By our age we’ve collected a lifetime of workarounds, and many of us have a name for how we think at last. Those workarounds are gold in a small business.
Take training opportunities wherever you can find them, network and find a mentor if you can. There is a wealth of information on the internet which can help you.
Let your passion show and talk about it wherever you go. Have business cards and don’t leave home without them – they’re your most valuable tool. Surround yourself with supportive and positive people and don’t listen to the negatives. Take small but positive steps. Build your brand and your confidence will build with it.
Follow your dreams and let your silver shine!
My tips:
Build confidence
Talk to people – network
Keep up to date with technology
Find out how your brain works. A late ADHD diagnosis changed everything for me
Be afraid and do it anyway!
If this sounds like your life, I’d love you to join me at The Dandelion Clock (nanberrett.com/the-dandelion-clock), my membership for late-diagnosed women who are done blaming themselves and ready to build a life that works with their brain instead of against it. One thing, once a month. No guilt, nothing to catch up on.