When I was young, I was always in such a rush.
I had grand visions of being a rich, famous entrepreneur and considered anything short of that a massive failure.
I was a sports journalist at the time and would occasionally do spots on TV and radio, so I guess I was marginally locally famous by age 30, but it certainly fell short of my lofty expectations.
And I was most certainly not rich.
As with most people, my 30s were lost to the work-intensive little kid phase of life as I helped raise my two boys.
As such, by the time I hit 40, I wasn’t anywhere near where I thought I would be.
But now, comfortably ensconced in my mid-40s, the stars have aligned. I have a side business that, across all income streams, provides me with a mid-five-figure boost to my day job income.
Sometimes I get down that it took this long, but then I remind myself that my current success couldn’t have happened until now.
I wasn’t ready mentally and I didn’t have the maturity to pull it off earlier, and my lifestyle simply didn’t lend itself to entrepreneurship.
Now? Now I have the knowledge, confidence, and, perhaps most importantly, the time to finally chase my dreams.
Let’s talk about why it’s never too late to start your own side business, and 3 key reasons your 40s are the perfect time to start.
Life takes over
I realize this will vary given how late people wait to have kids nowadays, but the more distance you put between yourself and the baby/toddler phase of your life, the more time and freedom you have to go after things that used to matter to you as an individual.
Now I would never suggest you neglect your kids to go chase fantasy business moonshots.
Quite the contrary – I pride myself on being an exceptional father.
And in fact, I make a good chunk of money every day while also coaching both my boys in hockey and travelling extensively for their tournaments.
But the amount of time, energy, and effort it takes to parent 12- and 15-year-olds versus babies and toddlers is a whole other world.
Yes, kids still do need you at those ages, but it’s not all-consuming the way it used to be.
- They don’t need to literally be spoon fed. They don’t need their diapers changed. They don’t need help getting dressed.
- You don’t need to watch them like a hawk out of fear they’ll wander off and get hurt somehow.
- You don’t have to sit at the park with them for hours or sit through playdates and other little kid activities.
And on and on it goes.
With my kids mostly self-sufficient, that has freed up my early mornings and good chunks of the weekend to work on my business.
The kids can be gone for hours with their friends, and on weekends, the 15-year-old sleeps until noon.
That gives me hours of quiet time to do … basically whatever I want.
Compare that to when my youngest was a baby and would wake up screaming at 4:45 a.m. to kick off what would be an excruciatingly long day of work and care.
By the time you get done with all your tasks, you don’t have any energy left to accomplish anything else.
The reality is that, when you’re in the little kid phase, their life is your life.
And there’s really no avoiding it (you know, assuming you’re a good, engaged parent).
You simply have to wait it out.
But then, when you step back into the light after 40, the world once again becomes your own playground.
A lifetime of knowledge
When you’re young, you think you know everything.
The truth is, looking back, I didn’t really know anything.
While the audacity that comes with youth can certainly serve as the catalyst for wonderful accomplishments, most of us just kind of flounder around while we try to figure out who we are and what we want to do with our lives.
But there is value in that.
As we navigate those career and personal speed bumps, we learn more and more about ourselves and the world, and we build the skills that will later come in very handy (even if we aren’t aware of it yet).
Case in point: I started out as a simple staff reporter at a newspaper.
I learned how to interview people, how to research, and (most important to my side business), how to write clean copy fast and meet deadlines.
I also worked on the brand-new online section of the paper in the early 2000s and helped build our internet strategy around newfangled technology like … blogs and online photo galleries.
Part of that job also involved tracking our analytics and reporting to senior management.
Tracking web stats was a fun little job at the time, but it would up being one of the most valuable things I ever did.
It allowed me to see what kinds of content people were actually reading versus what the managers thought people wanted to read.
And still today, I draw on those lessons when deciding what to write about and how to present it.
I was also one of the first reporters on Twitter, which helped me build a massive following and later got me a job running social media for another big business.
And in that job, I had an opportunity to develop graphic design and video editing skills that allowed me to launch and monetize my own YouTube channel within 11 months.
All of that seemingly disconnected experience combined to give me the skills and wherewithal to transform myself into a multi-skilled, multi-platform content creator.
I should also mention that, throughout that time, I was also reading a ton of personal development books and adding those skills and mindsets to my toolbox.
Growing up
But perhaps the most important key explaining why your 40s are the perfect time to start your side business is that you’ll have the maturity to pull it off.
I found success in my 40s because I finally know who I was.
I feel like one reason we fail is that we don’t actually know what we want when we’re young.
For all my writing talent and the journalism skills I developed, I hated being a journalist.
Early in my career, I was driving to work in the cold November rain, and all I could think was, “I have made a massive mistake.”
But I also didn’t really know what I wanted to do instead, which led to me running around trying a million different things and accomplishing nothing of consequence.
I found dead ends because I wasn’t trying to achieve anything … I was trying to escape something (a career I knew I didn’t want).
It wasn’t until I grew up and recalibrated my career and habits that my mind was clear enough to pursue something real.
And one last advantage to starting a business in your 40s?
The older you get, the more pragmatic you get about the passage of time.
Again, when I was in my 20s, I wanted big wins and I wanted them now.
And if those wins didn’t show up within a couple of weeks, I’d give up on what would otherwise probably be a very successful and lucrative business venture.
At 44, two weeks goes by in a flash.
A month passes in a breath.
A year is a stroll around the block.
What age gives you is patience and a long view of things.
It usually takes a minimum of 2-5 years to start to see progress in a business venture.
When I was young, that seemed like a lifetime.
Now, it feels achievably short. Age gives you the confidence to push through early-stage impatience.
So if you’re in your 40s and you think your best days have passed you by, take it from me: You’re just getting warmed up.
Pop culture would have us believe that if we aren’t rich and hot in our 20s, we’re failures.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Take it from someone why has been though the wringer and back: Your 40s really are the perfect time to start chasing those dreams you’ve kept buried for so long.
What lessons did you learn that set you up for success in your 40s?
Do you have your own side business or hobby success story?
Let me know in the comments!