116- Entrepreneurship and age in a post-pandemic world

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In this episode of The Struggling Biz, we revisit a theme promoted earlier about a good age for successful entrepreneurs. This was originally discussed in this show from a prior episode which was a narrated blog from Michael Hyatt about who make the best entrepreneurs — and, surprisingly, the best group was in the older generation. And this was mainly due to availability of resources, as well as maturity, discipline, planning, desire and organization and skills in execution of projects, with a patience that grows from EXPERIENCE and RATIONAL MATURITY. Thus, it was NOT the young college drop-outs like Gates, Zuckerberg and others who were the real success stories — but it was the group over 50 years of age that made the best pool of successful entrepreneurs.

I did record the audio narration of a blog post from Michael Hyatt (as he sent us the link in an email announcement to his distribution list, of which I am one). And though this was several years ago, this episode is confirming that same fact for a post-pandemic world (now that the sham-demic and planned-demic is just about over, having made billions for the big pharma industry).

And here is the prior episode of the original audio narration, so that you can understand the premise of Michael Hyatt’s conclustions:

Now, Michael Hyatt has been a very successful and popular blogger and podcaster, and he has been a respected speaker in past podcast conferences.

And for the post-virus-crisis world in the aftermath of the Chinese virus of 2020 and 2021, his words still carry a lot of good weight for those interested in entrepreneurship.

Why is this?

A good entrepreneur requires:

Resources — including the resources sufficient to recover from the dip in the economy (this is the most important asset from the viewpoint of Michael Hyatt), as well as to back their own ventures with their own resources;
Capital — including life capital, social capital, financial capital and education and intellectual capital
Maturity and discipline
EXPERIENCE that has delivered talents and insights for the entrepreneur;
Skills with projects in launching and executing them successfully;
Relationships — both with long-time networks and also business-based personal relationships;
PATIENCE, including the ability to MONITOR intellectually the status of the business and not be thrown off (or pivot to another business) due to stress or a crisis, such as the one in 2020-2021;
Ambition and desire that is coupled with wisdom and planning and review of the situations on a weekly or almost daily basis (especially in finance) to MONITOR the status of the endeavors;
Sufficient age as a qualifier, per a quote from Michael Hyatt in the blog post: “Age isn’t a disqualifier for entrepreneurs; it’s more like a pre-requisite”;

As a matter of fact, the younger entrepreneurs use the facility of pivots as a crutch or excuse to go in another direction — very much like a non-swimmer who is trying to grab on to anything to prevent drowning in the ocean, especially when there is no life-saver.

Now, too many pivots can be the downfall for the stressed-out younger entrepreneurs who are scared because of not having enough resources, and with little experience and maturity to handle a downturn or crisis. Or, as a previous episode from another podcast of ours, explains:

So, as you can see, the theme of maturity of age and resources for the entrepreneur adds to the probability of success in recovering from the crises of 2020 and 2021.

So, from this entrepreneur, I can suggest that you follow the advice from Michael Hyatt, who asks the younger entrepreneurs to have patience and humility to observe and learn from the older successful entrepreneurs. Although funding will always be a critical issue, other situations may be handled more reasonably and with more maturity in order to recover from the 2020-2021 crisis from the Chinese virus environment.

I hope that you find this topic helpful in your planned recovery from the Chinese virus crisis, so that you can get back on to the road of success for your business.

Thank you for your attention.