OLDERPRENEURS
Far from wanting to take it easy and put their feet up, the fastest-growing age group of UK business owners in the past decade has been the over-65s
WHEN Susan Wright was a little girl she loved playing shop, so when she saw a For Sale sign in a real shop window it set her pulse racing. “I thought, I’m 58, do I really want to carry on working for somebody else and sit out my time, or should I be courageous?”
Over a coffee with the owners Susan, 59, found out everything about the shop, Eco Republic in Buxton, Derbyshire. It sells ethical gifts, homeware and electric bikes and this appealed to Susan, who had a background in the charity sector. “I put a stop working. I still take holidays. Earlier this year I went to Florence and on Sunday I’m off to Venice.
“If you have the opportunity to keep on working, it’s good for you. If you sit and do nothing you soon get old. It’s being busy that keeps me young.” Will we ever see her on The Apprentice with Lord Sugar? business plan together and I was confident I could make a profit,” she says. With £15,000 in savings and a business loan of £20,000, she bought the shop, hired a part-time staff member and works five days a week. “I’m sure people think that your late 50s is the time to start thinking about retirement but that’s the last thing on my mind. I’m excited to come to work every morning. I’m now controlling my own life.” “I don’t think so. I’m sure I’d get ‘You’re fired’ from him! But the youngsters on that show don’t seem to know a lot. The advantage of age is that you have expertise.”
Brenda still does accountancy work for some of her former clients. “Most of them are in their 90s – I fill in their tax returns for them.”
NOW I WORK WHEN I WANT TO
STEVE BROWN, 66, of Thatcham, Berkshire, pictured above right, took out a bookkeeping franchise in 2010, a year after retirement. He had previously been a global support manager with a large IT firm and took early retirement at 58.
“I didn’t plan to go back to work, I had enough to live on but I got bored after 12 months,” he says.
“I suddenly realised I had no motivation to get out of bed, nothing to plan for. Sitting watching the TV and doing the garden didn’t appeal to me any more. I wanted something where I could work from home and there would be repeat business.”
The Rosemary Bookkeeping business, which he runs with his daughter, was perfect. Last year, Steve won the British Franchise Association award for the olderpreneur of the year. He increased revenues by 50 per cent last year and now employs five people.
He says the ability to work when he wants to has been invaluable. “I get up when I want to, work when I want to, do what I want to do,” he says. “The best thing about starting a business was that I had something to aim at again.
“My message to anyone my age who’s thinking of a start-up is do it! What frightened me in that year I had off was the speed at which I slowed down mentally. But now I have a team of people working for me, we can set goals and achieve them and it keeps me young.”