What Is the Best Age to Start a Business?

This is a guest post by Cristian Dorobantescu, author of both the Energybyte and Entrepreneur Interviews blogs.

Quote: Youth is the best time to be rich and the best time to be poor. ~ Euripides

Most people I meet that want to start a business have a set of barriers that they need to get over before they can take action. Those barriers include the fear of being unsuccessful, waiting for a great and unique idea, lack of funding, or simply the unwillingness to take a risk. Although these reasons are always the same, one's perspective towards them change with age.

So what's the best age to start a business?

I would say Mid-20's. I remember some 4-5 years ago I was working in an IT start-up, where everybody from the least employee to the owners were below age 30. The owners of that IT company are now millionaires (they did it before turning 30). Looking back, I realize that starting a business in the mid twenties comes with a set of advantages which where not so obvious at that time. I can now recognizing some of the advantages of starting so early. Let's discuss a couple of them:

Reasons to Start a Business while Your Young

1) The lack of experience is conducive to open-mindedness and creativity. I mean if you ask me now to start a project, I will probably follow the same patterns that I picked up from years of work experience. This might get things done but it definitely doesn't allow for experimentation which is usually good for entrepreneurs because it causes you to stumble upon better ways of doing things.


2) Your lack of experience will also cause you to be a more ready learner, to stay up to date, and to make the most of what you know. This is one of the interesting things about the human mind. When we are forced to learn to do things on our own, we are usually more inclined to keep learning. Some of my professors at the University did not learn this way and they would often teach methods that were outdated.

3) Your youth allows for more failures. Yes, this is a good thing. As strange as it sounds, if you are to fail (and most of us do) it's better to do it while young – it gets you some experience for the latter and the failures are easier to overcome.

4)Young entrepreneurs don't have many responsibilities yet so they are at liberty to take some high risk, high reward opportunities. The lack of family to support allows younger entrepreneurs to work late hours and to focus more on their business.

5) Young entrepreneurs usually have less egos and more desire to make things happen. They are usually striving for acceptance and accomplishment. This is what motivates them in the first place.

6) Young entrepreneurs still have the support of mommy and daddy (and maybe even some older brothers or sisters). Therefore, you can throw your few pennies into your business and eat on mommy and daddy's dime (lol). Plus they're is probably secretly expecting you to fail anyway. This takes some pressure off of you – especially if you do fail.

So, should we prefer the wisdom we'll have as an older entrepreneur over the creativity and freedom we get as a younger one? I would say emphatically "NO" but I would like to see your thoughts on the subject in Ben's comments section. Also, check out Ben's post Is College Necessary for Entrepreneurs

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About the Author
Cristian Dorobantescu is a part time entrepreneur from Eastern Europe that started blogging back in 2005, with his Small Business Entrepreneur blog (Energybyte). He enjoys writing about real life Entrepreneurship experiences, small businesses and knowledge resources for any entrepreneur wanna be.

See Christian's original post on this topic here.

Small Business Marketing: The Secret Revealed!

Clate Mask wrote an incredible article over at Small Business Trends earlier this week and I thought that a few points he made would be very helpful to our audience here at Ben Means Business. Clate used the example of the "on again, off again" couple (I know a few who still can't let go of each other.lol) to show how most small business owners approach marketing. The meaning of this metaphor is that when sales are down we feel that we must go out and do things to increase them; and when sales are up, we don't market at all. Then this cycle just continues over and over again. Sound familiar?...........Yup, it did to me too!

The Lesson for Small Business Marketers

I loved the authors overall point of this article and there were a lot of points in it that really hit home with me (its a shame b/c its a pretty short article. lol); but there was one point that I think really said a lot about marketing and I wanted to share it with you as food for thought. This point was listed as one of three small business marketing truths and it read as follows:

"You are a marketer of information about the problems your product or service solves. You’re not a marketer of product x or service y. "

This statement was so important because it let's us know that not only are some of us not consistent enough with our marketing, most of us are marketing the wrong thing. This caused some intense thought and what I realized is that all of the most successful products or services solve a popular problem. The first thing that you think of when you picture those products is the problem that they solve or need that they address. We buy most of these products because we want them and not necessarily because need them. So the fact that we still think of them as a solution is due to excellent marketing.

How this applies to your Business

Sometimes we attempt to sell our product or service on the strength of it's price or individuality because we are trying to seperate ourselves from the pack and that's fine. However, we must not forget to address the problem. The truth of the matter is that people spend money on things that address their needs(or at least claim to). For instance, even if you have the cheapest toothpaste, but you don't market the fact that it cleans well, no one will buy it. Most people will write it off as a "cheap knock-off" and then go buy some Crest or Colgate.

So the point here is that no matter what advantages you identify for your product(price, health benefit, etc..), your primary marketing goal should be to show your customers that your product or service addresses their needs. Once you get their attention, you can reel them in with your other strengths.

Small Business Marketing Secret: Keep the main thing the main thing.

What valuable information can you draw from Clate's statement? Anything you want to add to my point? Leave me a comment...Let's discuss it

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