It is never too late: how 3 founders later launched successful companies in life

One of the best parts of entrepreneurship is that it does not come with an expiration date. If you have great ideas and the passion to see it, it is never too late to bring it to life and make companies. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, people aged 55 and over actually have more than half of American companies.

As an entrepreneur, having some experience among your belt can actually be one of your greatest assets. Chances are that you have tightened valuable skills that will make you a stronger company owner. In other words, your work and life experiences from the past have probably prepared you for entrepreneurship and for dealing with companies.

Start companies If a second act can look like a big career step or just make money with a passion or hobby that you like. It could achieve a long-term goal to make an impact, leave an inheritance or find the flexibility outside of a standard 9-to-5 to lead life on your schedule. Shopify Speaked with founders who launched their companies later in life, and their stories can inspire you to take the leap.

Follow your passion

The age -old advice to follow up your passion may sound exaggerated, but it can lead to a satisfactory new chapter. After having worked in the mortgage industry for 16 years, Sonja Detrinidad became disappointed with the go-go-go speed of the work. The turning point came when a broker called her on a Sunday afternoon with an urgent work request. The expectation was that she would drop everything, including her personal time, to meet it.

On 48, Detrinidad left her job to lean on something that had always brought her joy – plants. “There are pictures of me like a little girl who hangs around in the garden with my grandmother,” she says. “I was always surrounded by plants.” This passion found the perfect exhaust valve when she moved to a new house that required a large overhaul of landscape architecture. Detrinidad made an art of finding free plants on Craigslist and blogged about it on the way.

It didn’t take long, she had built a loyal supporters as a professional plant shopper. Nowadays she is at the helm of partially sunny projects, a company that sends plants and accessories to customers throughout the country – and she has never been happier.

“I think it is never too late, because you have never been so old and so familiar in the history of your life,” says Detrinidad. “You have the experience that may not have a 20-year-old or 35-year-old version of you.”

That does not mean that there is no learning curve, but working for itself Detrinidad has brought the professional freedom and satisfaction that she always longed for.

Use the industry experience to go your own way

If you have worked in the same industry for years, you probably have a wealth of knowledge and experience to exhaust. That can be one of your most powerful sources. Before Amy Liu launched the clean skin care brand Tower 28, Amy Liu had worked in the beauty industry for two decades.

“When I started with Tower 28, I was actually 40 years old, so I did it much later in my career,” says Liu Shopify Masters.

During her business career she grew her professional network and got to know some of the greatest players in the industry. Liu was always attracted to entrepreneurship, but decided early to learn from everything the established brands did before they started her own.

“I went to work for other people because I said to myself:” I’m going to learn about someone else’s dime. I’m going to learn from everything they do, “she says.” And I really think that’s great for me. I don’t think something is wrong with [starting a business] Asked, but for me it helped me to build that trust. And I’m going to make my own mistakes, but I feel that, as a result, I am not trying to make the same mistakes that I saw. “

Because Liu had made a name for himself in the beauty industry, she also had an easier time Secure financing and retail partnerships with credo and sephora.

“I feel that I might have had the easiest time that fundraising of everyone I have ever known,” she says about the pre-launch fundraising she has secured from friends and family. “I think it was very bad based on who I am and my background.”

Another large part of her success was her willingness to share her vision with others – already in her business school days – what she recognizes and can be scary for new entrepreneurs, but has the potential to pay great.

“When I finally started raising money and I turned to people, so many people came to me and said,” Hey, I know you wanted to do this. I’ve been waiting for you. You said this forever. Let me finally invest, “says Liu.” And that was a huge voice of trust for me. “

Learn from missteps from the past and remain adaptable

Dusting yourself and throwing forward after failure can go a long way as a business owner. That resilience helped Danny Winer Hexclad, which he started building at 49, in a multimillion dollar kitchen utensils.

“It’s ok to fail,” says Winer. “It’s how you react to that failure, and how do you look at it and do you go:” What really is my role in this failure? “”

Winer tried to launch a Sapper for the first time, but finally ended the project after he and his business partner realized that they had misjudged the market. Instead of becoming discouraged, he chose to see and apply those challenges as opportunities to his next idea: hybrid cooking utensils.

“I knew the pain points that the consumer had because I had done it for years,” says Winer, referring to his earlier career in the cookware industry. While attending a trade show in Asia, he joined a man who invented a laser-ingertiest, hexagonal, anti-stick cooking utensil coating. He knew he had found something special, but it took time and many no-out to others to convince that a direct-to-consumer cookware company was worth investing.

“In the beginning it was not resonating,” says Winer. “Everyone laughed at me when I went to try to raise money and say:” We are becoming a DTC cooking company. “Nobody had done that ever.”

Winer did not see that criticism as a failure, but as an opportunity to refine the messages from the brand. “I was able to take the lessons in those rooms and make those good Facebook advertisements,” he says.

Hexclad was launched in 2016 and was perfectly placed when the Pandemie struck in 2020 to offer the wave of new home chefs the tools they needed – all online and online companies. The brand also attracted the attention of the famous chef Gordon Ramsay, who came as a brand partner in 2021. The mega-popular brand is now being marketed for professional chefs and home chefs.

“I am not saying that I am smarter than a 25-year-old, but I guarantee that I am wiser,” says Winer. “And you can learn from my wisdom, because all the mistakes you are going to make from 25 to 40, I made them.”

This story was produced by Shopify and assessed and distributed by Pile.

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