The overlooked benefit of starting a business later in life

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How old is too old to start a business? You’ve read the title of this article, so you already know this is a trick question.

Colonel Sanders was 62 when he opened the first KFC franchise. Laura Ingalls Wilder had her first Small House novel published at age 65. The more meaningful your life’s work is, the less likely it is to conform to a predictable timeline. Predictions are based on patterns, and the greatest achievements break patterns to offer something new to the world.

This becomes easier when you have lived a rich and full life. Spending time in the world can help you recognize what problems still need to be solved and how to take advantage of those opportunities. But you won’t always find them by looking directly.

Your best ideas can take decades to develop and result from unexpected twists of fate. Below I’m going to share a few that ultimately helped me turn Roof Maxx into an eight-digit number roof renovation company in my fifties.

Your most successful business probably won’t be your first

A few lucky people can be golden the first time they ever put a shovel in the ground, but most of us dig around for a while first. According to reports from OCI insights97% of founders have full-time work experience before starting their business. Only 3% start without it.

I launched Roof Maxx at age 51, but it wasn’t my first business and I wasn’t new to roofing. I had been in the industry since I was 20. So while it might be fair to call me a late bloomer when it comes to starting a national brand, that’s actually not the whole picture.

Those first years as a roofer were difficult, but they helped me understand the industry from the inside out. By standing on the roofs to inspect them, I became familiar with materials. By talking to individual homeowners, I gained insight into their needs – and the ways in which those needs were not being met by the rest of the industry.

Valuable lessons often come in unexpected forms

Little house on the prairie became more than a series of successful novels. It grew into a media franchise that eventually included several television adaptations and even a Broadway musical. Today it is widely considered a cornerstone of Americana.

But Laura Ingalls Wilder faced years of rejection before the first novel in the series landed a publishing deal. Before that, she wrote for agricultural publications for many years.

That probably seemed inauspicious at the time, but in retrospect the experience clearly taught her how to write in a Midwestern voice. Every experience can be a lesson in how to succeed, if you are open-minded enough and willing to apply what you have learned in different situations.

While it’s certainly less dramatic than the above, here’s an example from my career: Working with real homeowners has shown me that they were routinely underserved by the roofing industry. Most contractors did not offer a full range of services. They only wanted to do replacements, even for roofs they didn’t need.

So in my 30s, I started Roofer Success International (RSI): a peer-to-peer coaching program that taught contractors how to run a business while meeting real customer needs, from inspections to repairs and maintenance.

RSI organized live events and offered hands-on training. We showed roofers everything from how to answer phones and schedule appointments to what options to offer customers and how to price them.

At that point I didn’t even know I was going to start Roof Maxx. But it turned out that my experiences as a roofer and with RSI would both contribute to the ultimate success of that company.

Experience is transferable (so get as much out of it as possible)

Roof Maxx’s flagship product can help homeowners postpone expensive replacements for years. It does this by restoring the flexibility and durability of their existing asphalt shingles, making them last longer.

You’ve probably already guessed my first point, which is that I would never have recognized the need for these types of products if I hadn’t spent all those years in the industry. But performing RSI is actually a better example of how transferable business experience is.

I started RSI to highlight a gap in the roofing industry, but it turned out that I really enjoyed being an educator. Teaching allowed me to expand the impact I wanted to have on the industry. What I didn’t expect was that it would also show me the key to consistently growing Roof Maxx.

Ultimately, we chose to expand Roof Maxx through a dealer model where we distributed our product exclusively to roofers who joined our network. This meant that their success was our success. It also meant they needed in-depth knowledge about our product and how to sell it effectively.

The idea of ​​building a dealer management platform would never have occurred to me had I not founded RSI over a decade earlier. But since I had, it was the obvious solution.

Developing our own online portal not only directly benefited the company by allowing us to share training resources and stay in touch with dealers, but it also created a dedicated virtual community where these dealers could share knowledge and best practices. The love for teaching I discovered years ago turned out to be more than just a way to advocate for what I wanted to see in the industry. It became the growth engine that allowed my brand to thrive in all fifty states.

So don’t worry if you start your business too late. For all you know, you’re already gaining experience that could one day make your career.

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