Age is just a number. Starting an online business after 50 isn’t out of the question. A great idea, hard work, passion, and consistency are the ingredients necessary to build a strong business presence online in today’s ecommerce industry. But in order for any endeavor – whether it’s starting a business in one’s 50s or starting an entrepreneurial journey in his/her twenties – to succeed, the right mindset will play a big part when it comes down to overcoming obstacles that will eventually present themselves when operating online. Lets take a look at five key mindsets that will help you succeed.
Adopt the Mindset of a Go Getter
One of the keys to completing tasks and achieving your goals is adopting the right mindset. And it is even more important to embrace the go-getter mindset as an entrepreneur.
It helps you keep going and it can also work to help you overcome obstacles that get in your way. As a solopreneur, you’ll have many responsibilities resting squarely on your shoulders, and that can be a lot of pressure. This is especially true if you are used to a team-based corporate environment.
Identify Your Why for Starting a Business Now
Becoming an entreprenuer is possible for anyone as there is no age barriers and even financial circumstances doesn’t have to limit your quest to starting an online business. But something that is particularly helpful is knowing the reason why you want to become an entreprenuer.
Knowing your why helps you develop a key strategy for acheiving your goals and helps to keep you grounded and driven as you tackle the day to day tasks of running an online business.
It’s your compass that leads you to want what you want, and it underscores your motivation. When you know your why, it gives you something to always look at when you’re struggling so that you can push through.
Some people feel their reason gives them a purpose. As you get older, your life purpose changes. If you have children, they might be grown – so that job you may have worked to support them no longer gives you that same level of motivation.
Once you retire, you can also lose your sense of purpose. Starting your own business as an online marketer can give you a new direction or allow you to continue having purpose in life.
It gives you a reason to strive for something you want again. Not only that, it can also be beneficial to your physical health and cognitive function.
Perhaps one of the reason you are embarking on this new business journey is because you want to keep your mind sharp. Studies have shown that people who are in their early fifties and beyond benefit from taking on a new hobby or continue learning something because this allows the brain’s processing abilities to remain quick and clear.
Staying busy can help keep the mind sharp by boosting memory, too. While some people want to become an entrepreneur to have a purpose or to stay busy, for others, it’s a means of income.
Many new entrepreneurs start a business because they want to supplement their income. Or they find that once they’ve retired, their standard of living isn’t the same because they want to be careful with their retirement funds.
It could be that your reason for doing this is because you want to travel. When you work online, you can take the office anywhere you want to go. As long as you have an internet connection, you can work whenever you want to, wherever you want to.
There are many older adults who choose online business as part of a plan to leave a legacy. They want to create a business they can pass on. Or, they want to create a financial cushion for their loved ones for after they’re gone.
Another reason to pursue entrepreneurial endeavors could be to avoid isolation that can happen as you get older. Having a business online gives you access to people all around the world.
That includes colleagues you network with to form joint ventures, affiliates, clients and customers. There’s a lot of networking and many of these interactions result in some mastermind groups as well as offline meet-ups and events.
Be Ready to Commit to Your Dream
As with any new venture becoming an entrepreneur isn’t something that’s going to happen with a minimal dedication or involvement. You’re going to have to take the steps needed to turn it into your reality.
You can start by asking yourself what your ideal online career looks like. This is something that prevents some people from ever getting started. They haven’t taken the time to visualize what an online career would look like or mean to them.
Help yourself picture it by making a list of all the things that you want in life and how your online career can help you to accomplish them. Create a career map where you outline all the steps it’s going to take you to start a business and get it running smoothly.
Break those steps into goals that you need to accomplish daily, weekly and monthly. Have a motivation board that will inspire your commitment. On this board, put images of what you picture your life will look like as you achieve your dream.
You already have a lot of knowledge in many different areas of life – and maybe also in your current or former job. Don’t forget to tap into your experiences and skills. Put that to work for you.
Ask yourself what you enjoy or what you could spend hours doing – and that can be something that helps keep you committed. Put it in motion. Seek knowledge if you need to by studying business or mindset books, taking classes, or finding a mentor.
All of this can encourage you toward your commitment. You need to determine just how involved you’re willing to get in your online career. Many people don’t realize that running an online business requires a commitment to time.
It’s not something that you can just do when you feel like it. While it’s true that you get to set your own schedule as an entrepreneur, you still must have dedicated time to work on your business.
But even the boss has to show up on a consistent basis. That’s one of the most important things about building an online career. You must be committed, which simply means dedicated to something, and you must practice consistency with your actions with the business.
You can’t work on it, then let it sit for weeks or months, doing nothing and still expect success. When you’re not there, what will happen is that the audience you’ve sought to maintain will leave.
In order to lead a niche audience, you must be present online on a regular basis. It’s the same thing with serving your clients. You can’t build a client base, then not show up to serve them.
Let Go Your Excuses
A go getter entrepreneur doesn’t make excuses that holds him or her back. Neither do they let the excitement of being the boss override the truth that they have to get the job done.
They set the hours they need to work and then they show up to serve.
They do the hard things and when they succeed, it’s because they deserve every bit of that success. It was through their own efforts that they ended up making their dreams come true.
Some people aren’t like that, though. They don’t set hours and stick to them. They work when they feel like it. When they do show up, they let themselves get easily distracted by whatever shiny new thing pops up on the horizon.
They won’t put in the effort, but they expect success. When their business fails, they have a list of reasons why it happened. None of these reasons points the finger back at them.
It points out to all the other things or people that “caused” them to fail. These people have an excuse for everything. When they fail to complete a task, they’ll say the time just wasn’t available.
They won’t look at their own actions and acknowledge that the time was there, but they just didn’t manage it correctly. When they pay for a course but don’t end up finishing it, even when it could benefit their business, they’ll whip out a long list of excuses.
The teaching method was wrong for them – the course was too hard or the instructor wasn’t good enough. Their laptop acted up and they couldn’t log in to the course. They’ll say that they meant to work on the business but then something came up at home.
The dog wanted to go for a walk. They had to clean the house. The lawn needed to be mowed and they had to take care of that instead of working. You can tell yourself that you’re working and not let all those little things that nag at you persuade you to stop.
You have to learn to set boundaries – even with yourself – for the sake of your business.
But these people, these failed go-getters, will have dozens of reasons why they didn’t work on their business that day.
They’ll tell themselves it was because they had too much to do offline. They’ll complain about being tired or not able to focus, so they put off even trying. If you want water from a faucet, you have to turn it on to get the water to flow.
It’s the same thing with any business. If you want to see results, you have to show up. You have to turn on that faucet. These people didn’t try to find the answer or locate someone who could help with their questions. Don’t be afraid to reach to others who are a similiar niche or search for answers on Google or YouTube. You will be surpised at just how much information you can find online.
Don’t be like those who just stop trying and then follow up their failure by making an excuse. The definition of excuse is “an attempt to lessen the blame.” When you don’t work, it’s your fault.
When you don’t try, it’s your fault. Stop making excuses. Excuses make you feel good temporarily – but in the end, you’re still going to have to deal with the fallout from not doing what you should have, from not correcting a mistake and for not showing up and working on your business.
If you found yourself making a bunch of excuses, it time to examine your excuses. Only you know if that excuse is real or something you’ve fabricated. True entrepreneurs not only celebrate their successes, but they take ownership of their shortcomings, too.
Be Okay with Temporary Failure and Long-Term Flexibility
Many people don’t morph into a go getter entrepreneur because they’re too afraid of failure. Or they become an entrepreneur, but they’re too afraid to take risks. That’s because somewhere along the line, they associated failure with forever.
They believe that failure is the end. Game over. Time to quit. But you have to realize that every person on the planet has experienced failures and setbacks. No one has ever built a business that was problem or mistake free.
Yet people assume that problems, mistakes and everything in between that led to a setback or failure equals permanent problems. It doesn’t. It’s only permanent if you let it be.
Use your temporary failures to drive you forward to success and stop being afraid of something that happens to everyone. You might be so excited about your online business.
You’ve prepared everything and you just know that this launch is going to be a raving success. You can picture the glory in your mind – the success, the money, the praise from family and friends – all of it.
Then, the unexpected happens. That launch that you may have poured so much of your time and effort into, flops. Maybe it’s a little flop. Or maybe it’s the flop that you fear is heard around the world.
It makes you cringe just thinking about it. You want to crawl away, and you start beating yourself up. Maybe your great idea didn’t turn out to be so great after all. That can be discouraging.
But before you give up for good in your mind, take a deep breath. Don’t allow the temporary failure to be the finale moment that defines you or business. Instead, study that failure.
You’ve now learned what didn’t work. This is going to save you time in the future. You won’t try it that way again. Let this learning moment catapult you forward. One of the most important things you can do to succeed is to learn to adapt by using long term flexibility with your business.
Be flexible with your schedule. So what if you can’t work early mornings? Work nights. So what if something happens outside of your control that throws your schedule out of whack. Adjust and get right back on track!
Have that same acceptance toward flexibility with your niche choices, too. So what if one niche didn’t work out? Jump into another. Branch out. Have multiple niches if you want.
Shut one down and start over if you don’t like it. If your business model didn’t bring the success that you thought it would, change it. Adjust. This kind of flexibility is a perk of having an online marketing career.
It’s not something to be overwhelmed about. Being an online marketing entrepreneur gives you greater freedom and the ability to expand your own boundaries whenever you need to.
But in order to succeed as an online entrepreneur you’ll need to develop a winning, positive mindset.