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Why It's Best to Start a Business Before Your 25th Birthday
By starting a business when you are young, you avoid
procrastinating
Ever hear someone say "I'd love to start my own business someday
but...."? Those are the people who ultimately won't start their
own business. They are waiting for the "perfect" time to do it.
The moment when all the planets align. It will never happen. You
can always make up an excuse. When you are young, it's college
loans that need to be paid back or a lack of experience. As you
age, it becomes your marriage, kids, house, etc. There will
always be a reason to procrastinate. By starting young you avoid
becoming a habitual procrastinator.
When you are young, you have less responsibility
If you think it's hard when you are twenty, it will be ten times
as hard when you are forty. By then, you will likely be married
with kids, a house, a nice car, and a lifestyle that you are
pretty comfortable with. Think about how difficult it would be
to try to convince your significant other that you are going to
take on something that will occupy nearly all of your free time
and might not reap any benefit for a few years. It's tough
convincing yourself to make the plunge into entrepreneurship,
it's nearly impossible to convince your family to dive into
uncertainty with you.
When you are young, you are used to a hectic schedule
College age students are used to all nighters. They are used to
getting emails from a partner at midnight about something due at
8 am the following day, telling them that they did something
wrong and need to finish it up by the morning. Somehow, they
find a way to meet the deadline.
This is very conducive to the entrepreneurial environment. Your
day does not begin at 8:30 and end at 5:00. It begins when it
needs to and it ends as soon as the work for the day is done.
Somedays, everything goes smooth and you can work your 8:30-5.
Other days you work until after midnight. It is all dependent on
things that are somewhat out of your control. No matter how good
you plan, you can't plan for everything - a shipping mistake by
UPS, two feet of snow hitting the ground out of nowhere causing
you to be an hour late for an appointment, or your website
crashing - unexpected things will always go wrong. Students are
used to this. People who have worked the 8:30-5 for twenty years
tend to check out mentally at 5 every day. You can't do that as
an entrepreneur.
Students are used to being without money
College kids get by on Raman noodles and cheap beer. They live
with three other roommates and walk to class. Most of them have
part time jobs for some spending money, but they could probably
get by on what they earn over the summer or what Mom and Dad
give them. Why is this important? Because as an entrepreneur you
are probably not going to see any income for at least six months
(it depends on the business of course) and maybe for as long as
a few years. For the college entrepreneur, not a big deal. For
the guy who was used to pulling in $100,000 a year, it's a big
deal.
When I started SportsLizard.com a few years back, I was able to
do it with about $3,000 of savings from an internship I had the
previous summer. I didn't make any money for a while, but it
didn't really matter. You know why? I was living in my parents
basement. When your cost of living is $0 it takes away a lot of
the stress.
Young people are better learners
Everyone is good at what they do. Computer programmers are good
at computer programming. Artists are good at art. Athletes are
good at being athletes. What are students good at? Learning.
That's right, students are good at learning. It is, after all,
what they do for a living. They are used to seeing something
completely foreign to them and mastering it in a short amount of
time. Professionals tend to become more and more focused as they
get older. While they are really good at one or two things, they
haven't learned something completely new in a long time. The
workforce has a way of unintentionally limiting you by narrowing
your skillset. This works against them as an entrepreneur.
As an entrepreneur, you will be low on resources. Don't count on
having a secretary to do the things that you don't know how to
do. You can't afford a secretary! While your main focus is
living your passion, something you are inherently good at, you
will have to do quite a bit of learning to be an entrepreneur.
For example, it may appear that I run a website and the only
real thing I needed to learn was in regards to web programming.
I don't think many people would consider the amount of time I
put in learning how to run my business. I had to research
trademarks before choosing a name (you wouldn't want to pick a
name that someone else already has), I had to figure out how to
register my business with my county, and I had to learn basic
tax laws to make sure I correctly report all of my income. I
also handle all of the PR and marketing for my business, not to
mention customer service and budgeting. There is a lot to
running a business, even what appears to be a simple one that I
run from my house (imagine if I had employees, rented office
space, etc). A business owner is going to have to learn a lot of
things quickly and be able to execute what they just learned
with confidence. Young adults are better at this than any other
age group.
Young adults are used to change
One of the reasons you will need to learn so much is that you
will need to change often to compete as a startup business.
College kids are used to moving every few months, changing
classes every semester, and having different summer jobs each
year. This comfort with change will make it easier to make the
necessary changes for the good of the business. Someone who has
lived in the same house and worked the same job for fifteen
years will naturally be more resistant to change.
The other side of the argument
Obviously the downside that everyone will point to is the lack
of business experience that young people have. If you can't tell
already, I view this as an advantage. I feel that industry will
focus you on what you're good at. For years people will tell you
how good you are at what you do and encourage you to grow in
that area. Ten years later you are a master of that trade but
can't even conceive of switching professions. At that point,
becoming an entrepreneur is a lot harder.
About the author:
Adam McFarland owns SportsLizard.com - an online marketplace for
buying
and selling sports collectibles http://www.sportslizard.com.
SportsLizard.com was recently awarded honorable mention in the
Microsoft Start Something Amazing Awards.
You can read Adam's blog about being a young internet
entrepreneur by going to http://www.sportslizard.com/blog/