PRIME Initiative

Yell.com has published a very encouraging piece of research into businesses started by older people. The survey focuses on business owners over 50 who have set up in the last five years, who it calls “senior startups”.

Overall this is a strikingly contented group, with 44 per cent of respondents reporting that they are now happier than they’ve ever been. Around a third of all respondents (30 per cent) say that they love their work, and (61 per cent) say they regret not having set up on their own earlier.

More than half (53 per cent) say that the key piece of advice they would give to other over-50s would be to “go for it”.

Other findings include:

• The average turnover of the people polled was £67,500 per year, with most working alone from home
• Most have no thoughts of retirement and see their business as their pension plan – more than two thirds (71 per cent) want to run their business for as long as they are able
• Businesses within this group tend to be financed by savings – with only 13 per cent funded by bank loans

Only 16 per cent of those questioned had run their own business before, with 41 per cent having worked in a completely different field before setting up on their own. Almost one in five (19 per cent) of the female respondents were not working immediately before setting up their businesses.

More details of the research along with tips and case studies are on Yell’s the people behind the numbers web site.

Disclosure: PRIME has a connection with this study through Professor Mark Hart, who did the analysis and who is a member of PRIME’s board of trustees (the equivalent in a charity to a company’s board of directors).

Mark, who is Professor of Small Business Research at Kingston University as well as a PRIME trustee, comments “This research adds greatly to our knowledge of the over 50s’ contribution to enterprise in the UK. There is now clear evidence that the entrepreneurial activities of this diverse group are capable of providing sustainable incomes.”

The over 50s are little studied compared to younger entrepreneurs, but are known from other evidence to account for one in six of new businesses in the UK.