Suzanne  

Hello and welcome to the Midlife Business Show with Suzanne Mountain.

This is the podcast that celebrates all those of us who are building a business during our middle years. I’m an ex corporate girl who started my business six years ago in my 50s. And I’m loving it.

This podcast is here to inspire you with conversations with other entrepreneurs about the messy and magical ups and downs of this period of our lives. Plus, I’ll be sharing simple, actionable, step by step strategies to help you build a business with impact and a life that you love.

Hello, and welcome to Episode One of the Midlife Business Show with me Suzanne Mountain. 

 

As we get started with this podcast, I wanted to tell you a bit more about why I’ve decided to launch it.

Like many others. I’m a big fan of Simon Synek’s TED Talk and books ‘Start with Why’  He tells us that why is the purpose, cause or belief, it’s the very reason the organisation exists. He emphasizes that ‘WHY’ is not about making money. That’s an outcome of our why, that’s the result. 

I truly believe that those of us in our middle years or later need to grab life by the horns. 

 

And here’s why. 

 

Each of us has had ups and downs in our lives. And in my experience, I found that the painful ones are the ones where I learned most

 

20 years ago, at the end of a lovely sunny Sunday. My big hearted, funny unkind brother Graham was blue lighted to his local hospital. He was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 38. 

 

This led to my first adult experience of loss, the disbelief when I woke up the next morning, how could the new day have come when he was no longer here? 

The anger: Why him? 

What’s he ever done for this to happen to him? 

The pain of knowing that I’d never hear his laugh again, shook my world and changed my perspective on life. 

Until that day, I had not realised how precious life is. 

 

As I face the reality of loss, I found that in his honour, I will be braver, take more risks, and live my life to the full just as he would have done if he had been given the chance.

 

Quitting my executive corporate job to set up my business in my 50s. 

 

And then in 2020, relocating to live in my dream home by the sea, have both been a result of this vow. 

 

And this is the reason I focus my time and energy on helping other entrepreneurs who are in their middle years. 

 

I want to show how we can create a business and a life we love. 

 

I view mid life as a privilege. 

 

And I also believe it can be a time of rebirth, a time when we stop living to the expectations of others, and start to listen to our souls true calling. 

 

A time when the best can still be to come. 

 

As we relax into truly being ourselves.

 

 I want us to be a generation who rewrite the rules on what can be achieved during this phase. 

 

Our children, the younger generation and people just entering midlife need to see role models of what life can be as we age. 

We need to demonstrate age positivity with brightness, freedom and joy. 

 

My mission is to encourage and support others to live out their later life dreams through building businesses we love that fit with our individual vision of how we want our life to be. 

 

So in this podcast, as well as sharing simple actionable tips and strategies to help you build your business.

 

 I will also be talking with other midlife business owners like Yve who in her 40s spotted a gap in the market she was working in and created a business and now in her 50s She’s taken her business online so that she can work from anywhere. 

 

Or Elaine, who was fed up being made to feel old and frumpy by the youth culture of the company she worked in. They constantly celebrated those in their 20s and 30s and made assumptions about whether she was ambitious for promotion because she was in her 50s Elaine decided enough was enough and took her many skills and set up her own business consultancy and now makes double her previous salary whilst working less hours spending  more time walking her gorgeous dogs. 

 

My view is that we’ve lived very different lives to previous generations of women. Many of us have benefited from further education, improved health care, more opportunities to travel and better nutrition. And this results in us feeling and behaving younger than previous generations in their 40s, 50s and even 60s. 

In fact, my own mum was retired when she was five years younger than I am now!  

 

We’ve got that feeling that we still have something more to give, that little niggle, that says, I’m not done. Don’t count me out yet. 

 

And for some that siren call, that time is no longer on our side. And we need to take action now to make our dreams come true. 

 

So let’s talk about the term midlife. 

It appears it’s a bit like Marmite, some people love it, and some hate it. 

 

The Oxford language dictionary defines it as the central period of a person’s life between around 45 and 60 years. 

Recently, in my free Facebook group, one of my clients added a post asking for a members view of her naming her Facebook group, one of the titles had the word midlife in it. 

 

All this started a debate about when exactly are we in midlife? And what does it mean? 

 

A couple of the responders stated that they didn’t like the term and tended to not join groups or events that use that term. 

 

And of course, we’re all entitled to our own opinions, aren’t we? 

 

But I find that quite fascinating. 

 

Now I take it if you’re still listening, then you don’t feel the same. Or perhaps you’ve decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. 

 

Regardless of whether you consider yourself to be midlife or not, or just having a listen out of curiosity. You’re very welcome to be here. Growing a business in 2022 is not easy. 

 

For those of us born in the 60s and 70s, the rapid development of technology has changed the world dramatically.

 

I remember getting our first home phone. It had its own table with a doily in the hall by the front door. And Dad placed an egg timer on the table so that the calls were kept short. Even though I had no one to call! The excitement in the house was palpable when it rang. Do you remember getting your first phone home? 

 

The first computer I saw was at school. It was the size of a small car and sat in an air conditioned room by itself. The room was locked and we were not allowed to go in. And actually at the time, I wondered if the air was poisoned by some special gas or something.

 

And now we carry around a small computer that we keep in our pockets and call a phone. Although many of us rarely ring anyone on it. 

 

In the summer of 1983 Steve Jobs first talked about creating a little record store where software would be downloaded over phone lines. And in 2020 142 billion apps were developed. Can you imagine that 142 billion. Wow!

 

Embracing and trying to keep up with a rapid pace of change can feel scary when you’re a one man or woman band wanting to just reach some potential customers without spending all day scrolling on social media. 

 

Maybe thinking about the tech makes you want to go and clean the oven. 

 

Or scrolling social media leaves you thinking that there must be more to life than this. 

 

Starting a business is easy, but growing it is not. I know from my experience that there will be a million moments where you doubt yourself. Where you hear a little voice that tells you you can’t do it. Or even I’m too old to be doing this. Or maybe you’re no good at Tech. 

 

Want to know a secret. starting this business was the hardest thing I have ever done. 

 

The first year was one long grind. 

 

There were many times when I sat and had a few tears and asked myself why it was so hard. 

 

The trouble is no one talks about it. And that’s a problem. Because when it gets hard for you, you start to doubt yourself and question if you’re cut out for this. You let doubt creep in. You start to believe that maybe you should just call it a day. 

 

You look over the fence at everyone else making it and ask yourself, just like I did, ‘Why is this so hard for me? 

 

When in reality, guess what? It’s hard for everyone, just that most people gloss over that part of their story. 

 

Don’t believe all those social media instant rags to riches stories, they’re only telling one side. 

 

There’s the good, the bad and the ugly for everyone. 

 

I want you to know you are not alone. 

 

And there is no reason to be lonely when you’re running your own business. 

 

There is nothing you can’t learn to do if you need to. 

 

However, with most things, we have choices. And this is why my business success. 

 

I want mid life business owners to know that there is someone they can turn to for relevant advice. 

 

I want them to know that there are always lots of options. There is always more than one way to cook an egg as my old mum used to say.

 

 I love helping people to find solutions to what they see as business problems. 

 

I also have a lovely community group on Facebook, filled with other passionate midlife business owners. This podcast is a gift to me as it marks the sixth anniversary of my business. And I hope that in time you will see it as a gift to you too. 

 

Together, let’s rise above all those doubts and fears. 

 

I want you to set your eyes firmly on where you want to be. And to keep going. 

 

Remember, you can do this, but it might take a bit of patience and perseverance, as well as lots of learning. I hope you’ve enjoyed our time together today. 

 

Please come and join me and my lovely community my free Facebook group, the business Confidence Cafe. You will find the link in the show notes. 

 

Bye. Okay, that’s a wrap for today. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, rate and review the midlife Business Show. And if you’ve enjoyed it, tell your business buddies all about it. Bye for now.