Ageless Startup

I keep threatening to restart this blog. Time to try again. Ageless Startup: Start a Business at Any Age was written entirely before AI. The book, and every article that followed, is my work. I’m proud of that. And I learned a new trade by doing it. The book was launched within days of the pandemic being declared. Now we have AI to contend with. Here is an updated description of where I think Ageless Startup can do the most good now: Ageless Startup helps people turn a lifetime of experience into small, one person businesses. It shows that starting a new enterprise later in life can be a strategic advantage, using wisdom and modern tools to create meaningful, resilient work and a renewed sense of purpose and independence. "The best way to make a hit is to build something for the smallest viable audience and make it so good that people tell their peers." - Seth Godin

It’s New Year’s Eve – the last day of 2025. I’ve been practicing what I preach during these pauses. My ageless startup develops new business networks. My own current work focuses on food business networks in Pittsburgh, and Southwest Pennsylvania. We put the CAE Center to rest in 1924. The pandemic made a mess of those plans The model didn’t attract enough support. The ideas promoted by the CAE will continue to emerge – specifically in places like this blog. The world has changed significantly since I first started writing my blog, then my book, Ageless Startup. All kinds of new changes, threats, and opportunities continue to arise. As older citizens, we can use our skills, history, and our own networks to help ourselves and others navigate what's in front of us. Let’s find productive, valuable new ways to contribute to communities we love and industries that we know and respect. I’ve been working on a short ‘worksheet’ / zoom version of Ageless S...

Hi. The evolution of ideas surrounding work life in the second half of life has been significant. I started writing my blog - Sustainable Work - in 2005. From that start I wrote most of the book Ageless Startup in 2018-19. Ageless Startup was published by Entrepreneur Press in 2020 - in the same month the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in the U.S. For those of us working in or building one-person enterprises, the economic turbulance of the past few years supports our position. I'm going to use the next batch of posts to capture individual reviews and interviews that I want to be able to reference later. Thanks for following along.

Thank you Marlon and Ricky at the Success Journey podcast. What a great conversation! There are many parts of this interview that speak directly to intergenerational entrepreneurship networking that I want to focus on next. Links at the end. Ageless Innovators: Unleashing Entrepreneurial Wisdom w/ Rick Terrien Rick Terrien is a dynamic and accomplished entrepreneur whose journey is marked by a passion for innovation and a commitment to the entrepreneurial spirit. With a career defined by resilience and creativity, Rick has proven that age is no barrier to success. "As the author of "Ageless Startup: Start a Business at Any Age," Rick Terrien challenges conventional notions about entrepreneurship by demonstrating that the spark of innovation can ignite at any stage of life. His insightful book not only reflects his own experiences but also...

This post is about our Center for Ageless Entrepreneurs (CAE). For the winter of 22/23 I've been in a technology labyrnth trying to build a networking platform to provide the kind of networking services I think we most need right now. The platform is mostly up and running. Now I think we need to focus on using that platform to advance storytelling among intergenerational entrepreneurs. There are so many opportunities for younger and older entrepreneurs to learn from one another. Let the conversations begin!

The emerging markets for ageless entrepreneurs. Video blog - 4:44 Link to video blog hosted at YouTube

Many of the new posts here are focused on the Center for Ageless Entrepreneurs (CAE). The CAE is one of the featured outcomes from my book Ageless Startup. I'm working to get better at using short videos to present these messages. Here is the link to the video Join us at the CAE web site here.

I had a great conversation recently with Tiffany Moore at The Humanitarian Entrepreneur podcast. Among other things, we focused on opportunities for older entrepreneurs (3:27), what are the biggest myths that entrepreneurs face in the second half of their lives (5:04), the Center for Ageless Entrepreneurs, and the importance of teams. (12:18) Among my favorite takeaways was this: "We work in teams now and those with the best teams win. The idea is ot get yourself armored up so you can protect yourself and your family as you run your business. Then get into a team. That's why we're building these networks." - Rick (11:20) Thanks Tiffany for a great conversation! Link to the full podcast is here: PODCAST LINK Tiffany Moore is a Humanitarian Entrepreneur Coach helping activists looking to leverage their passion for change. Learn more HERE .

The news keeps coming from all sectors of the economy – the ageism that floods the discussion of older entrepreneurs is flat out wrong. This new Forbes article by Kumar Mehta cites some of the key factors that give older workers an edge when it comes to startups. I especially like this writer’s focus on working for the right reasons. Older workers have subject matter expertise and have worked to advance a specific version of that work. Also, that we are motivated by more than money. Companies and new organizations that succeed are driven to improve communities they love and markets they know. These are the three key factors this author says make the difference for older entrepreneurs: You Know Your Domain: "Domain knowledge and industry experience are crucial for any aspiring entrepreneur because you can only create a valuable enterprise by innovating, and for that, you must deeply understand your industry. Every successful founder knows their product a...

This is a is a one minute video introduction for the CAE