Late-blooming entrepreneurs - includes related articles on a three-year plan to starting a business and on questions to prepare for owning a business - Cover Story

Home Office Computing, Nov, 1991 by Linda Stern

QUESTIONS TO PREPARE

YOU FOR

YOUR OWN BUSINESS

For the most part, second-career entrepreneurs face the same issues as their younger counterparts. But some concerns become more pressing when you start a business after a lifetime of work in a corporate environment. If you are thinking about retiring into business, do some honest soul-searching first. Here are some questions to consider.

* What will you live on while building the business? Are you going to have to use your retirement nest egg to fund it? If that's the case, what will you do for money if the business fails?

* Do you feel physically up to the challenges of long workdays and nights?

* Will you feel cheated out of a leisurely retirement? Will you miss traveling if your business (as most in start-up stages do) keeps you close to home and perpetually on call?

* Do you and your pouse see eye to eye on your plans to be retired entrepreneurs? Do you both have the same level of commitment to the business, and do you plan to work together?

* What skills do you need that you don't have? Which ones can you learn? Will you feel comfortable hiring people to provide the skills that you don't have and can't (or don't want to) learn?

* If you've spent many years in a corporate bureaucracy, will you fell comfortable going it alone, without support staff to handle busy-work and supervisors to handle headaches?