Am I Too Old to Start a Business? I've Been Asking That Question for Thirty Years.
- Jun 3
- 5 min read
When I was in my early twenties, I got asked to create an ad for the Yellow Pages (remember those?) for a local business. I had a little voice inside my head ask me if I was too young to start a business. But I really wanted to create the ad; I was genuinely excited. So I started a business at 21 years old.
That's not a typo. Twenty-one. Fresh out of junior college, loaded with ambition and very little certainty. I had a regular job. I had bills. I had rent. And I had this small, bright idea burning a hole in my pocket. That thought about being too young nearly stopped me, but I’m glad it didn’t. And I have been working in graphic design, marketing, and art ever since – for over thirty years.
That question – "am I the right age for this?" – has followed me through every chapter of my life. And every single time that little voice rang in my head, I shooshed it and did it anyway.
When Thirty Felt "Too Old" for a Lecture Hall
In my thirties, I went back to school to finish my bachelor's degree. And yes, that little voice showed up again right on schedule. Aren't you a little old to be sitting in a lecture hall?
What I found when I got there was that I was surrounded by students in their late teens and early twenties who were doing the heroic, exhausting work of just staying alive: working jobs, paying rent, surviving on whatever they could afford, and dragging themselves to class on fumes. They were getting through each day. I remembered being them, and I had deep compassion for every single one of them.
But in my thirties, everything was different. I knew what I wanted. I knew why I was there. I savored every lecture, every project, and every essay. School wasn't something I was enduring – it was something I was drinking in. The very age I had been so quietly worried about turned out to be the exact ingredient that made the whole experience extraordinary.
The Recession, the Leap, and the Referral List That Kept Growing
After graduating for the second time – this time into a recession – the job I had studied for simply wasn't there. So I did what I had always done: I bet on myself.
I launched a web design business. No marketing, no cold calls, no ads. Just word of mouth and good work. Jobs stacked up faster than I could take them. I was booking clients two, three, four months out. It was the kind of momentum that felt almost unreal – right up until I bumped into the ceiling that every solo creative business eventually finds. Trading hours for dollars only scales so far.
So I pivoted. Again.
Siren Song Productions: "Are We Too Old for This?"
A friend of mine was (and still is) an incredible artist who wanted to teach at a retreat. I had spent ten years producing events for a nonprofit. We talked about the idea trepidaciously. What if we created a retreat for her to teach at?
And we did it. We created Siren Song Productions. The artist retreats we ran were genuinely life-changing, and I am not using that phrase lightly. I still hear from people who attended, asking if we will ever bring them back. Those retreats worked not in spite of our age and experience, but entirely because of it. We had the event production instincts, the creative vision, the logistical knowledge, the interpersonal depth. A twenty-five-year-old version of either of us would have been wonderful (and might have had more physical energy), but we would have been completely unprepared.
That nagging question, “are we too old?”, once again was wrong. We were at exactly the right time in our lives.
Forty-Nine, and Starting Something Completely New
Two years ago, I started The Yellow Studio. I was forty-nine years old.
And there it was again – that familiar little voice. You're pretty old to be starting something completely new, completely different from everything you've already done.
I started it anyway. What I understand now, looking back across every chapter of my story, is that forty-nine was not a liability. It was the key. Every business I had built, every skill I had developed, every failure I had survived and learned from, every retreat I had organized, every website I had designed, every single ad I had created for other businesses – all of it was the preparation for what would become my true life’s work. The Yellow Studio is not something I built despite my age. It is something I could only have built because of it.
You Are Never Too Old to Start a Business – You Are Just Right
Martha Stewart launched her catering business in her forties. Vera Wang didn't design her first dress until she was forty. There are women who have started their most meaningful and successful businesses in their sixties, seventies, and eighties – enterprises that changed not just their bank accounts, but the entire quality of their lives.
The belief that there is a window for starting something new, and that you might have already missed it, is one of the most dishonest stories we tell ourselves. The window does not close; it is always open, just waiting for you to walk through.
The elements of you that you bring to this moment are not a liability of your age. They are a library of lived experiences. A knowing about the things you want at this point in your life and understanding why you want and need them. They are the clarity that comes from having lived years of your specific life experience. They are the patience to build something extraordinary, and the wisdom to know what will make it so.
Your nineteen-year-old self was marvelous and sweet, but she didn’t know what you do now.
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
If you have been trying to drown out that whisper – am I too old for this? – you are in very good company. The Open Studio community is full of artists who have asked and continue to ask that exact question before they walked through the door (or should we say window?). Women who felt like their moment had passed. Women who showed up anyway, because they trusted their instincts.
What they found in our community was a room full of women just like them: bringing thirty, forty, and fifty+ years of living, creating, learning, and figuring things out – and turning all of that into something beautiful, sustainable, and completely their own.
A rising tide lifts all boats. And sweet friends, the tide is very much rising.
If you are ready to stop waiting for the "right time" and start building something that reflects exactly who you are right now – experienced, passionate, and just the right age – come join us inside Open Studio. This is where we do the work together.
Starting a business at 21 with bills and uncertainty must've taken serious guts — that Yellow Pages ad was a bold first step. I've been using https://ai-video-enhancer.com