Older workers are fighting ageism by starting their own businesses - and they're outperforming younger entrepreneurs

Susan Lee Colby started the advertising agency Grace Creative LA at age 58. She's now 69 and sees retirement as an outdated concept.

An eye injury during a pickleball tournament led retiree Brad Robins and a friend to create new protective eyewear for the fast-growing sport - even before they got home.

With a black eye and a few well-placed calls that drew on decades of contacts - to a military engineering friend, an eyewear designer and an advanced materials manufacturer - prototypes were in the process of being created by the time they got home to Toronto from the tournament in Ohio eight hours later.

"One of your most valuable commodities as you age is your network. None of this could have happened in my 20s or 30s. It could not have happened without the perspective and experiences that I've had," said Robins, 66, co-inventor and chief executive, along with founder, of Kitchen Blockers, the lens-free protective eyewear. Created in 2025, Kitchen Blockers eyewear - named for the "kitchen" area on either side of the pickleball court's net - is now sold in 52 countries.

Robins's career has spanned advertising, sports marketing and ownership of a junior hockey team.

"I take every part of that experience and apply it to doing good - better," Robins said. "Retirement is not for me. As an entrepreneur, how do you just chill? You can never shut off."

Brad Robins is a serial entrepreneur, creating Kitchen Blockers at age 64.

The average age of successful startup founders is 45, according to a 2020 study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University and the University of Pennsylvania. A founder at age 50 is almost twice as likely to experience a successful exit, such as an acquisition or initial public offering, compared with a founder at age 30, the study determined.

"We find that age indeed predicts success, and sharply, but in the opposite way that many propose. The highest success rates in entrepreneurship come from founders in middle age and beyond," the researchers reported.

As people are living longer and facing affordability challenges on everything from housing and medical expenses to gas and groceries, many older adults are under financial strain. They also have time, a desire for purpose and work experience that may be overlooked in an ageist society.

'There's this whole treasure of older talent not being utilized. You're at the height of your abilities and the world is telling you that you can go off and disappear.'Susan Lee Colby

Janine Vanderburg, co-founder of Changing the Narrative, an advocacy group raising awareness of ageism, asked five different AI assistants to produce an image of an entrepreneur. They all depicted a young man wearing a hoodie - reminiscent of Facebook's (META) Mark Zuckerberg in his younger years.

Vanderburg was incensed. Not only were the images ageist and stereotypical, but they also got a key fact about entrepreneurship wrong: Older business creators are more successful than younger ones, research shows.

"The reason that research says that older entrepreneurs are more successful is that they have the experience, the insight and the connections - the connections are huge. When you're younger, you haven't developed that deep network," said Vanderburg, who is also chief executive of the Encore Roadmap, a consulting firm for older professionals. "It's the insight that you build up over time - you know how to solve problems."

"The traditional work world doesn't work for many people. Older adults get judged. So many people are done with corporate and institutional bureaucracy," Vanderburg said.

'Stay productive and have more purpose'

When workforce-participation rates are taken into account, more than one-fifth of those in the workforce aged 65 to 74 are starting and running new businesses, according to Donna Kelley, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College.

The drivers for older entrepreneurship can include necessity - older adults don't have enough to retire on and need additional money - as well as lower traditional employment options due to ageism, Kelley said. Having and building your own business also offers more flexibility for some people versus 9-to-5 jobs, she added.

"Older generations want to stay productive and have more purpose," Kelley said. "With age, you see the advantages you may have - your mortgage may be paid off, the kids are out of the house. You have decades of experience and contacts to build from. That all goes into an increase in new-business startups among the older cohort."

At 58, Susan Lee Colby founded Grace Creative LA, an advertising agency focused on the 50-and-older market, because, she said, she had "aged out" of traditional advertising agencies.

"There's this whole treasure of older talent not being utilized," said Colby, now 69. "You're at the height of your abilities and the world is telling you that you can go off and disappear."

She focuses on older consumers, who control 70% of the spending in the U.S. yet are the focus of only 5% of the advertising budgets of major companies, she said.

"There's still a certain stigma that if you're advertising to this older audience, then your product is not as cool as Gen Z. But this audience is very savvy. Anytime we've done something out of the box - people feel seen, finally," Colby said.

Her advice for older adults considering starting their own businesses is to simply do it. She said her business has thrived because she knows "how to turn a pivot into a pirouette," knows how to manage people and relationships, and has deep industry knowledge and connections.

"You bring mastery because of all your experience. The idea of retirement really needs to be retired. It's an old concept. A lot of people don't just want to do nothing. Having a purpose is really important - it's important for healthy longevity," Colby said.

A divorce and a "surrendering of everything you thought your life would be" prompted Liddy Romero, 45, to draw on her Mexican-American roots and create Romero Cookies from her parents' recipe, she said.

Her dream of being an entrepreneur wasn't possible during her marriage, so it was important to her to break out on her own when she could, Romero said.

"If I'm going to do this, I need to do this now," said Romero, who started the business in 2024.

Liddy Romero built Romero Cookies on the foundations of her business career and fundraising experience.

Romero had been the founder of a national nonprofit organization and had raised millions of dollars to help others. She decided it was time to create some wealth for herself. She landed a Small Business Administration loan - even with zero revenue at first - and grew to $250,000 in cookie sales in the first year.

Romero has built on her experiences in managing employees, making decisions quickly and developing a comfort level in handling money and investments - all while making Mexican wedding cookies that ship across the country from her small commercial space in Denver.

"The challenges aren't the business experience - I have that. I can weather mistakes and pivot really fast," Romero said. "The challenge is, can I keep standing long enough for someone to see me? It's keeping an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset."

When Angelle Fouther, 61, started Kindred Communications, also in Denver, in December 2019, it was the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic - not the ideal time to start a new business. Yet, she pushed on, creating a business with her daughter that supports organizations focused on equity, healing and social change.

Angelle Fouther said all life experiences - good and bad - enrich her venture, Kindred Communications.

She tells other hopeful entrepreneurs not to be held back by fear, or lulled into inaction by the security of a regular paycheck and benefits, both of which could disappear in the next round of corporate layoffs.

"Reliance on security is a misnomer. You need to live according to your vision. Create a niche and build a business around that one thing you'd do even if you weren't getting paid for it," Fouther said.

Fouther said her age helps because she is no longer seeking validation from others and has the wisdom of experience - both good and bad.

"Age peels away the misconceptions. You become clearer about what you know to be true," Fouther said. "It takes years to develop networks and knowledge. And all the things that worked or went belly-up - all those were lessons learned. All that is valuable."

-Jessica Hall

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 08, 2026 13:18 ET (17:18 GMT)

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