- Did you know that the average age
of a successful startup entrepreneur is 45 years old?
In case you're wondering whether it's too late
in the game for you to actually
make that transition into a new career
or starting your own business
because you're in your 30s or your 40s,
in this episode I'm gonna walk you through
the three steps that I followed
to actually make my own career transition
and how you can follow it as well.
Intro.
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What's up everybody,
welcome to unstoppable.
I'm TK.
On this channel I help startup founders,
entrepreneurs, and business owners
start, build, and scale their own SaaS businesses.
So if you're new to our community,
if you're new to this channel,
be sure to hit that subscribe button
and that bell icon
so that you get notified
every single time I drop an episode
on Sundays and on Wednesdays with the TK energy.
If you're at a point in your 30s or your 40s
where you're like "it's now or never.
"I need to actually make a change."
Maybe it's finally starting that SaaS business,
maybe it's starting a startup,
maybe it's starting a business,
or maybe it's going after a different graph,
whatever it may be,
if you're like "Is it too late?
"Is it not?"
I've been there,
I've navigated a career change twice
in the last 20 years,
and in this episode
I'm gonna walk you through
three steps that I followed.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go ahead, smash that like button,
and let's go to principle number one.
The first step that I followed
was I really dug into who do I want to become?
So I've gone through two career changes.
The first one was when I was 28 years old.
I was working at the largest hedge fund in the world
and I was at a point
where I'm like "You know what,
"I need to finally start that company.
"I need to actually take the plunge,
"quit my job, and start my business,
"and start my startup
"and go raise venture capital
"and just live that dream that I always had."
And I took that plunge,
it was one of the hardest things.
But one of the things
that actually helped me break through that
was I asked a deep question
around who do I wanna become?
And most importantly,
who do I want to be serving?
When I sat at that hedge fund,
it was the largest hedge fund in the world,
one of the most successful ones,
it was an incredible job, incredible opportunity,
but I still wasn't feeling fulfilled.
And more importantly,
when I looked around the room,
I couldn't find the one person
that I could point to and say
"That, I wanna be that person five years from now
"or 10 years from now."
The same thing happened about eight years later.
I was 36 years old
and I had sold my company,
I had helped sell the company that bought mine,
and all of a sudden I found myself
to be an executive at one of the largest
software companies in the world.
I did the same thing.
I looked around,
I was 36, I'm like "I can't do this.
"This is not who I'm supposed to be."
And so I looked around
and I couldn't find the person
that I could point to
and say "Him or her,
"I wanna be that person."
And so I looked ahead
and thought about who I wanted to become
and I realized this wasn't it.
And I made that career change again
to do what I do now.
So, the first step that you actually wanna follow
is actually hone in on that feeling you have
around okay I need to make a change.
And actually ask yourself,
who do you actually wanna become?
Who do you wanna be serving?
More importantly, is there someone around you,
maybe it's your boss,
maybe it's your boss' boss,
maybe it's a board member,
that you actually wanna be becoming.
If that's not the case,
then you start to get this idea
that okay, I need to make a change.
And that's what I felt at 28
and that's what I felt at 36.
And I navigated both those career changes.
It was scary,
but I took that plunge
because once I looked at who I wanted to become,
it actually became very evident
that it wasn't in my status quo,
it wasn't in the spot that I was in.
And that may be what you're feeling as well.
The second step in my decision making process
and my transition process
was to instill belief.
I realized like okay,
it's none of these people that I wanna become
then who do I actually wanna become?
The truth is,
success actually leaves clues.
So what you wanna do
is find your heroes.
For me, I wanted to start a SaaS company.
For me I wanted to serve SaaS founders.
And so I looked outward
and I said okay, it's not by just sitting here
in this large corporation
that I'm gonna actually accomplish that dream,
but let me find the heroes
that I actually do wanna model.
So I can start to understand
how to make this transition
or take that plunge.
This time around,
I actually did some more research,
and I thought about like well,
do I wanna go into investing?
Do I go into coaching?
Do I wanna go start another SaaS business?
And I said, you know what,
let's just do some research around some SaaS businesses.
And I looked that up,
and surely enough I found this Harvard Business review study
that said that the average age
of an actual successful startup founder is 45.
You can check it out,
here's the stat,
and I'll link to the article below.
The average age was 45.
And that got me thinking, that's crazy.
Normally you think about the 20 something's
that are starting companies.
At 28, when I started ToutApp,
and I was already thinking like
man I'm late to the game.
And at 36 I'm like
oh I can't start another company,
I should go do some other thing maybe.
And when I started looking into the stats,
they were seriously eye opening.
So first of all,
according to Harvard Business Review,
the average age of a successful
venture backed startup founder is 45.
On top of that,
I started to look at some of my heroes.
When I looked at some of my personal heroes,
some of the people that are building
incredible SaaS businesses,
turned out they were in their 30s
or in their 40s when they started their SaaS businesses.
Mark Benioff, when he started Salesforce,
was 35 years old.
Mikkel Svane, when he started Zendesk,
was 35 years old as well.
Stewart Butterfield, when he started Slack,
amazing company, was 39 years old.
On top of that,
the godfather of SaaS right now,
Eric Yuan who started Zoom,
was 42 years old
when he started Zoom.
So this is what I would get you to do.
Depending on what you wanna do next,
maybe you wanna start a SaaS business,
success leaves clues.
So go find your heroes.
And what you'll find is
if you're in your 30s, if you're in your 40s,
in fact, now is the best time for you
to actually go start a SaaS business,
or make any other type of career change.
So for me,
step one was really honing in on that feeling
of like why do I wanna make a change?
Forget whether I can or not,
why do I wanna make the change?
Step one was who do I want to become?
And actually determining that.
Step two was success leaves clues.
Well who do I wanna become?
And if that's the person,
what did they do?
How did they do it?
How old were they?
Chances are you'll find a lot of people
that are in their 30s and 40s,
I did, that were actually successful
at that time.
Now, before I go into number three,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to get a little bit more amped
about making that career change?
Are you starting to see that
30s and 40s is not a death sentence?
In fact, you've enough domain knowledge
you have enough experience,
you have enough history
to actually go double down
and create something huge for yourself.
If you're starting to see that,
comment below with a yes
so I know you're with me.
The next step for me
was to actually make an action plan.
Not just for my startup,
but also for my life.
I decided to actually put in an action plan,
I'm like all right, let's just take a long view on this.
Who do I wanna be five years from now?
And based on that,
who do I wanna be serving
and based on that,
if I were to take a three to five year view
on transitioning my career,
maybe I do it cold turkey
or maybe I do it in a slower pace,
what would that action plan
actually look like
to make that career change?
Because I made that action plan,
not just with this time around
but also when I was 28,
I was able to actually navigate that change
in a much more effective way.
So, to recap,
if you're getting that feeling
that it's time for a career change,
you're not alone.
A lot of us are going through that.
In order to actually do this,
what you wanna do is step one
figure out who do you wanna become.
Is it someone around you?
Is it someone in your sphere
in your current career track
that you wanna become?
And how do you actually do that?
Or are you looking for
a completely different career change?
Number two, actually figure out
who your heroes are,
and figure out how they did it.
Success leaves clues.
And number three, make an action plan.
Now, as a next step to this video,
now that you know it's not crazy
to make a career change
in your 30s and your 40s,
I'm gonna give you two resources
to take the next step.
The first resource I wanna give you
is I have an unstoppable life planning guide.
So if you're trying to figure out like
well who do I wanna become?
What's my action plan?
How do I go about navigating it?
Follow the link below
and download my unstoppable life planning guide.
The second resource I have for you,
this is what my channel is really about,
it's about helping you build SaaS businesses.
I have a 10 point SaaS business checklist.
So if you know you've got a business in you,
if you've got a startup in you,
and now is the time
to actually make that shift
or at least start to make a plan around it,
go ahead and download
my 10 point SaaS checklist.
In it, I will walk you through
step by step on actually clarifying
your SaaS idea,
and crafting the strategy around your business
so you can start to make the next steps.
Ultimately, it's those who take action
that can actually make this transition.
If you liked this video,
please hit the like button,
it would mean the world to me and my team.
Also if you're new to this community
don't forget to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon,
I bring an episode
every single Sunday and every single Wednesday
to help you start build and scale
a SaaS business.
And lastly, remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life
and their business.
But when you are with us,
yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, I'll see you in the next episode.
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