You Are Not Late To Entrepreneurship. You Are Right On Time.

There is a quiet belief many people carry when they step into entrepreneurship later in life. The belief goes something like, “I should have started sooner.”

But the data says the opposite.

According to Gusto’s 2025 New Business Report, nearly 49 percent of all new U.S. businesses launched in 2024 were founded by women. In 2019 that number was just 29 percent. That is a 69 percent increase in the share of new businesses started by women in only a few years.

This shift is not being driven by fresh college grads or early-career workers experimenting with side gigs. It is being led by people who spent years holding teams together, managing households, navigating corporate restructuring, and carrying responsibilities that did not always match the compensation or recognition they received.

When Gusto asked founders why they started a business, the most common answers were:

• Control over time

• Freedom to choose the work

• Alignment with personal values and the life they want to build

These are not beginner motivations.
They are seasoned ones.

The Federal Reserve’s 2024 Small Business Credit Survey added another layer. It found that women founders are more likely to rely on personal savings, credit cards, or family support to start their businesses, and less likely to receive formal financing. That increases risk, which explains why people entering entrepreneurship later in life feel both clarity and caution.

But here is the truth.
Your caution is not insecurity.
It is strategy.

When you have lived enough life to know the cost of misalignment, you make different decisions. You recognize the signs earlier. You no longer tolerate work that drains your health or threatens your peace. You stop chasing titles. You start claiming authorship.

Entrepreneurship at this season is less about reinvention and more about reclamation.
Reclaiming your time.
Reclaiming your values.
Reclaiming the kind of work that honors who you are now, not who you had to be before.

You are not late.
You are informed.

And that makes you powerful.

Coming January:
January will explore deeper what leadership looks like when you already know how to work, but you are finally choosing to work in a way that fits.