A Practical Guide to Starting Small, Earning Wisely, and Building on a Lifetime of Experience After Retirement
Turn a lifetime of knowing how to do something useful into a small business that fits the life you already have.
5.5 × 8.5 in, 122 pages, posted to you. ISBN not yet issued
EPUB, reads on any e-reader, phone or tablet. ISBN 979-8-90623-689-0
About 2h 38m, narrated in full. ISBN 979-8-90623-690-6
For retired and semi-retired adults over 60 who want a small, right-sized business built on work they already know how to do well.
It is not a get-rich plan or a guide to venture-scale startups, and it gives no tax, legal, or financial advice for your particular situation.
Samuel almost spent three thousand dollars to find out whether anyone wanted his cutting boards. Instead he spent one afternoon and a few text messages, got a clearer answer, and kept the three thousand. Beatrice was the best seamstress in her town and quietly losing money on every job, because nobody had ever walked her through the arithmetic. Curtis nearly quit before he began, beaten not by the work but by a government website.
This book is for the person who has decades of knowing how to do something well and wonders, carefully, whether a small piece of that could become a small business. On your terms. At your pace. Without betting the security you spent a working life building.
Twelve chapters walk the whole path: deciding what the business must do for you, turning invisible experience into an offer someone pays for, choosing customers you understand, testing an idea for next to nothing, pricing for profit instead of applause, setting up without drowning in paperwork, finding the first few customers, delivering well without creating a second full-time job, protecting your savings and health and relationships, marketing in a way that does not make you cringe, and deciding on purpose whether to grow, hold steady, sell, or close.
About 25,000 words with warm chapter illustrations. At the back: a 30-day plan of one small step a day, the offer frame, a right-sized goal worksheet, an honest price sheet, referral and price-stating scripts, a saying-no script, a monthly ten-minute review, a support circle worksheet, a quick-reference card, a short glossary, and plain-language sources.
It promises no riches. It marks clearly, every time, the moment to stop reading and call a professional.
Every chapter, with the sentence it opens on.
Here is the whole book turned into one small action a day. None takes long. None requires money. If you miss a day or a week, nothing is lost, you pick up where you stopped. The point isn't speed. It's motion, small and steady, until a vague someday becomes a real thing you've partly built. Do them roughly in order, because they build, but adapt freely to your life.
Real pages, at the size they print. In the paperback these are black and white; the cover keeps its colour.
Copy these out, print them, or keep them in a note on your phone. They are yours to use.
I help ______ (a specific kind of person) with ______ (a specific problem) so they can ______ (a result they want).
Fill in the blanks until a real person would nod:
If it feels too broad, make the "who" narrower and the "problem" more specific. You want one clear person to read it and think, "That's me."
Revisit this every month. Hold every business decision up against it.
Whatever number this produces, resist knocking it down because it "feels like a lot." The feeling is the thing to distrust.
"I'm so glad you're pleased with the work. Can I ask a small favor? I'm still building up my customers, and a word from someone like you means more than any advertisement. If you know anyone who could use what I do, I'd be grateful if you passed my name along."
Use it at the moment a customer is happy:
Ask when they're satisfied. Name exactly who you're looking for. Make it easy to say yes.
"For a job like this, it's [your real price]." (Then wait. Let the silence sit. Do not fill it with a discount.)
When you name a price, state it and then stop talking:
If they say it's more than expected: "I understand. It's [the real reason it's worth it]. I'd be glad to do it for you." No apology. No unrequested discount.
One page, sent early, prevents most of the friction a small business ever creates.
"That's not something I take on, but here's what I can do instead: ______." Or simply: "I'm not able to do that, but thank you for thinking of me."
For work outside your boundaries:
Kind, clear, and final. You don't owe a long explanation.
No one does this alone, and you shouldn't try. Map your support in four rings, from the inside out, and fill in real names where you can.
Fill the outer rings before you need them. The worst time to look for a good accountant is the week you urgently need one.
Once a month, ask four questions and write the answers:
Ten honest minutes catches most problems while they're small.
Free to read
All 12 chapters: what each one opens on, the questions it answers, and the one small thing to do when you have finished it. About 25,000 words in the book itself.
The book’s own sources, printed here in full.
The ideas in this book are drawn from long-standing, widely accepted principles of running a small, low-risk business, not from any single source, and they're written to hold up over time rather than to report this year's specific rules. For the specifics that do change, and they change often, use current, reputable sources and, where money or law is involved, a qualified professional.
For free, reliable, general help with starting and running a small business, look to your country's official small-business agency and its associated free mentoring services, which in many places offer no-cost guidance from experienced businesspeople. Your public library is another genuinely useful and free resource, many offer small-business help, databases, and workshops, and the librarians are glad to point you to them. Reputable nonprofit organizations serving older adults often publish plain-language guidance on working and earning later in life. And your local city or county offices are the right place to confirm licensing, permit, and registration requirements, which vary widely by place.
For anything touching taxes, your national and local tax authorities publish current guidance, and a tax professional translates it to your situation. For questions about how earning affects retirement benefits, the official agency that administers those benefits is the authoritative source, and a financial planner helps you apply it. For legal structure, contracts, and liability, a small-business attorney is the right guide, and many communities have low-cost or nonprofit legal help for small businesses.
Because this book touches money, taxes, retirement benefits, and legal setup, all of which are specific to your situation and change over time, the material here is written to durable principles and deliberately avoids stating figures, thresholds, tax rates, income limits, or legal specifics that would date or that vary by place. Before publication, jurisdiction-sensitive material in this series is reviewed by a small-business attorney, a tax professional, and a financial planner, and time-sensitive specifics are checked near the publication date. Nothing in this book is a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who knows your actual circumstances. Where your decision involves real money or real legal consequences, treat this book as the thing that helps you ask better questions, and treat the professional as the one who answers them.
| Series | Practical Guides for Life After 60, book 2 of the series |
|---|---|
| Imprint | The Greenlight Guides Editorial Team |
| Length | 25,000 words, 12 chapters |
| Extent | about 122 pages (estimated from the manuscript, not a proof) |
| Size | 5.5 × 8.5 in (140 × 216 mm) |
| Illustrations | 15, full-page illustrations |
| Listening time | 2h 38m |
| ISBN, ebook | 979-8-90623-689-0 |
| ISBN, audiobook | 979-8-90623-690-6 |
| ISBN, paperback | not yet issued |
| Language | English (en-US) |
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