Kentucky Fried Chicken was founded by Harland Sanders at age 62. My advisor in grad school, Bruce Donald, cofounded a protein design software company when he was about 60. The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (later to be rebranded as International Business Machines, or IBM) was created by Charles Flint at age 61. The truth is that many amazing businesses from tech startups to fortune 500 companies to small home-based candle making businesses have been founded by entrepreneurs over the age of 60. In this article, we’ll go over 16 examples of home-based businesses you can start in retirement.
1. YouTube channel
You can create a YouTube channel about literally any topic, but business topics, career topics, and software tutorial topics tend to bring in the most ad revenue. However, hobby videos (e.g. knitting, quilting, salt water aquariums, etc) can also be quite profitable. One idea you may be uniquely suited for is creating videos about your day to day activities and life in retirement, but do it in a way that is focused on educating younger and middle aged adults about what to expect (health, money, and family-wise) in retirement.
2. Blog
Like YouTube channels, blogs can be created about any topic and for any audience. You can easily monetize blogs with ads and affiliate links.
3. Consulting
You already worked an entire career before retirement, which means you likely have some type of skill or experience that people would pay for. Here are some examples:
- If you were a firefighter, companies that sell fire protective equipment to fire departments may pay you to advise them on how fire departments make decisions so that they can sell more products. They may also pay you to make introductions for them to people in nearby fire departments.
- If you were a police officer, companies that make security systems may pay you for consulting work.
- If you were a nurse or doctor, companies that make medical software might pay you as a consultant.
- If you worked as a manager in a manufacturing plant, companies that make manufacturing equipment may pay you for consulting work. Or startups that are competing with your old employer may pay you to consult for them.
4. Microgreens Farm
“Microgreens” are just the edible seedlings of certain plants like Bok Choy, Buckwheat, or Radishes. Microgreens are typically harvested after just 2-14 days, which means you can grow many harvests in a greenhouse or indoor hydroponic garden during a single year. Microgreens are also high priced commodities, selling for around $5-20 per pound. Those high prices together with the ability to harvest 20-100 times per year mean that you don’t need a very large growing area to make thousands of dollars per month in revenue from microgreen farming.
5. Micro Private Equity Investing
Micro private equity refers to buying and investing in businesses making less than $10 million in revenue (and typically only about $500k-$3M in revenue). If you are newly retired, then you may have friends who own businesses in that range and are themselves nearing retirement. These friends need an exit to fund their retirement.
At the same time, there are many young entrepreneurs who are looking for a micro PE business to buy. If you can connect a retiring business owner to an aspiring business owner, you can give the aspiring business owner some money to help them acquire that business in exchange for some equity in that business. You get multiple financial and other benefits from this:
- The cash flow from your new equity stake in that business can help fund your retirement
- You will have helped a small business owner to achieve retirement
- You will have helped that retiring business owner to protect their legacy for the long term
- You will have helped a young ambitious entrepreneur build their career
It is a very satisfying type of work that builds the backbone of the economy. Also, if you don’t have enough money to invest in the company, you can still sometimes refer the company to a young entrepreneur in exchange for a referral fee of several thousand dollars.
If you don’t know how to find ambitious entrepreneurs looking to buy businesses, email me! I am constantly looking for good small businesses to buy and protect forever, and I also have a network of other young entrepreneurs who are looking for businesses to buy.
6. Freelance writing
When you retire, that means you have probably accumulated more experience than almost anyone still working. You can use that experience to write freelance articles and ebooks about business topics that you learned during your career and for which there are a shortage of freelance writers. You can find freelance writing gigs on Fiverr and Upwork. If you used to own a business before you retired, you might also be a good fit to write articles for Axiom Alpha! We pay $50-300/article, depending on length, quality, topic, and your level of expertise. Email me if you’re interested.
7. Write books
If you like writing, consider writing a sci-fi novel, a romance novel, a children’s book, an educational business book, or any other type of book you find interesting. Royalties on books can be a great perpetual revenue stream to help fund your retirement while the books themselves can be a part of your legacy that you leave behind.
8. Hard money lending
Young real estate investors need money to buy and renovate investment properties before flipping them or renting them. Often, these young real estate entrepreneur-investors don’t have enough of their own money to do this and don’t have enough of a track record to get money from a bank, so they turn to hard money lenders. A hard money lender is just a person or business who loans out money at typically a 10-20% interest rate for real estate renovation projects. They might loan 60% of the post-renovation property value, secured by a lien against the property (which hard money lenders typically require be held in an LLC).
Hard money lending is a way to get involved in real estate investing without all the hassle of managing tenants and property managers. It is also a way to help out young ambitious real estate investors.
9. Private money lending
Private money lending is similar to hard money lending: you again are lending money to young real estate investors. However, whereas a hard money loan typically has a term of 6-18 months and is intended for short-term real estate renovations, private money loans typically mean 15-30 year mortgages that you provide to young real estate investors to help them acquire rental properties. Because little to no renovation work is involved, private money loans typically have less risk and lower interest rates. They also make for a more passive business because once you make a loan, you keep collecting the income from it for 3 decades instead of having to redeploy all that capital again 6 months from now.
10. Create an online course
Online courses are basically productized consulting. A good way to come up with a topic for an online course is to start consulting and then, once you find your niche in consulting, take note of the common questions and issues that your clients have. Turn the answers and solutions into a course that you can produce once and then sell again and again instead of selling your time for money as you do with consulting.
You’ll likely have the most luck if you can focus on (1) a complete guide to starting a business in a particular niche or (2) insight into a high-value business role you have experience in (e.g. a course on how university endowment funds decide what fund managers to invest with, from the perspective of someone who used to sit on a university endowment fund committee).
11. Orchid farming
People buy standard orchids for $10-50 per plant. That’s $10-50 for a single flower plant. That’s an insane profit for growing a flower! Grow 10,000 orchid plants at a time, and you have a pretty fantastic business. There are also much more exotic orchids that sell for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per plant.
If orchids aren’t your style, there are also other lucrative plants you can farm such as saffron (Autumn Crocus flowers), wasabi (which sells for $130/pound!), fennel pollen ($195/pound), vanilla beans ($200/pound), and truffles ($400-$6,000/pound).
12. Flip antiques
Buy undervalued antiques and collectibles from thrift stores, flea markets, estate auctions, garage sales, ebay auctions, Craigslist, and/or anywhere else. Then sell them at full value on ebay or other online auction sites.
13. Pet sitting
If you are an animal lover, consider pet sitting. It’s easy to find clients on Rover, and they bring their dogs right to your house so you never have to leave home to run this kind of business.
14. Babysitting
Babysitting offers a lot of flexibility, allowing you to set your own schedule and take on as many or as few clients as you would like. Many retirees enjoy spending time with young children and find it fulfilling to be able to help out families by caring for their kids. It is a business that has a direct positive impact on the people you serve in your community.
Additionally, once a family trusts you enough to babysit for them, there is a good chance that you will be asked to come back again and again in the future which can lead to a steady stream of clients and a consistent income. Furthermore, starting a babysitting business typically doesn’t require any startup capital, which means just about anyone can do it.
15. Tutoring
After retiring, you probably have a wealth of knowledge and experience in a particular field, and what better way to use that knowledge than to help the next generations achieve their goals and improve their lives?
Being a tutor allows you to continue to use and develop your skills, and to make a real difference in the lives of young people. Additionally, the demand for quality tutoring services is always high, and you can set your own hours and work as much or as little as you want. That means a tutoring business is flexible and easily adaptable to each individual’s lifestyle.
16. Physical product invention
Seniors have unique needs, but there are very few innovators who are familiar with those needs. There is a real opportunity for you to take note of the day-to-day problems that you and your fellow retirees face and to invent solutions to those problems. You can then create a business to market and sell those inventions.