Bored by corporate life, this fifty-something entrepreneur noticed a vast, untapped niche in haircare and started a fast-growing brand

As an executive at Procter & Gamble and L'Oréal, Sonsoles Gonalez was frustrated to see that the beauty world had little interest in creating products for women over age 45.

She decided to do something about it by founding Better Not Younger, a fast-growing, Miami-based haircare products business, where she is CEO. The company creates products designed to address challenges such as dry and thinning hair for women in midlife and beyond.

“The last thing I even ever imagined was that I was going to become an entrepreneur …but I did it because I saw such an important and obvious opportunity in the market,” Sonsoles said. “I wanted to help change the narrative around women and aging that they need to disappear.”

Sonsoles started the business at the age of 52, after a nearly 30-year corporate career in which she served as president and general manager at P&G and, most recently, as general manager of L'Oréal Spain. She has grown the brand to achieve seven-figure annual revenue with a small team of employees and freelancers. She started the business after raising $600,000 in a round of funding from friends and family, followed by an additional $1.5 million from private investors.

Sonsoles was a panelists at a livestream event I moderated for the New York Public Library on May 12. I joined Helena Escalante, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the New York Public Library Thomas Yoseloff Business Center, to discuss “Income Streams That Will Keep Your Business Going No Matter What.”

Sonsoles riffed with three other founders you may recognize from my books The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business and Tiny Business, Big Money: Steve Ferreira, founder of Ocean Audit, which secures refunds for merchants from ocean shipping companies; Chris Meade, co-founder of backyard games company CROSSNET and The Founders Club, a networking group for young founders; and Angie Raja, a fractional chief operating officer and co-founder of sports gear maker RIMSports.

If you think it’s too late to launch a startup, Sonsoles will make you think again. “Part of being an entrepreneur is also having the mindset of ‘There's a problem here that I can solve. It’s as simple as walking down the street and asking, 'Why hasn't anybody invented X,’ she said. “That's what an entrepreneur does: solves those problems that are out there. But you have to have that bias for action.”

Here are some takeaways from her experience as an entrepreneur.

Don’t be afraid to break away from what’s comfortable. Sonsoles was doing well in her career, with a secretary and the freedom to travel business class, when she decided to unlock the golden handcuffs, retire from being a corporate executive and start a business. “It got to a point that I felt ‘This is boring—it is not very fulfilling,’” she recalled.

Trust your instincts. While still working in a thriving corporate career, Sonsoles saw a disconnect between the haircare needs of her peers and the products being offered. "I always looked around my group of friends, and everybody in my age group was so active and beautiful,” she recalls. “And I looked at the media showing older women as done for the rest of their lives…and that really was what triggered everything.”

Noticing her hair had gotten thinner and drier, she decided to tap her experience running brands like Pantene and Heads & Shoulders to address challenges like this. "I can find the solution here,” she said to herself.

She soon found herself calling labs, scientists, packaging companies, and logistics companies. “I started developing the products based on what I thought these women needed,” she said. “And to be honest, I didn't do a lot of market research.”

She made small batches of the products and tested them on herself, her sisters and a couple of friends. “I knew exactly when the products were good to go to market,” she said.

That gave her the ability to quickly see what was working and what wasn't. "Learn fast, be ready to fail, but keep going,” she said.

Accept that startup life isn't always glamorous. Early in the life of her business, Sonsoles had to go to her warehouse and pack boxes of products herself. “It was 10 p.m., and it was dirty and hot,” she recalled. “And it's not what I signed up to do as an entrepreneur, but I had to do it. Not everything is glamorous when you're an entrepreneur.”

Course-correct quickly. If a new product or service isn’t taking off, liberate yourself from the feeling you have to make it work at all costs. Three years into the business, Better Not Younger developed a line of products for mature skin, even investing in consumer testing. The company wasn’t profitable yet.

“One day, I said, ‘Let's stop all this. This is crazy. We're not profitable. And there's no way we're going to be able to feed another mouth,” she recalled. “And so we, we shelved the project. I never launched it. And it was the right decision. I think it would have been very distracting, and it would have been really bad for the business.”

Keep finding new ways to work efficiently. Sonsoles taps the professional network she built over the years to find freelancers around the world, supplementing it with contractors found on Upwork. She is also using ChatGPT to perform tasks such as summarizing contracts she is reading. "It really has helped my productivity because it would take me hours to read a contract before," she said.

Monetize your community. If visitors come to your blog or your website, you can find additional revenue streams by monetizing that community. “Think about what else that community would need or want and spend some time with that community understanding it,” she said. “Then you can come up with new ideas, or you can advertise or recommend some other products that do not directly compete with yours, and you get a commission through.”

Know your worth. If you’re confident in a product or service, even one you’re testing, don’t assume you have to give it away for free in the beginning. “I find that if you are more assertive about how much you are worth and ask and have a price tag, you get the recognition and the work,” she said.

Don’t worry about competitors entering the space. Sonsoles has been glad to see other brands paying attention to older women. “I almost wanted more brands to come into the space so it would be normalized,” she said.

Ultimately, competition doesn't matter much if you do a fantastic job. "At the end of the day, if you execute better than others, then you win,” she said.

Protect your personal life. To keep your business from taking over your free time, Sonsoles advises closing the computer at 6 p.m. “I got to a point where it was 24/7, it was weekends, and it was really unfair to my family, even though my kids were grown up,” she said. “My husband and I were at a time when we were supposed to be retiring and starting to have fun and travel, and we couldn’t do anything."

It's great when a business takes off, but be sure to save time to enjoy the rewards.