We Are Far From Fading: We Are Thriving

The narrative shift we all need to fully own

There's a pervasive cultural story that midlife represents our slow fade from relevance. Declining productivity. Diminishing value. The beginning of the end. We at Herlixir completely disagree with this narrative. 

The data, and the women making headlines right now, say something entirely different.

Far from fading, women in our 40s and 50s are starting companies at unprecedented rates, commanding our highest-ever salaries, reshaping corporate boardrooms, and reporting greater confidence and clarity than at any previous stage of our lives. This isn't anecdotal. It's a pattern backed by research, economic data, and the stories of women who are right now building some of the most exciting ventures of our time.

The Entrepreneurship Surge Nobody Is Talking About

Gen X women, those between the ages of 44 and 59, make up 69% of women business owners in 2023. Nearly seven in ten women-owned businesses are being built by women squarely in midlife.

This tracks with a broader, dramatic trend. In 2024, women started close to half (49%) of new businesses, a 69% increase from 2019 and the highest rate recorded in five years of reporting.

The women doing it are impossible to ignore. Lisa Skeete Tatum founded Landit, a career platform connecting companies and diverse candidates, in 2017, the same year she turned 50. She founded it as a result of her own experience at a career inflection point after over a decade as a venture capitalist. 

Trinny Woodall founded Trinny London at 50 during a moment of genuine personal crisis. Within seven years she grew it into a $250 million beauty empire with over a million customers. Bobbi Brown did something similar, at an age when most people assume a founder's story is already written. On the exact day her non-compete with Estée Lauder expired after 25 years, she launched Jones Road Beauty and promptly became a TikTok sensation. The biggest difference between launching her first brand in her 30s and launching Jones Road in her 60s? Knowledge, confidence, and knowing exactly what not to do. 

At 51, after a decade in retail leadership, Bridget Johns-Pavlopoulos founded To&From, an AI-powered gifting startup born from real-world product pain points. She was clear-eyed about what she was trading away, describing it as walking away from a nice paycheck and a stable existence, and yet was courageous enough to do it anyway.

Lastly, our own company, Herlixir Wellness, was founded by two women in our early 50s! And we can tell you we both feel like we’re in our prime and can’t wait to fully embrace all that this journey has to offer. We feel more than energized. We feel alive and at our best. 

These data aren't outliers. And companies founded by women have been performing great. From 2019 to 2023, the growth of women-owned businesses outpaced men's by 94.3% in number of firms, 252.8% in employment, and 82.0% in revenue!

Peak Earnings: Midlife Is Literally Our Pinnacle

If you want to understand where our earning power peaks, look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Peak earning arrives for 45- to 54-year-olds, with a median wage of $97,600, higher than all other age groups.

Research confirms that midlife can be a peak time across multiple dimensions simultaneously: work position, earnings, family leadership, self-confidence, decision-making abilities, and community contributions.

This is our financial prime! It’s the accumulation of decades of experience converting into maximum economic power, happening precisely during the years our culture tends to treat as the beginning of our decline.

We Are Reshaping the Boardroom

The data on women in corporate leadership tells a story of growing influence. Women now hold over 30% of corporate board seats on Russell 3000 companies. And it matters beyond optics. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their boards were 25% more likely to deliver above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile, according to McKinsey. Companies with more than a quarter of women on their executive committees realized a profit margin 16% higher, more than ten times that of companies with no female board members.

The women at the very top reflect the full breadth of who we are. Toni Townes-Whitley became the first Black woman to lead a defense industry corporation when she took the reins at SAIC, a $7.1 billion engineering and technology company, bringing 35 years of global tech leadership, including managing $16 billion in annual revenue at Microsoft, to one of the most complex leadership roles in the country.

Gayle Jennings-O'Byrne launched the Wocstar Fund to make early-stage investments in women entrepreneurs of color, drawing on three decades of experience on Wall Street, in technology, and philanthropy. Mary Barra has served as CEO of General Motors since 2014, becoming the first woman to lead a major global automaker, and has navigated one of the most complex industrial transformations in the company's history. The Fortune 500 now counts a record number of women CEOs, with female-led companies continuing to outperform benchmarks. 

Research shows that women spend more time preparing for board meetings, have better attendance records than their male peers, and actually improve the attendance behavior of male board members. We also contribute to the creativity and innovation of board discussions, champion difficult or controversial issues, and help broaden conversations to better represent a wider range of stakeholders. 

The Confidence That Comes With Not Shrinking Anymore

Something happens to many of us around our 40s and 50s that is genuinely difficult to quantify but very well-documented-we stop making ourselves smaller.

Research from Henley Business School found that midlife for female leaders can be experienced as a period of enormous opportunity, associated with increased confidence and a stronger sense of identity as a leader. 

Bobbi Brown puts it plainly: "Getting older is great, and you get so many great things with it. You get your power; you get your voice; you get your knowledge. So what if you get a few lines? My message to women is to always try to be the best version of yourself." 

Trinny Woodall echoes it: "It goes to show it's never too late to make that career change and go after your dream." 

Research confirms that midlife brings documented gains in emotional experience, crystallized abilities-the kind of knowledge that comes from lived experience-and control beliefs, meaning a greater sense of agency over one's own life. 

We know more. We feel more. And we give fewer apologies for both.

Rewriting Our Own Story

The cultural script around midlife women was written at a time when we had far less power, less economic independence, fewer leadership roles, and virtually no representation of our own experiences in public discourse. That script is wildly out of date.

By midlife, we know our strengths and we know our worth. Our networks are deep, built over decades. Our judgment is seasoned. Our tolerance for being underestimated has run out-and increasingly, we're channeling that energy directly into building something of our own. 

The woman at 50 who sells her home to launch a beauty empire. The woman at 62 who relaunches her career and goes viral on TikTok. The woman at 51 who walks away from the stable paycheck to build an AI startup. These are not exceptions. They are the pattern.

Midlife isn't when we fade. It's when we thrive.