What does that really mean? In many cases, they’ll be sole proprietors — people who set up one-person shops that leverage the expertise and contacts built up over several decades of corporate employment.

Sole proprietorships are by far the most common form of startup: 85 percent of all business tax returns are filed by companies with no employees, according to the National Association for the Self-Employed.

Often, these businesses don’t require much start-up financing. Empowered by the Internet, Boomer entrepreneurs often keep overhead low by setting up shop in their homes. And rather than take on the responsibility of hiring employees, they strike up relationships with other sole proprietors to provide key services, such as bookkeeping and marketing.

In many cases, the goal is to generate enough income to replace a salary that’s been left behind. Al Brown, a 20-year veteran of corporate purchasing jobs, quit his fulltime job just before his 50th birthday and started SupplyMex, a one-man consulting firm in Naperville that helps American companies find and manage product suppliers south of the border.

He was aiming to replace 80 percent of his previous salary with consulting income within 18 months of starting SupplyMex. His business is now about a year old, and he’s already 60 percent of the way there.

Still, leaving the world of fulltime employment can be a huge — and frightening — leap into the unknown. It’s important to plot your course carefully, make sure you’ve got a good financial safety net and put together the right team to support your venture.

Whenever possible, start planning while you’re still employed fulltime. “You can do a lot to get ready before you strike out on your own — while you’re still getting a paycheck,” says Terri Mauer, an Akron, Ohio-based interior designer and industry consultant who has operated as a sole proprietor for many years. “Do your business planning and market research. Is the business you want to go into something that will be viable?”

One way to jump-start the process is to hire a business coach. Al Brown worked with start-up coach Jeff Williams of Arlington Heights-based Bizstarters. Together, they sifted through several concepts. “One idea was to buy an existing business that fit my interests and capabilities,” Brown recalled. “Another was general purchasing management and consulting and global sourcing. The third was Mexico.”

Supply management in Mexico won out because of Brown’s extensive experience working there over the years, his relationships in government and industry and because he speaks Spanish.

Gordon Miller followed a more impetuous path to entrepreneurship. After a 25-year career in sales and marketing positions at large office product and information technology companies, Miller woke up one morning bored with work — and dying to scratch an entrepreneurial itch he’d had since boyhood. “When I look back, I always had this entrepreneurial spirit in me. My dad owned a small-town diner for many years back in Iowa where I grew up. I always had that spirit and drive inside of me, and was always asking myself, ‘Why not do your own thing?’

“I sat down with my wife in the living room and laid out what I was thinking. She said, ‘Why don’t you just take 90 days and just go out and test the waters — talk to a bunch of people and see what gets you excited.’ ”

Miller — who is based in Denver — spent a summer networking, focusing exclusively on people in businesses far from his own background. “We all have this tendency to stay within our own small sphere of influence,” he says. “I wanted to meet people I didn’t know and find out what they were up to, and their vision for the future.”

Ultimately, he decided that he liked the idea of being an executive coach, helping other business people manage the same life transitions that he’d been navigating. Today, at age 59, he does small business consulting, writing, speaking and coaching.

Still, Miller advises his clients to be a little less impetuous. “Do what I say, not what I do,” he says with a laugh.

* * * * *

Mark Miller writes Retire Smart, a weekly syndicated column that appears in more than 30 newspapers. He also publishes RetirementRevised, which covers careers, personal finance, health, travel and lifestyle topics. Mark is president of 50+Digital LLC, a multimedia publishing company dedicated to serving the information needs of the Baby Boom generation.

The post The Baby Boomer Path to Starting a Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Silicon Valley has seen the future of social networking — and its face looks a little wrinkled.

Venture capitalists are betting that Baby Boomers will take to online communities as their kids have adopted Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other Web 2.0 sites. The money flow started with Eons, the brainchild of Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor. Eons has raised a total of $32 million over the past two years from heavyweight venture capital firms including General Catalyst Partners and Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures and Intel Capital.

More recently, media veteran Robin Wolaner launched TeeBeeDee with $4.8 million in backing from Shasta Ventures. Other recent investments include a $16.5 million round for Multiply, a four-year-old site that started out as a photo-sharing site but has evolved into a social networking site for the grown-up market. The cash infusion came from VantagePoint Ventures, which was one of the early investors in MySpace.

Outside these venture-funded companies, Boomer-oriented social networking sites springing up include Boomj, Boomertown, Rezoom and NABBW.com, the website of the National Association of Baby Boomer Women.

And perhaps most notably, AARP — the 800-pound gorilla in the 50+ space — will add social networking at AARP.org early in 2008 as part of an overall site redesign.

There’s no doubt Boomers are online in a big way. Sixty-five percent of Americans age 50-64 use the Web, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The percentages are higher among younger Boomers, and older web surfers will account for a growing share of Internet traffic in the years ahead as more Boomers pass 50.

Grownup social networking is shaping up as an interesting business opportunity for entrepreneurs. For marketers, networking sites offer an attractive way to reach the lucrative Boomer demographic target in categories such as financial services, travel, health and real estate. Indeed, a recent survey for the Society of New Communications Research of 260 marketing professionals indicates that marketing spending on social media and “conversational marketing” will outpace allocations for traditional marketing by 2012.

Social networking also offers unique advantages as a media business model:

• Users generate most of the content, keeping a lid on expenses for publishers.

• Users help build site traffic by recruiting friends to join — a viral marketing benefit.

• Site owners don’t have to worry much about content relevance, since users drive site content around their own interests. In fact, 50+ networking sites can provide a useful window on Boomer interests for anyone studying the market. Eons, for example, publishes an annual ranking of the most popular member search topics that’s worth a look.

• User engagement is much higher than average. For example, the average visitor to Eons stuck around for almost 27 minutes per visit in September 2007, and viewed an average of 47 pages, according to Compete.com. Both of those numbers are off the charts compared with industry averages, and help the company monetize visits through advertising.

Will Boomers find social networking sufficiently compelling to drive these businesses to profitability? Some observers are skeptical.

“The most compelling reason that young people use these sites is to hook up,” says Susan Ayers Walker, who writes about computers and technology for AARP’s website. “Older people already have their social networks set, so what is the compelling reason they will use sites like these?”

But TeeBeeDee’s Wolaner argues that hooking up is no less powerful a motivator for Boomers. “A lot of the traffic on TeeBeeDee is around sex and relationships,” she says. “There’s really no place online for people at this age to talk about those things.”

One key challenge will be building traffic to levels that will generate meaningful advertising revenue. According to Compete.com, Eons had 788,000 unique visitors in September 2007; MySpace had 67 million unique visitors that month, Facebook 24 million. Already, there are signs of growing pains; Eons laid off about a third of its staff last September.

“There is a fork in the road at mid-life,” Wolaner says. “Some people can’t take the steps to reinvigorate their careers and relationships. But the mindset of the person joining our site is, ‘I’m in pretty good shape, I’ve got a couple decades ahead … I’m going to make the most of things.’ ”

Will that be enough to make TeeBeeDee and the wave of other social networking sites thrive? That’s … TBD.

* * * * *

Mark Miller is president of 50+Digital LLC, a multimedia publishing and consulting company focused on the Baby Boomer market. The company produces editorial content for the 50+ market, and publishes a blog focused on Boomer business and marketing trends at www.50plusdigital.com. Mark also writes the 50+Lifestyles column that appears monthly in the Chicago Sun-Times.

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By Mark J. Miller

Ready to chase the women? Marti Barletta thinks you should.

Barletta has been studying women as consumers since 1999, when she started the Trendsight Group, a consulting firm specializing in gender and marketing. She’s a leader in articulating the importance of women as customers. In her new book, “PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds and Business of Boomer Big Spenders,” Marti takes it a step farther. She argues that 50+ women will be America’s most important and valuable consumer group for the foreseeable future, and gets inside their heads so thoroughly that the book serves as a roadmap for marketers.

This is one of the best business books on Boomers that I’ve read. It’s well written, entertaining and has a fresh perspective on an important customer audience. Most impressive, Barletta’s point of view is backed up by solid research.

The core of Barletta’s argument: 50-plus women are entering the best time of their lives, personally and professionally. They’ll be at the top of their games — for the foreseeable future. As consumers, they’re affluent, upbeat and ready to spend — and ignored by most marketers.

Her timing is perfect, as the huge generation of Boomer women cross the 50-plus threshold. This is the first generation of PrimeTime women, Barletta says, because their life experiences are so different than those of women who preceded them. They’re the first generation to go to college in equal numbers to men; the first to work outside the home for pay in large numbers; and the first to benefit from major advances in health, fitness and nutrition that that are boosting the life expectancy of women (currently 79.5 years and rising).

The result? Fifty-plus American women are the healthiest, wealthiest, most active generation of women in history. And, women age 50-70 will be prime target for marketing of all kinds of products and services s for the next 20 years.

Here’s how the PrimeTime woman looks by the numbers:

• Peak income. When people retire, their income falls. But half of men and women age 50 to 64 are still in the U.S. workforce. Barletta’s data shows average peak income for U.S. households between 45-54 years of age at about $59,000-29 percent higher than adults age 25-35.

• Peak working years. Baby Boomers — women and men alike — have no intention of quitting work … either because of need or desire. Study after study shows that 75 percent or more intend to keep pursuing their careers indefinitely, launch a second career or throw themselves into volunteer work.

• Peak assets. Households headed by adults age 55-64 had median net worth of $182,500 in 2001 — more than double than the U.S. norm.

• Spending power. Once the college bills are out of the way and children launch their own households, the discretionary spending power of 50-plus women soars. “They spend 2.5 times what the average person spends,” Barletta says. “Women are the primary buyers for computers, cars, banking, financial services and a lot of other big-ticket categories.”

• Optimistic. Barletta’s PrimeTime women seem to be more upbeat about life than women in their 30s and 40s, who are trying to balance the pressures of child-rearing and careers. “All the research shows that women in their 50s and 60s are in the happiest decades of their lives.” (See chart below.)

• A growth market. By the year 2026, 49 percent of all U.S. adults will be over 50, compared with just 39 percent in 2000 — the result of the enormous Boomer age wave. It’s the only growth demographic around — every other age bracket will be flat or shrinking in size.

How can entrepreneurs and small businesses tap into this lucrative target market? Barletta suggests focusing on services that will appeal to time-starved, affluent women.

“One thing I’ve been saying for women in general — and especially PrimeTime women — is that companies need to get beyond the idea of customer service, and offer customer services. Customer service in this country is so bad that consumers have given up on it. Barletta advises small businesses to “think about the services that what will be important to this fast-growing, more-moneyed segment of the population — and offer them!”

I asked Barletta to describe the type of service businesses she has in mind. Some examples:

• Winterization. “Every winter after a big storm, I need more salt, but it takes me time to get over to the store and get it. I’d gladly sign a contract with a store that will guarantee to deliver a bag of salt after every storm.

• Gardening. “I’d love to do business with a garden center that delivers a pot of fresh flowers to my porch once a month, along with any other heavy, cumbersome products I might want for my yard, like soil and mulch.”

• Home electronics. Boomers are creating “specialty rooms and spaces” for home theaters and game rooms, and they’re buying second homes. Who’s going to help them set up all that expensive, complicated and unwieldy stuff?

• Pickup service at the mall. Barletta asks: “Will someone start this company — please? I’d love to see a service business that set up drop off and pick-up locations at four different points of a shopping mall. They want their customers to walk the whole mall, but to the extent that I’m a successful shopper, I quickly get loaded down with packages. And in wintertime I’m wearing a heavy uncomfortable coat and these malls are indoors. So, how about a company where I check my coat, drop off my packages as I go — and then make a call from my cell phone when I’m done to have everything delivered right to my car?”

The irony here is how poorly the PrimeTime woman is understood by businesses trying to figure out how to sell things to people. Rather than focus their marketing firepower on this lucrative consumer target, marketers lie awake at night worrying about how to sell to 18-to-34-year-old men — a market segment that’s increasingly difficult to reach — but a far less attractive consumer target than older women by almost any measure. “They don’t think women make decisions, or that older people have money,” Barletta says. “They see the numbers I’m talking about, but they don’t believe them.”

Or maybe marketers have just fallen asleep, after all?

* * * * *About the Author: Mark J. Miller is president of 50+Digital LLC, a multimedia publishing and consulting company serving the information needs of Baby Boomers. He also writes the 50+ Digital blog.

The post Marketers Listen Up: Boomer Women are Happier and Wealthier appeared first on Small Business Trends.

By Mark J. Miller

Looking for a growth market for your next online venture? Look no further than the 50+ market.

The number of U.S. adults over age 50 will soar over the next ten years. In fact, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that 50+ adults will be the only growth demographic — measured by age — between now and 2015 as the massive Baby Boomer generation enters its 50s and 60s.

Plenty of companies hesitate when it comes to marketing new products to Boomers — especially products with a technology focus. Many marketers adhere to traditional — and wrong-headed — thinking about older consumers: They’ve already made their brand choices and can’t be interested in anything new. They’re resistant to change. They don’t adapt well to new technology.

Marketers will tell you the big opportunity lies in young consumers, because that’s where you can convert a “customer for life.” But with today’s ultra-dynamic product marketplace, the notion of acquiring lifetime customers is obsolete, perhaps with the exception of mundane consumer products such as toothpaste and soap. The pace of product change is just too great for any company to hold on to consumers that long.

What’s more, Baby Boomers are just as open to new products as younger consumers. This is a generation that has broken the mold during every stage of life — and middle age is no different. As Boomers hit midlife, they’re open to a wide range of new products and experiences — just as they have at every other stage of life.

In fact, Boomers always have been at the forefront when it comes to embracing new products and technologies. During the course of their adult lives, Boomers have embraced personal computers, cell phones, PDAs, e-mail, and voicemail, and a wide range of other products.

“Boomers are leading the companies that are bringing new technologies to the world,” says Anne Wall, senior vice president of C&R Research, a Chicago-based market research company that specializes in Boomer consumers. “They’re using it at work, and at home and their kids are using it, too. Their entire lives have been about change.”

When it comes to the Internet, the story is no different. Boomers are using the web at nearly the same rates as other age groups, and in just about the same way. Contrary to the stereotypes, 70 percent of adults age 50 to 64 are online, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 12 percentage points less than younger age groups.

And while fewer 50+ Internet users have access to a broadband Internet connection than the general online population, their overall usage patterns mirror other age segments, according to Pew research. They’re more likely than GenX’ers to use the web to gather information, nearly as likely to shop online, and they’re avid consumers of digital health information.

Beyond those usage patterns, we’ll see a general “graying trend” online in the years ahead as the overall U.S. population mix turns older. At the same time, over the next ten years the 50+ web audience will include more of today’s younger Boomers — and their Internet usage patterns point the way toward some of the most interesting future opportunities.

Older Boomers’ Internet usage mirrors the overall population — they tend to use big portal sites, do their banking and shop online. By contrast, younger Boomers — age 40 to 49 — are much more attracted to niche websites, blogs, multimedia and social networking applications, according to Ken Doctor, of Content Bridges, a digital content consultancy.

“In the early going, things like podcasts and video are seen as gadgets — they’re for early adopters,” argues Doctor. “As these technologies become easier over the next five years or so, there will be adoption by a broader range of Internet users,” he argues. “It won’t seem as geeky.”

One Boomer-focused site already is leveraging social networking and Web 2.0 technologies. Eons, launched in the summer of 2006 by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, is the largest website launch to date that specifically targets the 50+ market. The site’s traffic recently topped 500,000 unique visitors per month, and is challenging AARP to be the highest-traffic site for 50+ Americans.

Site users need to be at least 50 to register on the site — or at least, claim that they are. Founder Jeff Taylor’s slogan: “Let’s live to 100 or die trying.”

Eons’ biggest success is the way it engages members with its tools for social networking and user-generated content. These include discussion boards, online self-assessment tools, and content ranking and voting systems.

Says Linda Natansohn, Eons’ senior vice president of strategic development: “Every tool we put out, our members use. And, community is growing like wildfire on the site.” Eons hosts over 1,000 discussion groups, many of them created by users. “Some of the largest ones have 5,000 members, and they’re spawning new ones,” she says.

Eons’ experience points toward lots of online opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to tap into the burgeoning 50+ market in the years ahead. In fact, the Eons list of top searches offers a good road map for online entrepreneurs gauging possible niche website launches for the 50+ market. The most popular topics in 2006:

• Alternative health
• Entertainment
• Finances
• Health/disease
• Hearth & home
• Hobbies/fitness
• Ones to watch
• Relationships
• Travel spots
• Web 101

How’s that for a list of possible niche website launch topics? It’s not hard to imagine smaller web-based businesses succeeding in these areas. The key here is to provide highly targeted value-added content and services in the areas most demanded by aging boomers, provided effective traffic-building strategies are applied, and expenses are kept in check.

“The web is increasingly a really efficient way to do very specific targeting,” says Eon’s Linda Natansohn. “You need to have a very specific niche, and get smart about search engine marketing and tactics. There definitely will be room for smaller businesses.”

I recently asked Mary Furlong, who has been watching the Boomer generation closely since the mid-1980s, where she sees the best entrepreneurial opportunities in the Boomer market. Mary heads Mary Furlong & Associates and recently published a new book on Boomer entrepreneurs called “Turning Silver into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplace.”

“Remember ‘Plastics, Benjamin’ from The Graduate?” she said. “Now, it’s blood sugar and reverse mortgages. When you look at the big categories for new businesses they all relate to security and longevity for older people — money management, wealth transfer, lowering their bills and home income plans.”

“Eldercare is a another giant category. Everything from in-home services to adult day care, new assisted living solutions and cognitive fitness classes and fashion. We haven’t even imagined the services boomers will need when they start to need eldercare. And travel is just enormous. Boomers and their grandchildren are the fastest growing part of the travel business.”

* * * * *

About the Author: Mark J. Miller is president of 50+Digital LLC, a multimedia publishing and consulting company serving the information needs of Baby Boomers. He also writes the 50+ Digital blog.

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