Baby Boomer - Do You Have The Disposition To Be An Entrepreneur?

Baby Boomer - Do You Have The Disposition To Be An Entrepreneur?

My dictionary says "tendency or inclination"...perhaps a natural inclination. I wonder if you and I have a disposition toward being a baby boomer entrepreneur.

The world around us is changing

As we face the issues of retirement, many of the choices we made earlier in your lives may not support the reality we face today. Does the fact that we worked for someone in earlier times of our life keep us from adopting the solution that may work better as we face new times in our life?

Does our disposition about financing our living need to change too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqjJGTwK13U

Many baby boomers are retiring at the end of the era of defined pension plans. They have established pensions that will meet their income needs and insurance plans that cover their health needs. May others have saved enough to cover these two big fears of baby boomers: 1) having enough money to cover their living expenses and 2) having a way to meet their healthcare needs.

The next tier of baby boomers face these same two problems and hope to cover them with an encore career. This might come in the form of working longer before retiring, working either full or part time. It might include becoming an encore entrepreneur in a more traditional business where they provide products or services that depend upon their personal efforts to meet the needs of their customers.

The third tier of baby boomers look to approach the problem differently. They look to create an income generating asset that will not ultimately depend upon them being able to be healthy to work to produce income. The asset will be able to provide for their needs. This is more typically another form of baby boomer entrepreneurship. This is creating a business that does not depend upon you to run the day to day operations. This may well be your best solution if you don't already have a defined pension plan or have not saved enough assets to cover your retirement.

This third tier depends upon developing a business where you work smarter rather than harder. You create a business as an organization apart from you that meets both your needs and the needs of the organization. The needs of the organization are basically the needs of your employees and the needs of your customers.

Many people believe this this is not possible, however we see examples of this around us every day. The most common example is that of the fast food franchise. Franchise owners do not set out planning to work behind the counter all their lives. They develop systems to run the business and hire managers to run the systems. That is how we hear about people who own hundreds of stores. Secondly, the asset they own can be sold to someone else to fund their future needs.

A second example is the corporation for which you may have been working for years. Do the shareholders, the owners of that corporation, show up to work everyday? Generally, the answer is "no". People are hired to produce the results that are defined by the shareholders.

Do you have the disposition to be that special type baby boomer entrepreneur?

Is your disposition fixed? Do we have the opportunity to change our disposition to become something we have never considered before? Can you reinvent yourself or is it too late?

This video is a Minute With Maxwell. In it, legendary personal coach John Maxwell shares his thinking about our dispositions. I think that if you watch it you will hear him tell you that you can change your disposition. Not only can you put on an entrepreneurial mindset, you can put on a mindset that will allow you to accomplish far more than you think you can accomplish as you read this post. I believe the answer is yes, you can. 

What's  the next step?

Watch the short video by John Maxwell and decide about your disposition. If your disposition is to begin shaping your entrepreneurial mindset, join our mailing list. My Baby Boomer Business Dream.

Brought to you by Shallie Bey, Founder - Smarter Small Business Blog
 ~ The Business Dream Weaver

Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, What Is Your Problem?

Roman Ross and I met for breakfast at a truck stop in Dallas. It was a great way for old friends to begin the new year. We like the buffet at the truck stop, having met there for breakfast before. It has good food and lots of variety, all at a reasonable price.

We were greeted by a very gracious server who seated us and brought menus. Roman asked her if there would be a buffet. The server told us the buffet wouldn't be open for about thirty minutes. Or, we could order anything we wanted from the menu. Roman told her we would wait for the buffet. The server brought us coffee. While we waited, we began to discuss the problems of the world, especially the new ones that have unfolded since our last visit.

New Year's Day is always a good time to discuss the topic of change. Change influences options. For many of us baby boomers, change seems to have reduced our options. We are older. For many of us, our problems are health related: vision, mobility, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Perhaps our problem is from our history. We might have issues lingering from earlier in life. We might not have the "right college major". We might have dropped out of college. We migh not have gone to college.

Perhaps our problem is from our present. We are getting a divorce. We don't have a job. Our industry that we have worked in all our life is dead, downsized, or outsourced. Our car isn't running.

The key to our future is recognizing and understanding problems. This is not about problems in the since of our personal sources of vexation and perplexity. We must understand the problems of people around us. We must think of problems in the sense of being a question raised for consideration or a solution.

All around us, people have problems that require solutions. People are eager to find solutions to their problems and will look upon you as a hero if you can show them effective solutions. They will pay you to help them find solutions when they don't know how to solve their problems.

Just as I was sharing my point about the word "problems" having two definitions, I noticed the servers were opening the buffet. Before I could suggest to Roman that we head over, I realized that people were getting up all over the restaurant. They were making their way to the buffet in mass.

Roman and I just sat and drank a bit more coffee. We watched the people serving themselves. The buffet became our case study on solving problems of people around us. We saw how the restaurant manager became the hero for 25 - 30 people by opening the buffet...by providing what the people wanted.

Though it was not obvious when we first arrived, it looked like nearly everyone in the restaurant was waiting for the buffet. Presumaby, we were all hungry. We could have ordered from the menu pretty much anything that we would have taken from the buffet. But we all wanted the buffet.

The solution to our hunger problem was not just food, but food delivered in a special way. The buffet gave us a package with options under our control. We could have what we wanted, with any combination we wanted, and as much as we wanted. As one of the hamburger commercials promises, we could have it "OUR WAY" and we had control of the maximum price.

Having once been a restaurant owner, I enjoy referring to delivering your product or service in such a special way as your "special sauce". YOUR special sauce is what makes your solution different and...to the taste of your customer. A hamburger can be a commodity like a light bulb if there is no way to tell one from another. A hamburger becomes special when your special sauce gives the hamburger a taste that makes your customer drive across town...to get a hamburger that tastes exactly the way they want it to taste.

So the way we create opportunities or options in our future is not to study the problems that limit us. Success is in studying the problems limiting those around us. We want to offer solutions to their problems. Our problems must have our "special sauce"...the way that not only fills their hunger, but in a way exactly according to their taste. Our special sauce makes it impossible for anyone else to solve their problem our way. Your problem is to find solutions to things vexing and frustrating those around you. The solutions to the problems of others are your doorway to new opportunities.

So, baby boomer entrepreneur, look around and discover the problems of health, the problems of the past, and the problems of the present...the problems that limit and vex those around you. Be the leader in solving a problem or some aspect of the problem, so you can help those around you. We call that a niche. What problem of others will you adopt for the purpose of finding solutions? To whom will you be a hero? So, baby boomer entrepreneur, what is your problem?


Shallie
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PS...Do you need help with your baby boomer business? Do you want to develop your special sauce? Join our free mailing list. Just fill on the box in the top right corner of this page. I will share with you some of the best business building tips available for free on the Internet. We can help you find your problem, the one that will solve the needs of your customers and will make you their hero.

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, Would You Like A Free Pass to the Classrooms of the Top Scholars In Your Field?

Could you benefit from hearing the key issues in astronomy, biology, chemistry, or our beloved topic of entrepreneurship? Would that help you find and develop your business ideas?

In our topic of entrepreneurship, there are 737 free guest lectures on such issues as why you need a business plan -- to The 5 Essential Skills that Entrepreneurs Need.

This is the work of Richard Ludlow. Richard is a 22 year old Yale University student. He is also a finalist in Business Week’s 2008 competition for America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs.

Richard felt that many people could not have access to the top lecturers in fields of interest to them. The barriers might be money, location, or time. So he found a way to bring Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale to the students. As a Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, you get to benefit by being a fly on the wall. You can look for business opportunities, build your knowledge, or simply increase your skills in entrepreneurship, all for free.

Thanks to young entrepreneurs Xavier Lur for bringing this to our attention. Xavier blogs at

http://techxav.com/2009/03/10/academic-earth-features-video-lectures-from-the-worlds-top-scholars-for-free/’ .

Go visit Academic Earth at : http://academicearth.org/ . I recommend to you Five Critical Skills That Entrepreneurs Need by Jerry Kaplan: http://academicearth.org/lectures/five-critical-skills-that-entrepreneurs-need . If you want an alternative view to Jerry Kaplan, you might want to see http://www.slate.com/id/2712/ .

Shallie Bey

A Reply to: Is Gladwell Right About What’s Most Likely to Make You Successful?

Some weeks ago, I wrote a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers. One of the places I posted the review was on my blog page for the Society for Word of Mouth.

Kare Anderson, a fellow member of the Society for Word of Mouth and a blogger, shared with me her blog post about this book and some "cautionary concerns" about Gladwells conclusions.

I want share with you, dear reader, some of the magic that comes with the world of blogging. I wanted to take some time to give her a thought out response. I would like to share that with you here.

The following are excerpts copied from Kare’s post. I want to encourage you to see her full post and share a link at the end of the excerpts.

It took me awhile to finally decide to write this post as it runs against the tide of most readers’ opinions. And many feel strongly as I discovered at dinner last night with friends, but here goes. Outliers purports to reveal the real reason some people — like Bill Joy, the Beatles and Bill Gates— are successful. Yet what Malcolm Gladwell finds is, as Michiko Kakutani notes, “little more than common sense” – except when he draws conclusions about what’s most important for success.

I admit that my summary of the book is not as fascinating or sticky as the

vignettes in it, yet see if Gladwell’s conclusions surprise you:

1. Talent alone is not enough to ensure success.

2. Opportunity, hard work, timing and luck are also essential.

3. Poor children are less likely to succeed than those raised in rich or middle-class families.

4. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become successful.

The first three seem blindingly obvious yet I disagree about what’s most important. And he over-generalizes. While it’s also obvious that mastery improves one’s chance for success, his conclusion that there’s a magic amount of practice time cannot be substantiated by the studies, interviews (Bill Joy, for example) and stories he offers…

…As Isaac Chotiner concludes, Gladwell “dislikes attributing individual accomplishment to the accomplishing individuals. He has set out to prove that people with social advantages do better than people without social advantages, and so the really wise thing for society to do is to arrange for more advantages for more people.” In fact Gladwell never really defines success.

Here’s my problem. He plays up the power of cultural background, timing and economic class and downplays the role in success of talent and perseverance...

You can read her full post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2009/01/29/is-gladwell-right-about-what%e2%80%99s-most-likely-to-make-you-successful/#comment-2125

This is my response in turn:

Kare,

Thank you for your kindness in sharing your "cautionary notes" about Gladwell's conclusions. I agree with your topics of caution to varying degrees. I think that is exactly the issue, that we do not have mathematical precision on how to measure some of the points. I visited your blog and enjoyed not only your comments but those of your readers as well.

I posted a rather long response there that I would like to elaborate on here. I think Gladwell did take into account personal responsibility and perseverance and such things as deliberate collaboration. He lumps them under what he calls "meaningful work".

He says: "Those three things -- autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward -- are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying...work that fulfills those three criteria is meaningful...hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning...once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig...the most important consequences of the miracle of the garment industry, though, was what happened to the children growing up in those homes where meaningful work was practiced...a lesson crucial to those who wanted to tackle the upper reaches of a profesion like law or medicine: if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world."

Just as I pieced the run on sentence from pages of discussion on meaningful work, I think meaningful work is the tread that holds it all together. I suspect that it is not that Gladwell ignores the concept of purposeful effort that he focuses upon the cultural issues. I think he makes the point that people flounder until their culture gives them the opportunity to discover purposeful effort. So, my conclusion is that if you were to sit down with Mr. Gladwell, he would agree with your cautionary concerns, except perhaps about the 10,000 hours. It is the combination of advantage, however it is produced, with meaningful work, that ultimately marks the path of the outlier.

For the convenience of readers to this blog, I will share below my more detailed post to your blog.

Thanks for taking time to both read my original post and to share with me your observations. As a blogger, you know how precious a gift that is.

Shallie
____________________________________

Kare,

Thanks for a very thoughtful set of comments about Outliers. I do believe you are correct to say that the ideas should not be accepted unchallenged. Like many things around us, this is a story of trends and probabilities. There is no exact science that we can develop at this point that describes everything perfectly.

I tend to agree with your challenge of the 10,000 hour rule, for example. I have heard it said that one can become exceedingly knowledgeable about many things with 1,000 hours of study. One thousand hours for you and I as newbie bloggers will leave us much more talented than we were at hour five. The same is true for learning to drive a car, learning a foreign language, or playing softball.

I do believe that Gladwell is right about building upon successions of advantage. Small advantages can grow into large advantages. As a former venture capitalist, for example, I did some research on the probability of someone getting financing from a venture capital company. The odds are small that you will get any attention at all, perhaps one in 100 at the time. But if you could get attention to your idea, the investor began to help you think it through and your odds went to one in five. Similar numbers apply to getting your book published or even finding the perfect date with an on-line profile.

In my own personal life, I can see much of the trend that Gladwell discusses. People often ask me how I got from being a minority kid from a low income family in a steel town to the point of being visible to the President of the United States and appointed to be Superintendent of the United States Mint Philadelphia, the world’s largest Mint.

I can assure you that I did not start my youth with that as an aspiration. However, after a couple close scrapes with death, I did know that I did not want to be a steelworker all of my life. I had above average academic skills and was named a National Achievement Scholar by National Merit Corporation. That lead to a degree in engineering from Purdue University, which lead to sharing an office with an engineer who worked on a taskforce doing operations research, sort of a combination of engineering, operational planning, and finance in a refinery. When he was temporarily moved to fill another critical role, I was assigned to step up to fill in for him because we had become friends and I had been interested in what he was doing.

We discovered that I had a talent for this stuff and I was nominated to fill a position as a financial analyst in a new division that was being formed to train some oil people in understanding non-oil related business as a possible diversification strategy. I assumed a managerial role and officer title in a very small subsidiary of a very large corporation. This created eventually an opportunity to back up my trial and error education in business by going to a little school down the street, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

So when the head of the search team looking to fill the position of the President’s appointee to Superintendent of the United States Mint Philadelphia came to town, he and his team talked with engineers, and oil company executives, and bar association chancellors, and bankers, and the Dean of Wharton. One of the things they asked was if they knew any minority person who might be a good candidate for them to interview since the President wanted to make some non-traditional appointments of minorities.

I was not on the top of anyone’s list, but I was on everyone’s list. That got me the first interview. And that interview was much like the eye to eye meeting with a venture capitalist or the endorsement of a literary agent for your book. It changed my odds.

And interestingly enough, my advantage was I had been a steel worker as a kid. I had worked on the bottom rung as a laborer in exactly the same type of heavy industrial environment as the Mint. My ultimate advantage was the disadvantage that got me started on my course of self-improvement.

Surely there is much more detail to how finally getting noticed led to my selection, nomination and ultimate Senate confirmation to become the 16th Superintendent, the youngest in the history of the United States and the first African American. Yet, the point is clear to me that my life correlates exactly to Gladwell’s hypothesis. I worked hard in one way or another every day of my life, but working hard was not sufficient to make me step into a small place in history. Everyone around me worked hard.

Shallie Bey

Smarter Small Business Blog

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs - Don't Expect To Build Your Business By Accident

Baby Boomers who are becoming entrepreneurs have serious intentions of building businesses that go beyond being hobbies. Research shows that they expect to build businesses that will support and fund their desired lifestyles rather than opting for the traditional path of retirement. Unfortunately, many are depending on building the business into a success without being willing to plan for success.

Regardless of the industry, most new entrepreneurs start with a common problem. As an entrepreneur, you face the challenge of establishing a complex business with limited resources and limited time. You have very little room for big mistakes. Because the challenge is bigger than what you can do by yourself, you have to involve others: employees, independent contractors, investors, and possibly even partners. And of course, your ultimate success is based upon how you are received by customers.

As a professional entrepreneur, it is your job to set the expectations for the business, for all aspects of the business, for everyone associated with your business. People often refer to this as having the entrepreneurial mindset, being willing to accept responsibility for what you are creating.

People often think of the business plan as a tool to raise money. Your business plan is far more importantly your tool for designing and operating your business. Writing your plan does not have to be as complex and time consuming as most people expect that it must be to produce results. One very good resource comes from Jim Horan, a skilled writer dispensing advice to entrepreneurs and author of The One Page Business Plan: The Fastest, Easiest Way to Write a Business Plan.

It is in accepting the responsibility for creating your expectations for your business and seeing that they are properly aligned with the expectations of your customers and employees that you avoid the trap of depending upon things to come together by accident. It is in defining and aligning expectations that you differentiate your business in the marketplace. This is what makes you stand out from the commodity businesses.

The overwhelming majority of business owners either fail to establish expectations or to communicate the expectations they hold locked in their minds. They think that common sense should tell people what to expect. They fail to establish specific systems that explain to customers how they will be served. They fail to establish systems and procedures that employees follow to make sure that customers get exactly what was promised to them.

People so often depend upon everything to come together by accident. What people fail to understand is there is no such thing as common sense. What we call common sense is actually an agreement or alignment of our expectations that results from dialog over time. By establishing the expectations on how you will serve the market, what promises you will make to your customers and how you will keep those promises, you make your business stand out from the many that lack direction and only do the same thing twice in a row by accident. That is how customers develop the common sense to come to you rather than other sources in the market, you are consistent in meeting your promises. Customers can feel in control because if what you promised is exactly what they want, they know exactly where to go to get what they want. They come to you.

Don’t assume your serious intentions are automatically built into your business. Take specific calculated steps to: 1) create the vision; 2) document your vision; and 3) find a way to express it to others so they can join you in delivering on your promises. Delivering on your promises cannot depend upon everything coming together by accident. Build your business on the solid foundation of a plan that honors the needs of everyone, you, your customers, and your employees alike. Make your plan. Make your promises. Deliver on what you promise. Expect it to all come together by plan, not by accident.

Shallie Bey

Andrea Stenberg, blogger for Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, was one of the first to report on the Bank of Montreal study about the serious intentions of baby boomer entrepreneurs. You can see her post at:

http://thebabyboomerentrepreneur.com/28/ipsos-reid-study/comment-page-1/#comment-852 .

For more insights on The One Page Business Plan, see the free resource directory I have created on How To Write A One Page Business Plan at:

http://www.squidoo.com/One-Page-Business-Plan

New Video for Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs

Baby Boomer business owners and Baby Boomers wanting to start businesses, we have a new video for you. It shares some of the key things you must consider to avoid the treacherous water with hidden dangers for new businesses. Topics include:

• Are you looking to join the alternative retirement trend?
• Are you starting a business to remain active?
• Do you want to establish a new work/life balance?
• What you need to build into the design of your business to make it work for you.
• Why you must slow down to get it done faster.
• Some things your life experiences will not prepare you to do.
• Where do you look to find the right tools?

I hope you enjoy it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzSVLQUTxYs

Shallie Bey

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, You Must Do More Than Just Buy Yourself A Job

Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964, are starting businesses at amazing levels. Though Global Entrepreneurship Week and similar efforts are focused upon getting young people to explore entrepreneurship, it is the Baby Boomer business owners who are answering the call at unprecedented levels. And if they don’t start right, they will experience failure at unprecedented levels. That is why you, as a Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, want to start smarter.

One of the key factors driving this trend is a change in the way people in this age group seem to view retirement. A recent USA Today/Gallop poll says that 63% of non-retired adults in the United States plan to work into retirement. These polls were taken during sound financial times and most people say they made the choice for non-financial reasons. Most say they get enjoyment from work. They just want to work for themselves rather than their current boss.

The vast majority of people who start businesses do so because they want to work for themselves rather than for someone else. This practice, often referred to as “Buying a Job”, is probably the underlying cause for most small business failure.

They jump into a business where they do the same type of work they were doing for someone else. So cooks open restaurants. Auto mechanics open repair shops. Pharmacists open pharmacies. And technically trained people become consultants. The problem is that knowing how to do the work in a business, knowing how to manage the work of that business, and knowing how to own that type of business are three different roles. If you are not working on all three roles, the odds of success are small.

People who do the work of the business, often open the doors thinking that people will beat a path to their door because they are the best at what they do. But the problem is that though you may be the best, people have to know you are out there before they can do business with you.

Excited that a few people stumble upon them, business owners often sell the service or product at attractive pricing, usually close to the amount you would have gotten paid when you were working for your old boss. But you now have overhead that your boss had to cover that was above a beyond what he paid you. You have telephones, electricity, and perhaps even some help that you never had to consider before. So how do you price what you are doing to make sure your can make money at this business?

And if you get lots of customers because word does get out that you do a good job, how do you avoid working longer hours than you worked before to serve your customers and make enough money to enjoy your “semi-retirement”. After all, that was the plan wasn’t it? You just wanted to do a little something to keep your mind alert while enjoying this new form of retirement, right?

With proper planning, these and other problems that tend to cause business failure can be overcome. And yes, they can be overcome much more easily than you expect. We hear about the high rates of business failures, but the failures are not 100% of businesses started. You want to know what the successful people are doing differently.

Three Tips For Getting Started At Something Bigger Than Buying Yourself A Job

First – There are many resources available online for free that will help you get the lay of the land. In response to the Baby Boomer Entrepreneurship trend, the US Small Business Administration has created a special web site to support Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs. Do a web search on Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs and you should find this site and other free resources.

Second – Get a good grasp of why businesses fail and what to do about it. Probably the best resource on this is the work of the author Michael E. Gerber. His book, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, is probably the best reference around. It is an easy reading book that will get you pointed in the right direction. A search under Michael Gerber’s name or for the book will give you a number of free resources including information from the book and interviews of Michael about how to work smarter rather than harder.

Finally – If you want to get going faster and to improve your odds of success, get some personal coaching from someone to help you apply the principles specifically. This can help you get off to a good start in understanding the entrepreneurial mindset, the ways you have to think differently to be successful as a business owner.

If you follow these principles you can experience the success that is being sought by Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs. You can have a profitable business that continues to fund your lifestyle. You can have a lifestyle with proper work/life balance instead of a life consumed by your business. You can join the successful Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs.

For more free resources on Baby Boomer Entrepreneurship, go to:

http://www.squidoo.com/Baby-Boomer-Entrepreneurs

Shallie Bey

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs - What's It All About?

Baby boomer entrepreneurs are starting businesses at unprecedented levels. Is this a new breakthrough in gracefully aging and making contributions to society, a new form of work life balance? Or is this another fad like the hula hoop that marks the progress of Baby Boomers into a new set of distractions?

Many of the comments from surveys suggest that Baby Boomers enjoy their work but simply don’t like the place where they work. So the solution is to start a business.

This sounds remarkably like what the sage of why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it, Michael Gerber, calls the Entrepreneurial Seizure. Is it about not having a boss? Is it about finally being the boss? Is it about being free from the limitations of working for somebody else? If it is, get the baby aspirin before the full seizure comes on. You are about to create “a business” with a mind of it’s own and that plans to enslave you.

If all you do is to start a business so you can create a place to work, will your dreams of work life balance come true, Baby Boomer Entrepreneur? Will you find happiness or yourself working for a new slave driver?

As the sub title to Michael Gerber’s great book, The E-Myth Revisited suggests, we know why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. A good place for you to start will be the free directories I have compiled for you on Michael Gerber’s work and on issues relating to Baby Boomer Entrepreneurship.

Join the Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs
http://www.squidoo.com/Baby-Boomer-Entrepreneurs

Michael Gerber and the Book The E-Myth Revisited
http://www.squidoo.com/Entrepreneurship_The_E_Myth_Revisited

Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, my fellow Baby Boomer, if you are going to do this, and I hope you will, make sure you know what it’s all about.

Shallie Bey

Seth Godin on the Number One Secret of the Great Blogs

Seth Godin wrote a very interesting blog post this morning. He says that the number one secret of the great blogs is that every one of them leads a tribe. The function of the blog, he says, is to be the standard bearer, the north star that tribe members can point to as a place to meet or for ideas to circle around. The blog isn’t about the writer, it’s about the readers.

Since reading Seth’s new book, Tribes, I have been trying to define in my mind the specific tribe for which the Smarter Small Business Blog is written. Of course, it is written for owners of businesses or people who want to become owners of businesses. Yet, it is not written for just any owner, but those who are or want to be true entrepreneurs. Even among true entrepreneurs, there are people who want to do things the hard way and those who want to be smart about what they are doing so that they can have a better work – life balance. I believe that is the tribe to which this blog is directed. It is written for the Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs who are forming new businesses at a rate that exceeds every other age group. It is also written for the young people who are responding to the challenge of Global Entrepreneurship Week to explore entrepreneurship as their way of making a mark on the future.

I guess that to lead this Tribe of Entrepreneurs, this blog must be about helping entrepreneurs find the Tribe that they will lead in the marketplace. We shall focus upon this in upcoming posts.

For now, if you would like to know more about this concept of Tribes, please see the Squidoo lens I have prepared for you. And if you want to see Seth’s direct comments on The Number one secret of great blogs, go see him at
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/the-number-one.html

Good luck at finding your Tribe. And if you are a member of that tribe of smart entrepreneurs who especially want a proper work – life balance, I hope you have found a home.

Shallie Bey

Track Back: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2123/35710502

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs

Baby Boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 are participating in Baby Boomer entrepreneurship at amazing levels. Though Global Entrepreneurship Week and similar efforts are focusing upon getting young people to explore entrepreneurship, it is the Baby Boomers who are answering the call at unprecedented levels.

In recognition that Americans aged 55 to 64 start small businesses at a higher rate than any other age group, the U.S. Small Business Administration has decided to focus upon making resources available to this sector. A new site, http://www.sba.gov/50plusentrepreneur offers help to explore the benefits of business ownership at this age. The site seeks to offer helpful information to make choices about business ownership.

One of the key factors driving this development is a change in the way people in this age group seem to view retirement. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll says that 63% of non-retired adults in the United States plan to work into retirement. Most interesting is that this poll was before the current economic collapse and that people were making this decision for non-financial reasons. Most were saying they made the choice for the enjoyment they get from work. Most certainly, with the impact of the drop in the financial market, this group will swell due to people having financial concerns.

One smart entrepreneurial idea may be helping Baby Boomers who want to become entrepreneurs. The SBA site includes an Experience Corps comment that the number of Americans age 55 and older will almost double between 2007 and 2030 - from 60 million to 107.6 million. That certainly sounds like a niche market opportunity.

This is not a new trend. Nearly half the country's self employed workers - 7.4 million - are so Baby Boomers according to the U.S. Department of Labor. And a recent AARP study conducted by RAND Corporation discovered that one in three self-employed workers age 51 to 69 made the transition to self-employment at or after age 50. See the SBA site for more facts. Also see our directory on Entrepreneurship for New Entrepreneurs.

Shallie Bey

Books for Entrepreneurs - The Back of the Napkin

When Dan Roam wrote The Back of the Napkin, he probably never thought he was writing a book for entrepreneurs. But that is exactly what he did. The book is about discovering ideas, developing ideas, and selling ideas. That is the entrepreneurship process. That is the way to develop entrepreneurial ideas and the foundation of the entrepreneurial mindset.

When Dan Roam wrote this book, he did have in mind presenting you with a set of visual thinking tools to help you learn how to tackle problems by looking better, seeing sharper, and imagining further. He does a marvelous job of accomplishing this task.

I have developed for my readers a Squidoo lens (Internet Directory) that takes you on a tour of the Internet on the topic of The Back of the Napkin. This site has excerpts from the book, YouTube presentations by the author and practical examples of how entrepreneurs have used this method to implement their entrepreneurial ideas. This is a great place to start if you are a young entrepreneur seeking to participate in Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Here is a quick sample of one of the videos you will find there.

Shallie Bey

Global Entrepreneurship Week Is Almost Here

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Is Global Entrepreneurship Week making you curious about how good an entrepreneur you can be? Well, the time to test yourself is coming closer and closer.

In November of 2008, during the week before Thanksgiving, the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Week will occur. It will encourage young people from around the world to explore entrepreneurship as a way of resolving many of the great challenges of the world.

In an effort to support Global Entrepreneurship Week I have scoured the Internet to collect some of the best advice on entrepreneurship that I could find. It is all organized on a Squidoo Directory to get you started.

This directory, called a lens by Squidoo, will 1) monitor the events leading up to Global Entrepreneurship Week, 2) Share insights on entrepreneurship, and 3) follow the progress once the event occurs.

Shallie Bey

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Entrepreneurship In A Word: Part 3 – Advisers

No matter how experienced you are as an entrepreneur, you depend upon growing by having good advisers. The challenge is making sure that your advisers are supporting your goals and dreams and not just selling you their own.

Joan Magretta, strategy editor of the Harvard Business Review during the 1990s and author of the delightful book, What Management Is: How It Works and Why It's Everyone's Business, has an interesting insight. She calls it “advice without context”.

She observed that the number of books and major articles on management has grown to over two thousand per year. Most of these focus upon a single idea in isolation and often out of context. But the practical reader wants ideas they can quickly use, so most literature is full of lessons learned and concrete to-do lists – the ten things you can do today to be effective or savvy.

The problem is that 10 things from each of 2000 sources suddenly turns into an overwhelming twenty thousand suggestions to you each year. This doesn’t even include the advice from friends, relatives, business consultants, customers, other successful entrepreneurs, and in today’s age the Internet. This is the problem of advice without context. Every piece of advice must be placed in the context of your personal goals and your business plan. This is the reason that you design your business plan to be your tool for designing your business. You must know not only what to do but why the advice supports your goals. So, as an entrepreneur, make sure you understand the motives of your advisers.

Entrepreneurship In A Word -- Identity

Entrepreneurial success begins with knowing who you ARE. Unfortunately, many of the success formulas that will be dangled before you will be based upon HAVE/DO/BE.

These advisors tell you that you must HAVE stuff to be able to DO the right things. And if you DO the right things, you will BE a success.

The true formula works exactly in reverse: BE/DO/HAVE. If you will BE who you are in a genuine way, you will DO the right things. If you DO the right things, you will HAVE genuine results.

The best advisors to entrepreneurs focus upon having you plan your life before planning your business.

Michael Gerber, famed author of The E-Myth Revisited, calls this finding your Primary Aim. He puts it this way:

"I doubt that by now you’d be surprised to find out that I don’t believe your
business to be the first order of business on your agenda.

You are.

Nor will you be surprised to hear that I don’t believe your business is your life, though it can play a significantly important role in your life.

But before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask these questions:

· What do I value most?

· What kind of life do I want?

· What do I want my life to look like?

· Who do I wish to be?

Your Primary Aim is the answer to all these questions."

Startup Nation has the same message: “Plan your life, then your business.”

See their excellent discussion of how to make this plan at:

http://www.startupnation.com/steps/55/
3751/1/1/create-life-plan.htm

Look for the download templates of the sample life plan and the template to create your own life plan.

A Symphony In Four Parts...The Art of Starting A New Business

Every business idea has to begin with a thought. That thought has to be developed. Regardless of the type business, there are certain universal principles that apply.

The 30 Day Challenge is designed to help an entrepreneur focus upon those principles to test the potential of a new idea. Ed Dale, the face of the 30 Day Challenge, shares the key concepts that he describes as a symphony. Like a symphony, it depends upon blending the right parts, in the right amount, in the right order, with the right timing.

Ed introduces the 30 Day Challenge and describes the four parts of the symphony:
1. Market Research
2. Traffic
3. Conversion
4. Product

A conservative estimate is that 95% of mistakes are made in the MARKET RESEARCH stage. This is because most people don't do the MARKET RESEARCH.

Following this universal pattern can't guarantee a success every time. The beauty is that it will help eliminate the stuff that will not work.

Whether you are doing a traditional business or an Internet business, the MARKET RESEARCH capability of the Internet opens new roads to success in starting a new business or growing an established business.

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Ed Dale's Free 30 Day Challenge In Marketing Training

The past 24 hours have been amazing to me as a lifelong learner. I have added a tremendous amount of marketing wisdom due to an absolutely free resource.

Ed Dale is a marketing leader who specializes in the Internet. He is offering his 4th 30 Day Challenge. This is a way of using Internet resources to market a business that is either online or bricks and mortar. It assumes that your total level of computer skill is to be able to open a browser and to use e-mail.

As a business coach, I spend a lot of time researching marketing issues and helping my clients. In the past 24 hours, what I have learned has at least doubled my efficiency.

Though the program began officially on August 1, you can still join. There are an amazing number of resources, particularly videos, to make it easy for you to catch up and work at your pace.

To get more information, follow this link:

http://www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com/challenge/25809

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Sir Richard Branson Knows Joe Polish…Joe Knows…

Early this week, I received a surprise gift box from Amazon.com containing a DVD and a note:

Enjoy the DVD!
Best, Joe Polish

Some advice givers say, “It’s not what you know, but who you know!”

Others say, “It’s not who you know, but who knows you!”

Still others say, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.

Regardless of which advice rings true for you, you need to know what Joe knows. Joe is one of the world’s leading advocates of relationship marketing: the concept that people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. And Joe proves the principle by investing in relationships, often by giving gifts like the DVD about the life of a famous man that he thought I would find inspiring.

Joe is one of the kindest, most generous people that I have ever met. Over the past three years that I have known him, he has expanded my horizons significantly.

Through such generosity in the form of charitable contributions, he came to know Sir Richard Branson. Not only personally benefiting from that association, Joe has opened doors for friends and clients of his company, Piranha Marketing, to gain access to that wisdom. He even recently arranged for a group to spend a week on Necker Island, Branson’s private island, to meet and talk with Sir Richard.

If you doubt how valuable an opportunity that can be, you need to know of the book, Millionaire Upgrade, by Richard Parkes Cordock. The book is inspired by the true story of an eight-hour flight with Sir Richard Branson. It describes the principles of success that a frustrated employee learned about becoming an entrepreneur when he was upgraded on a long haul flight and finds himself sitting next to a self-made billionaire.

The book shares eight principles and a “magic ingredient” that ties the principles together. Though I won’t share the details of the “magic ingredient”, I will share one portion of it:

“Never think you can do it alone – you can’t”

That is why I am thankful that Joe knows me!

Thanks Joe!

For more information on Joe Polish and to see him interview Sir Richard Branson, go to
http://www.joepolish.com/.

Doing Small Business In A Smarter Way

Small business owners face some of the toughest challenges on the planet. Like many of the top performers in various works, small business owners need executive coaches to help them polish their game.

Unfortunately, many small business owners are not aware of coaching and the value it offers. For others there is the fear that the cost of coaching will be more than they can afford. Business Rebirth is about making a place where you can get information to help you better understand coaching and get some help in a financially feasible manner.

As a small business coach, I am constantly searching for ideas that can help my clients. Business Rebirth will be a place to share some of my best findings with my virtual clients. We will discuss ideas on this blog and will flesh them out on the main web site www.businessrebirth.com. That site only has a place holder for the moment and will be constructed soon. In the mean time, share with me your questions about your biggest challenges as a small business owner. I will respond to those questions that have the widest appeal. Given time, I will also respond to you by private e-mail. You can e-mail me at shallie@businessrebirth.com.

See you soon!