America is getting older and more entrepreneurial.
By 2030, nearly 20% of all Americans will be 65 or older,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s up from 13% in 2010 and just under
17% by 2020. This so-called “Silver
Tsunami” is predicted to change many aspects of American working life,
according to the Fall 2014 “Public Policy and Aging Report” from the National
Academy on Aging, a policy arm of the Gerontological Society of America.
Entrepreneurs: Older, working longer, harder and better
The report predicts that Americans will be working longer and
retiring later.
And many of them will choose self-employment as a way to keep
working, with record numbers of senior entrepreneurs starting small businesses.
A Kauffman Foundation study found that
in the past decade Baby Boomers between 55 and 64 launched new business
start-ups at the highest rate of any age group. And the average age of small
business owners is rising as well, with over half ages 50 and over in 2012, up
from 46% in 2007, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
The reasons are varied, but because Americans are living on
average longer and healthier lives than previous generations, many are able to
extend their working lives. And by continuing to work they can also stretch
their retirement savings and according to some research are likelier to remain
physically and mentally healthy longer.
Elizabeth Isele,
founder and president of Senior Entrepreneurship Works, a forum for education,
training and advocacy supporting senior entrepreneurship, said seniors are
starting businesses of “every imaginable kind” at record rates. “They bring
tremendous experience —human resource and general life experience—to the
table,” Isele said. “One of the biggest challenges is identifying themselves as
entrepreneurs. Many other seniors are
intimidated by the word entrepreneur. We try to help people decode their
entrepreneurial experience by identifying experiences that help them discover
they have been acting entrepreneurially all of their lives. We try to ground
them in those insights.”
Isele said
entrepreneurial skills can be developed through many life experiences. She said
a single mother of four who needs to transport her children to multiple events
simultaneously develops entrepreneurial skills. She explained that seniors who
are considering starting a business are incredibly vital human beings with
energy and life skills.
‘We work with them on
how to assess and evaluate their ideas, how to pay for launching it,” she said,
noting that the program features a strong pre-assessment component. “We want
them to be realistic about the financial risks and time commitments and to do
this before they put a dime on the table.”
Isele herself is a
senior entrepreneur, a retired trade book publisher at Harper & Row in New
York City who first started teaching seniors technology in Maine. Those early
courses grew from teaching 12 seniors in Portland, Me., to more than 28,000
across the U.S. She was the director of
a philanthropy roundtable in Washington, D.C., and worked with a wide spectrum
of people to become more economically self-reliant.
Survival rates grow with age
In 2012, finding no
programs to help seniors start their own businesses, Isele created an umbrella
structure, Senior Entrepreneurship Works to educate seniors about starting
businesses.
“Whenever we have
workshops, we make sure to include some infrastructure to support their
efforts, such as banks that offer discounts on loans to seniors, who are some
of most responsible borrowers there are.”
Isele said a Kauffman Foundation report found that the life
and business experience seniors bring improves the chances of their businesses’
success, noting that the survival rate of new businesses increases with the
owner’s age. She said a MetLife Foundation survey found that 34 million Baby
Boomers want to start their own businesses and, as an age group, own businesses
at higher rates than any other.
She said some senior entrepreneurs start businesses because
they lost their jobs or were forced into retirement earlier than they planned.
Others recognized after retiring that they lacked the financial resources to
enjoy a comfortable retirement. Still others planned for years to start
businesses once they left their earlier careers.
She pointed to research finding that senior entrepreneurs are
more successful, with 70% of their startups lasting an average of three years,
while only 28% of younger generations last that long.
‘A person with experience’
Ann Arno Fishman doesn’t like being called a senior. “Call me
a person with experience,” said Fishman is the president of Generational
Targeted Marketing, a consulting firm she launched after the age of 50.
“A lot of
Baby Boomers have worked a lifetime at jobs they may not have been in love
with,” she said. “Now they have a chance to experience something they always
wanted to do, often in hobbies they love. Now is their time to go into their second
or third career, to be their own boss and do the thing they love, to do what
they would have done with their lives if they had the chance. Now is chance to
define what it is that makes them happy: the passion of their lives. Now is the
time to for it.”
Fishman said many
Baby Boomers regard their older years as best times of their lives.
“The challenge is how
to make it the happiest time, most satisfying time of their lives,” she said.
Fishman went back to school when her son was in third grade as the only older
person in class. She wrote a paper about it that drew the interest of a Tulane University
conference on aging, which published it.
“I found that there seemed to be no role for
the last third of our lives: it was fill in the blank. But I learned that the last
third can be the best.”
She left her government
service job and a hospital called her about reaching the seniors market. “I realized
that there is a market for people like me to translate for the various
generations: the boomers, silents and the GI generation. We lump them all together
as seniors, but they’re quite different. And if companies don’t understand
their different lifestyles, they won’t know how to market and reach them.”
Ken Rone, a retired vice president of manufacturing now servings
as a mentor with the Senior Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), said senior
entrepreneurs are all pursuing a dream, an idea or a vision.
“SCORE’s job to try to mold that vision and guide them through the
realities of the business world,” Rone said. “Senior entrepreneurs have a more seasoned, reasoned
and more realistic approach to that vision. They have perhaps been playing with
concepts and trying out hypothetical ideas for some time. By the time they get
to us at SCORE they might have better organization of what they want to pursue,
even up to a business plan.”
He said today a wide array of resources are available to assist
seniors interested in creating new businesses, from private foundations and
forums to membership organizations and state and federal agencies. He pointed
out that the Small Business Administration and the AARP teamed up in 2012 with
efforts to reach out to 100,000 encore entrepreneurs.
In 2012, Senior Entrepreneurship Works Founder Isele addressed the
first U.S. Senate Hearing on Senior Entrepreneurship, urging senators to avoid
the ‘doom and gloom’ that some have painted the coming ‘Silver Tsunami,’ labeling
it as an impending crisis.
“We, as a
society, need to recognize seniors are one of our greatest natural resources,” she
testified. “They are not a ‘silver tsunami’;
they are a silver lining, yielding golden dividends.”
Resources for Aspiring Senior
Entrepreneurs
- The U.S. Small Business Administration: includes links to SBA
District offices, SCORE chapters and other resources. https://www.sba.gov/tools/local-assistance/districtoffices - SBA resources for people over 50: https://www.sba.gov/content/50-entrepreneurs
- SBA Learning Center: Encore Entrepreneurs: An Introduction
to Starting Your Own Business https://www.sba.gov/tools/sba-learning-center/training/encore-entrepreneurs-introduction-starting-your-own-business - AARP tips on starting a new business: www.aarp.org/startabusiness
- Kaufman Foundation FastTrack for 50
plus: http://fasttrac.org/entrepreneurs/fasttrac-courses-for-boomers.aspx - Aging 2.0: organization that promotes innovation to
improve the lives of seniors. http://www.aging2.com/about/ - Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Center on
Aging and Work at Boston College: research and information about
multi-generational workforce. http://www.bc.edu/research/agingandwork/ - SeniorEntrepreneurshipWorks: Entrepreneurship and aging education and
training information. http://seniorentrepreneurshipworks.org/about.php
