Twitter - My Magic Carpet Ride

My father was a born in 1899. He lived in that rare time where he was barely old enough to serve in World War I and barely young enough to serve in World War II. He did both.

Full of curiosity and adventure, he decided to visit every one of the fortyeight states that then made up the USA. He rode the rails to realize his dream, passenger cars when he had money and freight trains when he didn't. He realized his dream between the wars. In 1949 he had his first born son and began a new journey, teaching me to dream.

Having inherited his taste for adventure, I wanted to do life at a bigger scale. I wanted to visit every continent of the world. I visited some continents, but was behind the pace I had hoped.

But three years ago today (July 31, 2008) a magic moment happened in my life. I had already decided that I wanted to begin sharing my business coaching skills with aspiring baby boomer entrepreneurs. These are the people born between 1946 and 1964, about 78 million in the United States alone. Many of these people have a taste for adventure and do not want to retire in the traditional manner. Many have a passion for something that they want to share with the world in the form of a business. Many also need help in developing the skills to convert their dreams into reality. My dream is to help them them reach their dreams.

Three years ago today, that magic moment happened while listening to Ed Dale...I learned about Twitter.

Ed is the face of a free training that happens each year called The Challenge (formerly the 30 Day Challenge). He teaches aspiring entrepreneurs to use the Internet at a tool to research business opportunities, a tool to market those opportunities, and a networking process to find others with a similar passion. I couldn't travel to every continent by rail, but I had something better, Ed helped me discover a magic carpet ride.

Twitter has taken me to every continent, except Anarctica...that will happen in time. I 've learned about people's passions and shared mine. I've made genuine friends during this three year journey. Thanks Dad, Ed Dale, and Twitter. To everyone else I extend this invitation:

RIDE WITH ME

You Are Probably Not A Natural Born Baby Boomer Entrepreneur

Should being a baby boomer entrepreneur be your encore career goal? Are you a natural born entrepreneur? Should owning your own business be the next step for you?

Many people feel that they have what it takes to be a baby boomer entrepreneur. YOU might be convinced that it is the logical next step because YOUR goals might be:

• To have more freedom in general in semi-retirement,
• To have better financial control over your life,
• To have greater control over how you use your time,
• To have more control over your intellectual or creative life.

All of these are great goals. But they don't require becoming a baby boomer entrepreneur. Plus becoming an entrepreneur has around a 90% failure rate. You are probably not a natural born baby boomer entrepreneur. You might want to explore your alternatives to accomplishing such goals.

My first suggestion to you is visiting the creators of the above video, encore.org They will show you how to think about "combining purpose, passion, and a paycheck". However, they will show you alternatives, including the possibility of becoming a baby boomer entrepreneur.

1. If you determine becoming an entrepreneur is still your goal,
2. If you decide that you are committed to developing a business that aligns with your needs, values, and beliefs,
3. If you decide owning a business is what you want, not what someone else wants for you,
4. COME BACK AND SEE ME!

You can accomplish what you want. But be sure what you are trying to accomplish IS what you want.

Shallie

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What Will Happen As Baby Boomers Hit Retirement Age?

Baby Boomers Approach Age 65 - Glumly - The Philadelphia Bulletin

The "Age Wave" is about to hit retirement. Baby boomers, from the very beginning, have changed the world as they hit various stages of life. Some describe this as sort of like the bump a pig makes as it is being swallowed by a python.

We saw this Age Wave prompt the building of hospitals, baby food, elementary schools, and sports shoes. Nearly everything you can think of has been touched by the expanding demand of the baby boomer age wave.

In just a few days, the first baby boomers will turn 65, the traditional retirement age. Many things about how baby boomers think will make a mark on retirement as well. According to this research by the Pew Research Center, one week from today baby boomers will start turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 a day for the next 19 years.

Answers to questions in this study point us to some of the changes we can expect in the future. Baby boomers don't think 65 is old. Baby boomers want to have more control of their lives. These are some of the factors already pointing to the emerging trend of baby boomers quitting their "day jobs" and becoming entrepreneurs. This is resulting from a desire to have a change from traditional retirement.

If you are a baby boomer, if you are someone who wants to sell to baby boomers, you may want to read this report. It is likely to point you to needs that will have to be filled over the next two decades. Filling needs is the sweet spot in life for entrepreneurs. You might even be inspired to join the baby boomer entrepreneurs.

Shallie

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Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, Do You Want A Worthless Business?

If you are like most entrepreneurs, you are building your business primarily to give yourself a job. This is true not only for baby boomer entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs of all ages. If you are currently, or hope to be, one of the owners of the 23 million businesses in the U.S., and don't want to explore being able to build a business you can sell to someone else, this book is not for you.

However, if you want to maximize your options, this is the book you seek. If you want to be the 1 out of 100 business owners who have something of value that someone else would want to buy, this could be the book for you. If you are tired of the typical chaos of small business or you are tired of the business practices that make most service businesses unsellable, you may want to look over the shoulder of Alex Stapleton, the owner of the business discussed in this book. Learn why building a sell-able business might be your best option.

Following Alex through this fictional account as he learns how to build systems and a management team will expose you to new options. Even if you are already a fan of E-Myth's Michael Gerber, you will gain new insights on how to “work on your business and not just in it”. Through his story, author John Warrilow shares the benefit of much experience in actually doing what he teaches you to do in the book. You will learn what to do, how to do it, why to do it, when to do it, and how to handle situations with conflicting priorities. He even gives you an “8 Step Model For Selling Your Business” in the recap of what you should learn.

As baby boomers, a new business may be the best bet for a comfortable retirement. If you are already a baby boomer entrepreneur looking to downsize and form a different business, this book may help you. If your goal is to get freedom with your time, I recommend you take a look. You might even only want to sleep better knowing that you could sell your business if you want to do so.

READ Built To Sell if you want to know:
1. How long it will take you to prepare your business for sale.
2. How to find prospective buyers.
3. How to avoid being taken advantage of by your advisers or your prospective buyers.
4. How to reward your management team for helping you build a sell-able business and make them willing to stay with the business when you leave.

If you are a baby boomer entrepreneur, you will be delighted to learn how to turn your business into one you can sell. Of course, this is true for entrepreneurs of all ages.

For more videos and more information, see my Squidoo Lense: Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, Do You Want A Worthless Business?

Shallie Bey

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Baby Boomers - Especially Entrepreneurs - Seth Godin's New Book Linchpin Is For You

How can I make such a statement to you baby boomers? After all. Seth says:
- I didn't set out to get you to quit your job
- or to persuade you to become an entrepreneur
- or merely to change the world.

Yet, he also says: ...fearful employees are in pain. They're in pain because they're overlooked, underpaid, laid off, and stressed out.”

“You weren't born to be a cog in the great industrial machine. You were trained to be a cog.”
“ You were promised: Follow these instructions and you don't have to think”

Now I ask, who can he be speaking to other than baby boomers. Who has lived under this training longer than any other generations? All of our lives, we baby boomers have been “pushed to produce, to conform, and to consume”. That is why 77+ million of us are looking to end our work careers. That is why many of us are seeking an alternative to traditional retirement and searching for advice on how to start your baby boomer business. We don't want anymore “attendance based compensation”.

We want the choice to be indispensable and to make a difference. As consumers, employees, and business owners - we do not want to participate in the old model “of racing to make average stuff for average people in huge quantities”.

As baby boomer entrepreneurs, we are starting baby boomer businesses at an amazing clip. We are already half of all the self employed business owners in America. Baby boomer women are leading the way at business formation at about twice the rate of men.

Seth doesn't promise you a map. What he does provide is a compass to point you in the right direction. He does advise you to focus on the audience you choose. He advises you to listen to them to the exclusion of all others. He advises making these customers happy. “Let the other guys pound sand”.

Baby boomers, especially entrepreneurs...this one is for you!

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.

About InCouraged- Because Courage is Contagious

Who is Megan? Honestly, I don't have a clue. But Megan encouraged me today with a blog post.

Her blog is called InCouraged. The sub caption is..."Because Courage Is Contagious".

Megan shares a series of five posts this month that I have really enjoyed:
Dec. 1 - Being A Better Decider
Dec. 2 - Liberating Your Emotional Real Estate
Dec. 3 - Rounding Out Your Inner Circle
Dec. 4 - Adding Structure to Gain Freedom
Dec. 5 - An Open Letter to Aspiring Entrepreneurs

If you are considering becoming a baby boomer entrepreneur, I encourage you to check out InCouraged.

On her blog, Megan talks about an epiphany she had one day in the shower. She shares the story behind the birth of the blog. Let me just share with you this part of the story:

So why are we doing this? Because it takes courage to look fear in the face, embrace it, learn from it and convert it into a positive force that only you can create. And in this day and age, we need more of it. A lot more.

I hope you will be encouraged by InCouraged. Let's prove that Megan is right...that Courage Is Contagious.

Shallie
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Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, Does Business Incubation Improve The Odds of Business Success?

As the economy continues to be weak, it is important for baby boomer entrepreneurs to know about business incubation. Business incubation in a formal program may be the key to business success as you form your new enterprise. If you can't join a business incubation program, you may want to simulate one of your own.

The National Business Incubation Association says that business incubation programs provide entrepreneurs with a guiding hand to help them turn their ideas into viable businesses. Since the first incubator opened in Batavia, N.Y., 50 years ago, incubation programs around the world have been providing client companies with business support services and resources tailored to young firms to help increase their chances of success.

Does Business Incubation Improve Odds of Success?
The U.S. Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration validates that incubation works. Their research says that business incubators provide communities with significantly greater results at less cost than do any other type of public works project.

Researchers found that business incubators are the most effective means of creating jobs – more effective than roads and bridges, industrial parks, commercial buildings, and sewer and water projects. In fact, incubators provide up to 20 times more jobs than community infrastructure projects (e.g., water and sewer projects) at a Federal Government cost of $144 to $216 per job compared with $2,920 to $6,872 for the latter.

In another EDA-funded study in the mid 1990s, it was found that 87 percent of all firms that had graduated from NBIA member incubation programs remained in business – and about 84 percent remained in the incubator's community.

It is estimated that in 2005 alone, North American incubators assisted more than 27,000 start up companies that provided full-time employment for more than 100,000 workers and generated annual revenues of more than $17 billion. Many thousands more jobs were created by companies that had already graduated from these business incubation programs and now operate self-sufficiently in their communities.

If a strategic focus on innovation and entrepreneurship makes the difference in businesses started in business incubators, a similar focus will work for you.

Find out more about business incubation by visiting the National Business Incubation Association at www.nbia.org.

If you can't find an incubator, you may be able to simulate the incubation process by participating in a structured process. See our suggestions on doing this by visiting Join The Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs.

Shallie Bey
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Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs - Use Twitter Secret Recipe to Develop Leads and Cashflow for Your Business

What skills do you need to develop if you plan on going into semi-retirement as a baby boomer entrepreneur? New business owners tend to suffer from lacking three skills:

• Lack of knowledge about business development
• Lack of knowledge about marketing
• Lack of knowledge about building positive cash flow

Interestingly, if you are planning on becoming a baby boomer entrepreneur, there are some shortcuts to help you with building those skills. One way is to use the highly popular social networking platform, Twitter, as a learning exercise. As you develop a marketing project on Twitter, you develop all the skills you need to design and market a larger business. It doesn't matter if that business will be on the Internet or the more traditional bricks and mortar.

If you are not familiar with Twitter, you can get a good overview at the free directory I have prepared for you Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs You Need To Know Twitter.
You will find videos and a directions that will help you understand it quickly.

Like most things that are really effective, Twitter is pretty simple. The challenge is not in how to use Twitter, but in knowing how to craft a strategy to use Twitter to develop your business skills.

Some months ago, I shared with you what internet marketing guru Ed Dale calls the Symphony In Four Parts. If you missed it, just click on the link. It points out the four parts of the symphony:

1. Market Research
2. Traffic Generation (Lead Generation)
3. Conversion (Sales)
4. Product Development and Delivery

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.

A low budget business that lets you develop the required skills is an excellent strategy as you transition from employment to business ownership. In addition to building the skills, it can help you fund the business development effort by generating cash flow.

A friend recently introduced me to a fully developed system for using Twitter, a Twitter Secret Recipe, for for building any kind of business. It pulls all the pieces together and gives you the exact recipe to follow. As you use this system to promote your followers on Twitter, you will understand how to do market research, how to develop leads, how to convert lead to build customer lists, how to use the customer list to make sales, and how to deliver your product.

By following this recipe, you will have rapid growth in your skills, an increase in your entrepreneurial mindset, and a great boost in your confidence that you can build a successful business. Please go watch the free Twitter Secret Recipe video.

Shallie Bey

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, What Is The Right Size For Your Business?

If your goal for being an entrepreneur is to enjoy the life style you want without having to fully retire, how big should your business be? What are some of the things you should think about?

Seth Godin recently commented that he had been doing a lot of thinking about issues of scale and units of measure. He concluded: “Many businesses that are in trouble are in trouble for a simple reason: they’re the wrong size”.

If you are the typical Baby Boomer Entrepreneur, looking for a business as an alternative to full retirement, what size fits your life goals? What are the units of measure you should consider? Here are a few to start:

• How much of your time should your business consume?
• How much of your financial resources should be invested in the business?
• How much personal cash flow should your business produce for you?
• When do you need that cash flow?
• How big a geographic scope should you serve?
• How many employees do you need to deliver on the promises you are going to make to your marketplace?
• Are you delivering a full scale system solution to your customer’s problem or a piece of the entire system?
• If you are successful, can you scale the business up and still enjoy the quality of life that is your goal?
  

The folks at Small Business Labs continued the discussion by commenting in their blog and sharing some of their research.

They observed that most industries are moving towards a barbell shaped industrial structure with a few global giants on one end and lots of small businesses on the other. Mid sized firms are being acquired by the larger firms or squeezed out.

Their second major observation was that variable cost business models allow small firms to be competitive with large firms in an increasing number of market spaces. New technologies have reduced the cost of starting and operating a business.

So, baby boomer entrepreneur, what is the answer for you? What combination of size and agility will allow you to compete in your market while still allowing you to live your desired lifestyle?

Shallie Bey

Back track URL to Seth’s post:

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b31569e2011279821f8d28a4

Back track URL to SmallBusiness Labs:

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345675df69e201156f52f46c970b

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

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs, What You Can Learn About Twitter From Teen Entrepreneurs

Are you confused about how to use such social media platforms as twitter and facebook? Are you wondering how to keep your friends easy to follow and yet looking to follow and make new friends, then let me introduce you to Stanley Tang.

Stanley is a teen entrepreneur who has some insights on these subjects. He recently found a video by another teen, Min Xuam, that he thought was so good he decided to share it on his blog. It is called “How Twitter changed my life”. It isn’t the only strategy for how to used twitter and facebook, but it is a great strategy. This slide show, How Twitter Changed My Life, is well worth the time.

I was most impressed with the suggestion that you tweet not about what you are doing but what has your attention. This is a massive revelation for me. It really helps me understand why I love reading certain tweets and why others do not capture my interest.

Twitter is probably not a fad. Even if it is a fad, we baby boomer entrepreneurs must learn to effectively communicate with our markets. Teen entrepreneurs are creating new tricks for us old dogs to learn. Let's keep on learning so we can stay on the porch with the big dogs.

You can follow Stanley on twitter at @stanleytang, Min Xuam at @minxuam, and even me at @
ShallieBey. You can get a free twitter account by going to www.twitter.com .

Shallie Bey

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

Career Renegade - A Book for Entrepreneurs

Are you a young person looking to make your mark in life? Or, perhaps, are you a Baby Boomer looking to redefine your life as an entrepreneur? Are you wondering how to live a life of fulfillment and joy, and a life with a proper work life balance?

So many people begin their life wanting to make a difference and find themselves side tracked along the way. They begin by asking what they want to be when they grow up. And then they discover that they are grown up and they still don’t know what they want to be.

Jonathan Fields saw that happening in his own life and in the lives of so many people around him. He saw people running faster, working harder, climbing higher, sweating more blood, and pushing through stifling fatigue. Most importantly, he saw that usually they were no freer or happier.

He saw people trapped in their fear that if they tried to do anything about it they would become poor or a failure…or even worse, perhaps both.

He decided to find the solution to the riddle of actually doing what you love for a living without leaving your life behind. Not only did he succeed, he discovered that part of what he loves is sharing the solution with others. Jonathan wants to share it with you in Career Renegade.

He describes his intent as wanting to deliver something that is not only fun and inspirational, but insanely useful. Once again, with the clarity brought by intense focus, Jonathan has another success.

Discipline is required for success in every pursuit. Part of that discipline is acquiring the fundamental information, as he calls it, that is required to participate in any activity. He will give you a lot of information and will point you to other sources to help you learn the fundamentals: the rules of the game, the knowledge of systems, wisdom, cheats, hacks, and secrets you need to know.

In Career Renegade, Jonathan moves what information marketers call the free line. He will give you for free what could cost you hundreds of dollars to learn in other courses. In addition to sharing with you for free his take on ropes to know, he points you to other useful free resources available on the Internet that you might not find easily by yourself.

One of the things you will enjoy is that Jonathan provides complete information. Unlike what so often happens, he won’t just tell you what to do, leaving you in the dark about why or how. He will even talk about how to explain what you are doing to your friends and family so they won’t think you have gone crazy.

So if you want to understand work life balance, if you want to pay the bills while pursuing your passion, whether you are a prospective young entrepreneur or one of the fast growing segment of the population composed of Baby Boomer entrepreneurs, talk with Jonathan Fields. Career Renegade is a good place to begin that conversation.

If your answer is yes, you want to know about Jonathan Field’s new book, Career Renegade. I have created a Squidoo Lens at http://www.squidoo.com/Career-Renegade. This site gives you a quick tour of the book and the thinking that will show you how to make a great living doing what you love.

Shallie Bey

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs – Commit To Taking The First Step

Unwritten, the song performed by Natasia Bedingfield ( click here it see her perform the music video on YouTube), has a message for would be Baby Boomer Business Owners.

I am unwritten,

Can’t read my mind

I’m undefined.

I’m just beginning

The pen’s in my hand

Ending unplanned.

This is where many aspiring Baby Boomer business owners find themselves, undefined. And this leads us to the very first step defining what being a Baby Boomer Entrepreneur or Baby Boomer business owner means to you? Is this something to which you are committed? At the very minimum, are you committed to finding the answer about your level of commitment before you spend your money and your life on the task of starting a business?

Are you willing to test out your role as a business owner? Are you sure you really want to be a business owner or is that just the next trendy thing to do because everyone else is doing it? Is this a life you really want to live?

Staring at the blank page before you

Open up the dirty window

Let the sun illuminate the words

That you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance

So close you can almost taste it

Release your inhibitions

Are you willing to release the inhibitions that come from years of working for someone else? Are you prepared to set aside the fears associated with being in the driver’s seat? Are you willing to go from a fuzzy generality to a specific commitment to be an entrepreneur? Are you willing to confront how you can define a work/life balance that works uniquely for you?

Feel the rain on your skin

No one else can feel it for you

Only you can let it in

No one else, no one else

Can speak the words on your lips

Are you ready to take the first step? Are you ready to commit to being an entrepreneur or business owner? If so…

This is where your book begins…

For more information to help you make that first step see: Join The Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs (click here ).

Shallie Bey

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