Are Baby Boomers Ready to Exit Their Businesses. It’s official: as of Jan.1, the oldest of America’s baby boom generation started turning 65 at a rate of 10,000 a day — a trend that will last for the next 19 years. As articles like this one point out, the coming wave will mean big business for many industries. Many of us who offer financial services linked to retirement have been anticipating the day when the largest wealth transfer in our nation’s history officially begins. Yet there is no shortage of articles proclaiming that people born from 1946 through 1964 are ill-prepared for retirement. While I’ve never seen a statistic comparing the lack of retirement planning with a lack of exit planning for retiring business owners, I’d be willing to bet that there is a strong correlation between the two.
In fact, my experience tells me that, while most people check the value of their stock portfolio at least occasionally, most business owners wait until the 11th hour to determine the value of their businesses. Both Mr. Mr. Internet Income For Baby Boomers » iArticle.org. Lure of Entrepreneurship Beckons Boomers. Instead of retiring, boomers are starting second-act businesses; some are motivated by an independent lifestyle, others by economic necessity In May, 2004, at age 50, Bob Axisa, then vice-president of enterprise technology services for JP Morgan Chase (JPM), had his position eliminated when the company merged with Bank One. "It was really scary," says Axisa. "I started at the bottom and worked up to a good position—what do you do when it gets pulled out from under you?
" Axisa decided not to return to the uncertainty of the corporate world because, he says, "with offshoring and outsourcing of work, no one really has a secure position. At least that's what I think. " Rather, he used part of the 49 weeks of severance-package funds he received from his buyout to start a CertaPro Painters franchise (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/12/05, "Extending the Front Lines of Franchising") in Staten Island, N.Y., where he lives. Corporate Jobs Too Insecure Business Experience Reapplied. Entrepreneurs Who Create Value vs. Entrepreneurs Who Lock Up Value. Andy Kessler is coming out with a new book today, called Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs, which I wholeheartedly recommend. It's billed as "rules for entrepreneurs," but it's more than your typical "rules" book, in that it really discusses many of the key underlying themes we talk about here on Techdirt all the time: things about abundance and scarcity, value vs. price, why zero marginal cost matters, the importance of "free," the nature of disruptive innovation and how value is often created in the tearing down of old monopolistic business models.
If you haven't read Andy's previous books, well, you should. But, this latest is typical Andy: packed full of thought-provoking insights, but done in a nice, easy (and quick) to read conversational manner. Like all of his books, this one made me stop and say "huh, I never quite thought of it that way... but that's exactly right" many times. Easy money forever. The real lesson? 10 Reasons to Start a Business This Year.