Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Conclusion

March 11, 2010 by 2 Comments

Well, here we are. We have looked at seven success traits that when properly cultivated and put to practice can make baby boom entrepreneurs build strong, lasting, and valuable second careers. Today I want to issue a warning and a challenge.

First the warning: Just because the life and business experience of the baby boom entrepreneur provides them with special insight into these success traits, success is never guaranteed. Let me explain with a couple illustrations.

I have been told that on nearly any day, on dozens of basketball courts in the New York City area, that you can find players who have the same raw talent and abilities that can be seen on the courts of the NBA. What makes the difference between the two is not talent or ability it is the willingness to make application of this talent and ability in a way that will provide success in the NBA.

I have had the privilege of playing golf men who played on the PGA Tour or were attempting to do so. When I asked them about why the didn’t “make it” the story was always the same. They didn’t have the “head” for the game. What they meant was that they had all the necessary success skills, but couldn’t make them work under the pressure of a tournament.

You see, having a skill set (or the success traits) necessary to win big in a chosen field does not in and of themselves guarantee anything. The ingredient that brings all these traits together into a synergistic force for success is your willingness to cultivate and expand them, to develop a “head” for the game. Without continuous growth and expansion of your success traits and an understanding as to how to use them in the best ways possible, you will be found on the “local courts” playing for pennies instead of staring in the big game.

Now for the challenge: If you feel the need, the burning desire to stay active in the second half of your life, then don’t let anyone stop you! You will find all kinds of people who will tell you why you can’t, shouldn’t, or won’t be able to follow your dream of a second career. They will tell you that in this current climate you are making a mistake and that if you use the time and resources necessary to “do this thing” and fail, you will become a burden to others.

In all this noise, you need only ask yourself two questions: 1) Do I have the skills necessary to build a successful second career? 2) Am I willing to pay the price to learn, grow, and work to be a success?

If the answer to these questions is yes, you can use your baby boom success traits and accomplish great success in your second career.

Talk more later ….

(Thanks again to Amy Grossman and her list of success traits. I also want to thank her for the tweets and messages of encouragement as these articles have been published.)

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Part 8

March 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Well, we are about to talk about the seventh success trait in this series of articles. My last article in this series will summarize this series and draw several conclusions about the potential success of baby boom entrepreneurs is starting a second career. I would like to thank Amy Grossman again for her article that is the basis for this series. Her work with baby boom women is outstanding! Thanks Amy!

Today we are going to look at the final success trait in this series. The one thing that most boomers have more than anything else is/are connections. Because of all of our years in life and business, we have made lots and lots of connections. Let me give you an example: I have a LinkedIn profile that currently has less than 100 connections. This small business group can provide me invitations to 122,463 people. If you carry my connections down three levels I have access through this small profile to over 3,482,800 people.

Think about it: All the people you know or have known in the days of your first career. Add to those connections all the people they know and then all of the people they know and you have a data base of people that you would never be able to service effectively or in any meaningful way. More potential customers than you could possible help, what a concept!

What it takes to bring these huge numbers into perspective is your ability to connect with them. To really get your unique message into their lives. You need to be able to provide them with the solutions to their problems and do so in a way that doesn’t seem to be “just another sale.”

Your skills and relaxed approach in this area will make you stand out in the crowd. Connecting effectively will make you a sought after business leader and someone who can use your second career to meet personal life goals rather than just a way to make money. Your ability to connect will truly make a difference here.

So … on top of all the success traits we have already discussed, baby boom entrepreneurs need to pay particularly close attention to their connections and let them provide an endless source of referral business and the greatest level of business and life success.

Talk again soon …

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Part 6

March 8, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Wow! This  has sure been a fun series of articles to write. I am pretty fired up about being a baby boom entrepreneur and the possibilities of my second career. Thanks again go to Amy Grossman for starting my mind out of this direction of thinking!

Today we are going to look at the fifth trait in our list of seven. Baby boom entrepreneurs have the trait of intuitive behavior. To be intuitive, according to Merriam-Webster, is the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference. In other words, it means to “understand” the right or wrong of a situation without spending lots of time spent investigating.

Being intuitive means to “just know” the right thing.

What makes the boomer more intuitive? In a word, experience. We have been around the block a couple times, this is not our first rodeo, we have all been there, done that, and worn out the t-shirt. Having been around for a good amount of time now, helps us to see things through the window of experience and gives us the ability to make decisions intuitively.

This intuition allows us to make decisions more quickly in business and to become more innovate (see part 4 of this series) than our competition. It also allows us to build our team with greater success, while providing our clients and customers with service that is “beyond expectation.”

While intuitive behavior seems to come without much thought, it is a success trait that can be cultivated. All you have to do is to take some time to think and record your experience in the various situations you might find yourself having to make decisions. When were you in similar situations in your “first career?” When did you make the right decisions? What were the circumstances of those right decisions? What was the success level achieved?

As you replay these circumstances in your mind you build a sense of what the right choice would be in today’s marketplace. This “sense of understanding” is what will become a more intuitive way of doing business in your second career. The more you call on your past successes (as well as failures) the more you will be able to use the success trait of intuitive behavior.

Talk again soon ….

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Part 5

March 6, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Today’s success trait is a very power one. Successful baby boom entrepreneurs must understand this trait and learn to use if effectively to secure their place in the market. This success trait is nothing more or less than personal confidence.

Personal confidence allows a business owner to entry the fray with assurance as to their ability to be successful. They understand the nature of their business and are convinced that they can overcome every obstacle. Confidence drives us to exceed the expectations of our own team and those of our clients/customers. While every business owner deals with the struggles inherent in business, those who have a sense of personal confidence know that none of their struggles will cause them to fail.

I need to caution us all in one area. Personal confidence can, left unchecked, lead to arrogance. The arrogant see themselves as people who cannot ever make a wrong decision and who are exclusively needed by their team, clients, and customer. Arrogance most often leads to destructive behavior and the eventual ruin of your business. Great care must be exercised with regard to personal confidence that keeps it from mutating into arrogance.

A healthy dose of personal confidence, on the other hand, will strengthen our relationship with our team, our clients, and our customers. They will develop a trust in us because of that confidence and we will be more often called upon to help meet their needs. As we act confidently on their behalf, a loyalty will grow toward us and our level of success will only be limited by our desires for growth and expansion.

The confidence of baby boom entrepreneurs comes from our time spent in the marketplace. We have learned from both our past successes as well as past failures. These lessons from the school of hard knocks have shown us that we can do much more than just survive. With these experiences we are less likely to be shaken by the current business climate and more willing to see things from all angles before making decisions.

I think that this point fits well as the center point of our current series. The reason is that personal confidence stabilizes us and gives us focus so that we can concentrate on strengthening all the other traits. With our confidence in the right place, nothing can stop us in the development of our “second career.”

So … Be confident, avoid arrogance, and watch success come to you!

Talk again soon ….

(By the way your comments, as always, are both requested and appreciated!)

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Part 4

March 4, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Today we are going to look at the third success trait that are found among baby boom entrepreneurs. That trait is innovation.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said that all business is about two things: Marketing and Innovation. That said, we boomers are arguably the most innovative generation in history. From muscle cars to mini-vans, from vacuum tube electronics to solid circuit, from bulky, slow desk-top computers to the new tablets and smart phones, the boomer generation’s fingerprints are all over modern innovation.

This ability to find new and dynamic ways of doing things makes us uniquely capable of being successful in any “second career” we choose. Not only will we be able to find points of difference that will separate us from the competition, but we will also be able to continue to innovate so that our businesses will never be seen as a “me too” kind of business.

Now let me make something clear, being innovative does not mean abandoning the basic truths of business success, but rather it takes those basic truths and wraps them in unique and innovative packaging that best fits your dreams/goals as well as serving your customers in ways that are best for them as well.

Boomers understand that innovation does not mean being “weird” but means finding was to make your product and services stand out in the mind of your partners and potential customers. These innovative differences will give you a top of mind position in your chosen field.

In order to make innovation work for you, you need to cultivate it. You need to look back at all the experiences that you have had in your life and business career and put them into play in the building of your new business. Take time to regularly look at your business as it relates to your desires, those of your clients, and the needs of your market. Look for ways to tweek things so that you continue to have top of mind presence in your field. Remember that without innovation you will eventually blend into the background and be just like everyone else.

Our generation has become experts at looking beyond the “normal” and find the unique and innovative. Your business will become more successful as you bring innovation to the basics truths of business success.

Talk more later ….

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – Part 3

March 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Today we are going to look at the second success trait that baby boom entrepreneurs exhibit that allows them to establish themselves is a “second career” during their retirement years.

This second trait is that of resilience. Resilience is in plain language the ability to bounce back after events occur that cause us to stumble. Most of us who are boomers have had to deal with many life experiences that have tested our metal so to speak. (Remember Viet Nam, the Kennedy assassination, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster, social unrest, riots, and on and on and on.)

We have seen the heights of business success and the double digit inflation of the 1980′s. Everything that can strike at the heart and slow the pace we have experienced in our generation. Yet, we carry on! We are resilient! We know how to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again.”

The current economic climate has its own set of unique uncertainties. What is going to be the conclusion no one really knows. However, more and more we boomers are being told that we are going to need to work later in our lives than we may have planned for in our earlier years. This thought might well be one we struggle with for a while. It may cause us to pause and consider the options. But, in the end, we will call on our resilience again and find ways to move forward and create new areas of success in our lives.

Boomers are looking at all kinds of ways to “start over.” Some are consulting in their former corporate arenas, some are considering franchise businesses, many are looking at the “home business” industry to see if their is anything legitimate that they can run “from the road.” No one way of looking at things has ever satisfied our generation, but finding the right way for ourselves has always marked us.

So, let’s dig down deep, find that trait of resilience and head out to reclaim the path that takes us to where we have planned to go all along.

Talk more later ……

Oh, by the way, if this is the first article you are reading in this series, I want to recognize the author of the list of traits I am using. Her name is Amy Groosman and I am grateful for the article she wrote that inspired this series.

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs – 2

March 2, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Today I want to talk about the first of seven success traits that allow baby boom entrepreneurs to claim a decisive advantage in the creation/development of a “second career.” As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this list of success traits is not of my own making. I want to again acknowledge that they come from an article written by Amy Grossman in November 2009.

The first of the success traits mentioned in that article was that of autonomy. Now according to Wikipedia autonomy “refers to the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision.” So for we baby boom entrepreneurs, this means that we can look at the options available to us and gather the necessary information about those options and make “informed and un-coerced decisions” as to which option best meets our personal needs.

In other words, we do not easily bow to the kinds of pressures that require us to make decisions “NOW“  or one’s that require us to act without all the information. We are a generation who grew up questioning everything and we will not be easily fooled by slick campaigns and promises that if we act now, things will all be clear later.

Now, as we will see in a few days, we are also decisive as a group. However, there is really no conflict with these two traits. Once we have seen the information available and understand our options, we are then able to make the decisive decisions and take the appropriate actions to build successful businesses.

This success trait will allow us to stand out from the crowd because those who approach us with the next great idea will know we will want to make our decision in a rational, well informed, and un-coerced fashion. Along with the decisions to start our business, our autonomy will be reflected in the course and speed of our business as well. Our autonomous nature will cause us to stay informed and chart the course and speed of our businesses in the same rational, informed, and un-coerced fashion with which we created it in the beginning.

Our customers will be happy and our business partners and vendors will rest secured in the skills we bring to the table.

Talk again soon …

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Success Traits of Baby Boom Entrepreneurs

March 1, 2010 by 1 Comment

I read a great article over at Baby Boomer Magazine written by Amy Grossman back in November 2009. In her article, Amy points  out seven traits that she sees present in entrepreneurial baby boom women. As I read this article, I agreed with the premise that our age and life experience provided us with the advantage of these attributes (though I find them in men as well as women :) ).

Over the next seven days I am going to expand on Amy’s thought and cover each of these seven traits in some detail. I believe that we boomers have much to offer the world and in these days of uncertainty and financial insecurity these seven success traits are some of the most important. So, let’s step up again in this time in our lives to make a difference for the remainder of our generation and for the empowering of future generations as well.

So, what are these seven traits that will make us a force to be reckoned with as baby boom entrepreneurs?

1. Autonomy – we have an innate “independent” streak in us that allows us to stand out in a crowd.
2. Resilience – we have the capacity to continue on in the tough times and are willing to get up every time we fall.
3. Innovative – we can see new and better ways of delivering products and services to our clients and customers.
4. Confidence – we know that once we set our minds to a task, we will succeed.
5. Intuitive – we perceive things with a clarity that allows us to make right moves in business.
6. Decisive – we are able to make decisions without unwarranted delays.
7. Connections – after years of being in corporate/business settings we know lots of people that we can easily connect with to build and expand our new enterprises.

Again my thanks to Amy Grossman for the inspiration for these next seven posts. I hope you will enjoy them and that they will inspire you make the right moves for you and yours family in these next years.

Stay tuned for these upcoming articles,

Dave

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