Boomers Back in Business

I’m in the process of co-writing a book called The Second Chance Revolution: Becoming Your Own Boss After 50. It is written for those who are, or soon will be, free agents; who are searching for second careers appropriate to their 50+ personal goals and financial resources; who are at the point in life where they are ready to pursue their lifetime dream. But who need expert guidance finding it.

The reading audience for this book consists of the largest labor pool the United States has ever produced – the Baby Boomer generation and beyond. Always anxious to amaze us with demographic shockers, statisticians tell us that every 8 seconds a member of the Baby Boom generation turns 60.

What is important to note here – I cannot stress this point strongly enough – is that the concerns that people 50 years of age and older must plan for when putting together a new business are substantively different from those faced by entrepreneurs in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. This book will address these differences, providing targeted information for the legal, financial, administrative, technological, psychological and family life concerns specific to entrepreneurship in the second half of life.

Co-author, David L. Carroll, and I intend to break fresh ground, providing the 50+ entrepreneur with practical, targeted, hands-on advice on how to make each reader’s new business venture a triumphant success. There are, needless to say, innumerable volumes on entrepreneurship in the book chains today. To date, not a single one homes in on the needs of the enormous and as yet untapped reading audience of baby boomers and beyond – of the millions of entrepreneurial-minded men and women who dream about becoming their own boss after 50, and who are searching for guidance on how to do it. We intend on making this book the first. In an effort to provide the best information to our potential readers in this book, I created a group on Squidoo.com about this topic as an open forum for those who have any valuable information to contribute( Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs on Squidoo). I hope to generate discussion on the following topics:

Determining the type of entrepreneurial activity best suited to your current finances, time constraints, personal goals, family situation, and temperament.

Making the right start-up business choices and decisions from a 50+ perspective.

First-hand experiences from already-established 50+ entrepreneurs.

First-hand experiences/ concerns from 50+ entrepreneurs that are in the process of, or are thinking about, starting their own business.

Getting your business up and running smoothly. Then keeping it that way.

Learning what you need to know about 50+ entrepreneurship vis-à-vis taxes, legal matters, franchising opportunities, time management, home office options, technological training, and more.

To buy or not to buy into a franchise.

Negotiating 50+ personal monetary concerns such as medical insurance, self-employment tax, estate planning, Social Security, and more.

Availing oneself of the smartest entrepreneurial information, know-how, tricks, and resources available in the country today.

What tools, resources, etc are 50+ professionals looking for when starting down the road of entrepreneurship.

I am looking forward to feedback and comments!
Edward Rogoff
Follow Me On Twitter
Take Two Entrepreneurship Event
Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs on Squidoo
How to Write a Bankable Business Plan
Creating Financial Models
Group Brainstorming Exercises

Group Brainstorming Tools and Exercises

Brainstorming is a tool that can maximize creative thinking by solving a design problem, naming a product, or developing a business idea…The process works like this:

1. Select a group of people of different types, experiences, and knowledge.
2. Bring them together in a relaxed setting where you will not be interrupted.
3. Engage in some fun exercises such as coming up with ideas to improve a business everyone knows. This will get their creative juices flowing.
4. Establish a rule that no one can express negative judgments about any one else’s idea.
5. Give the group a question such as, “I want to start a seafood restaurant in town. What qualities would make it successful?”
6. Designate someone who can write quickly to list on easel pads all the ideas so everyone can refer back to them.
7. Have people work individually several times during the brainstorming session to write down their ideas and report them back to the group.
8. After the brainstorming session, go through the list and select the best and most realistic ideas.

Brainstorming can be used to develop an idea from scratch, to refine an idea, or generate a strategy to vie with a competitor.
A variation of brainstorming is “rolestorming” in which each member of the group is assigned an identity and asked to come up with ideas from that person’s point of view. For example, the roles of customers, suppliers, or competitors can be used, or fictional characters, such as the superheros Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman.

Edward Rogoff
Bankable Business Plans
Newton Business Programs
How to Write a Bankable Business Plan
Creating Financial Models
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Creating Financial Models

I have completed writing my ten steps to writing a bankable business plan and hope that they have been helpful in guiding some of you in your entrepreneurial endeavors. I wanted to post some helpful tools that I had put together when creating my textbook for Bankable Business Plans for Entrepreneurial Ventures.

Because your financial projections represent the heart of your business plan, it is critical that you have a superb financial model that combines all the financial aspects of your venture. Financial models are usually produced with a spreadsheet program to allow the numbers to be linked, so that a change in one automatically translates into related changes on all of the projected statements and analyses.

Creating a model from scratch is an excellent exercise because it forces you to consider all the financial assumptions in your business plan and it will teach you how the model works before you make changes in future versions. There are several readily available spreadsheet tools that can help you:

• www.bankablebusinessplans.com has many resources related to my textbook including sample spreadsheets that you can review and download.
• One of the best spreadsheet models is Active Money produced by the Columbus Enterprise Development Corporation. It is comprehensive, all the tables are links, and it is free. It is available at www.cedcorp.com
• One of the easiest financial projections model is available on the Missouri SBDC Web site: www.missouribusiness.net/library/finance.asp. Produced by Aldis Jakubovskis, this model is not overshelmingly detailed but it clearly shows which assumptions have to be entered, and produces completed projected statements based on the assumptions.
• Commerce Clearing House (CCH) has a very useful site for entrepreneurs at www.toolkit.cch.com. It has model spreadsheets, as well as useful and up-to-date tax planning tools.
• Find a plan with a financial model for a business in your industry. Many quality plans are available on Web sites for business plan competitions such as the MOOT Corp. competition at the University of Texas, at www.businessplans.org/businessplans.html. Because of the large number of quality plans on such websites, you have a good chance of finding one for a business in your industry.
• Excel templates are available with the CD that accompanies the MBA’s Guide to Microsoft Excel 2002 by Stephen L. Nelson, published by Redmond Technology Press.

If you build your financial model from scratch or modify an existing one, there are several guidelines that you should follow:

• Examine your finished model in detail. It is not sufficient to review the model to see if it “looks” correct. You must test it by proofreading it carefully and checking all the spreadsheet cell references and formulas.
• Test the model by making changes to assumptions and checking to see if the changes flow through the rest of the model.
• Compare the model to others for similar companies to ensure that it uses standard industry categories.
• Have some of your advisors who are accountants, financial professionals, or people with industry experience, review the model.

Edward G. Rogoff
Bankable Business Plans