Hello fellow boomers!
My name is Jean Murray, and I’m joining Jim Norton on Small Business Boomers. I have two qualifications for this post:
1. I am a member of the “Baby Boom” generation, born in 1947. I’m also married to a boomer, which helps when you’re trying to communicate. To prove I’m a boomer:
- I can tell you where I was when I heard that President Kennedy was shot (in Chemistry lab) and when I heard he died (out in the hall by my locker).
- I remember becoming a member of the HoJo “clean plate club.” Of course, that’s Howard Johnson’s, and I blame them for all my eating issues to this day.
- My ring tone on my Blackberry is “Sugar Pie Honey Bun/Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops.
I’m looking forward to signing up for social security in a couple of years. I figure they might as well just transfer the money directly from my children’s account to mine, skipping the Social Security Administration as the middleman.
2. I have been helping people start small businesses since I received my MBA in 1974. My passion is giving people information, advice, and encouragement as they start into business. I know it’s a pretty scary proposition to start a business ; I have started three solo businesses and one with two other people. The only one that didn’t work was the one I started with the other people. The first one was a word processing service (with a large standalone Wang word processor, for those of you who remember those things). This was a great business for me, because I could do it from home while I had small children. I gave up the business when we moved a few years later, and I was sad because I had built up some nice relationships with some great clients. The second one has been a business consulting with health care practitioners (particularly chiropractors and dentists) who are starting into their practices. The most recent (just in the past few months) is freelance writing. I’m currently working on a couple of books on contract to publishers, about small business topics.
In addition to consulting, I have taught classes in business startup and I write about small business topics in books, online articles, blogs, articles in professional publications.
Baby boomer are in a unique position to start small businesses today, for several reasons.
- Many of us are old enough to have had great professional careers which we can translate into a successful business. For example, my husband has been working both in sales and software engineering and he’s got a great idea for his own business that combines these two fields.
- Most of us have no children at home to worry about or to distract us from work, so we can concentrate on our businesses.
- We have many interests and hobbies, which we can also turn into successful businesses. For example, a friend of mine is a great quilter, and she’s getting ready to open a quilt shop (of course, I’m helping her put together her business plan).
Have you noticed that the older we get, and the fewer our years, the more patience we have? My granddaughter, at age 6, has absolutely no patience. She is now done being impatient about Halloween and is now working on being impatient for the Christmas. We Baby Boomers can take our time and enjoy the journey, understanding that it’s the journey, not the arrival. I believe this applies to small business ventures.
If you are considering starting a small business, comment here, ask questions, and Jim and I and others on this blog will respond with information, advice, encouragement.
I’ll be blogging about small business news and events, about starting into business topics, and about being a baby boomer in business. I will keep things short and sweet, relevant, and interesting.
Thanks for listening.
Jean
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POSTED IN: Being A Boomer, Boomer Talk
1 opinion for Hello fellow boomers!
Kelly
Nov 2, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Welcome aboard Jean!
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