Home Care Seniors, Elderly Care, Companionship - Sonoma County, CA » Baby Boomers

Without considering your age: Would you consider starting a business? In California wine country?

Julie Ann Anderson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:29:02 +0000

What are your on-the-job skills? Sales? Finance? Marketing?

If you suddenly found yourself without your job – an unfortunately realistic scenario for many these days – what would you do?

Without considering your age: Would you consider starting a business?

That’s exactly what 55-year-old Cinde Dolphin did.

NOT READY TO RETIRE Cinde Dolphin, who was a marketing manager for Coors for 24 years and took a buyout, started a public relations firm that helps winemakers like Story Winery in California. Photo Credit: Jim Wilson, NYTimes

Dolphin, a marketing manager for MillerCoors, was recently profiled in the New York Times. After the merger of Miller and Coors a few years back, Dolphin saw the writing on the wall and took a buyout. She traveled for a while, but soon realized she wasn’t done working.

Problem is, with a recession lurking overhead, it wasn’t the best time to be job hunting, and she was at an age where hiring managers tend to shy away in lieu of younger, faster workers willing to do the same job for much less.

So Dolphin took what she knew – marketing for the beverage industry – and applied it to what she loved: California wine. She runs a company called Marketing for Mavericks, helping California wineries promote themselves using tools like Facebook and Twitter.

More than 5 million Americans age 55 or older are running their own companies or are self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration, via the New York Times. Among 55 to 64 year olds, the number of self-employed climbed 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.

If you’re really thinking of taking the plunge, consider the advice of Civic Ventures’ Marc Freedman, who tells the Times:

“People should start with some realism about what it takes to do this. It’s important to realize that this is a trajectory that can last 10, 15, 20 years. That means take some time to prepare, whether it means going back to school or doing an apprenticeship. There’s no need to succeed at the very first attempt at this. There’s room for readjustment and regrouping.”

In Mrs. Dolphin’s case, there wasn’t much overhead to start a marketing company: She had her “marketable” skills. She had a computer with Internet access. She now has a client roster. She says she’s having a blast. Jeri Sedlar, author of “Don’t Retire, Rewire,” says two types of people start businesses: those who always planned to, and those who cannot find a job. Those who planned ahead may have a leg up and an idea of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And those who are unable to land a new gig want use their current skills and market those skills to new clients. As Sedlar tells the NYT:

“People have to keep up on their skills, keep up with the latest. You need to be sure you are really a valuable asset. The entrepreneur of today has to be motivated not just to know their skills and the job, but to be constantly challenging themselves. Every day they have to be reconfirming to their clients, ‘I’m good, I’m on top of things. Age is not a factor. Here I am doing it. ”

So, what are you waiting for? These are your Golden Years. Go and do. And enjoy some wine, while you’re at it.

Will Boomers be any different? Home Instead CEO in NYTimes New Old Age Blog

Julie Ann Anderson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:02:47 +0000

If you’re not familiar with it, The New York Times has a well-written blog column in the health section called The New Old Age. The column often features topics of caring and coping with stories of people who are being full-time family caregivers either for a spouse, a parent of other loved one. There are often senior health related topics as well.

Home Instead CEO Paul Hogan quoted in The New York Times’s New Old Age Blog

Last week, writer Paula Span featured a caregiver column entitled, “Will Boomers be any Different?” In the column, she says that “…the the No. 1 question I encounter when I speak to family caregivers is how to cajole old people into adapting to increasing disability when they are, to be a tad euphemistic, “fiercely independent.”

“In 20 or so years, when we baby boomers enter the ranks of the “old-old” ourselves, will we be any different?,” she asks.

She interviewed our very own Home Instead CEO, Paul Hogan, who was in Richmond, VA, last week meeting with the Boomer Project, a market research firm specializing in marketing to Boomers.

“We’ll see more seniors coming directly to us for help in the next 10 years, versus the past 10 when it was a daughter or son calling us and tearing their hair out,” says Hogan.

With the Depression generation…agreeing to home care “takes a doctor’s ultimatum: ‘You’re not going home from the hospital unless you get help, because you’ll break that other hip.’” But Mr. Hogan’s own mother, a businesswoman in her 70s, has long paid financial advisers, child care workers and housekeepers. “She sees getting help when she’s older as just another in the long line of services she’s taken advantage of throughout her career,” Mr. Hogan reported.

For boomers, though,“the concept of reaching a certain age, leaving work, and disengaging from our lives and social networks is anathema,” said Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project. “We get a lot of our self-fulfillment from work – and we’re going to need the income,” Mr. Thornhill said. So we may not be so amenable to leaving our homes, either — or giving up our cars.

Whether Boomers will really be any different than our parents in the next 20 years is yet to be seen. But we certainly are more willing to outsource and pay for services that are parents didn’t. And, as Ms. Span points out,

”In fact, we’ll probably have to accept hired help. As a generation, we’ve had far fewer children than our parents, and we’re less likely to be married. Even if we prefer to rely on unpaid care when we’re sick or frail, our smaller families may be stretched too thin to provide it.”

”The reputation of older people is that they get stuck in their ways,” Mr. Thornhill mused. But that may not pertain to boomers. “We’ve always been so adaptive. Life for us has been change.”

If you’d like to read the full blog post and the comments, you can simply click on this link: NYTimes New Old Age Blog – Will Boomers Be Any Different?

And if you would like more information about Home Instead Senior Care, please call our Rohnert Park home care office at 707.586.1516.