Apparently, Americans aged 55 to 64 are more likely to become entrepreneurs than those aged 20 to 34. For many people this statistic is counter-intuitive. Younger people are more likely to take risks, right?

Wrong! According to this particular study, “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34.”

How much higher? One third.

But that’s not all. The study also notes that “a longitudinal survey of nearly 5,000 companies that began in 2004, two-thirds of firm founders are between the ages of 35 and 54.”

What are the causes of this baby boomer boom? The study suggests a decline of lifetime employment is a major cause. While many boomers grew up expecting to work for the same company through to retirement, as we all know, this is no longer the case. The implication is lose your job, start a business.

Our longer, healthier lifespan is another contributing factor. Because we live longer, and are fitter and more active, boomers are more likely to continue working longer and are doing so in their own businesses. The study also suggests the current recession is contributing to the increase in entrepreneurial activity in the baby boom generation. When people lose their jobs and can’t find new ones, they start a business instead.

However comprehensive this study is, I believe they are missing a major reason why entrepreneurial activity is skewing older. When someone has worked 15, 20, 30 years in a career they like, but don’t love, at some point they start thinking about doing more with their life. When the mortgage is paid off and the kids have moved out, it’s time to start thinking about doing something they love.

While I haven’t conducted a scientific survey of boomers, from people I’ve met and spoken with, the main reason for starting a business in your 40s, 50s and 60s is passion. They decide it’s time to spend their days working in something that really moves them.

When you’re younger, you’re looking for experience or to pay the bills. You’re trying to figure out who you are, what you want to be when you grow up. You’re starting a family. Taking a risk and starting a business can seem like too much when everything else in your life seems risky.

But at some point, many of us start to think life is too short to waste doing something less than amazing. I know for me, there was that moment when I thought, “If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.”

Perhaps it’s the fear of getting to the end of your life and having regrets about actions you didn’t take. Or it’s just a desire to have a career that is more meaningful. Yes, getting laid off may be the boot in the behind some of us need to get started. But I’ve spoken to just as many baby boomer entrepreneurs who left high-paying, secure jobs of their own volition.

Passion, not recession is why boomers are joining the ranks of the entrepreneurs.

Andrea J. Stenberg

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

How to Add Twitter to LinkedIn

This means you can now have Twitter update your LinkedIn status and vice versa. For someone like me who is a heavy user of both LinkedIn and Twitter, this added functionality is much appreciated.

To add Twitter, log into you LinkedIn account. From your Home page, scroll down to the bottom. On the right hand column you’ll see an “Add an application” link. Click on this and you’ll see a drop down menu similar to the one on the right. Select “Tweets” and follow the instructions. It should take you about a minute to set up.

One key feature to note  is you can choose whether all your Tweets are sent to your LinkedIn status or only specific ones. This is important in my mind as many people have a more chatty style on Twitter than they might be appropriate for LinkedIn.

Retweets, links and many of the @reply conversations on Twitter really wouldn’t fit the culture of LinkedIn. If you are updating your LinkedIn status too often because you are a heavy Twitter user you run the risk of annoying your LinkedIn network.

Although, who knows: maybe over time this feature will loosen up the more formal culture of LinkedIn as people are given more of a chance to show their personality.

If you choose to limit which Tweets update your LinkedIn status (and unless you Tweet very infrequently, I think you should), you need to add the hashtag #in or #li to any Tweets you want sent to LinkedIn. Of course, if you choose the limited setting, you have to ensure to remember to add the hashtags.

You can also update Twitter from your LinkedIn profile. You can do this two ways. When you update your status you can have it sent to Twitter as well or you can actually send a Tweet from within LinkedIn and have it update Twitter. If you do it this way, your Tweet doesn’t update your LinkedIn status unless you add the hashtag.

This connectivity is particularly powerful for people who use one site more than the other. For example, people who Tweet frequently but don’t log into LinkedIn every day will be able maintain an active presence on LinkedIn. They won’t have their status being days or even weeks old. Of course, they will still need to log in to monitor their emails, connection requests and participate in Answers and Groups.

This connectivity is so new it’s hard to know how many LinkedIn users will actually use it. However, if people respect the culture of LinkedIn when posting Tweets, I think it can only enhance both sites.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Will you be adding Twitter to your LinkedIn profile? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think of this.

Seriously! I am a writer, but I’ve never sustained a writing project that was quite this long. I wondered if I’d run out of ideas. However, everyone I knew who was a blogger (and I confess that two years ago it wasn’t that many) told me running out of ideas wasn’t going to be a problem.

Over the past two years I’ve learned a lot about myself, my business and who my customers are. A good part of that learning is a direct result of writing three times per week. Some of these lessons are fairly profound and some are less so. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll share some of what I’ve learned.

Stickiness

First, I learned I can stick to something. You’d think that after four & a half years as an entrepreneur I’d already know that. After all, you can’t stay in business that long without finishing what you start.

However, if you’re been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I am ADD. I really have a tendency to flit from project to project as my attention wavers. Knowing I can stick to something for two whole years was a really important lesson to learn. Particularly for something like blogging which really doesn’t have an end date. There is no point where I can say “I’m done here”.

What’s my business all about

When I made the move to be a full time entrepreneur in the spring of 2005, what I thought my business would be is very different than what I’m doing today. And that change has come about in a very large part because of this blog.

You see, when you sit down and write about business in general and you own business in particular for three to five hours a week, you really start to know yourself. Sure, for the first few posts – even the first few dozen – you can write about what you think you should be doing.

But if you stick at it long enough, you can’t help but write about what really excites you. You can’t help but find your passion. If you don’t, you’ll get bored.

So I started out writing about marketing principals and running a business. Eventually I discovered Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the whole world of social media opened up for me. Then I noticed when I wrote about social media, besides having more fun, I got more traffic to my blog, more comments and more emails. Suddenly I knew my niche. I wasn’t just going to be a marketing generalist. I would teach people about social media.

Yes, I still write a little bit about everything – the ADD hasn’t disappeared – but I write more and more about social media.

But I would never have gone there without the blog.

Technology isn’t that scary

Until I started the blog, I didn’t know a thing about HTML, code and all that other techie stuff. In fact, I had intentionally avoided it all. But suddenly I needed to know at least the basics.

I joined a blogging course to get me started, found some people who know more than I do to answer questions and used Google to help me find out the rest. Two years later I can go into my theme and change the font, alter the appearance and do a bunch of other things I would never have thought possible two years ago.

Statistics can be fun

You’ve heard it before – you can’t improve anything unless you track it. Not your weight, your bank account and your blog traffic. And unlike getting on the scale or trying to balance your chequebook, tracking your blog stats can be fun.

Seeing my traffic go up from month to month is exciting. Looking at what keywords people are using to find me is interesting. Noticing that visitors are coming from all sorts of countries amazes me. I expect to see visitors from Canada and the US, but seeing that people are visiting me from Europe, England, South America, Asia and Australia made me feel very cosmopolitan. I may not have been to all those places (yet) but my words, thoughts and ideas have.

Entrepreneur is a stupid word

I’m not kidding. Every time I have to type that stupid word into a web browser I curse myself. I almost NEVER am able to type it out without making a mistake or at least slowing down and thinking “E … N …T…E no R next …”

And you should see how it fits on my business card. If I’d known how much I’d come to hate that word I would have chosen something different to name my blog.

On the other hand, The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur is distinctive. People can remember the name. I’ve gotten calls from the media as a result of it. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

There are some really amazing people on the web

One of the biggest fears people have about going online is that they’ll run into the crazies: stalkers, loud mouths, critics, meanies and just plain nut jobs.

And while I’m sure there’s more than their fair share of loonies online, overall I can say my experience has been positive.

In the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to virtually “meet” (and in a few cases in real life) many amazing people, most as a direct result of my blog. Whether it’s through visiting websites of people who leave comments, starting email conversations with readers, connecting on social media with readers, interviewing experts for blog posts, podcasts and my book I’ve had the chance to communicate with so many people.

And the people I’ve met have been interesting, talented and incredibly generous. If the people I’ve met as a result of blogging are at all representative of humanity as a whole, in the long term, everything will work out.

The journey is as much fun as the destination

I’ve always been more task oriented than process oriented. In other words, I focus on the end result, not how I get there. I like to make lists and check the items off. I like completion. In fact, I’ve often thought I should have been a bricklayer so I can visually see how much I’ve accomplished each day.

However, the journey is important too. After all, the end of life is death, and I’m in no hurry to get there, so I’d better start paying attention to the journey.

Blogging is a journey. Yes, I can enjoy what I wrote in the past: review my traffic, read comments, check on incoming links. Yes, I can plan for the future: come up with topic ideas, set aside quotes, create a publication plan. But for today, there’s just the blog post I’m writing at the moment. If I’m going to continue for another 313 blog posts, I need to be able to enjoy the process of writing them one at a time.

Thanks for joining me on this journey

While for me blogging is about expressing my thoughts and my ideas, if no one was reading it would sort of be like talking to myself. So I appreciate all of you who have taken the time to read my little blog and comment on what I had to say.

I plan to be back here in another two years reflecting on what four years of blogging has taught me. I hope you’ll plan on coming back as well.

Andrea J. Stenberg

If you’re never been to southern Saskatchewan then picture bald prairie. The only trees were planted by hand and carefully watered with buckets carried from the wells. And the trees were needed to protect the houses (no R2000) from the winter winds.

It was the Depression and they were poor. Aunt Hilda spoke about grandma holding blankets over the windows during hail storms to protect them from the hail. She remembers the kids all crying because they knew what hail meant – no food. As a mother, my heart clenched at the thought of listening to the hail and knowing it meant not enough food for my kids.

And having no backup. No social services. No food banks. No credit cards. Just hungry kids.

Then Uncle Felix started telling a story about one Christmas when there was no money. So little money that they thought they might lose the farm. And would have if grandma’s parents hadn’t loaned them the money to keep going.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, grandpa wanted to make sure the kids (about seven at this point) all had gifts under the tree. With no money, he scrounged around town for scrap wood. He then stayed up late each night carving and building. The older girls got hope chests, the younger ones got toy kitchens (I still have my grandmother’s) and the boys got horse and wagons (Uncle Felix still has his).

The determination and love grandpa showed: not knowing if they were going to have a home and yet giving up sleep to give the children a good Christmas seems quietly heroic to me. No one is going to make a movie or write a book about grandpa. And I’m sure most prairie families have similar stories in their family history.

But it got me thinking about my life and my business. It’s easy to get scared about taking risks and trying new things. It’s easy to feel a sense of foreboding when I look at what’s happening with the economy.

And then I think about Aunt Hilda crying as grandma holds up a blanket to keep the hail out. I think of grandpa working late into the night with scrounged wood even as he wondered where they’d be living next summer.

Suddenly the things that seemed scary and overwhelming don’t look so bad. Suddenly I’m thinking if my family can go from wondering if they’ll have a home and food to hosting a family reunion with over 75 in attendance in less than a century, what can I do?

The next time I worry about taking a risk or wondering if I can succeed at something new, I’m going to think of grandma and grandpa out on the bald prairie. I come from hardy stock. I can succeed too.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Through the wonders of technology, I’ll be continuing to post business-related articles throughout my trip. However, I may indulge from time to time, with some personal contributions about my journey. If you are really curious about what I’m up to, I will be posting fairly regularly to Facebook however (internet connections permitting).

Yesterday I heard a radio interview with someone from the Dominion Institute. They conducted a survey and found 41 percent of Canadians couldn’t readily identify faces of Canadian icons. I scored 7 out of 10 on the quiz. How did you do? Take the quiz at www.dominion.ca and share how you did.

If you’re a Canadian, enjoy the celebrations. If you’re not, have a cold one and raise a toast on our behalf.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Meanwhile, many people rushed to reserve vanity URLs for their Fan or Business pages on Facebook. According to Facebook rules, your Fan page had to have been created prior to May 31^st and had to have at least 1,000 fans by that date.

If you didn’t meet that criteria, you were shut out. But not permanently. Starting midnight eastern Saturday (12:01 Sunday June 28^th) everyone with a Facebook Fan Page can set a vanity URL.

Since you can only have 5,000 personal friends but unlimited numbers of fans, creating a page for your business makes sense.

Celebrities have Fan pages branded with their names – www.Facebook.com/JaneDoe. For example: www.facebook.com/AshtonKutcher

Now you don’t have to be a Hollywood celebrity to brand your Fan page around your name. Authors, consultants or anyone who is a leader in their field and is branding themselves around their name could use their name as their vanity URL.

However, if you already used www.Facebook.com/JaneDoe for your personal page, you can’t use it for your fan page as well. And you can’t change your personal user name so you’ll have to come up with another option. I suppose you could use www.Facebook.com/Jane.Doe, however I think that might cause confusion.

On the other hand, if you have a business name, you can use that. www.facebook.com/PizzaHut

Authors can create pages around the title of their book. www.facebook.com/CrushIt

If you weren’t able to reserve your vanity URL for your Facebook Fan Page, set your alarm clock for midnight Saturday. And spend some time between now and then deciding what your URL should be, because you can’t change it later.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you seen some examples of great Facebook Fan Pages? How are small businesses using Fan Pages? Leave a comment and share your thoughts or the links to great pages.

All this changes at one minute after midnight (your local time) Saturday June 13^th. If you’re reading this on Friday June 12th, that’s midnight TONIGHT!

At that point you’ll be able to register your own user name for your personal profile and your fan page.

This is big news. Having a “vanity url” makes it easier for people to find you and for you to share your Facebook profile. Once you reserve your vanity url you’ll be able to easily direct people to your Facebook profile. It will also allow Google to more easily index you Facebook page, which should help with Google ranking.

The key to remember is once you’ve registered your user name, that’s it. You’re stuck with it. You can’t change it so consider what you choose carefully.

If you have a common name like Jane Smith, you might want to have some backup options in case www.Facebook.com/janesmith is taken when you register.

Some options you have when registering your user name:

• You can use periods, so jane.smith works.
• Your username has to be a minimum of five characters so you couldn’t register “Jane” but you could register “JaneSmith“
• You can use numbers so you could try jane97.
• You can only register one name for your profile (and you’re only allowed one personal profile).
• Generic user names (like “dogs” or “house”) are not available.

In addition, Facebook says:

If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after [Tuesday June 9^th] at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or “squatting” on names.

If you have a Fan Page – a page for your business – there are some further restrictions. Facebook says:

Your Facebook Page must meet two requirements: it must have been live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have had a minimum 1,000 fans at that time.

This limitation is temporary. All Pages created after May 31, 2009 or that had less than 1,000 fans on that day will be eligible to claim usernames on Sunday, June 28, 2009.

How to Register

At one minute after midnight on Saturday June 13^th (ie, stay up late Friday night) go to http://www.facebook.com/username/. I suspect there many be some traffic issues as everyone tries to reserve their name so be prepared for things to slow down.

You will be taken to a form that looks like this:

Choose one of the options Facebook gives you or type in your own. Double check that the spelling is correct then click “Set User name”.

If you have a fan page and meet the requirements, repeat this for the fan page.

So set your alarm and go get that Facebook user name.

Andrea J. Stenberg

If you need more information about how to reserve your Facebook user name, check the Facebook Blog or the Facebook User Name FAQ.

Andrea J. Stenberg

And social media use is exploding. If you believe the hype, everyone is using it.

I’ve learned however, that reality doesn’t live up to the hype. There are tons of people out there who have never given social media a shot. And even more people who get on one of the sites and then scratch their heads, wondering what the big deal is.

I’m continually getting calls and emails asking the same sorts of questions. Even worse, are the people who give social media a half-hearted try and then give up.

As the economy continues to slow, marketing is even more important for a business to stay healthy. And I truly believe social media is an essential part of most small business marketing strategies.

For all these reasons, I created an online course to help small business owners make the leap to a successful social media strategy.

Starting tomorrow, Tuesday January 13^th, and running for four consecutive Tuesdays, I’m teaching Getting Started with Social Media Marketing: How to Use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to build your brand, increase traffic and make more money.

I’ll be recording the calls so even if you can’t attend live, you won’t miss a thing. In these four weeks I’ll be teaching you:

• Why you need to be using social networking strategies and how to position your business above your competition.
• The differences between Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and which site is best for you and your business.
• What to do once you’re on a particular site to attract a following, build relationships and ultimately, build your business
• The best way to position yourself to get more high-quality traffic to your website or blog
• The biggest mistakes people make and how to avoid them

The cost for these four teleseminars is only $87 Canadian.

If you’re still not getting the most out of social media, don’t miss this online course.

Sign up now!

“See” you on the calls.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Are you already a social media whiz but know someone who really could use this course? Why not become an affiliate and recommend the course? They’ll learn how to use social media to build their business, you’ll get a $40 commission and I’ll be able to help even more people. Talk about a win-win-win proposition. Become an Affiliate today!

According to the poll, when asked to rate overall business conditions for the coming year more than half of those surveyed seem optimistic: 16 percent expect things to be better, 40 percent expect things to stay the same and 44 percent expect things to get worse.

When looking at operating costs (transportation, material, energy, etc.) again, more than half expect things to stay the same or improve: 13 percent expect improvement, 42 percent expect the status quo and 44 percent expect things to get worse.

Looking at production volumes well over half are optimistic: 15 percent expect improvement, 46 percent expect it to be the same and only 40 percent expect a drop in production.

For sales in 2009 it’s evenly split. Twenty percent expect growth, 31 percent expect sales to remain steady while 49 percent expect a drop in sales.

Interestingly, 58% of respondents believe their profits will be lower next year, while only 17% forecast an improvement and 25 percent expect things to remain the same. This figure doesn’t jibe with they survey’s prediction of improved or maintained business conditions, same or lowered operating costs and improved or maintained sales. Perhaps respondents were able to look at the individual aspects objectively but are being influenced by the media when making an overall prediction.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not burying my head in the sand, ignoring the recession. I know times are tough for a lot of businesses. But not everyone is suffering. I’ve spoken to many business owners who have seen growth, sometimes significant growth, in the past few months.

The key to surviving this economic downturn is to stay optimistic and work smarter as well as harder. Look closely at products and services to see which are most profitable. Decide if there are areas you need to focus on more. Market relentlessly. Provide top notch customer service and look for areas to reduce costs.

Andrea J. Stenberg