You Can't Fire Me Now
By: Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2004-07-02 16:08:00-04:00
After some 35 years in the oil and gas industry, Elizabeth Bradford was sick of the corporate grind—but she wasn't ready to retire. So in 1999 she founded It's A Dog's Life, Inc., a Houston-based daycare center for dogs. "I love dogs and was tired of spending 12 hours a day without them," says Bradford, 62. Her first center was so successful that in 2002 she opened a second one.
If Bradford is now the Colonel Sanders of pet care—an older entrepreneur with a hot idea—she's also part of a trend. The number of 55-plus Americans who are self-employed jumped 10 percent between 1994 and 2003, from 2.6 million to 2.8 million; they're now the fastest-growing and largest group of entrepreneurs in the nation.
For some, like Bradford, it's the need to do something different. For others—those receiving lucrative buyout packages—it's a rare opportunity to bankroll a business. But for many older workers, self-employment is simply a survival tactic in a tough job market. Older workers generally command higher salaries and have higher medical expenses, a liability in a sluggish economy. Ned Bennett sent out resumés for a year when his position at a financial firm was eliminated in 1999. After barely a nibble from employers, Bennett, 61, went from layoff to payoff: he and two colleagues started OptionsXpress, Inc., an online options and stock brokerage firm based in Chicago that now boasts 100 employees and 90,000 client accounts.
Interested in becoming your own boss? The most important step is to protect your assets, particularly if you're over 50, since "you have less time to recover from missteps," says Giovanni Coratolo, director of small business policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. His advice: consider incorporating your business (as opposed to forming a proprietorship). It provides some protection against liability and helps shield your personal assets in a lawsuit. For more info on running your own company, visit the National Federation of Independent Business's website.
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