Watch Out, The Boomers Are Coming
If you are a Baby Boomer, you know it.
For those readers who have not yet come across the concept baby boomers are those people born between 1946 and 1964.
They represent a sizeable percentage of the population, due, at least in part to the returning soldiers wanting to get their family started.
Because of their numbers, Boomers have been trend setters throughout their whole lives, and although you can't lump such a diverse group of people into one homogeneous group, they are used to getting their own way in life.
There are a number of reasons for that.
Their parents were, in the main, those born just after World War I, who, during their formative years endured the depression, then World War II.
Again, a generalisation, those experiences affected that generation deeply, so deeply they determined their children would have a better life than they ever had.
As a result the Boomer's parents worked hard to give their children a good life.
The sheer size of the Boomer cohort meant considerable changes in the way things were done.
When they were old enough to start school, the number of schools and the number of classes within each school increased dramatically.
When they started work, new pathways were developed to cater for such a large influx into the work force.
Jobs were plentiful because there was so much construction and development going on.
When they started getting married and settling down new areas of development need to be opened up and manufacturing and construction industries were booming trying to keep up with demand.
And so the trend setting pattern continued.
Now, the oldest of that generation is close to the official retirement age.
But the Boomer idea of retirement is quite different from that of their parents.
It tends to be the time, not of putting their feet up and relaxing, but doing things they didn't have the time to do when they were working.
With the advances in medical technology people now look forward to a much longer life expectancy, sometime twenty, thirty even forty active years after retirement, before they die.
That will place new demands on services for older people.
Not only that, but the world now has a generation that wants to travel.
The advances in transport have made that possible in a way that was not available to earlier generations.
The Internet has also had the effect of diminishing the size of the world, at least in people's minds.
So, what is the point of all this? You can track through the history of the Baby Boomer generation and see how, as they reached certain critical points in their lives, so demand for products and services in those areas trended upwards.
Whether you like it or not, Boomers have demanded attention, if only because they represent a significant population, bigger than just about any other generation born since then.
That gives the savvy person looking to get into a small business, some clues as to the areas that are going to boom for the next fifteen to twenty years.
They include, but are not limited to: anything to do with travel, both overseas and within your own country.
Medical products that allow people to continue an active life while contending with the health issues that come with ageing.
Financial advice, small business development advice are some more areas of potential boom markets.
Then there is the leisure industry.
Golf, lawn bowls, gardening, bus tours are just a few that come to mind.
In short, there are a multitude of business opportunities coming up over the next few years that could provide a veritable goldmine for the savvy business person who positions him or herself to take advantage of what is going to happen as surely as night follows day.
For those readers who have not yet come across the concept baby boomers are those people born between 1946 and 1964.
They represent a sizeable percentage of the population, due, at least in part to the returning soldiers wanting to get their family started.
Because of their numbers, Boomers have been trend setters throughout their whole lives, and although you can't lump such a diverse group of people into one homogeneous group, they are used to getting their own way in life.
There are a number of reasons for that.
Their parents were, in the main, those born just after World War I, who, during their formative years endured the depression, then World War II.
Again, a generalisation, those experiences affected that generation deeply, so deeply they determined their children would have a better life than they ever had.
As a result the Boomer's parents worked hard to give their children a good life.
The sheer size of the Boomer cohort meant considerable changes in the way things were done.
When they were old enough to start school, the number of schools and the number of classes within each school increased dramatically.
When they started work, new pathways were developed to cater for such a large influx into the work force.
Jobs were plentiful because there was so much construction and development going on.
When they started getting married and settling down new areas of development need to be opened up and manufacturing and construction industries were booming trying to keep up with demand.
And so the trend setting pattern continued.
Now, the oldest of that generation is close to the official retirement age.
But the Boomer idea of retirement is quite different from that of their parents.
It tends to be the time, not of putting their feet up and relaxing, but doing things they didn't have the time to do when they were working.
With the advances in medical technology people now look forward to a much longer life expectancy, sometime twenty, thirty even forty active years after retirement, before they die.
That will place new demands on services for older people.
Not only that, but the world now has a generation that wants to travel.
The advances in transport have made that possible in a way that was not available to earlier generations.
The Internet has also had the effect of diminishing the size of the world, at least in people's minds.
So, what is the point of all this? You can track through the history of the Baby Boomer generation and see how, as they reached certain critical points in their lives, so demand for products and services in those areas trended upwards.
Whether you like it or not, Boomers have demanded attention, if only because they represent a significant population, bigger than just about any other generation born since then.
That gives the savvy person looking to get into a small business, some clues as to the areas that are going to boom for the next fifteen to twenty years.
They include, but are not limited to: anything to do with travel, both overseas and within your own country.
Medical products that allow people to continue an active life while contending with the health issues that come with ageing.
Financial advice, small business development advice are some more areas of potential boom markets.
Then there is the leisure industry.
Golf, lawn bowls, gardening, bus tours are just a few that come to mind.
In short, there are a multitude of business opportunities coming up over the next few years that could provide a veritable goldmine for the savvy business person who positions him or herself to take advantage of what is going to happen as surely as night follows day.
