Baby Boomers are in transition. After years of working for others including family and companies, Boomers are getting laid off or downsized; some are just on the move and trying to start over at a later age in life.  Others are retiring, but even more are finally moving into career, work and businesses they always dreamed of doing. 

Does this sound like you?  If you’re in the Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964, you could be in a state of flux right now.  So what are you going to do? 

First of all, be happy!  In fact, look at the situation as the opportunity to be a maverick in your industry and create something new and exciting that only your years of experiences can produce.

You definitely will find that you have special skills, knowledge and expertise that other people are willing to pay for.  You might not recognize these areas at first because you take these things for granted. 

But don’t fear; help is on the way. One idea is to take an assessment of your talents, skills, years of experience and transferable skills and start a practice as a Coach or Consulting.  Take your area of specialization and bring those talents back to the entrepreneurial or corporate world in an independent manner. 

But don’t stop with what you’ve already done.  This is the time to also explore what you’ve always wanted to do.  Dig deep inside and pull out that long hidden dream venture and see what it takes to turn that into an income stream. 

Change and transition for Boomers can finally present an opening to do what you’ve wanted to pursue for a lifetime. Be brave, be bold be a maverick Boomer.

The world always needs new ideas.  Nothing in the world is completed to a final state.  It can’t be, because the world is constantly changing.  People are active, quickly bored, restless, and eager for change. 

It’s no surprise that material objects are invented to become obsolete very quickly, forcing people to get new things.  Look at the video world.  People are being forced to update their home technology.  From video and VCR’s to DVD’s and more. Now you can download movies and watch them on pocket sized devices on in the back seat of a vehicle on long drive.

If you have the money readily available or not, it’s necessary to keep up with rapid creative changes because certain products will be taken off the market.  Items that are still useful and barely used become old fashioned or obsolete. This makes room for new and different things to be purchased. It happens all the time.  

A business that produces new ideas is the one that will potentially remain profitable over the years. Coming up with new ideas, new ways to present products or services, or just a new gadget, will keep you ahead of other businesses in the marketplace.    

Many business people seem to have lost their ability to be creative.  Instead of being innovative and creating something new, they find something being done and copy it.  With the Internet, it is not surprising to find a lot of the same information being spread around. 

Have you ever purchased something on the web based on the fabulous copy in the sales letter that promised that you would gain the latest and best information possible through that product?  After buying it, did you find it to be the same ebook or product you had already purchased, only with a new name on it?  

This happened to a client not long ago. He purchased a CD of a teleclass on a particular topic. One of the promised bonuses was an “exclusive eBook” with all of the secrets for getting this new business idea up and running. As soon as he started to print the eBook it looked familiar. In fact, it was the same eBook he had purchased before and found disappointing.

All that was changed was the title.  All the purchase did was change his mind about the integrity and expertise of the self-proclaimed guru that had sold it.   

No one wants to just get a poor imitation of something they’ve already experience because of a lack of creativity in business. It doesn’t take genius status to come up with new ideas and to be creative.  Ideas are everywhere.  Be creative and make your business stand out from the crowd. Creative requires using what is familiar in new and innovative ways as you think differently about what you already know.   

Creativity will always be needed and welcomed. Grow your business by developing a reputation of being on the cutting-edge of creativity in a world that can’t stop that changes and wouldn’t be as fun and exciting without them anyways.

Tiger Woods is all the news these days and that’s not good; at least not for the reasons he’s in the news.  Some might argue that this infidelity situation with so many women is a personal thing between him and his wife. But it also brings up a question for business owners and organizational leaders who select a public “face” to represent their businesses. 

It’s a well known marketing fact that using famous personalities is a great marketing strategy.  Well-known celebrities quickly attract attention, build instant credibility and promote trust in the product or services they represent. The goal of course, is to increase sales as much as potentially possible.

But what happens when the “face of the business” messes up?  One of the first things the public wonders about is, will there be a loss of endorsements? While worrying about the loss of money for an already wealthy celebrity is entertaining, this issue opens up the opportunity to think about and discuss how having a person attached to your business who is sucking in negative publicity on the personal level can affect the credibility of the business.    

Perhaps it’s time for businesses to change their ideas about who or what should be representing their business to the public. 

No one is perfect so it’s impossible to know what will happen with any human being at any time. That makes selecting a “face” to represent your business or organization a tricky marketing strategy. You’re counting on the person to propel your product or service to higher levels in the eyes of your target market. 

But what happens if you get a Tiger Woods situation?  What happens when your business name is totally linked to a person that totally messes up? How do you change the negative image that could stick to you based on your selection of a representative? 

That is always a potential risk that has to be considered when dealing with human nature.  It might be the luck of the draw to find a person who starts with and maintains a spotless background over the long term to be your representative.  The problem is that it seems to be a gamble these days. With the widespread availability of video and audio devices almost nothing is a secret anymore.  Add a down economy and the potential to benefit financially by either outing someone’s bad behavior or better yet, having a relationship to someone shaky and nothing is sacred anymore.

Whether or not Tiger Woods will remain the face of all of the major companies he’s been affiliated with after this situation still remains to be seen.  Like other celebrities that have provided us with their own version of entertainment through their failures for a few weeks, the world will wait to see what the companies will decide. Meanwhile, this contemporary dilemma gives business and organization professionals just one more detail to consider if you intend (or already do) select a public person to be the marketing face of your business. 

This is just one more issue to add to the strategic plan when looking at what changes to make in your organization for 2010.