Still looking for meaning and with decades of experience, baby boomers are launching new companies.

BIZ(941) March 2011 Author: Molly McCartney - Photographer: Alex Stafford

Baby boomers have determined social and economic trends for the last 65 years, and now they're reshaping retirement.

A 2009 study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation reports on "The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom," and notes that, contrary to popular assumptions, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group.

"The 20-34 age bracket, which is usually identified with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google), has the lowest," the report says.

Factors that are shaping this flurry of entrepreneurship are longer, healthier lives; a recession that's taken its toll on boomers' 401(k)s; the continued decline of lifetime employment, especially among men over age 50 (no more gold watches for 30 years of service); and the know-how that comes from decades of experience.

Plus, many boomers like to work. It's a big part of their identity, and they're carrying that need for purpose and meaning into their next phase of life. Here are six boomerpreneurs right here at home.

Name: Sue Ellen Addicott

Age: 64

Former profession: Conference director in Washington, D.C.

Retired at age: 54

New company: Senior Moves, manages downsizing for seniors

Biggest challenge: Learning a new field

Biggest strength: Experience

Senior Moves

In 1998, Sue Ellen Addicott retired from her Washington, D.C., job as a conference director and moved to Sarasota with her jazz musician husband. She learned to play bridge.

She did volunteer work. But she felt something missing. In 2007, she got the idea that many older people in the Sarasota region, especially those without children here, needed help downsizing into independent living facilities,. Families also need help closing homes when older relatives die, she thought. So why not start a business that helps seniors move? And call it Senior Moves?

"I saw firsthand with my own parents the emotions that people experience with this process," she says. "And I thought this is a job that requires organization, which I can do. And people skills, which I have."

With a $10,000 personal investment, she launched Senior Moves in January 2007. "At first I thought I had invented the concept. But in fact, I found an association of senior move managers, which was good because I didn't have to invent everything. Art Mahoney with the Small Business Development Center at State College of Florida mentored me on marketing. Another person mentored me on how to draw up a business plan and a financial plan," she says.

By October 2007 Addicott had her first customer. "We do everything with the move except transporting the goods," she says. "I come in and offer a complimentary consultation to get the lay of the land. I can do a floor plan of the new residence for the clients by measuring their new place and their furniture. And that helps with a lot of the decisions about what can go and what can't."

Today Addicott, 64, has eight part-time employees who do the packing and unpacking, and then work to get the empty house into condition for sale. She has a website, a blog and even a radio show from noon to 1 p.m. on Saturdays on Sarasota's WTMY-AM.

Since launching her company, Addicott says she has helped about 150 families move. "We made a profit in 2010 for the first time," she says. She plans to keep the business going as long as she enjoys it and has good health. "At some point I need an exit strategy," she says. But not yet.