Generational Business: Boomer Businesses are Retiring

Small, family owned businesses have been seen as one of the centerpieces of American society for decades. Baby boomers built a set of businesses that, today, make up 40% of all small businesses and franchises. These are highly successful, established, and respected businesses.

In contrast to the past though, the younger generations of today aren’t satisfied in simply taking over the family business. As the tech, entertainment, health, and a host of other industries have grown in scope, small businesses have lost a lot of the glamor and respect they once held. 

So what are baby boomers meant to do? Simply closing the business serves no one, but selling it to some equity company or merging with another corporation doesn’t appeal to many business owners either. This is where the idea of a business passing to the next generations actually reemerges. 

Instead of passing it to their children, boomers are selling their businesses to entrepreneurs of the same generation. Millennials, to become their own boss, are buying small boomer businesses and making them their own. This only makes sense when considering it serves both generations’ needs perfectly.

Millennials can set their own path, own something completely, and boomers can sell to someone they know will put passion into the business. This is just one of countless examples of generation wealth being passed from the baby boomers to upcoming generations. Baby boomers made the past, set the present, and are influencing the future as they leave the economic sphere.