County baby boomers aren't retiring quietly

A year ago, Steve Huber was ready to retire from the Navy, but not ready to sit around and do nothing.

So Huber, 51, retired as commander of the Naval Surface Warfare Center and started a consulting business.

He said the term for ending a career with the military — a “transition” — was a more apt description than retirement.

“My great discovery when I first transitioned from the Navy was that I can’t sit around and watch TV and do nothing,” said Huber, who finished his career at Naval Base Ventura County.

The Oxnard resident wanted to put his skills and his years of experience to work. Through his consulting business, he has been able to put his knowledge to use helping organizations streamline and become more efficient.

It’s been so successful that his consulting led to a full-time job with Serco, a global management services company. He still does enough outside consulting work to keep S. H. Huber and Associates in the black. Plus, he has the added luxury as a retiree of worrying less about a salary to pay the mortgage and more about pursuing work he enjoys.

Huber, a young baby boomer, is indicative of the generation, which started retiring in earnest in recent years. Many boomers are finding — even in an economic downturn, or perhaps because of it — that their retirement years are best spent working.

For some, it’s about keeping a paycheck coming in after 401(k)s have shriveled and pensions have been cut. For others, it’s about keeping active and engaged.

Retirement offers a little more financial flexibility to start a business, and being self-employed creates more opportunities to set hours or determine the kind of work.

“I wanted to basically go into business to be able to have the autonomy and ability to control my own destiny,” Huber said.

John Hudson, who has years of executive coaching experience and recently opened The Growth Coach franchise in Ventura County to help small businesses, sees potential for retirees to serve a vital role in the coming years, when there will be more jobs than people to fill them.

Because so many industries are now service-related, it creates an opportunity for retirees to take their knowledge and offer it to organizations as consultants, he said.

He has a book coming out later this summer on baby boomers and retirement, “Choosing the Right Path.” Hudson not only wrote the book for baby boomers — he is one.

“In many ways, I’m sort of writing to myself,” he said.

He sees two sides to the issue: how baby boomers will make the transition into their retirement years; and how businesses will respond to compensate for the leadership they will be losing.

“There are some tremendous work force planning issues for organizations around that — the brain drain that it could create,” he said.

He finds that many baby boomers want to do something different. For some, it’s starting a business. For others, it’s volunteer work, coaching or consulting.

But Hudson has seen a shift due to the economy.

When he started working on the book about four years ago, he talked to many retirees starting businesses. Many were well-set and had money to start a business.

In the past year, however, the economy shifted and people’s savings were wiped out.

Now, some people who planned to leave the work force are finding they can’t.

That has its own implications for workers and organizations, as people who want to be doing something else show up for work each day.

“That’s probably another book,” he said.

The economy was not a deterrent, but almost a motivator for Huber as he saw public sector organizations — such as local governments — facing budget constraints and needing to become leaner.

“It was almost a perfect opportunity when I was retiring with that skill set,” he said.

Though he had the skills, Huber didn’t have experience writing a business plan or setting up marketing and finances. That’s why he turned to SCORE, which provides volunteer counseling by executives and retired executives.

He attended workshops and then received counseling on the practical side of running a business from SCORE volunteer Michael Scotto.

Scotto said he is seeing fewer new retirees starting businesses these days.

“Most of the people that we’re seeing now are people that have been laid off, have lost their job and are thinking maybe this is the time to do something,” he said.

But for those seeking to start a business, it has to be about more than just a last-ditch effort, he said.

“You have to have a tremendous passion for what you’re about to do and a love for it, not just because the economy’s bad and you have to find something to do,” he said.

Those starting businesses also need some financial security, both to carry them through the tough times and to put into the business. Scotto said one of the biggest reasons small businesses fail is due to lack of capital.

Scotto joined SCORE about a year ago when he decided to retire.

Scotto is another part of the picture — though he falls at the tail end of the pre-boomer generation. He has 45 years of marketing experience, spending years working for large retail companies and the past 21 years running his own marketing consulting business that focused on small business turnarounds.

When he decided to retire, he wanted to stay active and joined SCORE as a way to give back to the community.

“It’s the same thing I was doing in my own business, only I’m doing it for free,” he said.

In that year, he’s become a SCORE advocate and will become the local chapter chairman in October.

“It surprises me that there are almost 69,000 businesses in Ventura County and we are not swamped,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think the public is aware of the assistance the agency provides.

Other resources are the Small Business Development Center at Ventura College, Women’s Economic Ventures and local chambers of commerce.

To read the article on the Ventura County Star web site or to listen to the podcast of the article, click here.