NICK SCHIFRIN: There might be a stereotype of the 20-something start-up entrepreneur,
but older people start businesses at higher rates than their younger counterparts.
Correspondent Paul Solman visited a New York City tech center that is helping seniors realize
their start-up dreams, part of a new series about older workers we're calling Unfinished
Business, part of our weekly look at economics, Making Sense.
MAN: Let the fashion show begin.
PAUL SOLMAN: For a group of designers in Manhattan's Chelsea district, senior moments to remember.
Former recreational therapist Virginia Hamlin modeling her handmade scarves.
VIRGINIA HAMLIN, Entrepreneur: I'm 75.
I'm at level 75.
PAUL SOLMAN: Knitter Madelyn Rich, a former paralegal and social worker.
MADELYN RICH, Entrepreneur: I'll be 75 next month.
PAUL SOLMAN: Arline Rubin, who makes clothes with recycled material, was a professor for
35 years.
ARLINE RUBIN, Entrepreneur: I'm 84 years old.
PAUL SOLMAN: But this is a venue for much more than fashion statements.
VIRGINIA HAMLIN: If you have a smartphone, and the phone is smarter than you, you need
to go to Senior Planet.
PAUL SOLMAN: Nowadays, every day, in locations across the country, Senior Planet teaches
Americans 60 and over the basics of cyberspace, from video streaming to job search.
WOMAN: If you don't have social media, it will appear like you don't know what's going
on.
Founder Tom Kamber's first senior client was a woman in her 80s.
TOM KAMBER, Executive Director, Senior Planet: And once a week, she would come to my office
with her breakfast in a napkin, and we would do a computer class.
And over the course of a year, she learned a lot about technology, but I learned a lot
more about aging, and a lot more about the magic of what happens with older people when
you bring together computers and seniors and you give them a chance to succeed with it.
BONNIE MACKAY, Consultant; I needed support.
PAUL SOLMAN: Even though Bonnie MacKay had been a hotshot retail designer at Bloomingdale's
and then New York's Museum of Modern art.
Now 68, she's consulting and, thanks to Senior Planet, cultivating a younger clientele online.
Yes, she still has customers from the past.
BONNIE MACKAY: But you still have to communicate, and you still have to -- you have to do LinkedIn,
and you still have to do social media, and you still have to communicate with the cross-generational.
PAUL SOLMAN: She has no plans to throw in the towel.
Sixty-six-year-old Cheryl "The Gourd Lady" Thompson, who plays and sells African instruments
fashioned from gourds, is not about to bow out either.
CHERYL THOMPSON, Entrepreneur: I'm still perpendicular.
I still have my health, and I'm just constantly on the go, doing, doing, doing, and just trying
not to think negatively, and being around positive people.
PAUL SOLMAN: The main virtue of Senior Planet for her?
CHERYL THOMPSON: It's become an extended family for me.
PAUL SOLMAN: For so many older people, working on is critical to well-being, says Tom Kamber.
TOM KAMBER: And there's a lot of research about how important it is for people to still
be activated and have a purpose and be trying to be creative in their later years.
MADELYN RICH: I don't know if these colors look great for you.
PAUL SOLMAN: Like Madelyn Rich, her creativity inspired by a chilly ride on the New York
subway.
MADELYN RICH: By the time I got home, I had a stiff neck.
And I pulled out my yarn, and I started knitting.
And two days later...
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: Wait, this is a New York subway over-air-conditioning cowl?
MADELYN RICH: Exactly.
My saying is fun, funky, but functional.
PAUL SOLMAN: A slogan she's learned to hawk online.
For many here, though, like milliner Carlos Lewis, 73, Senior Planet begins as remedial
ed in low tech.
CARLOS LEWIS, Entrepreneur: I was a dummy, don't know a computer, couldn't type.
Now I can type.
Now I can actually partially build a Web site.
Now I can send a picture to a client.
PAUL SOLMAN: Did you think you would be working at this age?
(LAUGHTER)
CARLOS LEWIS: Working at this age?
No, because I thought that the business that I started, I thought it would be, like, really,
really long, ongoing.
PAUL SOLMAN: But he took a financial hit when his hat factory went bust, now markets custom
pieces to private clients.
Income is an even more pressing concern for The Gourd Lady.
CHERYL THOMPSON: Just keeping the roof over my head.
I don't get regular, steady paychecks.
And I get residencies, and they are temporary.
So I'm always looking for the next residency, the next sale, the next source of income.
PAUL SOLMAN: Cheryl Thompson's Senior Planet goal?
To sell her instruments on Etsy, so she can start saving for retirement.
She's 66, remember.
CHERYL THOMPSON: I was just so busy, always looking for the next dollar to keep the roof
over the head.
And, of course, now, being older, I realize, oh.
And I'm like 60 came so fast.
I have saved I don't know how many times, but then I have had to use it.
TOM KAMBER: Twenty percent to 25 percent of the people that come in the doors here are
looking to improve their financial situation.
They are looking for a job.
They are looking to save money by shopping online.
Or there is some business idea that they have been percolating for years, and now they're
65, and they suddenly have an opening in their life to say, I want to start that business.
PAUL SOLMAN: According to the Kauffman Foundation, in 2018, the 55-to-64-age group made up 26
percent of new entrepreneurs, a larger share than their younger counterparts.
Baby boomers turn out to be twice as likely to start a business within the next year as
millennials.
Senior Planet is teaching the tech-savvy that passed so many seniors by.
There's is a downside in becoming acclimated to cyberspace, says Cheryl Thompson.
CHERYL THOMPSON: I told my instructor it was his fault.
He said, why?
What?
What did I do now?
You introduced me to Spotify.
I spent a whole day at home on Spotify just going through and collecting songs and things.
I was like, wow, this is great.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL SOLMAN: Great, but not exactly income-producing.
On the other hand, says Tom Kamber, older entrepreneurs aren't looking to strike it
rich.
TOM KAMBER: Entrepreneurship turns out to be different for younger people vs. older
people.
When you talk to a 20-year-old and they're starting a business -- and I know a lot of
those -- they have this whole dream of, you start the business up and then you get bought
out by a big company and they buy you out, right?
PAUL SOLMAN: Right.
TOM KAMBER: When we get older, our horizons become a little shorter.
And so we start realizing, well, geez, I might have 20 years or 10 years to execute something
that really represents me as a person on this Earth.
For many people, they have been waiting a long time to do that stuff.
PAUL SOLMAN: Like the designers on the runway at Senior Planet.
And that's why Tom Kamber calls this a senior moment.
TOM KAMBER: Ageism is one of the last really accepted areas where people will engage with
some really negative stereotyping and negative biases, and act as if it's normal.
So, for example, somebody just the other day used the word senior moment in front of me,
and I had that I had to not, you know, like, throttle them, because a senior moment -- can
you imagine if your demographic was defined as the demographic that forgot things?
To me, a senior moment is about being honest, because seniors are much more honest and much
more willing to speak their mind than younger people.
They're more confident.
They know who they are.
They have experience.
They have some judgment.
They have perspective.
Those are senior things.
PAUL SOLMAN: And, often, they're less paralyzingly self-conscious as well.
For the "PBS NewsHour," this is Paul Solman in New York City.