My dad has long been convinced that the next big wave of business startups will be seniors starting businesses. Looks like he’s been  right: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, according to the Kauffman Foundation, Americans age 55 to 64 have posted the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity for the past 10 years.

The Journal took a look at some senior entrepreneurs, many of whom have found their niches targeting people in their own age group. Many do so because they feel no one else cares about or understands their age group.

Entrepreneurs cited in the article include a woman who helps clients deal with Medicare paperwork, a woman with a memoir-writing service and a man who coaches seniors on how to start businesses. “The aging boomer is the ideal customer,” says Jennifer Campbell, the memoir writer.

Statistics bear her out. In a recent Ipsos Mendelsohn survey of affluent adults (household incomes $100,000 or higher) baby boomers were still America’s wealthiest generation; their annual spending power is estimated at over $2 trillion.

Matthew Taylor, a consumer market analyst at Datamonitor, which recently did a survey of boomers, said size and affluence make boomers a market to be reckoned with and noted that boomers–especially “empty nesters”—are still likely to upgrade and buy premium products despite the recession.

If you’re targeting boomers, realize they are still price-sensitive and want value. Yes, they’ll spend more—but only if they’re getting quality.

Within the boomer cohort, an especially good market to target is boomer men. Author and marketing consultant Brent Green, writing in MediaPost’s Engage:Boomers e-newsletter, notes, “nearly 6,000 baby boomer men turn 50 every day and a boomer male turns 60 about every 15 seconds.”

Boomer men have “transformed every life stage they’ve occupied,” writes Green, who cites studies from the National Marketing Institute showing that boomer men have been spending discretionary dollars despite the recession—a trend he believes will continue  as we move towards recovery. “Boomer men are changing the meaning of aging,” writes Green, who predicts that as they pass 50,  boomer men will continue to “acquire more.”

Did you miss Ronan Keane’s webinar on social media last week? Good news: You’ve got another chance to hear it. Ronan, who’s co-author of my e-book Startup Success: Boost Your Chances for Business Success With Web 2.0, is partnering with SCORE to conduct a webinar on social media each Thursday in March.

“Social Media Road Map for Your Business Success” its a practical guide to getting started and successfully using social media tools including Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. Ronan will also explain how to start a blog and how to distribute your content so that it reaches hundreds and even thousands of people. He’ll also share secrets to getting your content near the top of the rankings on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

I’ve learned a lot from Ronan, and you can too–just sign up for “Social Media Road Map for Your Business Success” tomorrow at noon, EST. It’s absolutely free, so you’ve got nothing to lose!

Want to see content specifically geared towards your business? Business.gov wants to help, but needs your input to cover the right industries. By clicking on their survey page, you can submit the industries you want to see or vote on ones submitted by other users. The survey will result in providing information on licenses and permits specific to your business.

Cupcake businesses remain hot, but now some new twists are popping up. Here are two we’ve seen recently.

Manly Cupcakes: FINS.com reported on the story of David Arrick, a Wall Street Lawyer who started a cupcake business after being laid off and noticing long lines outside New York City’s Magnolia Bakery. He saw an article describing cupcakes as “pink and magical” and decided they could also be masculine.

Arrick’s online cupcake delivery business, Butch Bakery, sports an unabashedly manly design and touts the manifesto: “We make manly cupcakes. For manly men.” What makes them so manly? Part of it’s liquor: flavors include kahlua-soaked vanilla cake with Bailey’s Bavarian cream, brandy-soaked lemon cake with orange-infused chocolate ganache filling, and chocolate and beer-infused cake with beer buttercream frosting. Of course, there are also non-alcoholic flavors like caramel cake with salted caramel filling; and maple cake with milk chocolate ganache and crumbled bacon.

Ironically, Arrick admits most orders have been placed by women. Brides have also asked him if he’ll make wedding cakes, and the Food Network approached him to see if he wants to audition for its show “Cupcake Wars.”

“It’s surprisingly a cutthroat environment for cupcakes,” Arrick told FINS.com, but that isn’t stopping him. Currently with so many orders his site is backlogged, Arrick is planning to expand to Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles this year.

Wine and Cupcakes: Combining two hot trends, sisters Sandy Neves and Josie Genaro launched Sisters Cupcakes by Design in Cathedral City, California. The company sells 23 varieties of gourmet cupcakes and caters weddings and other events. But one marketing tool that’s worked especially well is its wine and cupcake tastings.

Held several times a month, the tastings pair flavors like coconut lime, chocolate orange and spumoni cupcakes with various wines.The events have been extremely successful for the sisters, who also offer tea and cupcake tastings that can be held at clients’ homes for events like wedding or baby showers.

Get the latest on the state of small-business lending in my blog on iBank.com.

Finally, read whysome of America’s biggest brands are turning to franchising in my post on the AllBusiness.com Franchise Blog.

Jen Groover, inventor of the Butler Bag, is an innovative entrepreneur who’s a real inspiration to others. If you’re thinking about starting a new business but your fears are holding you back, pre-order a copy of her forthcoming book What If? & Why Not? How to Transform Your Fears Into Actions and Start the Business of Your Dreams.

Groover knows that the biggest roadblock to startup success isn’t the outer obstacles like getting a license or even finding financing, but the inner obstacles that keep you stuck in the status quo. “This is a book about overcoming self-doubt and the fear of failure so that you can take action,” she writes.

The book’s chapters are structured around specific fears, such as, “What if everyone tells me I can’t do it?” or “What if I’m terrified of selling?” In each chapter, Groover addresses the fear and offers a series of “Why Nots” to help you overcome it. She also includes anecdotes from real-life entrepreneurs who share how they overcame fears.

There are many business books that will tell you the nuts and bolts steps to startup, but Groover’s edge is in addressing those inner steps that are often the biggest and hardest to take.

Do you want to learn more about using social media tools to build your business? (Doesn’t everybody these days?) My friend Ronan Keane, co-author of my e-book Startup Success: Boost Your Chances for Business Success With Web 2.0, is partnering with SCORE to conduct four webinars on social media each Thursday in March.

The first seminar will be held tomorrow, March 4. Titled “Social Media Road Map for Your Business Success,” it’s a practical guide that will show you how to start and maintain successful social media accounts with Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. It will also explain the importance of establishing a blog for publishing content and how to distribute your content so that it reaches hundreds and even thousands of people. Ronan will also talk about how to get your content near the top of the rankings on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

“Social Media Road Map for Your Business Success” is tomorrow at noon, EST–and it’s free. Sign up at this link and get ready to learn!

SmallBizDaily is giving away a free HP iPAQ Glisten. I’ve been test-driving this new smartphone for several weeks now, and there are lots of cool features for small-business owners. One thing I love about the Glisten is its long battery life. It’s also got a great browser—clear and easy to see. But what you’ll really like about the Glisten is it comes equipped with Windows Mobile 6.5, so you can use Excel, PowerPoint and Word on the fly.

The Glisten has a full QWERTY keyboard as well as a touchscreen. It’s got multiple connectivity options, built-in Wi-Fi and GPS, advanced mobile e-mail capabilities and rich multimedia features. To find out more about the Glisten, visit AT&T’s site.

Sounds pretty smart, huh? To win your Glisten smartphone, share a “smart trick” you use to run your business better. We’ll share the best smart tricks on our blog. Just e-mail your tip (100 words or less, please) to editor@smallbizdaily.com with the subject line “HP Glisten.” Remember to tell us your name, your business’s name, and your business’s physical mailing address and phone number.

Tips must be received by midnight PST on March 22, 2010. See official rules for more details.

By Karen Axelton

Harvard Business Review posted a thought-provoking look at the future of work that has some key implications for how you manage your employees.

The recession has accelerated changes that were already happening in the work force, writes Tammy Erickson. It’s worth reading all of them, but if I were to boil the 5 trends Erickson pinpoints down to one word, I’d call it “detachment.” Employees are less and less confident that employers will provide benefits, stability, a regular paycheck or all of the things that used to be part of the deal. As a result, they’re giving less and less of themselves to the job.

Some aspects of detachment are good – like what Erickson calls “adult arrangements.” Simply put, this means treating employees like adults, such as letting them choose their own benefits or hours from a menu of flextime options. At some point in the future, she suggests, we might even give employees the freedom to set their own pay levels or take responsibility for their own performance reviews.

But others are bad—like the fact that increasingly, you’re competing with a host of other priorities for your staff’s “discretionary energy.” Already, Erickson says, holding multiple jobs or starting a side business is starting to become the norm—driven in part by the current trend toward employers cutting back hours to save money. Employees who are being told to only work 4 days a week naturally start to assess their work in a “by the hour” fashion, unwilling to give more hours than necessary to the job.

As employees start to become clock-watchers, you’ll struggle harder to engage them. But engage them you must. “More and more of the work in today’s economy cannot be done rotely — success requires a spark of extra effort, creativity, collaboration, and innovation,” Erickson writes. Ironically, removing employees’ incentives to spend their discretionary energy on you could sap their innovation just at the time when you need it most.

What are you competing with to get your employees’ discretionary energy?

Have you missed any of my blog posts around the Web this week? Here’s what I’m writing about:

Last week I heard one of the most inspiring business speakers ever, Seth Godin, talk about his “Linchpin” theory, why your lizard brain is holding you back and how to create a business that matters. Get more on my AllBusiness.com blog.

With big-bank lending drying up, community banks could be a lifeline for small business. Read more about President Obama’s plans for increasing local lending in my blog post on Anita Campbell’s Small Business Trends site.

There’s a whole generation growing up in the shadow of this “Great Recession.” Learn how the economic meltdown is changing their attitudes—perhaps forever—and what that means to your business in my post on AT&T’s SmallBusinessInSite.

Thinking about buying a franchise? Before you do, find out what that company’s franchisees really think of it. I’ll tell you how on my AllBusiness.com franchise blog.