Early Retirees in New Ventures, Mostly for Fun

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Not the hard-driving type who makes the business news pages. Rather, the laid-back, come-what-may variety. Many of them are part of the first wave of America’s 76 million baby boomers who are taking early retirement and turning their hobbies into small businesses. Very small businesses.

They say their microbusinesses are a way to give focus to a favorite pastime, get more zest out of life and make a little money. The best part is they do not care if the ventures fail.

For all their insouciance, these quasi-entrepreneurs display some of the symptoms that drive their mainstream brethren. Their compulsion to escape the restraints of the workplace before they turn 65, for example, reflects their desire to run their own show.

Carl Boast, owner of Peaceable Kingdom Photos in Moneta, Va., was making a hefty salary in New Jersey as a neuroscientist in the pharmaceutical industry when he decided he “wasn’t a fan of working for a living” and began plotting his departure.

Against the advice of his financial adviser, who worried about how much money he was letting slip away, he quit his job five years ago at age 55 and moved to a five-acre property on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia that now includes a 2,700-square-foot home, a guesthouse, a pontoon boat, a canoe, a tandem kayak, three single kayaks, two one-person sailboats and a jet ski.

He says he is too busy hiking, boating, reading, writing songs and traveling to fit the definition of an entrepreneur. “I’ve put very little effort into marketing,” he said. “I’m not out to make money or change the world.” He has created a Web site, he says, but it is “buried in Earthlink somewhere” and is out of date.

What really motivates him, he said, is “sharing my pictures to convey the idea, ‘Wasn’t this a neat moment?’ ”

And yet, he displays entrepreneurial traits. He had that a-ha moment many entrepreneurs describe when his wife, Linda, asked what he planned to do in retirement and he blurted out, “nature photographer.”

Soon after, he bought photography equipment, learned to cut mats and read guides like “The Business of Nature Photography.” He marketed his products at craft shows held by his employer, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. He felt the jubilation of making his first sale.

“Somebody paid me $12 for an 8-by-10 photo of a squirrel,” he said. “I way underpriced the photo, but still. It was such a rush, actually selling what I had produced, instead of giving it away. Over two days, I made $200. Since then, I’ve given this woman several other squirrel photos.”

He gave himself a crash course in business basics, like registering his venture so he could collect sales taxes, filling out business tax forms and ordering business cards. After moving south, he bought a digital single-lens reflex camera and a seven-ink printer. And he created an office and studio in his basement, with display board, halogen lights, pull-down screen, projector and table for cutting mat boards.

His sales usually run a few hundred dollars a year, he said, though they peaked in 2003 at more than $1,000 after an insurance company bought 20 photos to put on its walls. He also makes and sells calendars displaying his artwork, and he sees possibilities in the 2,600 photos he and Linda took on a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand.

Other opportunities have been coming his way, including small honorariums for speeches to bird clubs and nature clubs. “I haven’t been beating the market bushes,” he said. But if he could find the time, he said, he might start going to art shows and submitting his photos to magazines.

Jan Oudemool of Harwich, Mass., is, if anything, even more relaxed than Mr. Boast about his venture. Mr. Oudemool, 65, retired five years ago from a job as a special-education teacher and not long after began making decorative mobiles in his home.

Last year, he sold about 35 for close to $4,000, more than double the revenue of his company, Cape Cod Art Mobiles, in its first full year. He is delighted by the growth — not because he needs the money, but because he does not want his creations to gather dust in his basement.