What Is the Silver Wave? A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity

The “Silver Wave” is more than just a turn of phrase — it’s a seismic demographic shift that presents a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs.

But this isn’t a “trend.” This is an economic tsunami. The Baby Boomer generation is handing off the keys to their companies, and the question is: who’s going to take them? For some entrepreneurs, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to skip the startup grind and take over revenue-generating businesses.

There are currently about 76 million Baby Boomers in the United States, and every year, more than 4 million of them retire. That’s about 11,000 retirements a day. Out of those 76 million Boomers, around 8 million of them are business owners. This means that 416,000 Baby Boomer business owners retire every year, or about 1,155 a day.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Of those 8 million Boomer-owned businesses, 5.2 million are profitable. This means about 270,000 profitable Boomer business owners are retiring annually, or about 750 daily.

Turns out about 27,000 of these businesses generate over $1 million in revenue per year. That means around 75 profitable businesses with revenues exceeding $1 million could potentially be put up for sale. Every, Single. Day.

But wait, there’s more!: Of those 75 profitable businesses, only seven of them have a transition plan or exit strategy in place. That means the majority of these valuable, profitable…