Retirees, upstarts matched at business fair.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL [biz] - Ball Corp. - Editorial

Bill Boothby has been retired for seven years from a career that included starting two businesses--one in the 1970s and one in the 1990s--that he built up and sold. In between, he served as director of international business development for Ball Corp. Now he volunteers helping others launch their business dreams.

"I'm kind of unusual in that I have small-business experience. I know what it means to have to make a payroll and not have any money," says Boothby, 66. "And on the other hand, I've also done large corporate work."

Boothby was explaining this in the context of his involvement with SCORE, the Service Corp. of Retired Executives, a resource partner of the Small Business Administration made up of volunteers who counsel startup business owners and those who have never been in business but want to be.

"It's fun, and it's great to be part of someone else's dream," he says.

Of course, a recession like this has not been seen in decades--the national 9.5 percent unemployment rate is the highest in 26 years--so lately many of the people Boothby sees are not so much pursuing a dream as they are trying to shake a nightmare--of unemployment, financial woes, career uncertainty.

"We see so many people who for years have run good businesses, and they're good businesspeople who are in trouble because their customers have just absolutely disappeared," Boothby says. "It really shakes them right down to their core because they begin to question who they are and where they're going in life."

About 400 seeking guidance found their way to the Lowry Conference Center in mid-July for CBS4 News' "Beating the Recession Small Business Fair," which offered workshops on securing capital, consultations with lenders, and one-on-one sessions with counselors like Boothby, who finished a two-year term as president of SCORE'S Denver chapter in 2008.

I asked Boothby about some of his clients' ventures, and he led me to the Lowry Conference Center kitchen to show me a countertop full of gourmet cupcakes with elaborate swirls of coconut, chocolate, strawberries and cream, and vanilla icing. They are the handiwork of one of his former clients, Porche Lovely.

Lovely was a project manager for Sun Microsystems before being laid off in 2004. She went through the Johnson & Wales University baking and pastry program and out of that created a business plan, but it sat dormant for about a year. Then she came to Boothby for help in 2007.

"We spent a good couple of months working...