Number 42
Formal peer groups, too. The Entrepreneurs' Organization (which was the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization before changing its name in June) now boasts 550,000 members in 120 chapters in 40 countries.
Number 43
Because it's still easier to balance your life when you own a successful business. And more people than ever wish they could arrange that balance for themselves.
Number 44
Because in the '70s you could differentiate and build a business by inventing something that big companies weren't brave enough or visionary enough to try (Apple Computer). And you still can.
Number 45
Because in the '80s you could differentiate and build a business by enriching your products and services with information, establishing a bond with customers no corporate competitor could match (Smith & Hawken, The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry's). And you still can.
Number 46
Because in the '90s you could differentiate and build a business by blowing up and reinventing sales channels in ways established corporations will never be flexible enough--or structurally divorced enough from the status quo--to attempt (Dell, Amazon). And you still can.
Number 47
Because in every decade you could differentiate and build a business by running an organization in strange new ways, unleashing yourself and your people by sharing equity or opening the books, or putting authority in the lowest hands, or experimenting with heroically unconventional environments, or leveraging teams, networks, and alternative workstyles, or by embracing any of a hundred other managerial strategies of unexpected provenance. And big-company managers, unlike you, still can't.
Number 48
Because, bizarrely, even Simon Cowell has spotted the bandwagon. In development is The Million Dollar Idea, a reality TV program by the American Idol producer, in which nine contestants will each get $50,000 in seed capital to launch a venture, with the winner being decided by America's vote.
Number 49
Because the paper isn't blank--and copying is encouraged. This is Todd Harff, president of Creating Results Strategic Marketing in Occoquan, Va.:
"I don't have time to make all the mistakes myself, and I'm too impatient not to capitalize on other people's ideas. That's all good, though, because of how it's gotten so much easier to learn from the history and mistakes and proven ideas of others. That's why I like being in TEC [The Executive Committee, a peer group and counseling organization]. And the Internet, too, has enormously altered how easy it is to research articles, case studies, and management ideas. When you're hitting your head against the wall, you almost always can find out about someone else who hit his or her head against the same wall and figured out an answer. It gains you a lot of ground fast."
Number 50
Because once it was unions that looked out for workers. And now, if you're good, it's you.
Number 51
Because once it was schools that effectively ushered outsiders into U.S. economic life--preparing immigrants and the unfortunate. And now, if you're smart, it's you.
Number 52
Because so many of the changes that bring opportunity also pose threats. Vanishing borders, technological enfranchisement, the ascendancy of ideas over resources--trends that enable everyone to compete with everyone--are the kinds of developments that will benefit those who capitalize on them, but will swamp those who don't. Entrepreneurs are positioned to do the capitalizing.
Number 53
Because Kathy Ireland (who sells a billion dollars' worth of clothing and home furnishings a year) and Christy Turlington (who has started three businesses) can be your role models. Used to be, it was plenty for better-seen-than-heard fashion models to claim aspirations to acting. Now even wanting to direct isn't enough. Today it's about launching a business.
Number 54
Or George Clooney, if that's more your style. He and three partners have announced plans to open a Las Vegas casino.
Number 55
The Small Business Administration, which despite whatever politics surround it continues to lend business owners increasing amounts of money. Through the third quarter of 2005, lending through the SBA's 7A program was up 19.5% over 2004. And 2004 was a record year. As were 2003 and 2002 before it.
Number 56
Because nowadays even companies that aren't entrepreneurial want to appear to be. Big beer producers label fake microbrews and airlines invent brands that look "independent." Why the dissembling? Seems consumers don't trust the big guys so much. Consumers trust you. (Again we say: Don't blow it.)
Number 57
Martha Stewart. Seriously. Remember when she was merely the doyenne of taste, content to help us put style into our lives? Now comes (to your local bookstore soon) Martha's Rules, not an autobiography but "a handbook for developing a business from scratch utilizing advice and expertise from the woman who built a billion-dollar brand by turning a great idea into a well-organized, well-run, creative, and debt-free company in just a few years." Now Martha wants to help us put entrepreneurship into our lives. Call it the mega-mainstreaming of entrepreneurship.
Number 58
Any or all of the ever-multiplying websites that can put us into hotels, airplanes, theaters, or rental cars in seconds--and cheaply.
Number 59
Your iPod--Steve Jobs's personal object lesson in the market-moving power of design, the kind of design that any daring entrepreneur (unbridled by committees, convention, or consensus) has the freedom and authority to attempt.
