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Let me first establish the premise of this post:    America will be OK.   This economic crisis is being fueled by fear more than anything.  Sure there are problems with the discovery of phantom cash reserves of banks and the inflated value of real estate.  But we have been there as a nation at least 2 times in my adult life that I have vivid memories of - S&L Bail Out, Real estate collapse of the ’78-’82 time frame and the dot-com bomb and Enron/MCI-WorldTelecom etal financial debacle…IBM even laid off 300K+ people over a 5 year period of time.  So how can I remain optimistic faced with all the chicken littles running around?  In one word:  Entrepreneurism.

What differentiates America from all other nations is that we seem to be borne with an entrepreneurs gene.  From the earliest days when a child sells lemonade or takes a paper route or tries to win a contest at school for selling the most stuff, entrepreneur-morphins are released and wheels are set in motion.   They decide they hate it and will lead a life as a good employee or they feel the power of controlling a large part of their future.   I’m an old(er) entrepreneur and wish I had some of the tools available now to entrepreneurs.   The entrepreneur programs at many universities are great incubators for the next generation.   Aspiring entrepreneurs don’t just have to rely on DECA or Junior Achievement, or trial and error to figure it out.   These entrepreneur programs are great proving grounds.  I had the opportunity to be Entrepreneurs in Residence at the University of Florida last spring and was delighted to hear young entrepreneurs learning about planning, funding, and growing business…same things that we teach old(er) entrepreneurs today as they come to LAUNCHfn to get access to capital and resources to grow their businesses.  

I discovered a young entrepreneur that is also providing a guiding light to the legions of aspiring and inspired entrepreneurs.   Stanley Tang.  His focus is on internet based business, but is still very relevant for young entrepreneurs wanting to cut their teeth and get things started in business.   Make some money, make it almost residual, and then use that to fuel the launch of the great idea, innovation that will once again change how business is done…in the US and the World.   His blog with great info for aspiring entrepreneurs is: http://www.stanleytang.com/

Interesting recent posts are:

So be inspired.  The champions are realized when they rise from the dust….just been reminded of a great Teddy Roosevelt quote I received on a desk plaque from IBM, but has helped me forge on many times:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

But in looking for that one, I also found this one:

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Entrepreneurism is tough.  Every bubble that has burst in our economy happens in part because the latecomers thought by jumping on a band wagon they could get-rich-quick.   They overloaded the band wagon.