Fin de Siecle Americana - more Americans are starting their own businesses - Industry Trend or Event - Column

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1997 by Nick Sullivan

Every once in a while, I look around and realize that an increasing number of my friends and relatives are running their own businesses. This shouldn't be news to anyone, least of all me. But I'm so used to looking at numbers and trends, I often forget to include faces. What finally caught my eye was seeing my brother-in-law quit his job with a big engineering company to go solo, my wife and her business partner raise capital for their publishing venture, and my sister-in-law assiduously read this magazine.

Besides the usual reasons for this trend -- strong economy, technological empowerment, a bottleneck of baby boomers at the entrance to the boardroom -- I'd like to add another. And if this theory proves to he true, it means that new businesses will continue to accelerate for years.

The theory is that more and more people, whatever their profession or occupation, are being asked to run a business or at least think like business-people. Doctors and lawyers, who once used to bill wantonly by virtue of their advanced training and knowledge, are now forced to think like businesspeople. A growing number of people in big companies, torn from the buffer zone of middle management, are being asked to control their own profit-and-loss statements. Architects, designers, and other creative professionals are being expected to sell as well as create their services. Everyone everywhere has to control costs and raise revenues. There's no insulation from the nuts-and-bolts world of business.

Thus, thousands of people who never before gave the mechanics of business a second thought have been exposed to budgets, margins, and ratios. None of this is rocket science, although it does take some intuitiveness and decision-making prowess. And so people begin to think that they can replicate what they've learned on the battlefield.

For children of parents who came of age during the Depression, this is a relatively new path. These kids were brought up to learn a profession or trade and get a "good job with a good pension." But they are still young enough, mostly in their 40s or early 50s, to try a new tack. Those in their 30s came out of college during the entrepreneurial boom of the Reagan years, and those in their 20s were weaned on computers (and watched their parents get downsized), so both groups have a natural affinity for independent thinking. All these rivers are merging together to form a wide and deep social trend.

Certainly very few of today's new businesspeople, except MBAs and business administration majors, learned anything about business in school. Very few are true entrepreneurs, who risk their own and other people's money and fly by the seat of their pants. Today's entrepreneurs are somewhere in between, with an untested set of business skills but high comfort and confidence levels in their ability -- and, in many cases, a spouse who is gainfully employed.

Whatever caveats you throw up to deflate this trend, there is something wonderfully American about it. A little bit Horatio Alger, a little Norman Rock-well, a little Steve Jobs, a little Gold Rush mentality. It's not happening in here. Nothing ever does. And the longer the trend continues, the bigger it will become. Because more and ore people are starting to think like businesspeople at younger and younger ages.