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The Critical Minority That Makes Us Great
After a career in very large business ranging from big industrial work to Silicon Valley madness, I settled down in my second half of life — it used to be called “retirement” — to work with small businesses. After 10 years of advising, coaching, and salvaging many entrepreneurs I’ve come to two conclusions: 1) Starting and keeping a small business healthy is a crucible of pain and challenge to which few are suited; and 2) The large institutions of government, labor, and finance are antithetical to small business existence.
Despite these dire observations, the resilience of America has always been led by the critical few who move outside the established framework and go somewhere new. We once celebrated pioneers —not the famous ones, but the unnamed ones who slogged the Oregon Trail, farmed the plains, or dealt with the Dust Bowl. We saw an untamed, wide-open frontier called the Internet change our everyday lives, driven by thousands of individuals with the drive to try something new.
America provided the freedom to try. It allowed you to fail or prosper.