Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Live from New York

NEW YORK, N.Y- If you need any reminders that entrepreneurism is flourishing in the United States, all you need to do is stroll down a sidewalk in this city and do a visual sweep from pavement to sky. 

At your feet, you find an endless array of wares – of dubious or divine provenance – spread on blankets or tables by people willing to worm their way into business through whatever tiny opening they can find; at eye level, you see the uncountable grocery stores, restaurants, gift shops and other small ventures of America’s newest and hardest-working arrivals; and everywhere above them, towers filled with enterprises of all sizes and kinds, an architectural timeline of success past, present and future.

The contrasts are amusing, but instructive: You can’t be afraid to start low, work hard and dream big. If the guy selling little sculptures – made out of metal nuts and screws – at a ratty folding table between Central Park and the Plaza Hotel is brave enough to pin his future on his own sheer doggedness and the whims of tourists, how can any of the rest of us fail to believe that we can make our own ideas work?

How else did Central Park and the Plaza get built?

As an entrepreneur, you tend to look for inspiration constantly just to get yourself out of bed in the morning. New York has plenty to offer, in spite of its gross-out excesses on both ends of the economic spectrum, because it takes real courage and resourcefulness just to open an ice-cream shop or a salon in this city of a million competitors.    

If people like that think they can succeed, the rest of us had better quit doubting and get busy.