I hate running.  But I do it anyway.

I’m excited.  It’s an amazing time to be alive.  Our world is changing so fast and the social web has permanently altered the way in which individuals and businesses interact.  You can argue that MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter are fads, but in reality they are simply vehicles for the social web.  They are to the social web what Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia are to cell phones.  The brand that is most popular today will change tomorrow, but you’ll still carry a cell phone.  Much like the telephone (and later cell phones) the social web has changed the way we communicate forever.

For entrepreneurs this era is loaded with opportunity.  No longer is it difficult or costly to share a great idea with a group of people predisposed to hearing it.  The world is waiting for you to bring your brilliant products and services to bear in the market and, if impressed, they are ready and willing to share it’s goodness with everyone they know.  Right now you have an idea that someone wants to know about.  Someone wants to hear about your obsession with He-Man.  Someone wants to buy the art you’ve been quietly working on in your spare time.  In the last century it was very complicated and expensive to share your ideas, or your art, with the people who wanted to know about it.  You had to have a product or service that would be universally desired and get the attention of a handful of people who made decisions about which products and services to promote.  But that was last century.

The simple fact that you are reading these words is proof that you can reach the people who want to know about what you have to offer.

The caveat is that you must also be prepared to deal with the fact that bad news will travel just as fast.  If you let your customers or your audience down you can believe that they will express their displeasure to everyone they know as well.  It used to be said that a satisfied customer would tell 5 friends, but a dissatisfied customer would tell 10.  Those days are over.  It would be a miracle for only 10 people to see a rant about your business on Twitter or Facebook now.

But still the good outweighs the bad.  If you are passionate about something and understand how to use the social web to connect with your audience you have an unprecedented opportunity to turn your passion into something meaningful.  Not everyone will leverage their passions to get rich, but there are people earning a decent living in ways that would have been ludicrous to imagine just a decade ago.  For those able to share their passion in a meaningful way, the sky is truly the limit.

The world is waiting for you.

That’s all I have to say.  Now go be awesome.