To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others Read Online Free PDF Page A

point. “I want to put out an honest product in an honest company,” and that demands traditional selling and non-sales selling in equal measure. Such is the life of a small entrepreneur. Instead of doing one thing, he must do everything. And everything inevitably involves a lot of moving.
    To be sure, the world economy includes plenty of planet-straddling behemoths—companies so enormous that they often have more in common with nation-states than with private firms. But the last decade has also witnessed a substantial increase in very small enterprises—not only those like Brooklyn Brine that offer products, but one- or two-person outfits that sell services, creativity, and expertise.
    Consider:
     
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the American economy has more than twenty-one million “non-employer” businesses—operations without any paid employees. These include everything from electricians to computer consultants to graphic designers. Although these microenterprises account for only a modest portion of America’s gross domestic product, they now constitute the majority of businesses in the United States. 1
The research firm IDC estimates that 30 percent of American workers now work on their own and that by 2015, the number of nontraditional workers worldwide (freelancers, contractors, consultants, and the like) will reach 1.3 billion. 2 The sharpest growth will be in North America, but Asia is expected to add more than six hundred million new soloists in that same period.
Some analysts project that in the United States, the ranks of these independent entrepreneurs may grow by sixty-five million in the rest of the decade and could become a majority of the American workforce by 2020. One reason is the influence of the eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old generation as it takes a more prominent economic role. According to research by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 54 percent of this age cohort either wants to start their own business or has already done so. 3
In sixteen Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—including France, Mexico, and Sweden—more than 90 percent of businesses now have fewer than ten employees. In addition, the percentage of people who are either a “nascent entrepreneur or owner-manager of a new business” is far higher in markets such as China, Thailand, and Brazil than in the United States or the United Kingdom. 4
In our What Do You Do at Work? survey, we asked a question designed to probe the issue of micro-entrepreneurship, phrasing it in a way that recognized that many people today earn a living through multiple sources: “Do you work for yourself or run your own business, even on the side?” Thirty-eight percent of respondents answered yes.
    Given these numbers, “Instead of rolling our eyes at self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters pickling everything in sight, we might look to them as guides to the future of the . . . economy,” says New York Times Magazine columnist Adam Davidson. 5 Harvard University’s Lawrence Katz, perhaps the top labor economist of his generation, agrees. He projects that middle-class employment of the future won’t be employees of large organizations, but self-sufficient “artisans.” 6
    Whether we call them artisans, non-employer businesses, free agents, or micro-entrepreneurs, these women and men are selling all the time. They’re packaging pickles for customers, of course. But because they’re responsible for the entire operation, not merely one facet of it, they’re enticing business partners, negotiating with suppliers, and motivating employees. Their industry may be gourmet food or legal services or landscaping—but they’re all in the moving business.
    One essential—and ultimately ironic—reason for this development: The technologies that were supposed to make salespeople obsolete in fact have transformed more people into sellers. Consider Etsy, an online marketplace for small businesses and