Ask an Expert: Now is the best time ever for small business

— -- It being Small Business Week and all, I have to say that this is, without a doubt, the greatest time ever — and I mean ever in the entire course of human history — to start, own, run and grow a small business.

Hyperbole, Steve? No, my beloved reader, fact.

(For those not in the know, National Small Business Week is an event put on every year since 1963 by the Small Business Administration. The week-long event in Washington recognizes the vital impact made by American entrepreneurs and small business owners.)

Back in the Roaring '20s, a time of Big Oil, transnational railroads, a booming stock market, and not a few swindlers and robber barons, President Calvin Coolidge famously said that, "the chief business of the American people is business."

Today let me suggest, that the business of America is small business. But let's not stop there. Let's double down. The business of the world now is small business.

Not long ago, we lived in a bi-polar world where two systems —communism and capitalism — dominated the economic field. In communist countries, there was no small business, save for the black markets that provided goods that the state could not offer, because a state-run system provides few incentives to create, innovate, grow, and produce.

But even back then, in the '70s let's say, here at home small business was still small; big business ruled the roost. The Big 3 automakers were only topped by the Big 3 networks. Big business was big business.

But since then, five different seminal events/factors/changes have combined to transform the landscape into one where small business grows ever more dominant, both here at home and abroad.

1. New markets: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, small businesses could only sell their wares to people in their immediate geographic area. How quaint. But two things dramatically changed that such that no one need ever be tied to doing business only in their neighborhood anymore:

• The Internet: Discussed in detail below, but suffice to say here that we all work virtually these days. Never before in history have small businesses had the ability to work and sell globally, and so inexpensively. And the online, virtual marketplace is limitless.• The fall of communism: In Eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union, in China, Asia, and in South America, capitalism won. Markets have been opened. In China alone, there are hundreds of millions of new small businesses. New markets have been born.

2. Attitudes: Because capitalism has proven to be the best economic system, because entrepreneurs are now the new global rock stars, small business and entrepreneurship are now in vogue. And because of that, the idea of owning your own business has become much more acceptable, indeed, desirable. Small business is on the march because, among other reasons, people now get that supporting small business is good business.

3. Technology: This may be the most important reason and change. The ways in which technology has fueled the small business revolution are almost too numerous to mention, but a short list would include: