Without letting me finish, he scoffed: “Don’t tell me about your failures,” while my jaw dropped.

The internet has since shifted people’s understanding about what works. The downturn will bring with it more “one man shops” of every variety.

If you go to Ecademy.com, one of the earliest UK networking groups, which has grown into a 350,000 member global social network with 100 monthly events happening globally, you will find “Entrepreneur Country” in full force. Ecademy members are evangelical about how networking has enabled the rise of their SMEs and one-man bands.

Richard Duvall, founder of online bank Egg and then Zopa, the online lending and borrowing exchange, summed it up when he said: “People are better than institutions.” Richard saw the rise of what he called “free-formers” – people who would be forming their lives around the freedom to live the way they want rather than by the traditional workplace or financing systems.

All entrepreneurs are in search of “The Big Idea”, but entrepreneurship itself is the big idea for the 21st Century.

Iqbal Quadir of the Grameen Bank says: “Capitalism was about empowered authority which didn’t necessarily activate the citizenry; the Internet stands that on its head, and shifts the power to the Individual – making Individual Capitalism the force of the 21st Century.”

You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy, and still be for the little guy, and the world is going “little guy”.

The 21st Century will see an army of little guys who are making their way, uninterested in working in big companies, who don’t trust government, who figure that the best way to thrive is to take full responsibility for their livelihoods including paying for the services that they get from the state.

They have seen enough ordinary people who have become successful through hard work, or TV, or networking, and the dire economic situation means that they don’t bet on the government to save them.

The world in 2009 is scary. But when you think of it, isn’t working for anyone other than yourself the biggest risk you could ever take? Determine what your unique contribution is to the world, and then go for it.