David Sax, Revenge of Analog and the Soul of an Entrepreneur (The Tiny Typecast)
This podcast looks backward to understand the present and future, and there is nobody better on the business side than David Sax. The author of three books—on delis, on the revival of analog culture, and on the right way to look at entrepreneurship—David’s insights help give us insight into the joy people feel in letterpress printing and the way in which cottage businesses dominated the world, and still do. Printing and letterpress aficionados will particularly like his 2016 title, The Revenge of Analog.
David Sax believes the lifeblood of the economy is the small-scale entrepreneur, and studying how small businesses work and succeed offers more lessons to people than the billion-dollar-revenue unicorns and massive companies that capture attention. In his new book, The Soul of an Entrepreneur, David looks at several kinds of businesses and the deeply personal experiences of refugees, immigrants, and families with roots going back generations in their communities.
This book has a poignancy in coming out in April 2020, in that the retail landscape has been devastated globally as the pandemic continues, but it’s never been more relevant in stressing the critical aspects of the kinds of people who will drive recovery—and invent new modes of retail and manufacturing operations in cities as the economy reforms around a world fighting coronavirus for the long haul.
This episode was recorded in March 2020 before large-scale shutdowns of everything in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Some of our speculation and discussion about independent bookstores, the future of the book, and retail entrepreneurship at the end may therefore seem quaint. But the cycle will ultimately come around, and we will once again have millions and millions of small businesses selling directly—we just don’t know when. David’s examination of the near-past will help provide a blueprint for the future.