The 'New Boys Club'

WASHINGTON

Arthur Andersen is going down. Rich guys are mastering the perp walk. Even Vice President Dick Cheney is ducking questions about his old firm, Halliburton. It's been a bad year for the old boys club.

Perhaps it's too late for your 401(k), but the cavalry arrived in Washington last week when more than 450 young, driven and noticeably cheery business leaders gathered for the 15th annual Young Entrepreneurs' Organization seminar.

On registration day at the Capital Hilton, many of these entrepreneurs are relaxing in shorts and sandals. One sweats in a shirt with monogrammed cuffs.

Some hold onto gin and tonics, others their girlfriends. All share a like-minded joy in this room of enterprising peers. These are decidedly not the beleaguered old boys, nor do they want to be.

"I think you have to distinguish between small business and big business," said Larry Joseph, who manufactures custom loose-leaf binders in Houston. "We're really no different than mom and pop in the corner store. We have more affinity with them than Jack Welch or Bill Gates."

Maybe so, but mom and pop have never been part of a group like this. Membership in the nonprofit Young Entrepreneurs is by invitation only. Candidates must be no older than 39, and they must be the founder, co-founder, owner or controlling shareholder of a business with an annual gross revenue that exceeds $1 million. The average is about $5 million.

'We're wired differently'

By the standards of high-powered corporate CEOs, that's small potatoes. For the 4,700 members of the "new boys club,'' that's economic freedom and a bag of chips. The Young Entrepreneurs group promotes entrepreneurship as a lifestyle, as self-actualization, as a healthy alternative to Fortune 500 America, as the rejection of bureaucratic caste systems. It is business as liberty, individuals striving in the name of God and country.

The United States "was built by entrepreneurs," said Joseph, shaking the ice in his tumbler. "I can't imagine going into work every day and sitting in a cubbyhole, punching a clock 9 to 5."

"An entrepreneur is a visionary,'' says Gregory Patrick, owner of a fantasy vacation company called Tours of Enchantment.

"We're wired differently," said Jim Pyle, owner of a boyish face and an accounting firm.

This new boys club is actually 14 percent women. But they seem underrepresented at this seminar. Most attendees here are from the United States and Canada. They are fit, predominantly white and markedly positive.

Phill Young, 37, owns a for-profit substance abuse rehabilitation center in Dallas. He is a picture of good health, something he makes readily apparent in his tank top, shorts and tennis shoes. On his shoulder is the red mark of a full pair of lips. Perhaps it's lipstick. Maybe it's a tattoo. Perhaps you're supposed to ask.

We don't ask. Young feels good about his company because "it's almost recession-proof."

"Actually, we do a little better when the economy is down," he said. "People tend to drink a little more. Get wasted a little more.''

He smiles -- the tool of the entrepreneurial craftsman. They trade in good vibes. They ply you with positive energy. Their can-do magic will pull the money right out of your wallet. They can charm you even as you grow aware of your shortcomings.

'We're about balance'

Young represents a different sort of executive than the ones shown on CNN explaining their accounting practices or the failure of their inflated dot-coms.

He says he's unaffected by the recent corporate scandals, and he survived the bust of the 1990s Internet economy.

"I think it shook out a lot of people. A lot of people got rich quick,'' he said. "It was a lot easier then. The strong are surviving now."

This seminar is called the Four-Day MBA -- a crash course for the work-hard, play-hard set. Along with marketing sessions and information technology presentations, it includes classes in yoga, cooking, self-defense and -- not surprisingly -- intimacy.

"The nice thing about this is that it's not just about business," said Matt Mladenka, a Young Entrepreneurs spokesman. "We're about balance.''

Mladenka has a degree in entrepreneurship and can go into depth on the struggles of the young, the independent and the driven. "Entrepreneurs are successful primarily because they're passionate about what they do,'' he said. "That can tip the balance to work, and they neglect family and a personal life. They have to learn balance. You see an amazing support system at YEO.''

'Independent-type folk'

Ben Lemieux of Montreal wears Oakley sunglasses atop his sun-bleached hair. He's got a tennis player's tan and a golfer's shorts. He says he found a common ground in this group that he had lost among his friends from school.

"It's a special bond," he said. "When you lose $20,000 in one day, you can't go to your college buddy and say, 'I need your help.' He's been trying to make $20,000 all year.

"So a lot of people here like to talk about business. We also talk about personal stuff. But everybody is excited with what we are doing.''

For all the networking energy, you can't miss the distinctly independent vibe of this room.

"I think entrepreneurs by definition are rebellious and independent-type folk," said Jeff Bissett, founder of the Toronto marketing firm Interact Direct Marketing Inc.

Conversation often sounds like product pitches, though soliciting is forbidden here. Discussion of management style is laced with the same tension of neighbors comparing new cars. Annual revenue numbers are dropped like names in a gossip column. Accolades are measured. There is much discussion about the future.

Bissett said, "What you see happening in the Enrons of the world, all the scandal, is the old boys club. I think in this millennium we're going to see a big shift for entrepreneurship and small business. I think we, as entrepreneurs, are feeling the need to act differently and conduct our businesses differently. To guide our own destinies. In a way, to work against the old boys club way of conducting business."

What then will the future hold for this new business class?

"We all want to be rich old guys who retire and play golf all day," he said with a smile.