It feels like I wrote this letter just yesterday. I’ve been editor of Utah CEO for just over a year, which makes this my second Year in Review issue. It’s a curious paradox, how 365 days can seem so long and yet so fleeting all at once. The time flew, but were any of us having any fun?

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is nothing more than a signpost. Be that as it may, it’s a good opportunity to reflect. Utah CEO began three years ago as a quarterly publication. Judging by the archives, it’s come a long way since then, but even looking back over just the past 12 issues I like to think the magazine has continued to evolve. One thing I’ve tried to do is engage you, our readers, in generating content by asking “What do you need to know now?” I’m grateful to those who have helped me develop stories, and to those who have contributed as sources. Hopefully it has benefitted us all — feedback suggests that we’re moving in the right direction.

Moving forward into 2010 and beyond, I hope to ramp up the magazine’s engagement with its readers to become even more useful. To that end, we’ve introduced an online events calendar; please submits events of interest to the business community to jblodgett@utahceomagazine.com. While you’re at it, feel free to provide comments, criticisms and suggestions for what the magazine can do better to better serve you. And visit welcome to the new Utah CEO blog at www.utahceomagazine.com/blog. Like the magazine, it’s a work in progress; as blog, it’s a living document.

The signpost has been passed. It’s good to be traveling with you.

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Ballsy. Bubbly. Inventive. Energetic. Resourceful. Dynamic. Daring. Fierce. Focused. Gregarious. Free spirit. Rule breaker. Early adopter. Solo artist. Multi-faceted. Creative. Front-line warrior. Disrupter. And just plain different. After I asked readers to describe an entrepreneur, these are a sample of the nouns and adjectives tweeted or e-mailed to me in response.

I’ve faced a lot of entrepreneurs lately, not least those I met leading up to and at the award event for the 2009 Utah Student 25. Utah CEO was a media sponsor of this inaugural competition, which as the name implies highlighted student entrepreneurs (for a full description including eligibility, see page 34). Never mind the youth of the applicants, the presumed inexperience, the need to balance classes with business meetings — they all are worthy of the descriptors I outlined above. I left the November 3 awards event energized and inspired to infuse my life with the entrepreneurial spirit wherever I could.

I’m still working at it. An article in Inc. magazine moved me to start reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the masterpiece the article’s writer claims is “the favorite … of countless entrepreneurs.” I’d been meaning to read it for years. And just now in the mail I received a review copy of American Entrepreneur: The Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States by Larry Schweikart and Lynne Pierson Doti. It’s next on my reading list.

I’ll tell you what I’ve learned so far. You have to dig deep sometimes to find the energy, the drive, to get things done. And in order to get things done, you must stop complaining about how things aren’t as they ought to be.

“It is what it is” is a phrase I hear — and use — almost daily. Perhaps it’s borne of the recession, the resigned mantra of weary souls just trying to solider through this economy. But I’m willing to bet it’s a statement you’d never hear from an entrepreneur.

What can we learn from that?

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