text: What could we predict about the future? We agreed on this: Entrepreneurs would not give up. They’d join together and shift from panic to adaptation. By July, we figured, people would have plans. They’d find opportunity. They’d collectively carry the world forward.
  So who should be on the cover? Entrepreneurs should be on the cover. “Let’s fit as many people as we can,” I said, which turned out to be 137. We wanted them to be a representative sample of entrepreneurial ingenuity — people who work at every scale, at every experience level, running solo businesses to international powerhouses. Our sole filter: They had to have done something adaptive during the pandemic, whether it was helping their team, their community, their customers, or others. We’d include everyone who was quoted in the magazine, as well as people we’d simply heard about and admired. One day, for example, I read a local news story about Maya Gilliam, who saw no future in the spa she’d run for years — so she transformed it into a boutique farm and upscale hemp dispensary called Hempress Farms. I loved that. On the cover!
  Does this sound messy and haphazard to you? I agree — but what else is there, really? Entrepreneurship is also messy and haphazard, the product of envisioning a destination and then improvising your way there. We’d all prefer perfection, but we must settle for this instead: When we have an idea, and join with others to make it happen, we have a chance to create something meaningful. On any given day, that’s the best we can do.
  The world we couldn’t imagine in March has now come into focus. New businesses are launching. Old ones pivoted. Just as we are sending this issue to the printer, many people are leaving their homes and joining a movement for racial equality —­ another seismic event that could pull us apart or create togetherness and hope for a better future.
  I do not know what comes next. But I sure know this: We won’t get there without each other. We were never alone, even when we felt we were. Now we know it.
  These 137 people represent the wide range of entrepreneurs adapting to COVID-19. Those interviewed in our July/August issue are linked to their corresponding stories; others are explained here, with more on Entrepreneur.com and @Entrepreneur on Instagram.