What makes some companies and some individuals always near the top of the pack?

The biggest differentiator in the new economy is a constant and never-ending quest for excellence. The Japanese have a word for this: “kaizen.”

Do you practice kaizen in your personal and professional life?

If you were hiring a doctor, lawyer, builder or accountant—wouldn’t you hope they were practicing constant and never ending improvement in their personal and professional lives?

If you discovered they were not interested in excellence would you think of hiring someone else?

I am shocked by how many people are accepting of the mediocrity in their personal lives and yet expect excellence in others.

We would be upset if the waiter or waitress does not refill our water when it is empty, but think nothing of giving less than 100% on our own jobs or businesses.

Why the double standard?

Let’s decide today to live our lives in all areas to a standard of excellence in all that we do.

Anyone desiring to live a life of excellence must declare war on average.

If you can do better, then it is time to start giving the world your better on your way to best.

How can we possibly change others if we will not do the hard work of changing our own average habits?

The world will flock to a man or woman who is focused on giving their absolute best to their chosen profession.

If you wish to get more—you must begin by giving more!

In fact, I would tell you to give more even if you never get more. Success is an inside job and the satisfaction obtained from knowing you did your personal best is the ultimate reward.

My attitude anytime I speak, write, or mentor is to give my personal best. Regardless of whether anyone recognized it or not—I still feel great because I know I did my personal best.

There is a story told of Joe DiMaggio of New York Yankee fame that exemplifies this principle.

Joe was one of the greatest hitters of all time and Hall of Famer.

In a spring training game that did not count in the standing or statistics—Joe drove a ball down the first baseline.

Instead of jogging to first with a single, Joe sprinted around first and dove head first into second just ahead of the outfielder’s throw.

Joe hit a double in a meaningless game that did not count in the record book.

Yet it looked like Joe was playing in a World Series game and not a spring training exhibition.

Why did Joe do that? A reporter after the game asked the same question, wondering why Joe sprinted out a double and risked injury in a spring training game.

Joe’s answer ought to be taught to every person in every profession.

Joe said he couldn’t help but think that some mother or father had brought their young daughter or son to the game. Maybe this was the only time they would ever see Joe DiMaggio play the game of baseball.  He wanted to be sure to give them something to remember.

Wow! That gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!

In your life, are you giving people something to remember? Are customers raving about your quest for excellence in all that you do?

Many people remember watching Joe play the game because he was in a quest for excellence in his chosen field.

Joe understood that success was from the inside out and if he played baseball he would play it at his high standards.

I encourage you today to live a life in a quest for excellence. Listen to your customers and seek ways to improve their satisfaction with your service.

The more you have them raving about what you do, the easier it is to market your profession.

A satisfied customer is the best advertisement for what you do.  An unhappy customer is the worst advertisement for what you do.

You will never make everyone happy, but you must start with making yourself happy with your efforts. If you are not happy then it is no surprise that others are not.

Today is the day to make your life a quest for excellence and live kaizen in your life.

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Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

Connect With Orrin:

Over the course of the week we enjoyed tons of outdoor activities, including canoeing, kayaking, river rafting, fishing, cliff diving, motor boating, and more.

One of the favorite activities was being pulled behind the motor boat on a huge tube and being thrown off into the water at neck-breaking speeds.

One boy in particular was very nervous about this as he crept into the water. As he floated with his life jacket, waiting for the tube to come his way so he could climb on board, you could see the anxiety on his face building about this unfamiliar situation.

Finally, before the tube arrived, he frantically decided he’d had enough. He swam as quickly as his arms and legs would take him towards the boat. He wanted out!

As he climbed into the boat, calmness began to replace fear and I asked what was wrong.

“Sharks!” he said.

I then explained we were in a fresh water lake and there were no sharks. He quickly interrupted my scientific and logical explanation and said he didn’t care.

He had just watched the first two Jaws movies for the first time 3 days before the trip and enough was enough. Bobbing up and down in the water with his legs dangling underneath him was just too much to handle.

This experience reminded me of the real and tangible fear almost everyone experiences when building a business, talking to unfamiliar people, facing rejection, etc. Entering those atmospheres can feel like we are left out there bobbing and fully exposed for a blindside attack.

Sometimes certain situations or even other people can seem like sharks — but in reality these “sharks” don’t exist.

In other words, just like with this young man, the fear is real but what we’re afraid of is usually not real. No one has ever died from rejection. Friends, neighbors, and other people you encounter are not going to eat your legs.

You’re not actually swimming with sharks, but at times your fears may make you believe that you are.

I’m happy to report that this young man fought through the prior day’s fear and spent the next day in the water behind the boat having an incredible day. He still swam a little faster than others and had some anxiety, but he overcame it.

Face your fears; overcome the obstacles around you that are limiting you. Remember that the feeling of fear may be real, but Jaws is a figment of your imagination.

**************************************

Carl Woolston is a business and marketing consultant with KGaps Consulting, a co-creator of the proprietary marketing methodology “Hub Mentality,”, and a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership.

His expertise includes network development, marketing, web strategy development, lead creation, and lead capture strategies.

He and his wife Christy are raising their six rambunctious children in Bountiful, Utah.

Connect With Carl:

Email: carl [at] kgaps [dot] com

Note from CSL: In The Coming Aristocracy, Oliver DeMille lists networking marketing as one manifestation of “mini-factories.” In this article, network marketer Orrin Woodward describes how to be successful at network marketing specifically, though the principles apply to any entrepreneur, mini-factory builder, and aspiring social leader.

Links throughout are for informational purposes and do not represent specific endorsements from CSL of companies or products.

 
IN A HOME TOO CRAMPED FOR OUR GROWING FAMILY, in a relationship where neither of us understood the other, in a time of increasing responsibilities and decreasing hope, in a desperate move to keep my baseball cards, my wife Laurie and I started our networking business.

Can there be a more bizarre beginning to a destiny-changing day?

Your story is different in the details, but alike in the life-changing opportunity presented to you.

Networking provides people the opportunity to take control of their futures and no longer swim with the current of the times.

There are only 3 steps to master to accomplish nearly any goal or dream that you can imagine through the power of networking:

1. Define
2. Learn
3. Do

Define

Life is not always a bowl of cherries as it pulls us in so many directions, requiring more than we would give in three lifetimes, forcing us to clearly define what we want to accomplish with the time God has given us.

Clearly defining your objectives, narrowing your field of vision to the critical few, painstakingly visualizing, repetitively experiencing in your mind, and developing your game plan are essential features of all successful lives.

DO NOT WORK THE BUSINESS, BUT CHASE YOUR DREAM THROUGH THE BUSINESS!!

Businesses are not built with an employee mentality, but with an ownership mentality (affiliate link), meaning, to do everything with a specific intent.

Why do you go out night after night to build this business? You didn’t have a dream as a young child to build a community did you?

The business is just the vehicle to accomplish your dreams, just as you buy a drill if you need a hole.

No one buys a drill because they have always dreamed of owning a drill. A drill is the specific tool used to get the specific hole you need.

Networking is the specific tool to give you the time and money to get your dreams.

When you know what you want, learning and doing become the necessary steps to achieve what you desire.

If you do not take the time to clearly define why you are in business, then you are setting yourself up to fail.

Why share the product, why show the plan, why start the process, if you have no reason to?

If you are not showing the plan 15 times a month, it’s not because you are lazy, it’s not because you are loser, it’s not because you are incapable, it’s only because you lack focus by not beginning with the end in mind.

• Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
• Who would you choose for neighbors?
• What car would you drive?
• What charities would you support?
• What vacations would you take?
• What random acts of kindness would you do?

It must be defined, imagined, and experienced mentally before it will happen physically.

Learn

Learning is one of the most natural things that we do as human beings. Anyone with children has experienced the endless questions that your kids will ask you as they seek to learn.

“But daddy, why is the sky blue? Why do we drive on the right side of the road? How do our brains see the pictures from our eyes?”

We are born hungry to learn, but society quenches this hunger through ridicule and scorn.

Networking has reversed societies rules and created a culture that is hungry to learn. No one is above learning and the quicker you learn, the quicker you will apply, the quicker you will have.

Learning is not a part-time hobby, not a full-time job, but a lifetime of joy.

Have you experienced the joy of learning lately? Are you listening and learning from CD’s and mentors’ advice? Are you reading books, brochures etc?

Are you pounding through the information from the best of the best?

If you’re not, perhaps you need to revisit your dream.

Do

Making contacts, picking up the phone, showing the plan, talking in front of people, were some of the most fearful things that I had to overcome.

In fact, the only thing that helped me get over my unbelievable shyness and corresponding fears was the power of my dreams.

It makes me want to gag when I hear people say, “Well you have to be a certain type of person to build a network,” assuming that you are born that way.

Yes, you have to be a winner to build a network, but anyone can be a winner with the three steps that we are covering.

Winning is simple, but it isn’t easy because you must swim against the current.

It you want to win, then you must Define your win, Learn how to win and then JUST DO IT! No guts, no glory!

Are you going to let the negative thoughts of others deny you from the destiny you desire?

Laurie and I decided to follow our dreams, not our dreads and it made all the difference.

Are you dreaming, learning and doing or dreading, lying, and dying?

The choice you make weaves the strands of your destiny. Your posterity will either be blessed by your courage or cursed by your cowardice.

Choose wisely.

****************************

Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

Connect With Orrin:

Consistently performing the actions that bring the best results should be the focus of any business venture.

To sit on these merits and not innovate can easily become the poison that causes businesses to suffer.

On the other end of the spectrum, to focus too much on innovation can cause chaos and lack of profitability.

In his classic business book Good to Great, Jim Collins tells the story of how Circuit City used both innovation and systemization in a self-reinforcing cycle to become a great company.

In 1973, Alan Wurtzel inherited the CEO position for Circuit City from his father. The company was close to bankruptcy.

Burdened by debt, in 1974 the company began a series of closely-monitored innovations after rebuilding the executive team.

They first experimented with warehouse showrooms. In 1976 they experimented with selling consumer electronics in the warehouse showroom format, and in 1977 the concept transformed into the first Circuit City store.

When this format proved to be successful, they began converting all their stores and by 1982 they had committed fully to the concept.

As they made the shift over the next five years, they generated the highest total shareholder returns of any company on the New York Stock Exchange.

Drawing lessons from Circuit City, we find the following guidelines for managing the dynamic between innovation and systems:

1. Dedication to truth.

When ego runs a company, truth goes out the window. Profitable, lasting companies are dedicated to uncovering and aligning with truth.

What is truth in business? Results. More precisely, results based on your stated goals and parameters.

This means that you need flawless data tracking systems in order to find truth in the first place.

2. Consistent, incremental change is better than massive, chaotic change.

Dramatic revolution always appeals to human nature, but wisdom dictates that we take small steps, measure the results, and build on them.

The parable of the tortoise and the hare is highly applicable here.

3. Stay in the trenches.

It took Circuit City a decade of hard work before receiving media recognition or seeing dramatic results. But patience and persistence won the day.

You have to be willing stay on course long enough to see results.

Jim Collins calls this the “flywheel” principle. He writes:

“Picture a huge, heavy flywheel — a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible.”

Initially, it takes great effort. You strain and struggle to get it to turn one time around in two or three hours. But you keep at it, and it slowly picks up momentum.

“Then, at some point–breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn…whoosh!…its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn…builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort.”

Most individuals and companies are willing to put forth the sustained effort required to kick the flywheel effect into gear.

Every business wants to find itself where cash flow and success are coming, almost without effort. The price for the painful birth of a system has already been realized.

The balancing act, then, is to do what is working and continually innovate to meet your customers at the current level of their need.

Dedicate yourself to truth. Set up tracking systems and measure your progress. Discover what works and what doesn’t. Build on what works incrementally.

Then, stay in the trenches and watch your business take off…

**************************************

Carl Woolston is a business and marketing consultant with KGaps Consulting, a co-creator of the proprietary marketing methodology “Hub Mentality,”, and a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership.

His expertise includes network development, marketing, web strategy development, lead creation, and lead capture strategies.

He and his wife Christy are raising their six rambunctious children in Bountiful, Utah.

Connect With Carl:

Email: carl [at] kgaps [dot] com

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here

Anti-Federalist Prediction #6: The Treaty Power Will Be Abused

Prediction: The treaty power will be used to change the Constitution in ways the people don’t even know about and that benefit the rich at the cost of the people’s freedom.

This has happened and still does. In fact, it may soon be a major concern.

For example, when banks fold and endanger entire nations, government can bail them out. The same is true for huge businesses and even state-level governments.

But what happens when nations fail financially?

The old answer was that they became open to attack like Western Europe during the Great Depression. The result was devastating.

To prevent such a disaster from being repeated, the Allies met in 1944 and crafted the Bretton Woods organizations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Since then, nations who couldn’t pay their debts have been bailed out by the IMF.

In return for such benefits, the borrowing nation submits to “Austerity Measures,” under which the IMF closely watches national policy and government institutions to ensure that the nation does nothing to jeopardize its ability to pay back its loans.

This system has certainly had its share of successes.

But Austerity also amounts to a virtual transfer of sovereignty from national government to IMF regulators—well beyond the power of the citizenry to require accountability or to effect remedies.

So far the United States and most Western European nations have been lenders to the IMF, not debtors.

But if the U.S. ever needed to become a debtor nation, Austerity Measures would prove the anti-Federalist prediction devastatingly true.

For example, when Greece defaulted on its debt payments in early 2010 and Spain threatened to do the same, the European Union came to the rescue.

The IMF was called in to advise the EU, and Austerity was established over the Greek government.

Many citizens (including a huge number of professionals and managers) took to the streets in protest.

But instead of protesting a drastic loss of freedom to Austerity, they were upset because of wage freezes.

There are three ways the U.S. can avoid Austerity at some point in the future.

First, we can tighten our belts, reduce government expenditures, and deregulate and lower taxes on small businesses, which historically make up 80 percent of our economy’s growth.

This would convince many employers to hire and consumers to spend.

Second, we could borrow from other nations. China has a huge surplus of government and also private savings, and it wants to invest in the United States. Indeed it is our largest creditor now.

Other nations may also be persuaded to keep supporting our spending habits. But one has to wonder why our philosophical opponent (communist China) wants to invest so much.

Are its motives pure? What if they’re not? Is it a simple profit motive? What if it’s something more?

As Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal:

“People are freshly aware of the real-world implications of a $1.6 trillion deficit, of a $14 trillion debt. It will rob American of its economic power, and eventually even of its ability to defend itself. Militaries cost money. And if other countries own our debt, don’t they in some new way own us? If China holds enough of your paper, does it also own some of your foreign policy? Do we want to find out?”

A third possible method of solving our debt problem is to borrow from huge international corporations. This carries the same problems as borrowing from nations.

Note that if we do eventually take IMF loans, they will only pay the interest on the debts. We will have to pay back the original loans, and an international team of regulators will run our national economic policy and make our economic decisions.

If Americans are frustrated with Congress, imagine their frustration with a group of international bank officials running our economy—bankers who may not have as their motive either to see us out of debt to them or to strengthen our economy, society, international influence, or other elements of our way of life.

The rule of international borrowing is simple: The lenders make the rules.

Method one of facing our economic reality—returning to an incentivizing free enterprise system and living within our means—is hard.

Neither political party wants to promote it, and whoever does implement it will probably be blamed for higher short-term unemployment, stock market losses, and a worsened recession.

In the long term, however, this course will revitalize America’s economy and free lifestyle.

The other two options keep America in economic decline and will eventually result in reduced political power, weaker national security, and fallen status.

They will also, most importantly, lead to a significant decrease in our freedoms and the prosperity of our children and grandchildren.

This is our choice: Make the tough decisions now, or lose freedoms and prosperity for generations. So far we have passed on making the right choice.

No wonder independents, tea partyists, and the far left are so frustrated with both Republicans and Democrats.

Moreover, economic downturns are three-headed dragons; and to this point we have only faced recession and high unemployment.

Inflation is likely to be the next crisis, and it may very well rekindle and worsen the first two.

Whatever we decide to do economically, we should, like the Federalists and anti-Federalists, clearly understand one thing: Economics and freedom are directly linked.

A debtor nation is less free than when it was solvent.

To be continued…

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 5 Here

For a long time America used IQ as the measure of intelligence as well as a predictor of academic and career success.

IQ tests measured literary, mathematical and spatial intelligence, but little else. They basically ignored the other intelligences.

Daniel Goleman’s best-seller, Emotional Intelligence, showed how managers could become better leaders by also developing interpersonal, intrapersonal, and more artistic skills. He argued that EQ (emotional intelligence) is just as important as IQ.

Pop culture tends to summarize these two as right brain (EQ) and left brain (IQ).

In this view, left-brain experts, professionals and executives have significantly different skill sets than right-brain artists, creative types and motivators.

It is all about the intellect versus the emotions, in society and in each of our personal lives.

The IQ monopoly resulted in many business authors writing that being too intelligent is not good for business, since many with a very high IQ were hired by mid-IQ bosses.

EQ shed some light on the situation, showing that successful entrepreneurship and innovation tend to blossom where analytical and creative skills are balanced.

High IQ with significantly lower EQ, or vice versa, tend a person toward specialized employment. Where right and left brain are generally equal, be it high or middle or even relatively low, initiative, risk, tenacity and leadership often flourish.

In short, many jobs require certain levels of IQ or EQ, but successful entrepreneurs either naturally have a balance of both or must develop one.

The old view that IQ can’t be increased is being replaced as we see many people who clearly break old barriers and disprove the experts.

Entrepreneurial success usually requires deep understanding of and skills in many of the basic intelligences.

General education courses in three of them and specialization in only one simply doesn’t work in the challenging real world of entrepreneurial competition.

Nor, for that matter, is it adequate to maintain freedom.

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

Add personality types to the intelligences and skills, and our realization of the need for widespread entrepreneurial talent and experience intensifies.

Where the Greeks and moderns tend to break human personality into four dominant groups, symbolized by animals or colors or other models, the Old Testament emphasized twelve types and the New Testament adopted thirteen.

One of the most unique and profound systems of personality typing is the Enneagram.

The Enneagram was created by Muslims from the Sufi tradition, and is now popular in many multi-level and network marking circles.

Its nine types of people are distinct, deep and tend to resonate with nearly all readers. The nine types are essentially as follows:

1. Reformer: principled, purposeful, self-controlled and perfectionistic
2. Helper: demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, and possessive
3. Achiever: adaptive, excelling, driven, and image-conscious
4. Individualist: expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental
5. Investigator: perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated
6. Loyalist: engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious
7. Enthusiast: spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered
8. Challenger: self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational
9. Peacemaker: receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent

Of course, there is a lot more depth to this in the many volumes which describe it.

Interestingly, in traditional business the typical use of the Enneagram and other personality types like the Myers-Briggs is to help managers interact more effectively with their employees — and vice versa.

Teachers often use it to better understand and work with their students.

In entrepreneurial environments, however, the focus is quite different.

This can be understood in the following three steps:

1. Understand your own top strengths so you can give them a lot more energy and greatly improve them.
2. Identify those types on which you score at the mid levels, so you can develop them into strengths.
3. Clarify where you are weak and team up with people who are extremely strong in these areas.

This flies directly in the face of much educational/career theory from the past half century, where the system has generally been satisfied with grade-level performance in a given subject, and focused special attention on the students’ weaknesses.

By contrast, teachers governed by entrepreneurial values in the classroom would have children spend much more time on their strengths than their weaknesses.

Those scoring high in math, for example, would take a lot more math than other students and in fact study math at the highest levels in special courses designed just for such students. The same would occur in all fields.

Teachers would also divide students learning to read, for example, not by levels but into teams where each team would include students from low, medium and high reading levels.

Corporate architecture would combine mail carriers, board members and everyone in between in adjacent offices and co-mingle everyone on all floors.

The Third-Turning value of efficiency would give way to the Fourth-Turning focus on growth as a community through individual excellence and synergistic cooperation.

This, by the way, is how nearly all entrepreneurial ventures and small businesses actually do things.

The consequences in society and governance are huge. Indeed, this is exactly the model of citizens and voters that America’s founders had in mind—all types of people mingled together, each equal as a citizen and before the law.

Freedom is the natural result.

And on the skills of applying such a model, small business leaders and entrepreneurs are years ahead of the rest of society.

The point is not, as most entrepreneurs will tell you, to turn things over to entrepreneurs or any other group of citizens. Such a plan would only create another style of class system.

The real solution is to have a lot more entrepreneurs in society. In the long term, this is achieved by giving America’s youth a true Leadership Education and naturally letting our society benefit as more entrepreneurs arise.

A quicker solution would be set in motion by simply de-regulating small businesses.

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Read Part 1 Here

There are three groups with long-term independence whose members are permanently free from dependence on a paycheck.

The first two are made up of people supported by trust funds or equivalent, covered financially for life by wealth earned or passed down to them.

Group one lives off these funds, often spending their lives in play and leisure.

The second group spends their lives dedicated to making a difference in society through service, career, investment, entrepreneurship, or whatever path they choose to use to improve themselves and the world.

The third group has no trust fund or equivalent wealth to rely upon, but has the skill set and worldview of entrepreneurial enterprise.

This group doesn’t start with full bank accounts, but rather with emotional accounts full of faith and determination, grit and initiative, and an undying belief in the principles of abundance, hard work, and enterprise.

Whatever happens, members of this third group have an almost unshakable belief that there is opportunity everywhere.

They believe in themselves, and they believe that if they put their minds and hands to work they can build value out of opportunity and create prosperity through their energy and effort.

Together, the second and third groups are society’s Producers.

They start, build, invest in and grow businesses and organizations that create a nation’s assets, advancements, and top achievements. They employ the workers of the world.

And when hard times come, they don’t ask government or employers to provide for them. Rather, they look around, assess the situation, see opportunities amidst the problems, and get to work building value for the future.

They do, however, ask government and the big established businesses to get out of the way, to allow them the freedom to turn their initiative and work into growing profits and success.

When government increases obstacles and regulations on small business, it directly attacks freedom and prosperity.

When this occurs, entrepreneurs naturally look for nations and markets that are friendly to business. As a result, nations with free enterprise systems attract more producers and are blessed with greater wealth and prosperity.

Non-Producer Attempts to Create Producers

Nations naturally benefit from a large producer class, but how are producers created? The common answers fall short.

The liberal view is that those with credentials and advanced education—the experts—must set up a system that allows enterprise but also fairly distributes the rewards of economic success.

The conservative view is to allow big investors to get huge rewards and therefore be willing to take big risks.

The blue-collar populist approach is to make sure management treats labor fairly and humanely.

The bureaucratic view is that rules make the society and economy work.

While each of these has a place, within limits, none of them really get to the heart of what makes producers tick.

The problem is that these views are nearly always promoted and managed by employees with an employee background and an employee mentality.

Non-producers grudgingly admit the great need for more producers, and then set out to build conveyor belts which will produce more producers.

This only works insofar as a born entrepreneur sometimes breaks out of the conveyor belt and overcomes the obstacles to his or her success.

David Brooks has referred to Washington’s party politics as the PhD’s (liberals) versus the MBA’s (conservatives).

Both give lip service to small business; but their modus operandi belies a different governing worldview.

The PhD’s want government to run the economy and provide jobs, and to be the Great State Entrepreneur so that regular citizens don’t need to take risks.

The MBA’s want to appeal to big investment, and are loathe to consider small business significant or meaningful.

The average citizen-employee wants managers to treat employees better.

This is all employee thinking.

Government programs will not create many entrepreneurs, nor will most corporate ventures, bureaucratic agencies, or labor unions.

And most MBA programs emphasize employee training and measure their effectiveness by citing job placement statistics.

Entrepreneurs are the natural competitors to all these.

To be continued…

This is part 4 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here

The Right Level of Complexity

The main criticism of simple societies is that they are often intolerant, controlling, and narrow-minded. This is an accurate and good criticism, and such simple societies are not the ideal.

Indeed, Madison shows the negatives of such societies in Federalist Papers eighteen through twenty.

He proposes that by establishing a large nation and a free constitution we can simultaneously establish both an open, modern, and progressive society and a free, prosperous, and happy nation.

Fortunately, we are not forced to choose between a stupidly simple nation and an overly complex one.

The ideal is a nation sufficiently complex to promote progress, toleration, cooperation, and growth and one with enough simple common sense to achieve freedom, prosperity, and opportunity.

This is the traditional entrepreneurial mix.

Whereas mercantilism values a few cosmopolitan elites employing a mass of less urbane managers and workers, in contrast the entrepreneurial challenge has always been to balance complex and intricate details with simple and effective systems and results.

In short, we need more entrepreneurs running more small, medium and large institutions in society.

Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous

The success of the next few decades will depend on certain types of people with certain skills and abilities.

The talents and habits of “The Company Man” came into vogue in the 1950s and helped create a society of professionals, experts and officials. This greatly benefited the final half-decade (1955-2005) of the Industrial Age surge.

But as the Information Age moved past infancy (1964-1991) and began its rebellious growth to adulthood (1992-2008), many became aware that change was ahead.

As the Information Age grasps maturity and takes over in the 2010s and 2020s, major alterations in society are inevitable.

The Company Man is now replaced by what David Brooks called Patio Man: Individualists who want personal freedom, enough income to pay the bills plus some extra spending money, a government that provides national security and keeps jobs plentiful, a nice house, a nice car each for him and her, a grill, a good movie tonight and friends over for the big game on Sunday.

At first, this was paid for by one working parent, then by both.

But unless something changes, this lifestyle is at an end for all but the wealthiest tenth of the population.

The thing which facilitated such a lifestyle in the first place was the prosperity generated by entrepreneurship, and the only thing that can maintain such a lifestyle and still pay off our society’s debts and obligations is a drastic increase in the number of entrepreneurs.

Period.

To be continued…

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Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

This is part 3 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here

There are at least two major roadblocks hindering this needed Freedom Shift.

The first is habit. Our society has become habituated, at times addicted, to certain lifestyles.

For example, when the recession hit, people spent more money, not less, at McDonald’s. We are habituated to eating out, and tightening our belts in hard times has come to include eating even more french fries.

Perhaps our most debilitating rut as a culture is a dependence on experts. Until we kick this dependency, how can we rise above the statistics and become a nation of entrepreneurs and leaders?

The answer, as challenging as it is, is for entrepreneurs to show us the way, and to keep at it until more of us start to heed.

The second huge roadblock is our complexity. Indeed, we have reached a level of complexity where simplicity itself is suspect.

For example, the simple reality is that jobs migrate to less difficult nations. It’s the old Rule of Capital: Capital goes where it is treated well.

In nations that have become too complex, taxes and regulation cause at least a doubling of the amount employers must spend on labor.

Many experts call this “progress,” but the natural result is that many companies respond by sending their operations and jobs to less costly nations.

When this happens, complex nations react in an amazing way: They villainize the companies (“greedy profiteers”) rather than reducing taxes and regulations to entice companies back home.

Then they take an incredible extra step: They increase taxes and regulations even more on the businesses that stayed!

The result? More money flees and recession inevitably comes.

At this point, when the need is obviously to lure businesses, capital, and jobs back home with decreased regulation and taxes, nations that are too complex actually compound the negative situation as angry workers cry out for more regulations and controls.

Freedom, prosperity and stability all suffer.

As Ken Kurson put it,

“Our bipartisan addiction to spending and borrowing pairs with a hostility toward employers that makes real recovery difficult.”³

Or, as the Governor of Minnesota said:

“I was talkin’ to people this morning who run small businesses. Where’s their bailout?”⁴

People who point out how ridiculous this is are often labeled extremists or radicals. Simple answers aren’t often very popular in complex nations.

Sadly, only major crisis is usually enough to get people to listen to simple solutions.

Poor Complexion

Another example is found in the issue of health care.

Health care costs consistently increase where voluminous regulations along with medical lawsuits cause huge malpractice insurance costs.

When government seeks to regulate and force the costs down, it must find a way to reduce litigation and payouts.

But in complex society, people want to have their cake and eat it too.

They want health care to cost less and also to leave doctors and insurance companies paying for incredibly expensive lawsuits.

How is it possible to get both? “The government should make it so,” is the answer of a complex society. But how? “The government should just fix it.”

This amazingly naïve view of things is the result of complexity. Far too many citizens don’t even expect to be able to understand the issue, so they leave it to the experts.

And once all is in the hands of experts, they are expected to solve everything without any pain or problem to the populace. After all, they’re the experts, right?

Those who benefit most from the costs of lower health care either need to forego the threat of so many lawsuits or be willing to pay higher prices.

But such simple answers don’t convince in complex societies.

One more example is interesting. Hamilton argued in The Federalist Papers that for society to be free the legal code would need to be long, detailed and difficult to understand.

He based this on the systems in Europe at the time. But these were the very systems the founders fought to abandon.

In contrast, Jefferson, Madison and many others taught that complex laws and legal codes were sure signs of oppression.

They agreed with Montesquieu, Locke and Hume and that laws must be simple, concise and brief, and indeed that the entire legal code must be simple enough that every citizen knows the entire law.

If a person doesn’t know the law, they argued, he shouldn’t be held liable for breaking it or freedom is greatly reduced.

In complex society, most attorneys don’t even know the whole law.

To be continued…

Sources:

3. Ken Kurson, “A Hedge Fund for Little Guys,” Esquire, March 2010.
4. Governor Tim Pawlenty, quoted by Mark Warren in “The Dark Horse,” Esquire, March 2010.

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver: