The government bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will cost taxpayers $5.3 trillion. The $700 billion bailout of other notable financial firms is a Band-aid approach to a gaping-wound quandary.

So what is the long-term solution? Does the current crisis represent the end of America as we know it?

What can you do to contribute to a more secure and prosperous economy?

Is it possible for you to prosper in economic downturns?

The first step to identifying solutions is to accurately diagnose the problem. While the reasons are diverse, our current predicament is the product of three primary factors on three different levels:

1. The government manipulates the economy with the money supply, creating artificial demand and warping natural market forces.
2. Corporations have been guided by shortsighted greed.
3. The average American consumes more than they produce.

Since corporate behavior and government policy represent individual action, the only long-term solution to America’s economic woes is for individuals to be the change they wish to see in the world; to focus more on their internal economy than on the external economy.

Internal v. External Economy

The external economy represents everything outside of you: GDP, the Federal Reserve, international trade, supply and demand, manufacturing, etc.

Your internal economy is the sum total of the value you offer to others minus the factors that limit your production. It is your human life value—your knowledge, skills, abilities, relationships, confidence, etc.

It is what happens within you that determines your material and spiritual prosperity, or lack thereof.

Our pressing crisis hasn’t happened in a vacuum; it’s the result of a steady shift in culture, based on personal, internal decisions.

We can blame the government and corporations all we want, but government agents and corporate executives are common Americans like you and I, doing common things.

There’s little you and I can do to influence government policy during this crisis, but there’s an infinite number of things we can do to ensure security and prosperity regardless of what happens in the external economy.

Do you want to learn and grow, or complain and wallow in the misery? If you choose the former, then it’s time to grow your internal economy.

But how, exactly, is this done? Your personal economy will be strengthened and vitalized by living the following five principles:

1. Entitlement is the enemy of prosperity.

Stop waiting for someone else to solve your problems and give you economic security.

Contrary to New Deal lies and cradle-to-the-grave propaganda, the only things you’re entitled to are life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The government owes you nothing but the protection of your unalienable rights. Corporations can give and take benefits as they please.

Your suffering during hard economic times will be directly proportionate to the degree to which you feel entitled to “security” and benefits from any person or institution.

You’re entitled to the fruits of your own labor and ingenuity—nothing more or less.

Don’t abdicate your responsibility to prosper to funds that you don’t understand, investments that you can’t control and that are not collateralized, and managers that you don’t know.

Take full responsibility for your money and your life.

2. Produce more than you consume.

The average American—while complaining about the federal budget deficit—spends more than $1.20 for every dollar that he or she earns. Contrary to the crippling myth that “consumer spending drives the economy,” production drives the economy.

Production—creating value for others in a way that they compensate you for it—is what gives any individual or entity the ability to consume.

You can’t control government spending. But you can control your own.

• Spend less than you earn.
• Never, ever borrow to consume.
• Pay off consumer debt as fast as you are able.
• Cut up your credit cards if that’s what it takes.
• Increase your production through education, better marketing, a career change, etc.
• Save and invest ten percent of your income.

Do whatever it takes to ensure that your home economy produces more than it consumes; this is the best way to fight inflation.

3. Value creation comes before desire fulfillment.

Who has more money—you, or other people? Obviously, other people.

How can you get others to give you money? By providing something to them that they value more than their money.

Greed and selfishness are at the basis of so many of our current problems. The wise understand that they can only get what they want by first focusing on what other people want.

Ask yourself:

• What do you have to offer that other people want?
• What suffering exists in the world that you have the ability to alleviate?
• What do other people need and how can you provide it efficiently?

Dollars follow value—creating value for others is the only legitimate way to meet your own needs.

4. Integrity is worth its weight in gold.

Corporate executives are being caught in lies like flies to honey. But what about you? Are you going to unfairly take advantage of others in the name of “Everyone else is doing it?”

Or will you take the road less traveled and be a person of your word, a person who others can trust in and rely upon? Does your private life reflect your core values?

When times are hard, people look for stability. Integrity provides stability of character, drawing others toward you.

Integrity alone is a magnetic marketing tool and will boost your ability to influence and serve others, and therefore profit in spite of crises.

5. Find and live your Soul Purpose.

Soul Purpose is your unique set of talents, abilities, values, and passions applied productively and effectively, making tremendous impact upon the world and bringing the highest levels of joy and fulfillment to you and everyone you touch.

You were born for something wonderful. Are you doing it?

Do you love to get up every morning? Are you energized by your career? Does it continually stretch you to achieve your fullest potential? Or is it time for you to choose something different?

Prosperity is much more than dollars, investment accounts, and toys; it’s the internal joy that you experience by applying your best work to pressing problems.

Soul Purpose is the best long-term investment. Find what you were born to do and do it—your prosperity will increase exponentially.

Rise to the Occasion

The problems we face are big—which means that there’s now more opportunity than ever to create value by alleviating suffering.

Big problems require bigger solutions, and bigger solutions pay bigger dividends.

The positive side of the financial meltdown is increased awareness; there is now enough pain for us to course-correct and overcome the economic myths of the last century.

The solution isn’t to elect new leaders any more than changing drivers on a broken car makes the car run better.

The solution is for common Americans to reform the economy from the inside out by:

1. Eliminating the entitlement mentality
2. Producing more than we consume
3. Creating value for others
4. Developing impeccable integrity
5. Living Soul Purpose

If you don’t know what to invest in—especially during hard economic times—your best bet is to invest in yourself through education.

After all, the external economy is nothing but a reflection of the aggregate of internal economies.

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

Garrett Gunderson is an entrepreneur, financial coach, the founder of Freedom FastTrack, and the primary author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Garrett loves inspiring others to turn their potential into production. He has dedicated his life to living and teaching a unique concept known as Soul Purpose that reveals how anyone can live a more prosperous and rewarding life.

As a finance and business productivity coach, Garrett instructs both large and small groups of business owners and financial service professionals nationwide.

Connect With Garrett:

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

None of his sculptured works have survived, and only around a grand total of fifteen of his paintings are known.

Although he wrote a lot about architecture, no buildings anywhere are credited to his name.

Dispassionate scientists have long debated the originality of his many inventions found only in his sketchbooks – little evidence exists that he ever actually built or tested any of these ideas.

Yet Leonardo is heralded as a universal genius, the ideal of the Renaissance in which artists were not only proficient but expected to be masters in many fields.

He is shrouded in mystery and myth, movies and books being written about his sensational secret codes, mischievous messages, and secret handwriting (which was actually just backwards).

As with most post-modern heroes, however, closer inspection reveals a somewhat smaller man.

Although unarguably monumentally talented, Leonardo suffered from what art historian Ken Clark called his “constitutional dilatoriness.” Pope Leo X said, “Alas! This man will never do anything!”

Leonardo often accepted commissions for works he never finished, in many cases, works he never even began.

Of the paintings we know of, such as the Mona Lisa, he worked on them off and on for years, most experts agreeing that the art itself shows the weaknesses of such a lackadaisical methodology.

Perhaps authors D’Epiro and Pinkowish asked it best:

“Why did the man who was arguably the greatest painter who ever lived dissipate his energies, often quite carelessly, among so many other fields?”

There is absolutely no denying the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was an extremely gifted man, one of the towering giants of the Renaissance.

The question that carries the most meaning for those of us on our own journeys of life accomplishment is “Why so little output?”

I am reminded of the Stephen King quote concerning the author of Gone With the Wind: “Why didn’t she ever write another book?”

Success is the product of many components, of which one of the most prominent is focus.

We can do many things in our lives, but we can’t do everything.

We can have wide interests, and to a certain extent that is good and healthy, but we shouldn’t dissipate our true well of talent on too many endeavors.

If genius like that of a Leonardo is wasted by too broad a stroke, then what happens to those of us who are less well endowed?

As Leonardo himself wrote:

“As a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, so every mind divided among different studies is confused and weakened.”

The less talented we are, the more focused we must be.

Even the least talented can accomplish grandiose achievements if applying themelves ferociously, consistently, and with enough focus over time.

In fact, it seems that often the greatest accomplishments go to those who actually aren’t all that talented, but retain just this one last shred of talent: the ability to focus intensely and over the long term.

Sadly, we will never know what wonders of painted masterpieces Leonardo may have produced for the enjoyment of the world. He spent too much of his time elsewhere, on areas other than his gifting.

While in many cases he was still better in these areas than most of the rest of us, the loss still stings. One is left wanting more, but time answers back a heartless “too late.”

This brings us to the saddest consideration of the squandered gifts of life: What could have been?

Do not squander what you’ve been given, no matter how much or little, rather, harness it, develop it, hone it, and focus it, bring it to bear on a daily basis and letting the world see what you were given.

It is a duty to return our gifts of talent totally spent and depleted in worthy use.

Or, if not, one may join the great Leonardo da Vinci himself, who wrote toward the end of his life, “Di mi se mai fu fatta alcuna cosa” (Tell me if anything was ever done.).

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

Chris Brady co-authored the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Weekly, USA Today, and Money Magazine best-seller Launching a Leadership Revolution.

He is also in the World’s Top 30 Leadership Gurus and among the Top 100 Authors to Follow on Twitter. He has spoken to audiences of thousands around the world about leadership, freedom, and success.

Mr. Brady contributes regularly to Networking Times magazine, and has been featured in special publications of Success and Success at Home. He also blogs regularly at Chris Brady.

He is an avid motorized adventurer, pilot, world traveler, humorist, community builder, soccer fan, and dad.

Connect With Chris:

If you apply these principles, you’ll avoid wasting money, time, and effort and learn to quickly identify the right opportunities.

A couple years ago I had an opportunity to apply the lessons that Garrett Gunderson and I teach in Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

I had been studying affiliate marketing to see if it is a viable opportunity with a solid value proposition.

Online affiliate marketing means to market the products and services of others in order to earn a commission from the product creator.

On the surface it sounds like a great model–you don’t even have to create your own products, all you have to do is market, and you can supposedly earn great money.

But the industry is plagued with scams and scammers.

So what were the problems I uncovered, and how can the lessons I learned apply to your life?

1. Backwards Motivation

For most people, the primary motivation for getting into the business is to make money, not to create value.

They go into it asking the question, “How can I make more money?” rather than “How can I better serve others?” or “What does the marketplace need that I can provide?”

If your primary motivation is to make money, you’ll be chasing money for the rest of your life. Even if you end up making a lot, you’ll live in scarcity because your primary concern is money, not value creation.

You’ll be plagued with the worry of losing it. You’ll be less inclined to be generous. You’ll attach more value to material things than to people.

2. Problematic Value Proposition

As Garrett and I write in Killing Sacred Cows:

“A value proposition is simply the identification of how value is created for others through specific actions, investments, business proposals, etc.

“A good value proposition comes in the form of a very clear and concise statement that explains how value is being created and how it will be sustained…

“One excellent way to analyze opportunities and mitigate risk is to ask and answer the following five questions:

1. Is this in alignment with my passion and values?
2. Will it increase and/or utilize my human life value?
3. How will it benefit others?
4. How will it benefit me?
5. Is it based on sound economic principles?”

One could say that the value proposition of affiliate marketing is that it creates value for product sellers by increasing their reach and duplicating their efforts, while creating wealth for those willing to share their product.

The problem comes when we ask if it’s creating value for the ones paying for the entire process-the end buyers.

Most affiliate marketers simply go to Clickbank, a broker of online products, choose a product that looks like it will sell, then promote it without knowing if it’s actually benefiting end users.

They’re not even using the product themselves. The main things they study about the product are its commission rate and popularity, not its value to society and end users.

Some products may create value for buyers. The problem is that affiliate marketers don’t know for themselves if the products are valuable or not.

They’re not in it to create value or to identify a solid value proposition; they’re in it to make money regardless of any such considerations.

3. Unethical Practices

It’s a common practice for affiliate marketers to identify three products in a particular niche, then create a “review” site, such as this one , showing the pros and cons of each.

Again, it sounds like a potentially great service–end users can ostensibly benefit from the research performed by the marketers and choose the product that best fits their needs.

So what’s the problem? Most “reviewers” are rarely reviewing anything–they’re making it all up and choosing three products that will pay them a good commission.

Also, every user of Clickbank, the product broker I mentioned above, agrees to certain terms and conditions when they create an account. Agreeing to an online form is just like signing your name–your integrity is on the line.

In the case of one company I researched, the creator of it admits outright that he is a liar.

After describing a deceitful technique he promotes, he writes,

“Technically, this is against Clickbank’s terms and conditions, but I know of plenty of affiliates who do it (many of whom make $300 and upwards per day –- see if you can draw a causal link). I have only heard of a few people being told to stop offering bonuses by Clickbank, and I have never heard of a single case of an affiliate being banned for doing so. I do it myself, so that should tell you where I stand on the issue.”

Two pages later, after describing another deceitful technique, he says:

“Now once more, this is against Clickbank’s policies (and I have anecdotal evidence to suggest they dislike this more than the bonus offer), but I do again know of some $500/day affiliates who do it. I have tried it myself on two occasions with moderate success…”

In other words, as long as everyone else is doing it and as long as you don’t get caught, it’s all right. Anyone else see a problem with this?

Such practices are not built on solid economic principles and so they will always fail.

There will undoubtedly be a few who make good money doing it, but most people will find nothing but heartache pursuing these types of businesses. And even those who do make money aren’t truly prospering anyway.

No amount of money is worth your self-respect and the talents that will be uncovered when you set out to serve others, talents that remain largely undiscovered if your primary concern is how to make more money.

Unless you’re really creating value for others, serving them, providing them with what they really need in a principled fashion, you will never find prosperity.

4 Steps to Economic Certainty

Follow these four simple steps any time you are presented with a business opportunity to discover if it is the right thing to do:

1. Start by asking, “How can I serve?” and “What does the market need that I can provide?” as opposed to “How can I make more money?”

2. Identify the value proposition, and trace it back through every level down to the end user.

Look beyond the hype and sift through your feelings of scarcity. How is the business/investment creating value for others, for the economy, and for society at large? Is it truly helping others, or just selling them?

Do you personally know how it’s helping others, or are you just believing the hype presented by the seller?

3. Never engage in unethical or illegal practices, no matter how many others are doing it.

Keep your word. Live the spirit and the letter of all of your agreements. Be a person that others can trust and you will always prosper.

You reap what you sow–reap lies and you will sow mistrust and eventual failure. Reap truth and honesty and you will sow trust, loyalty, and prosperity.

4. Never spend time, effort, and money on anything–no matter how much money you can make–that does not align with your passion, values, and Soul Purpose.

Find what you love to do and do it in the service of others.

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

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

I recently watched the first four episodes of Jamie Oliver’s television show, Food Revolution.

It’s at once shocking, infuriating, inspiring, and uplifting.

I was mesmerized, not just because it’s a great show, but also because it’s overflowing with profound insights and lessons on leadership.

There are too many to list, so I’ll narrow them down to four.

Note that these lessons aren’t shocking revelations that you’ve never heard or read before.

But what makes them so poignant is actually seeing them in action on Jamie’s show, rather than just looking at dry, empty words on sheets of paper. The show makes the lessons real and tangible.

Jaime became famous as the “Naked Chef,” a TV show where he “[stripped] food down to its bare essentials – to prove that you didn’t need to dress up ingredients or buy a load of fancy gadgets to make something really tasty.”

After a successful campaign to improve school food programs in the U.K., he came to the U.S. to attempt the same.

He chose Huntington, West Virginia as his starting point because it’s statistically the unhealthiest city in America.

He begins by convincing a local school district to let him cook lunch for an elementary school.

Lesson #1: Expect Resistance

Jamie is plunged into conflict from day one.

The kitchen cooks resent him for treading on their turf. School district bureaucrats force him to comply with insane guidelines. A local radio DJ launches a personal campaign to disparage his efforts.

Diplomacy is certainly necessary for leadership, but no matter how skilled a diplomat you are, you will encounter resistance. Nor does it matter how sincere, pleasant, and right you are.

Implicitly, leadership is about changing the status quo. And the status quo doesn’t like to be changed.

Lesson #2: Re-Define & Shift the Enemy

However, when facing resistance, it’s almost always a mistake to fight force with force, fire with fire.

Rather, you can deflect and transfer the energy of your resistance by making the enemy someone or something else other than your resistors.

This works particularly well when it’s a common enemy that you share with them.

One of Jamie’s low points comes when a local paper takes some of his comments out of context and makes him out to be the enemy of the town.

When the cooks, bureaucrats, and radio DJ read the paper and confront him about it, they’re deeply hurt, to the point of wanting to run Jamie out of town.

But rather than fight through their ignorance, he deflects their energy and shifts their focus to a common enemy: the government, who makes the food guidelines, and our corporate system that produces processed food and is in bed with the government.

Scott Brown, the Republican junior senator from Massachusetts, used a similar strategy to win the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy.

Rather than making Democrats at large the enemy, he defined the enemy as the Washington political establishment, both Republican and Democrat. This won him support from both sides of the aisle.

Lesson #3: Passion Trumps Everything

When you’re 100% aligned with your mission and in tune with your passion, nothing can stop you.

Passion gets you through the hard parts of leadership.

About 41 minutes into episode one, after dealing with angry and defensive Huntington residents, an emotional Jamie says:

“It’s quite hard to cut through negativity and defensiveness…I’ve given up massive time that is really compromising my family, because I care.

“The tough thing for me is they don’t understand me ’cause they don’t know why I’m here. They don’t even know why I’ve done the things I’ve done in my life in the last 10 years.

“And I’m just doing it ’cause it feels right. And when I do things that feel right, magic happens. I’ve done some amazing things, you know, and that’s when I follow my heart. And when I never follow my heart I always get it wrong.”

Jamie’s passion pushes him through the negativity. It helps him swallow his pride when needed, and act boldly when the time is right.

It sparks creativity. It makes him nimble and adaptive. When he gets blocked, he always figures out a detour.

Lesson #4: Be an Expert Marketer & Engage the Masses

When he struggles to get the establishment — the cooks, school district, and local media — on his side, Jamie circumvents them and creates his own media and movement.

He befriends and engages the help of a local pastor. He forms a group of aspiring chefs from the local high school and leverages them to create goodwill in the community with a fundraiser.

He sets up a kitchen on the main street of town where residents can come and learn how to cook for free.

And things really heat up between him and the radio DJ, he takes a giant risk and bets the DJ that he can teach 1,000 people to cook in five days.

His kitchen is dead the first two days; few people know what he’s doing, and the DJ uses his bully pulpit to discourage residents from going to the kitchen.

So Jamie has to be smart and bold. He coordinates a “flash mob” at the local university, which creates massive awareness and turns the tide in his favor.

He builds momentum, rallies the townspeople in a big way, and eventually wins the bet.

In fact, the 1,000th person he teaches to cook is the same DJ with whom he made the bet and who was his staunchest opponent.

Although there are tons of technical details to marketing, the magic is in the passion. Jamie’s passion led him to do things that most people are unwilling to do or can’t even imagine doing.

When asked how to market, Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farms, a social leadership enterprise, responded, “Become the local lunatic.”

If you want big things to happen, you’ve got to stand out.

Of course, you run the risk of looking like a complete idiot and failing miserably. But if you’re aligned with passion and mission, you’ll pick yourself up and keep moving.

Want to learn how to become a social leader? Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and take notes.

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

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

This is part 5 of a 5-part article.

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For years American politics has been dominated by two parties, one emphasizing success and the other nurture.

This battle of Ego versus Eco still drives most national debates.

Where one party is driven toward wealth, fame and progress, the other prefers to promote caring, service and acceptance.

One is self-centered and the other is inclusive. One sees private life as the highest good and the other wants government to solve all problems in society.

One prioritizes national security above all else and the other idealizes social justice.

More Americans now consider themselves independents, rather than loyal to either major political party, in part because we have reached a point where the majority of the nation’s citizens consider both Ego and Eco to be vital.

This has been the norm for entrepreneurs for many years. Indeed, entrepreneurs who try to put one above the other seldom succeed for long.

Small and entrepreneurial business leaders learn that both caring and drive are necessary.

The same is true of citizens who want to remain free. Indeed, the most important entrepreneurial skills and lessons are those most needed to promote free society.

Freedom is best supported by excellence and compassion, self-improvement and service, building wealth and taking care of other people and the earth.

Freedom requires a balance of analysis and creativity, intellect and emotion, wisdom and intuition, reflection and action.

Free societies are intelligent societies, because the broad citizenry must understand and protect its freedoms or it will lose them.

But a society cannot remain free by following a few geniuses at the top — this always destroys liberty.

The most prosperous and free civilizations are those where the majority of people develop and share their best personal genius.

Everyone has genius inside, and it is the purpose of Leadership Education to reveal it and help people develop it.

Career is the place where genius is then shared to benefit and improve the world. Finally, it is the purpose of free society to allow all to fully achieve and share their genius.

Entrepreneurial activity naturally seeks these peaks and balances. This isn’t new; it was the reality during the American founding and has been ever since.

The future will be no different. We all need to learn and apply this truism: However small business goes, so goes the nation.

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

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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

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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.

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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 2 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

The lessons of such expertise naturally impact the prosperity and freedom of a society.

And such lessons come from depth in many of the intelligences instead of general education in only three and a specialty in just one.

Such widespread competency in reading, writing, persuading, leading, calculating, comparing, analyzing, thinking, creating, beautifying, composing, building, interacting, initiating, overcoming, enduring, changing, improving, motivating, self-starting, self-disciplining, self-guiding, teamwork, leading and serving are what the American founders idealized as quality education.

These are the necessary skills of successful entrepreneurship and also of societal freedom.

This level of education and expertise is developed by what Ken Wilber calls the Big Three of Buddhism: Buddha, Sangha and Dharma.

“Buddha” in this sense means combining one’s purpose or mission in life with developing oneself into a true and great servant of society.

The Greeks called this Fate and the American founders called it Providence.

By seeking to be guided by higher powers and higher purposes, a person becomes her best and as such greatly improves society through her efforts and contributions.

Buddha is credited with saying that “Our purpose in life is to find our purpose in life and then give our whole heart and soul to it.”

Sangha is one’s community, gathering, group or team. Working together with the right people, “we” do more than “I” ever could.

Good teams are diverse, individualistic, cooperative and united toward the same goals. They achieve most when they operate at peak levels.

Dharma is the truth, the true, the ideal. Dharma helps us know why we are here, what we are about, and therefore who we really are.

But Dharma is not about “I” or “We.” Rather it is about what we accomplish: the goal, the objective, the positive change we bring to the world through our best efforts and service.

In Christianity this is the Christian walk, the anointed purpose, the path.

Christianity’s equivalent of Sangha is the Church, and “Buddha” is the submission to Christ and His will.

Plato and secularists call these big three the good, the beautiful and the true, and psychology calls them the “I, We and It”—Buddha, Sangha and Dharma respectively.

In American politics these are citizen, the Constitution and freedom.

The lesson for education is that great learning is:

1. Individualized
2. Best achieved in interactive groups with mentors, peers, discussions, feedback and group projects
3. Mission-driven

Again, the very skills and abilities created by this model are exactly those most needed in free society. Without them, entrepreneurial prosperity and political freedom decline.

Click Here to Download a Printable Version of This Article

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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 1 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

Howard Gardner’s research suggests that there are fundamentally seven basic intelligences: literary, mathematical, artistic, musical, spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

Modern education tends to emphasize basic knowledge in three of these (literary, mathematical and interpersonal) fields followed by career specialization in one.

During the American founding era that produced a generation of citizen-farmers and citizen-entrepreneurs who established the freest society in history, a different sort of education-career path dominated.

Today’s professionals and experts tend to be trained in problem solving under structured guidelines, whereas successful entrepreneurs seldom have the luxury of easily knowing what the problems are.

They have to figure out what the real issues are and define the problems, and only then find ways to solve problems and overcome roadblocks.

This requires high levels of initiative and resiliency, independent and analytical thinking, ingenuity and creative thinking, tenacity and self-analysis.

These entrepreneurial skills and talents are precisely those needed to establish and maintain freedom.

Intelligences

To prepare youth for success in entrepreneurial (and free) cultures, education tends to emphasize originality, creativity, breadth, depth and leadership skills rather than rote memorization, standardized curricula or socialization.

The latter skill set is vital in societies with strong upper classes employing the lower castes, but the former is essential to free democratic nations.

Where class societies tend to educate for general knowledge in literary, mathematical and interpersonal skills, entrepreneurial nations educate for depth in literary, mathematical, interpersonal, artistic, musical, spatial and intrapersonal (self-understanding, self-discipline, and self-starting) excellence.

Then entrepreneurial societies go a step further by educating to the hyphens.

This means using personalized and mentored learning in the greatest classics and works of mankind along with current original sources to establish skills and train experts in multi-intelligence categories.

Examples include many who used two or more intelligences to significantly impact societies, cultures, paradigms, governments, policies and worldviews:

• Interpersonal-musicians like Mozart and John Lennon
• Literary-artists such as Goya, Cecil B. DeMille, and M. Night Shyamalan
• Interpersonal-literati like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and John Steinbeck
• Spatial-artistry like gladiators, NASCAR, and the Louvre
• Mathematical-artists like Michelangelo and Picasso
• Literary-mathematicians like Newton, Einstein, and Hawking
• Literary-intrapersonalists such as Tolstoy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Goulding and Ayn Rand
• Intrapersonal-mathematical thinkers like Montesquieu, Hume, Madison, Mises, Keynes, C.S. Lewis, and Buckminster Fuller

To make sense of this, consider a society where the youth become proficient in reading biographies of great leaders from Socrates to Washington and Andrew Carnegie to Ray Kroc and of effectively applying the lessons learned to their own lives.

Or where every young person knows both the formulas in calculus and also how to build and implement a business plan, including detailed financials, to turn “thin air” into great institutions of profit and non-profit value in society.

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:

He shared the following insight, which he learned from Mike Metzger:

“You meet 4 kinds of people on the ocean of life.”

“Those who drift just go with the flow. The wind and the waves control their speed and direction. The drifter quietly floats along and says, ‘Whatever.’”

“Those who surf are always riding a wave, the next big thing. They stay excited until the wave fades away, then they scan the horizon for something new. Surfers don’t usually get anywhere, but they make a lot of noise and put on a good show.”

“Those who drown seem to stay in the center of a storm. It doesn’t matter how often you rescue them, they’ll soon be in another crisis, crying, “Help me, save me, it’s been the worst week of my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’”

“Those who sail are navigating toward a fixed point. They counteract the wind and waves by adjusting the rudder and shifting the sails to stay on course.

“But without an immovable, fixed point in your life, there can be no sailing. There’s nothing for you but drift, surf or drown.”

“Your fixed point,” taught Roy, “can’t be money, because money is everywhere you look.”

Are you drifting, surfing, drowning, or navigating?

What’s your north star?

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com