This book is written as a guide to prepare you to handle those risks. And there’s good news for those who have served in the military: You already have the education and training, the core strengths, the spiritual willpower, and the sense of mission required to endure the rigors of being an entrepreneur. If you want guarantees of success, a steady paycheck, and benefits, it’s probably best you keep your day job.
There is another reason I have written this book. I believe that the United States and the world face a massive problem, the problem of unemployment and underemployment.
Today, with youth unemployment high, we have a global “lost generation,” a generation of young people between the ages of 18 and 35 who are missing a critical window of real life experience, either unemployed or stuck in a job that does not challenge them. Odds are that many in this “lost generation” will struggle for the rest of their life.
Will History Repeat Itself?
Pictured on the following page is a chart from a very dark time in world history. It is a chart that illustrates the relationship between the rise in unemployment in Germany and the rise of the Nazi Party.
Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and approximately 80 million people lost their lives. World War II, fought between 1939 and 1945, was an Industrial-Age War, fought by rich nations with industrial power.
Today’s, terrorism is an Information-Age War, led by angry (and often poor) people, with access to low-cost, high-performance technology. Today a terrorist with charismatic leadership skills can create their own military force, using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Today, cell phones can be more powerful than nuclear weapons. Today’s Information-Age terrorism can spread rapidly and grow in ways that are virtually invisible.
Add these facts to this mix of data: In 1970, America had the highest rate of high school graduation in the world. Today, it has the lowest, ranking at 23 of 28 countries surveyed.
While a few high school dropouts do go on to lead great lives, a high proportion make up the long-term unemployed, the homeless, the welfare recipients and the incarcerated.
This is why I founded The Rich Dad Company and became an entrepreneur in financial education. It is tough becoming an entrepreneur without financial education, which is why I became an entrepreneur in education, outside the school system.
America Today
Now look at a chart on long-term unemployment in America today.
Today, we do not have an Adolf Hitler. Today we have the rise of terrorism, and anger fueled by rising food prices and rising youth unemployment.
The reason entrepreneurs are important is because only real entrepreneurs create real jobs and real prosperity.
Who’s Killing Our Jobs?
While our veterans were serving our country our corporate leaders were busy “outsourcing jobs,” sending jobs overseas.
Since pictures are worth thousands of words, I will let the following ‘pictures’ tell you the story of the freedom we defended.
Here’s a sobering headline: Top U.S. Corporations Outsource More Than 2.4 Million Jobs Over Last Decade.
This graph tells the story:
As you can see from the chart above, the economic recession has had little impact on corporate America’s patriotism. Corporate America is hiring, but it’s not hiring American workers.
In 2009, representatives of many of the nation’s most powerful corporations attended the 2009 Strategic Outsourcing Conference to talk about how to send American jobs overseas. Conference organizers polled the more than 70 senior executives who attended the conference about the behavior of their companies in response to the recession. The majority said their companies increased outsourcing in response to the downturn, with only 9 percent saying they terminated some outsourcing agreements.
Here’s a different chart that tells the same story:
According to the research, the primary reason for outsourcing was to “reduce operating costs.” According to the research, only a relatively small percent of respondents (just over 10 percent) said their reason for outsourcing was for “access to world-class capabilities.” This means companies outsourced to save money, not to make better products.
Loss of Tax Revenue
The chart below illustrates the reason state governments are in the red. When jobs leave a state, tax revenues decrease.
Unfortunately, for some of these companies, sending American jobs overseas isn’t enough. They also want to bring the profits back into the United States with as little tax liability as possible. Cisco Systems, which had 26 percent of its workforce abroad at the start of the decade but 46 percent of its workforce abroad by the end, is currently involved in a lobbying campaign titled “Win America” calling for a tax repatriation holiday that would let big corporations “bring money they have stashed overseas back to the United States at a dramatically lower tax rate.”
Asking for Your Service Again
As you can tell by these charts and graphs, your services are needed—this time at home. America is in trouble. America needs jobs. And the world needs entrepreneurs. Governments cannot create real jobs. America needs entrepreneurs because only real entrepreneurs can create real and sustainable jobs and real, lasting prosperity.
Simply put, when our government creates jobs our taxes increase. When taxes increase, life becomes more expensive, people suffer, our economy suffers, and our country grows weaker. When entrepreneurs create jobs, those jobs generate taxes, our debt goes down, we export, and our country grows stronger.
In this book I am asking our service men and women to serve once again, this time at home. And this time as entrepreneurs. I believe that the men and women of our armed services have the unique skills and training to be great entrepreneurs.
How the Military Trains Great Entrepreneurs
Education is a big word. Education is more than the 3 Rs, reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.
The problem with traditional education is that schools focus on teaching the brain. We are human beings, not human brains.
Pictured below is a diagram of education for the whole human being, a diagram of four different intelligences.
As we all know, all human beings are different. In one family alone, you can have four children—from the same parents—who are amazingly different. Even twins can be very different beings.
For true education to work, education must inspire all four intelligences. True learning requires that all four intelligences are engaged. For example, learning to play golf requires all four intelligences. Anyone who has played golf knows that the game of golf requires physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual intelligence.
The problem with traditional education is that our schools focus primarily on mental intelligence, with little attention paid to the other