Saniel Bonder 

National Entrepreneurship: Rebuilding the Foundation of the American Dream

The day I sat down to start writing this essay, in the midst or maybe still early stages of the worst American financial crisis since the Great Depression, government figures came out announcing the loss of 159,000 jobs in September. Those were the worst employment figures yet, but the numbers had been negative for nine solid months: a total of more than three quarters of a million jobs gone, this year.

A few weeks back, in one of the last gentlemanly exchanges between our presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain each spoke at a forum on National Service. Both men warmly embraced the idea of such a program for our country. Understandably so—each of them has given so much in voluntary service in his lifetime. Each appreciates its unique gifts both to recipient organizations and communities, and to the giver herself or himself.

Interestingly, as it happens, neither of these men has had much history, if any, as an entrepreneur or business owner. Some of the other, earlier candidates, especially Mitt Romney, have such a background. So does Michael Bloomberg, who for quite some time loomed as a potential entry into the race.

I spent the first twenty-plus years of my adult life almost exclusively engaged in a livelihood of service, in the context of a spiritual quest. Since 1992 I’ve engaged in entrepreneurial versions of a similarly spiritual mission, both in non-profit and for-profit formats.

So I’m familiar with both “service” and “entrepreneurial,” “non-profit” and “for-profit” orientations to work, livelihood, and participation in society. I do agree that a program of National Service can make a wonderful contribution to the lives of all concerned and our entire national society. However, in this and future posts on this theme, I propose that implementing National Service opportunities will be incomplete and, I believe, insufficient unless we institute, on an equivalent scale, a program for National Entrepreneurship.

Senator McCain may have actually been wrong about even what he did mean when he now-famously said, not too long ago, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.” He later explained that he meant the American workforce is strong, resourceful, and capable of great achievements.

But that may not really be true any longer—at least, not as true as we’d like. If we review the history of American work since the founding of our nation, we see that the advent of serious industrialization and the proliferation of corporations in the 19th and especially 20th centuries turned us from being a significantly self-directed society of small business owners into one of mostly hired hands working for others in large corporations. And there is now in our workforce a profound ambivalence about participation in a world run by big corporations, and perhaps an equally strong or at least substantial handicapping of its resiliency, resourcefulness, and drive as even union-organized servants to that world.

Today, more Americans than ever before are dropping out of corporate jobs, and of course recently more are being “downsized” before they can quit even if they want to. In part as a result of that trend, the number of people starting home-based and other entrepreneurial businesses is vast and growing.

Yet very few of them really know what they’re doing. And they get precious little help in mainstream education. Even our business schools have until recently hardly touched the subject of entrepreneurship. There is almost no training at all in our high schools in this most vital way to actually realize one’s own version of the “American Dream.” Most of the accomplished entrepreneurial mentors I know of teach in places like the Learning Annex or their own networks on the margins of mainstream business.

Tiger Woods and his partners have a great program for mostly younger kids called “Start Something.” I propose a substantial initiative on a national scale, National Entrepreneurship, with multiple, focused trainings on what it takes to actually not just start but also sustain, grow, and succeed in one’s own business. It could be targeted to teenagers and young adults, yet available to, and with tailored programs for, people of any and every age.

Such a program may prove crucial to our country’s regaining the economic prowess that is currently slipping away with our massive institutional failures and bailouts. It may well be of enduring value even to large companies and their teams. They could benefit tremendously from prioritizing entrepreneurial values and skills within their corporate cultures. It could even become a cornerstone on which we can together rebuild the American Dream, this time far more sturdily than ever before.

No other country on Earth so orients its citizens from an early age to the blessings of discovering and fulfilling one’s dreams. Nor is any other country, even in what’s now called “the Euro-zone,” so ostensibly friendly to the real rough-and-tumble life of the entrepreneur, including its inevitable downturns and occasional failures. But till now we have done so very little on any serious scale to train our people, young and old, to become effective entrepreneurs and business owners themselves, capable of understanding and managing all aspects of what it takes to create and run a successful business.

A National Entrepreneurship program may prove to be every bit as important as enhancing our educational prowess again in math and the sciences, which many people wisely advocate. Again, it may also prove to be as necessary and salutary as a program for National Service. And it addresses a gap that neither of those can fill.

A National Entrepreneurship initiative could well reveal itself to be a primary long-term inoculation of our entire society and economy against future financial plagues of the kind that are now ravaging our mortgages, our 401-K’s, our mutual funds, even our banks. It could turn out to be one of the most grounded, dynamic, and transformational single educational forces in our society: a kind of “Leadership Training Extreme.”

Responsible 21st century living anywhere on Earth calls for extraordinary advances in our understanding of the forces at work in our world today and driving us toward tomorrows that we can either consciously choose and create together—or unconsciously, and in ignorance, be forced to accept. Responsible 21st century citizenship in the United States of America calls each and every one of us to rise to challenges of self-development and mutual collaboration that we probably cannot now even imagine, much less anticipate.

The kinds of interrelated skill sets and the qualities of character that truly successful entrepreneurship will demand in this 21st century will also enable increasing numbers of us to meet those challenges, whether or not we continue to create or run business enterprises.

The enormous financial bail-out/rescue that Congress and the President just enacted, and all the grand plans of either of our presidential nominees and their parties, won’t have a chance at succeeding in the long run without massive infusions into the life-blood of our population of enterprise-building creativity, resourcefulness, daring, and pragmatic leadership skill. A National Entrepreneurship drive—created and administered by proven entrepreneurs, who will insist on optimizing its success—can potentially have that kind of effect. I don’t know what else possibly can.

In future posts to this column I’ll continue to promote an initiative for National Entrepreneurship. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

© Saniel Bonder 2008. All rights reserved.

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About Saniel: Harvard educated “destiny-empowerment” expert, Saniel is author of the forthcoming audio series, "Wealth Without Guilt," the provocative "White-Hot Yoga of the Heart," and many other books and programs. He hails from Sonoma, California where his unique blend of intellectual curiosity and spiritual wisdom is honed and nurtured. Saniel co-writes and co-teaches with his wife, Linda. Together they travel and teach “materiality and spirit” workshops throughout the US and internationally. His website is http://heartgazing.com/spiritmoney.