ratsass wrote:Craig, you could write it from a politician's viewpoint and call it "AmeriCON"!! 
Clever as always brother.
But I definitely want to focus on the more positive side of this, the 1st song notwithstanding. LOL
I want to REIGNITE the ROOTS FEELINGS of Family, and Beliefs, and POSSIBILITIES that this country has always been known for, but are slipping away from us.
But I'm tellin' you brother...
You are up on alot of issues, and you have a folksy and humorous way of expressing them, which doesn't offend people, but makes them think. You are missing one of your callings!
You have things to say!
You need a blog, that could grow into a devoted forum of fans and the curious, to say what you need to say. I think you could write. So what if punctuation is not perfect? Mine isn't. It is a folksy blog. I think you could interest people in it.
At least think about it.
I would help you with marketing ideas or designing graphics or whatever else I could do. Hell, I'd put a link to it on both my sites. Over 10,000 people combined.
LET ME JUST SAY THIS TO EVERYONE READING:
One thing I learned a long time ago, and have tried to spread to others here and there, is this...
BELIEVE and TRY IT!
Everyone one of us, has had ideas for things. Inventions. Gadgets to make life easier. Ideas for government. For music. Something we thought of and said "Wouldn't it be a good idea if someone..."
One of the first things that separate people who only have ideas, from people who see their ideas realized, is... TRYING.
Just that... TRYING.
The masses of us, think things are wrong and should be a different way, or we have ideas for things to make life easier or more fun. All of us are creative in one way or another. But MOST people let themselves believe: "Yeahm but that's for someone else to do." or "I couldn't do that." or "Well, this kind of stuf would never happen to me"
And then we get disappointed or even angry when someone else takes "our" idea, years later, and makes a fortune from it.
The difference?
WE SAID "Not me" and they said "Why not me?"
THEY BELIEVED. THEY TRIED.
What are we afraid of?
Failure?
Success?
Having a life we have convinced ourselves will never be ours?
Being afraid of failure should not even be a consideration. We immediately FAIL when we don't try. To paraphrase Edison "I haven't failed. I have successfully found 1,200 ways of making something that doesn't work."
Process of elimination.
Isn't he also credited with "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."?
In 1984 Roxanne Quimby began a business relationship with Burt Shavitz. Burt was a beekeeper and sold honey by the roadside from his modest home. Roxanne would buy honey whenever in the area, and got to know Burt. When she learned that there was alot of wax that would be discarded, from when he harvested the honey, she got the idea of making candles with the unused wax. She also got Burt to entertain the idea of her selling his honey in other outlets, small mom and pop stores, etc... and a relationship developed. Roxanne thought that Burt looked like an iconic old hippie, with his beard that flowed far down his chest, and she thought it was a natural that his image should adorn the product, and the name was perfect too...
We'll call it "Burt's Bees"
She sold $200 worth of her homemade candles at a craft fair, and that was the beginning of "Burt's Bees". She began approaching local stores to put Burt's honey on their shelves, and by the end of the fiirst year, Burt's Bees had made $20,000 dollars in sales.
As the product line was growing, Roxanne suddenly came across a 19th century book of homemade personal care products, that could be made at home using bees wax. She tried out many products and the most successful ones became part of the product line.
By 1993 she had bought out Burt for several million dollars.
Not bad for a bee keeper who had been fairly content selling a few hundred dollars of honey a week from his house.
But Roxanne, continued to grow the company, necessitating a move to a larger city for warehousing demands.
By 1998 Burt's Bees natural personal care products had over 100 products being sold in 4,000 locations with sales in excess of $8 million dollars per year.
The business model that Roxanne had early on set for the company was called: "The Greater Good" and had a philosophy similar to Ben and Jerry's of being socially responsible and using the company's success for, well... "The Greater Good"
To that end, in 2002, Roxanne purchased 185,000 acres of land in Maine, and donated it to the state for a nature preserve.
If I am not mistaken, she sold most of her interest in the company for around 200 MILLION DOLLARS a few years back.
In 2007 Clorox Company advised their shareholders that they would be buying the company for 925 MILLION DOLLARS.
Nearly One Billion Dollar folks!
Burt believed in bees. He retired a multi-millionaire because he TRIED.
Roxanne was a simple housewife who believed in quality natural products and in Burt's bees, and in only 20 years time, a company founded from $200 dollars in sales at a craft fair, was sold for nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS!
This would have NEVER happened, were it not for the fact, that Roxanne believed in not just having an idea, but in taking the idea and TRYING!!!
What does your heart tell you, you should be TRYING?
- if everyone likes it, and believes in it's potential, I want to make a video, even if it is a home-made one, and work in clips of some of the citizens that have been fired up at these town hall meetings. I also want to work in clips of average American families, on the front porch, etc... I have some servicemen who say they will dress for me, and be in it. And I plan on mixing in groups of, especially younger adults, college age, lipping some of the key parts (Think of the video for Nickelback's ROCKSTAR but with a group of 5 or 6 kids all together, to show a wide variety of people, including the young, and heopfully inspire them, so this will catch on.
