Eighteen months ago, my wife Valerie and I were in Costa Rica on vacation with our pals, the coauthor of my book on sports marketing, Dr Bill Sutton, and his wife Sharon. It was the second time we had gone to this stunning country —a home and haven for some 70,000 ex-pats, according to the U.S. State Department. In Mexico, when you thank a native-born for their great service and friendly greeting with muchas gracias, you receive a response of de nada, meaning you are welcome, or it is nothing. In Costa Rica, the response is pura vida, which literally means pure life. But in essence, what it means is that life is good, and nothing is worth getting too stressed over.
The repeated and sincere pura vida’s got Bill and I seriously thinking about its impact on us as Americans. At that time, I was beginning to write my new book, and already realizing that we need a positively uplifting national ethos campaign for the U.S. — especially given the current nasty toxicity we are experiencing politically. We need something to help bring us back together as one united nation.
Who Gets to Achieve the American Dream
As an immigrant from Britain, I moved to the U.S. for graduate study in 1973 and never left. I’d already come to these shores in 1970 to be a soccer counselor at a summer camp in Maine and immediately fell in love with this country. 51 years later, I have been blessed to live the American dream and fortunate enough to pass it on to my four children and six grandchildren. I want to see that same level of aspirational drive available to all American citizens and permanent residents. But as it stands today, such an aspiration is not attainable for many in our country.
My American dream took me from graduate school to pioneering a new academic discipline, to C-Suite roles in major league sport franchises and league offices to becoming an entrepreneur and building my own sport marketing agency. Since its inception in 2008 — in the midst of a financial crisis — The Aspire Sport Marketing Group has generated over $1.5 billion for our 300-plus global sport and entertainment industry clients.
But during my own rise, I watched in alarm as the ties binding America together loosened. While focusing mainly on growing my own career and raising my family, I saw two major trends emerging in our society. First, the dream was becoming unattainable for many of our poorest citizens with the lowest quality educational experience. Second, the dream was fading for far too many others, so the fabric binding our nation together was becoming irreparably frayed — which led to the current nasty toxicity in America between far-left and far-right political beliefs. Yet Pew Research found that over 60% of Americans are Independents, sitting in the middle with moderate political viewpoints. Unfortunately, our moderate voices are being drowned out by the screaming from the extremes. That has to stop.
Finding a Common Purpose: RAD
To grasp the promise of a perfect union as the Founding Fathers envisaged, we need a renewed common purpose — a shared story anyone can write in the pages of their own life & by our pals. I mapped a path forward with my concept, RAD — which offers a prescription for our current Top Ten social ills and a positive vision of a future in which every American can fully realize the fruits of their talents and labor.
RAD models how investing in a quality educational experience for all Americans — which would need to be paid fully by the Government — would more than produce a substantive return, enabling many more future Americans to be highly productive. This large return on investment would be further realized by massively reducing the costs of those social programs designed to redress such ills as teenage pregnancy, youth substance abuse, and high unemployment and reducing the high cost of entitlement programs such as food vouchers, housing subsidies, other grants, and low-income awards.
RAD also recommends bringing our country back together by solving the income gap and lack of generational wealth through better education for our youth. It starts with free preschool for all, so that all children can know the alphabet, and can read and write basic sentences and do simple math additions by the time they enter Kindergarten. It continues with a proposal for free babysitting in the school for the one in five American kids who are “latch-key kids” and go home from school to an empty house.
The capstone of this “Prescription for America” is a common 8-week Boot Camp: a paid sleep-away experience for rising high school freshmen, followed by required paid employment experience each summer thereafter during high school. This program alone could provide every graduating student with a $25,000 cash “nest egg,” including interest from savings, at the young age of 18. Those who successfully complete this four-year work program will be rewarded with free vouchers to cover four years of college tuition/ room and board or the cost of completion of a career professional certification.
A New Ethos
How do we tie this new day for America’s youth with a program for all of us adult Americans? I suggest we create a new national ethos program for us & our pals all to follow, starting with greeting one another in a new, friendly, and uniquely American way. I am suggesting that in the spirit of Costa Rica, we start greeting one another as the American brothers and sisters that we actually are by calling one another “PAL” — which stands for Peace and Love. Hi Pal. Pleased to meet you, Pal. After all, isn’t this exactly how each one of us wants to live anyway? In peace and harmony, with a common bond of love for all other humans, instead of using the current extreme labels of “deplorables” or “fascists”?
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Dr Bernie Mullin is a groundbreaking sport and entertainment industry executive who’s turned around franchises, set all-time revenue and attendance records, and generated $1.5+ billion in revenues for brands from the NFL to the US Open Tennis, with his agency, The Aspire Sport Marketing Group. He was CEO of NBA and NHL teams and CMO of the NBA. He’s also a globally acclaimed speaker, podcaster, author, and humanitarian who has served on multiple boards, including the United Way, YMCA, and Make a Wish Foundation. The Aspire Difference Foundation (TADF) focuses on supporting single parents with preschool children. All net proceeds from his consulting, podcasts, and books support TADF. His new book is Reimagining America’s Dream: Making It Attainable for All.
By Dr Bernie Mullin
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