“The Innovative Kids of America Project”

Over Memorial Day weekend, I had the distinct pleasure of launching my newest concept to teach America’s kids how to become young entrepreneurs. “The Innovative Kids of America Project” was an absolute hit with fair attendees at The Sacramento County Fair. The idea is based on my series of kids’ books, “How to Become an Entrepreneurial Kid" that I wrote to share my own kids' success learning the lessons of starting a business with their very first yard sale cookie stand. The transformation of my kids after their first entrepreneurial endeavor was enough to inspire a nation, and that is just what I plan on doing!

"The Innovative Kids of America Project" provides an opportunity for kids all over the country to have an outlet for their creative ideas by teaching parents and kids how to achieve the American Dream of having their own business. Last weekend, ten kids between the ages of 3 through 18 each had their very own booth at the Sacramento County Fair. They had a few weeks before the fair to come up with what they wanted to create and/or resell. Every child made money, some more than others, but this experience was unbelievably successful for all who participated. The interaction with customers and each other was beautiful. What a great opportunity to use their academic skills, master communication with customers, and even learn about success and failure. (It was most interesting to watch the kids reinvent themselves when their product was not selling.) I had grandparents come up to me crying, “I wish I had this opportunity when I was a child; my life would have turned out differently!"

The American school system does not teach economics, and even worse, it preaches that kids have to prepare to become employees, not an employer’s! If you know anything about economics, you know that 80% of this country's economy is based on small business; they are the job creators in this country, and the lack of focus on this fact is frightening. We do not inspire kids to think like job creators anymore, we expect them to just get good grades and go to college, and then what? Get a job and work for a small business? 50% of college graduates can’t find a job! If America does not start cultivating entrepreneurs, its brilliant innovators will become extinct.

The government's anti-small business environment is deterring many Americans from becoming excited about starting a business. There will always be certain entrepreneurs who will succeed in going against the flow of this socialist-style movement, and who will remain solid and successful, but because very few Americans are offered the opportunity to realize the possibilities of being their own boss, we have so many people voting for big government. They really don’t understand that no one is always going to take care of them, and that freedom is about self-reliance not dependence.

Children are America’s great hope! Kids are natural entrepreneurs, and it only takes one entrepreneurial experience to awaken that spirit that dwells in so many of us. This opportunity to present “The Innovative Kids of America Project” to Sacramento Fair attendees proved to be the launching ground of a national movement. I plan on working with fairs all over the country to inspire kids to start their own businesses. "The Innovative Kids of America Project" changed those ten kids' lives forever, and the sky is the limit for success. This was America’s entrepreneurial spirit in action, and the parents were thrilled! Help me work some Great American Magic, and let’s create a pro-small business movement and take back our country one small business at a time!

Dianne Linderman can now be heard on Talk Radio Network on her 2 hour live syndicated national radio show. “Everything That Matters” Visit her online shopping cart.

Evil's Brilliant Recipe

I am a chef, a very good and natural chef. I just look at ingredients, and the recipes start flowing from within me. It is a gift. I am not always sure where my ideas come from, but I know that they are not from me! I believe that each of us on this earth has a calling, something we are compelled to do, and many of us reach this calling and become successful, happy, strong and secure. Most of us recognize that our talents are gifts from something greater than ourselves and build upon this foundation. The appreciation of our gifts is what makes us a strong and determined nation made up of strong and determined people! It plants our feet in a firm foundation and scares the hell out of evil! There is nothing more frightening to evil than an honorable, confident, well-grounded nation of people!

But have you ever wondered about evil, and how it too makes its call, and how easily people are lead? How brilliantly it masks itself as good! How strange that evil would need to appear as good to make people its host! Why can’t evil stand on its own? We all see terrorists as evil, but after all, aren’t they just answering their calling? How did human beings allow themselves to sink so low as to believe that killing innocent people is the way to Heaven? It’s Evil’s Brilliant Recipe and I’ll explain how it works!

To be able to hitch a ride on its host person, evil needs to hide its true identity, its dark and ugly agenda of power over the powerless. If evil could show itself for what it is, there would be no willing hosts because a potential host would see it for what it is. This awareness would alert the host, and when the host is aware, evil cannot attach itself.

Let’s observe and become aware of how evil masks itself, and why it is becoming so easy to take over a nation. We’ll use food as a simplistic example. Every time you want a candy bar or those french fries or a double chocolate shake, your excuse mechanism rises up and gives you every reason to give in. The excuse comes in a voice that laughs away reason and even thoughtfulness for your own health. This is called compromise. Everyone has this weakness, but if you compromise for you own selfish purpose, you now have guilt. If you don’t want to own up to your weakness, the only way you can alleviate your guilt is to get others to compromise along with you. Now you have to protect your decisions, so you look for groups that feel that compromising principles, even if it means harming themselves or others, does not matter because all that matters is the feeling. Deep within ourselves we are all still protecting our original compromise.

Each of us has some sort of sin that if we keep excusing and then compromising, will allow us to feel good for a fleeting moment. It all seems so worth it, but it is the perfect recipe for evil because it’s not dark, it does not seem intrusive to others, it is all about self, and it is giving into something stronger than the desire to do what is right. Eating the candy bar is not the sin; it is the willingness to give up your principles and excuse away the reason not to eat the candy bar. Evil has lured you in and fooled you into giving in, and you spend the rest of your life excusing your decisions instead of owning up to wrong choices.

Look at what is going on in America: people will take up arms to protect baby seals from being killed, but will sell morning-after pills in a vending machine. (Wouldn’t it be nice if seals could help our babies?) People will riot in the streets for the right to kill the life of a baby in the womb because they would rather justify their pro-choice agenda and seek that moment of fleeting pleasure of a romp in the sack rather than having self-respect — and respect for a human life! The rights of the wrong will always be protected, but the rights of the right are being whittled away along with America.

There are many forms of terrorists; they can come in the form of cruel teachers and tainted university professors, unprincipled leaders, the entitled, and anyone who is not living by principles and is part of the cause for “fairness.” The call for fairness, which is now being perpetrated as goodness, makes their demands more powerful, stealing away your rights in the name of their rights. Fairness will always be the excuse, and most of us will stand by and allow it to happen because we have become a nation of fearful compromisers, never wanting to be the one who appears unfair. Compromise and fairness have taken on the same meaning.

The confusing call from evil has become louder and more cunning and acceptable than ever before. It masks itself as just about anything that can make a person feel. Its job is to dull awareness and to give its host a sense, a feeling, of being needed and belonging to its cause. In so many ways it takes so little to confuse the willing to see good as evil and evil as good. Evil simply creates an army of foolish souls, more like sheep following their newfound leader, by arousing hidden guilts that it can prey upon! Because of a person’s past, unresolved indiscretions and guilts, their soul is always seeking a release from guilt. By becoming a do-gooder, being more sensitive to the call of the needy, they walk arm-and-arm with other guilty souls. Now this army of sensitized people actually does the hard work for evil; they justify, excuse, and confuse and accuse decent, unsuspecting good people in order to create new followers. The rich and famous are the most guilty, and use their power to lead the way.

This army of the unprincipled cannot wake up; they are enslaved by their compromise, the unwillingness to admit they are wrong about anything! These unprincipled souls who feel that their group of defenders are their people and would rather protect a baby seal than a human life, think that they are answering their calling!

Evil is the most patient entity on earth! Its plan has been in effect from the beginning of time. It has trained the best of the worst. Most of us will never know we have been taken over, dumbed down and made to be part of the grand design! We are all in search of fairness, and acceptance, and our new army makes us feel entitled. Most of all we need the sense of belonging and purpose that Evil’s Brilliant Recipe gives us. By compromise, evil will inherit America, unless principled souls find their calling, stand up, and shine the light of awareness on the cunning efforts of Evil’s Brilliant Recipe.

Dianne Linderman can now be heard on Talk Radio Network on her 2 hour live syndicated national radio show. Find out more about Dianne on her “Everything That Matters” website.

The Two Heads of Education

My life began the moment I broke out of my cell of doubt created by the public school system! Every summer vacation I felt like my sentence had ended, and the only sad thought was that it would begin again, in just a few short months, when school started again. Most kids feel the same way; they hate school but they go because they are trained to believe it is the Great American Expectation. Remember, we are told time after time that if we do well in school then we will be successful. So we strive to please our parents, our teachers, the system, and ourselves. This is the secret, cruel pressure that molds our spirits.

The simple question that has followed me around like a pesky fly all of my life has been, "Why did I hate school so much?" I wanted to like school, but the moment I entered kindergarten I felt like I was not allowed to be my free little self anymore. I can remember it like it was yesterday—the classroom looked fun, but only five years earlier I had been delivered into the hands of my parents, and now I was being delivered into the hands of complete strangers and expected to perform! Even when I was five years old, l knew there was something wrong with this picture, but a giant cloud of expectation had become ever present in my life. It was inescapable, and it seemed to follow not only me but my brothers and my parents.

As matter of fact, it followed everyone I knew. As a child, it felt so wrong that many of us lived under this cloud of expectation. It seemed to be the very thing that kept me from doing what I really wanted to do, especially as a child. This cloud of expectation never allowed me to see through it, to the outside of the cloud. It was ever present and kept up a fog, and that fog seemed to have a head on it with an authoritative quality. This authority had so many of us wanting so badly to please it, and because we needed its approval and acceptance, just one negative mark on our report cards could make us feel like we had failed completely. And so we then tried even harder to please this authority.

The one secret this authority has is it that it will never allow anyone to ever know that you can never make this cloud of expectation happy, and that once you buy into its power, it holds you hostage forever! Without the approval of this authority, you will always feel like a loser! Its power and hold over us makes us view people on the other side of the fog as outcasts and losers, and even entices us to feel above these so-called radical types and to look down our noses at them. If you are accepted by this powerful system, then you are part of the club of expectors. You are then paid for by entitlements. Once you find the excitement of being entitled, you are set forever, and you now have the club of expectors behind you who will protect their own at any cost.

As I grew older, I became sick of this cloud of expectation following me, so I broke out to the other side of the fog, and, guess what? You can breathe better, see better, and you can feel the excitement of ideas and dreams becoming part of you—sometimes for the very first time in your life. But still, that cloud of expectation wants us back; it does not like losing anyone, so it turns on the doubt switch that is planted in you, and you can’t really be free until you discover the key. That key is the other head of education! It is the freedom of discovery, the love of teaching yourself, and the understanding that everything you ever wanted to learn or know is within yourself. You can excel beyond the expectors' understanding and knowledge, and they no longer know how to control you because you have become an individual! You confuse the expectors, because they don’t understand what true freedom really is, so they label you a rebel, and they try to keep you from succeeding.

The other head of education is not a cloud of expectation, but a blue sky of freedom. It needs no degrees to prove its brilliance. Once you learn to believe in yourself and your own ability to learn what you love in your own time, motivated by the love of your interests, then anything and everything becomes possible. It is also possible for your children. We all must learn to believe in our children and not in the cloud of expectation that is put on them. When your child does not want to go to school, think about it—maybe they are smarter than you. Don’t allow the cloud of expectation to cloud your intuition; we are all conditioned to believe in it and not in the other head of intuitive education. Who says a child cannot teach himself? I beg to differ. Children are brilliant little beings, and they only need the trust of a parent to free them to become pure brilliance. Children have common sense and they will know when they need teaching; they also know when they don’t need to learn something they are not interested in.

The moment you stop believing in your children and start believing in the system of expectation, and that authority, you hand your beautiful, innocent children over to that system and they are no longer under your authority. Just look at our teenage population. Where are the individuals? Most kids find a peer that they can feel accepted by, because remember, you just handed them over to strangers, and they know it! These kids now feel completely abandoned and look for someone they can identify with. Most kids at school are in the same boat, but there is always going to be that one person your child will confide in and, “bam," there is almost no hope of retrieving them. They no longer trust you and become part of an even more dangerous system.

My life began the day I quit public school and started my own business at sixteen years old! My journey has taken me from a jewelry business, to becoming an award-winning author, publisher, restaurateur, writer, nationally-syndicated radio talk show host, successful entrepreneur, chef, mother, teacher, speaker, and mentor to thousands of troubled kids. And all it took to help these kids was to hold their hands through the fog to the other side where they felt the fresh air of freedom on their faces, and the rest was within each one of them. Why is it so hard to believe that real education does not need degrees or fanfare? It only requires the love of learning and the love of discovery.

Dianne Linderman can now be heard on Talk Radio Network on her 2 hour live syndicated national radio show “Everything That Matters.” Visit Dianne's online shopping cart.

The Seduction of Education

Steve Jobs was the perfect example of what a well-educated person should be; he was self-educated! The older I get the more I realize how we all buy into the idea: “If we could all just get a good education, we would all be successful!” I have never fit into that box and even had feelings of shame and embarrassment for being so-called “uneducated,” until recently.

It all started about four years ago when my daughter was about 10 years old. She was just like me, never really fitting into the groove of school and always behind everyone in her class. The school principal was very concerned about her future. Alexandra could barely read at 10 years old and hated school with a passion!

The principal told me that Alexandra really was just lazy and that I gave into her, and in the end I would ruin my daughter. The principal is a good friend of mine so I doubted my daughter and forced her to attend school! I could not help remembering how I hated school, and Alexandra reminded me so much of myself, but my own doubt and fear was ever present because of my so-called “uneducated” status. The almighty authority of education made me feel so insignificant, and I did not want my daughter to feel that way. I wanted her to be smart and become anything she wanted to be, so I did what was expected of me and pushed her out the door each day to attend the box.

My daughter, thank God, is a very strong person, but I hurt her very much by going against my gut instinct. Alexandra came to me one morning and laid out her own plan. She was crying, and through her tears, I felt her pain and felt like my spirit was dying all over again. So I decided to go against all authorities, pull her out of school, and homeschool her! I was told that I would destroy her chances of getting a good education, or even a good job. I thought, “Job, what the heck. I have been in my own business since I was 16 years old.” Suddenly, it came to me, “Wait one cotton pickin’ minute! Is a job or higher education that carrot that seduces us to remain planted in our chairs five days a week, 8 hours a day in the almighty box, called school?” Wow, I suddenly had an awakening. As the answer to my prayers began to unfold, it all came so clearly to me how we have been made to believe all of the rhetoric and B.S. that says without a formal education, by the system, we are all going to be just a bunch of losers, but with a formal education, we will be winners. But, what do we really win with this so-called education? Do we lose something along the way, like our own initiative, self-motivation, vision, ideas, and belief in our own ability to teach ourselves something?

The real fear I had was the thought of homeschooling her, because I was so bad at traditional education I did not even know where to start. So I panicked. Again the doubt tried to find its way in, until the next morning, when I woke up and walked into my living room and saw Alexandra drawing! I decided to just leave her alone and let her relax and come down off of all of the pressure that she was a part of for so many years. I wanted to see what she would do if I did nothing for her, so I did! After a few hours of drawing, she went out into our backyard and played with her dog, a big beautiful golden retriever. I just watched in amazement, as Alexandra trained her dog to do tricks. My husband had built her a dog cart, and she had never tried to use it, but now Winchester was pulling her all over the yard.

After a few hours of playing, Alexandra ran in and said, “Mom, I want to build a chicken coup and have chickens.” So guess what? She went online and researched chicken coups, chickens, chicken feed, what type of chicken she wanted for laying capabilities, and boom, she was in the chicken business. She was also reading, learning, and expanding her universe in a real life situation. Weeks passed, and I still did not one thing for her except free her to find her interest, and she was on fire, all of her zest was back. She felt free to become anything she wanted, teaching herself beyond my wildest expectations, and completely self-motivated.

This type of learning is called education of the highest form. I found the following definition in a dictionary: “Education derives from the verb educe, which means ‘to draw forth from within.’ The original teaching method of Socrates of drawing from within has been largely displaced by professorial deference to received scholarly authority. Students are taught how to take exams but not how to think, write or find their own path.”

This definition will never be shared by super-educated, elitist institutions. They want to hold back the brilliant kids, and keep them from thinking for themselves. This concept is like herding a bunch of sheep into a pasture, and, when it is eaten down, only then will the shepherds make the decision to move them to the next pasture.

God forbid, if one of the sheep decides to jump the fence and find a greener pasture! It will be the first one sent to the slaughterhouse because if the other sheep notice that the free-thinking sheep is outside of the enclosed pasture eating green grass, there will be mutiny. The captured sheep will begin to wake up, and this will ruin everything. The shepherd will lose control and nothing will bring the mutinous sheep back!

As long as the system of education can make people believe that they are only as good as their education, then America has no chance of prospering and remaining free. The people will continue to be enslaved by their own fear. But, if one person could be that lamb and jump to greener pastures because they want to be free, then fear not! Life begins when you rip open the box and find that self-discovery is the highest form of education. Let no one ever steal your thunder, your ideas, and your belief in your true self!

Dianne Linderman can now be heard on Talk Radio Network on her 2 hour live syndicated national radio show “Everything That Matters.” You can also visit her online shopping cart HERE.