Doctor Bernie Mullen discusses critical issues surrounding the American dream and the challenges faced by families striving to achieve it. With a focus on the staggering statistic of 37 million Americans living in poverty, Mullen emphasizes the importance of restoring the dignity of work and providing opportunities for single parents and their children. He highlights the need for systemic changes, such as raising the minimum wage to ensure that caregivers can adequately support their families without the pressure of multiple jobs. The conversation also explores the role of mentorship and community support in transforming lives and breaking the cycle of poverty. Mullen’s Aspire Difference foundation aims to provide targeted assistance to single parents, demonstrating a commitment to making the American dream attainable for all.

Doctor Bernie Mullen discusses critical issues surrounding the American dream and the challenges faced by families striving to achieve it. With a focus on the staggering statistic of 37 million Americans living in poverty, Mullen emphasizes the importance of restoring the dignity of work and providing opportunities for single parents and their children. He highlights the need for systemic changes, such as raising the minimum wage to ensure that caregivers can adequately support their families without the pressure of multiple jobs. The conversation also explores the role of mentorship and community support in transforming lives and breaking the cycle of poverty. Mullen’s Aspire Difference foundation aims to provide targeted assistance to single parents, demonstrating a commitment to making the American dream attainable for all.

In this enlightening episode, Dr. Bernard James Mullin delves into the importance of not taking oneself too seriously and the need to reintroduce humor into society. He shares insights from influential leaders and thinkers who have shaped his vision of making the American Dream attainable for all. Dr. Mullin discusses the critical need to address poverty and support single parents and caregivers. He proposes actionable solutions such as raising the minimum wage, providing free daycare, and implementing a summer camp program for rising freshmen to teach adult responsibilities and foster unity.

Dr. Mullin outlines a comprehensive program aimed at tackling poverty and inequality in America. This program includes quality childcare, work experiences for high school students, financial incentives for saving, and free college or trade school education. The goal is to create generational wealth and opportunities for low-income families. The conversation also highlights the importance of mentorship, community involvement, and building a strong value system. Dr. Mullin emphasizes the necessity of a cultural shift and political support to bring these changes to fruition.

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Doctor Bernie Mullen, a transformative figure in the sports entertainment industry, shares his remarkable journey and insights on achieving the American Dream. He has an impressive track record, having generated over 1.5 billion in revenues for various organizations, including the NFL and US Open Tennis. Mullen dives into the essence of his new book, 'Reimagining America’s Dream: Making It Attainable for All', wherein he emphasizes the importance of community support, education, and economic empowerment. He passionately advocates for systemic changes that would allow all Americans, regardless of their background, to achieve their dreams. Mullen also highlights his philanthropic efforts with the Aspire Difference Foundation, which supports single parents with preschool children, showcasing a commitment to uplifting families in need. The conversation takes a deep dive into the challenges faced by low-income families and the multifaceted approach required to address poverty and create equitable opportunities for success.

The discussion further explores the vital role of mental health and community resources in nurturing children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mullen emphasizes the necessity of restoring dignity to work, advocating for a living wage to allow single parents to focus on raising their children without the burden of multiple jobs. He elucidates how the lack of access to quality education and supportive communities continues to perpetuate cycles of poverty. Mullen's insights shine a light on the systemic barriers that many families face, particularly in urban environments, and he passionately argues for the need to build healthy communities as a foundation for individual success. With a focus on mentorship, community engagement, and practical solutions, he provides listeners with a hopeful vision for a more equitable future where the American Dream can be accessible to all, regardless of their starting point in life.

Takeaways:

• Dr. Bernie Mullen emphasizes the importance of restoring the dignity of work for parents.
• The Aspire Difference Foundation focuses on supporting single parents with preschool children effectively.
• Creating a minimum wage of $30,000 would alleviate many financial burdens for families.
• Education systems need to adapt to teach skills relevant for the current job market.
• Mullen advocates for community involvement to empower families and improve their living conditions.
• Mentorship is critical for providing role models to children in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aspiredifferencefoundation.org
• playfly.com
• amazon.com
• barnesandnoble.com
• kobo.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Aspire Marketing Group
• British Leyland
• Austin Morris
• Jaguar
• Triumph
• Rover
• Rolls Royce
• Vicks Pharmaceutical
• Coca Cola
• Alliance Insurance
• Playfly

Doctor Bernie Mullen, a transformative figure in the sports entertainment industry, shares his remarkable journey and insights on achieving the American Dream. He has an impressive track record, having generated over 1.5 billion in revenues for various organizations, including the NFL and US Open Tennis. Mullen dives into the essence of his new book, 'Reimagining America’s Dream: Making It Attainable for All', wherein he emphasizes the importance of community support, education, and economic empowerment. He passionately advocates for systemic changes that would allow all Americans, regardless of their background, to achieve their dreams. Mullen also highlights his philanthropic efforts with the Aspire Difference Foundation, which supports single parents with preschool children, showcasing a commitment to uplifting families in need. The conversation takes a deep dive into the challenges faced by low-income families and the multifaceted approach required to address poverty and create equitable opportunities for success.

The discussion further explores the vital role of mental health and community resources in nurturing children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Mullen emphasizes the necessity of restoring dignity to work, advocating for a living wage to allow single parents to focus on raising their children without the burden of multiple jobs. He elucidates how the lack of access to quality education and supportive communities continues to perpetuate cycles of poverty. Mullen's insights shine a light on the systemic barriers that many families face, particularly in urban environments, and he passionately argues for the need to build healthy communities as a foundation for individual success. With a focus on mentorship, community engagement, and practical solutions, he provides listeners with a hopeful vision for a more equitable future where the American Dream can be accessible to all, regardless of their starting point in life.

Takeaways:

• Dr. Bernie Mullen emphasizes the importance of restoring the dignity of work for parents.
• The Aspire Difference Foundation focuses on supporting single parents with preschool children effectively.
• Creating a minimum wage of $30,000 would alleviate many financial burdens for families.
• Education systems need to adapt to teach skills relevant for the current job market.
• Mullen advocates for community involvement to empower families and improve their living conditions.
• Mentorship is critical for providing role models to children in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Links referenced in this episode:

• aspiredifferencefoundation.org
• playfly.com
• amazon.com
• barnesandnoble.com
• kobo.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Aspire Marketing Group
• British Leyland
• Austin Morris
• Jaguar
• Triumph
• Rover
• Rolls Royce
• Vicks Pharmaceutical
• Coca Cola
• Alliance Insurance
• Playfly

My guest today, Doctor Bernie Mellon, is a groundbreaking sport 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 Aspire Marketing group, he was CEO of an NBA and NHL teams and CMO of the NBA.

He also currently is acclaimed speaker, podcaster, author and humanitarian who has served on multiple boards including the United Way, the YMCA and the Make a Wish foundation.

His the Aspire Difference foundation focuses on supporting single parents with preschool children.

All net proceeds from this consulting, podcast and books go to support Tadfanous.

His new book is reimagining America's making it attainable for all.

Welcome Doctor Mullen to the podcast.

Well, today my guest is Doctor Brad Mullen.

How you doing?

Bernie Mullen.

Sorry, I'm good.

No worry, no worry.

Reverend Keith.

Keith Yep, I'm doing great.

Every day.

Every day vertical is a good day.

I love to ask my guests this question.

Can I get a chance to know you better?

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Well, it doesn't sound like it is, but it is.

And while at university, Coventry University in England, I got a scholarship to work for british Leyland Boda Corporation.

And they were Austin Morris, Jack triumph Rover.

We even made the car voice rolls Royce.

And I worked for a very salty VPN of purchasing who didn't like college graduates.

And I was there between my sophomore and junior year and he basically said, don't ever believe your own b's.

And, you know, when, you know, without getting political, it's all about, you know, the presidential debate going on.

You know, I think too many people believe they're on b's.

And I think a corollary of that, very much along the same lines, is I think people take themselves too seriously.

So I take life seriously.

I take other people's lives seriously.

But, you know, I am of English, Irish, a little bit of scottish in my genealogy.

And you can tell me all the Irish, all the English, all the scottish jokes you want, and I will wholeheartedly laugh at them.

And we've lost that.

I believe in political correctness, but not to the point in time where we sanitize really important truths and we skate over them or we cover them up, which I think is a little bit of what's going on in today's America.

You're right.

And I think the ability to laugh at oneself is so critical.

We take ourselves too seriously, then, you know, we lose the ability to see the humor and even the joy in life if we're always so on edge and nothing can ever be funny.

Comedy is just totally different these days.

We can't even laugh at ourselves or laugh at society anymore because it's politically incorrect.

So I agree with you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Where we lived in Atlanta before we moved back to Denver last August, we had a great comedy club, the best comedy club in Atlanta.

And you would get a lot of black comedians, and it was, excuse it for your listeners.

Wet your pants funny.

I mean, it was absolutely hilarious, you know, and they would pick on us white guys when we got in there, deservedly so.

And we would love it and laugh, and they could be as irreverent as they wanted to be.

And it was, you know, we'd have three or four other couples that we'd go with, and we'd all come out laughing.

That was great.

It was very therapeutic.

We left our socks off.

Nothing wrong with a good belly laughing.

Certainly an hour of belly laughing was always very healthy.

We need that.

We need that.

So, Bernie, can you talk about some leaders or thinkers who are involved in helping shape your ideas and your idea of making american dream attainable?

Yeah.

I'm not certain, Keith, that the leaders help shape the recommendations so much as shape the thinking behind the book.

So the book reimagining America's dream is three things to me.

Number one, it's.

I've been an american 50 years, and I wanted to say thank you.

I wanted to say thank you to all the wonderful Americans who influenced me and got me in.

My ex wife and the mother of my three kids have fall with, you know, my second marriage through second marriage, and they.

They got us to fall in love with America.

So, number one, thank you.

I'm so blessed.

I've lived the american dream.

Don't take it for granted.

Number two, I found it incredibly aspirational.

For me.

It started with my mom's uncle from Canada who did really well, bringing his kids and grandkids every summer to Liverpool and me getting to know them and realizing six, seven, eight years old didn't know what the difference between Canada and the USA.

Just knew it was on the other side, that big pond that I could see out our window called the Atlantic.

And that was the first influence.

And my dad's cousin, who was a VP for Vicks Pharmaceutical, lived in New York, worked in Manhattan.

So I had all of that in me.

So it was all there.

So the book then says, hey, tremendously aspirational for me.

I think it's aspirational for everybody.

And in the evolution of the toxicity that we have in America right now, I think that a united dream helps bring us together, you know, when it is.

The final part is, you know, it hasn't been attainable for everybody.

Yes, it was attainable for me.

You know, some would say, well, it's because you're white, it's because you're educated, you know, all of those kind of things.

And I'm sure that's part of it.

But, you know, I worked hard to get my degrees.

I worked hard to build my career and build the businesses.

And so I have enjoyed that for me, for my kids and now my grandkids.

So how do we get that available to everybody?

And that's the genesis of it.

And what was the thinking?

I mean, the big leaders were a colleague of mine, doctor Guy Lewis, not the Houston basketball coach, Guy M.

Lewis, beautiful Mandev, very visionary, wanted to create a center of academic excellence, and we did.

And we created the association for the industry.

And guy was students first and a servant professor, very, very, very socially conscious.

Having played football in North Carolina, growing up there, seeing, you know, this is back in the days, Keith, when there were no black quarterbacks, you know, and all of those things in football, because guy was a good 20 years older than me.

So guy was one of the first.

Malcolm Prine Mac Pine, the president of the Pittsburgh Pirates when I left after being a professor for ten years and became practitioner C suite executive, Malcolm Prine had polio as a kid.

He'd been given a scholarship by the YMCA to swim and got over his polio.

He was a mid America conference Mac conference referee.

He was CEO of envy.

Ryan Holmes, amazing guy and amazing visionary.

And, you know, as senior vp, I was always worried, how do I make the right decision, Mac, he says, do whatever is in the best long term interest of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club and our fans.

Very clear, very, very easy.

And he got involved in a political fight with the general manager and left.

And the guy that replaced him was head of the largest law firm.

And the decisions there were whoever's of my clients is most important because eleven of the 14 people that owned the pirates in those days were his clients.

That was a name that's new clarity whatsoever.

And Mac Prine also told us about the community and making the world a better place, which is why the 14 top corporations in Pittsburgh and the city of Pittsburgh, through its urban redevelopment authority, invested to buy the pirates and keep them in Pittsburgh at a time when the Debartolos were trying to take him to Tampa Bay, long before Tampa Bay got the race.

I think in Colorado, I worked for David Elmore, who was a minor league operator, who told me a lot about business principles and that those business principles were good for the community because you had a good employer who would stay and be sustainable.

And as long as we created a great culture, a working culture, where people loved to go to work.

And I think particularly important, Keith, in today's world with young people, and we can pick that topic up in a little while of what are they looking for today in companies is very different from what my parents were looking for when they went to work, very different from what I was looking for when I went to work, and I think provides a very interesting challenge.

So David was great, but probably the biggest influence is Dan Ritchie.

Daniel L.

Richie.

I helped build half a billion dollars worth of athletic facilities.

Between all of the facilities and the Daniel L.

Richie Welles center, seven venues there.

And Dan took the University of Denver, which was a little bit of an academic, elite institution, and specifically went out and looked for young leaders, particularly minority leaders, lower income leaders, who had the potential to really change the world and gave them scholarships.

And that really, you know, sunk into my head and my heart and influenced a large part of the book.

Haven't seen Dan since I left Denver 24 years ago, but hoping to have lunch with him soon, give him a copy of the book and say, you inspire this.

I love that.

You know, I had a project for my doctoral work on entrepreneurship, and my project idea that my group and I came up with was, you kind of touched on it, is that our education system really is not designed to train the current generation of workers that companies need.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a community corporate partnership where the corporations came in and they shaped the education system so they could actually teach and have the kind of curriculum that they need to raise up that next generation of leaders.

And so it was kind of an idea that was on our drawing board, I think, we could look at doing in the future.

Well, I'm hoping, Keith, that we get traction behind what I'm calling the prescription, you know, in that we have.

We.

We have a toxic, sick culture in this country right now.

And I think anybody looking at the presidential debate, the presidential, the whole campaign, would probably acknowledge that you've got 60% of the country saying, I don't know who to vote for because I don't want either of.

Of the candidates.

And this is the greatest country on earth.

I grew up in Europe, moved here when I was 23.

Through the last 16 years of my career, before I sold my business, it was an international, global business.

We worked in eleven countries.

So I've seen these cultures and I know that we've got the greatest culture, but we're letting it slide.

I think the educational system, clearly, when I went to the MBA, our community program was read to achieve.

And it was crossing the digital divide.

And particularly with a league where so many of our players came from very poor backgrounds.

And the perception, and wrong in many cases, but right in some cases, was that our guys were not academically bright.

And so we did read to achieve as a way to break out, to give them the digital access to technology, to really open up their opportunities.

And so the book is based upon the top ten social issues in America as recorded by Pew Research, with post voter poll and number one and the chapters named that way.

It's the economy, stupid.

It's always going to be, which is number one in the debate.

Presidential debate is going to be inflation.

It's how much money you have in your pocket and what can it buy.

And so we recommend a national minimum wage of at least $15.

In the 16 years before I sold it, it generated 1.75 billion in new and incremental revenue for 300 clients.

So we built it that big, over 200 employees.

And what did we do?

Essentially, we worked with college athletic programs and pro teams and leagues and sports properties like Coca Cola that invest a lot in sport through sponsorship.

And we worked in alliance insurance and wealth management in Germany.

We worked with all those guys to maximize their investments and to grow the impact of what they did.

Most of what we did was database building, followed by intelligent marketing, meaning I send Keith Haney an email or a text exactly about what you want.

You know, I've got the intelligence to know who you are, what you are, what are you fan of, and if you're not a fan of, I am selling, you know, Indiana State, you know, or we don't have anywhere in Iowa, unfortunately, we're selling to.

We've been selling Kansas for twelve years.

So Kansas athletics.

If you're a Jayhawk living in Ames, Iowa, or Des Moines, I'm communicating with you and telling you what you can get, whether it's a donation, you know, for your favorite tennis program or whatever, because you played tennis when you were there, whatever it may be.

And it's one to one with the follow up phone call.

But we're only calling you because we've sent you a text, you've opened it up and.

Or you sent an email and you've opened it up.

So it's not pariah, robocall, obnoxious, all the stuff that drives us and most people nuts.

So that's what we built.

And how do we build it?

We built it based upon, we call them fan relationship management centers.

So we had 16 employees inside Allen Field house in Lawrence, Kansas.

And, you know, selling football, basketball, baseball, and obviously the women's sports as well, and did extremely well because we built a relationship and we built a connection.

And that is so simple, and yet it's so vital.

And everywhere I've gone, whether it's there or the color Rockies, where you.

I built all the front office and the plan broke the world's attendance, season long attendance record there, 4.483 million.

And built coarse field.

It's about building communities.

And so that's what we gotta do.

We gotta build healthy communities.

I love that.

And I've been to Corey's field, by the way.

I was there about three years ago.

No, four years ago for the 4 July.

And it was, we got to go on the field and watch the fireworks.

But that was an awesome thing.

Cause it was put on.

Bye.

I think the aeronautics and space group that was there.

I wanna dig into something that we kind of.

We haven't touched on yet, but I wanna get to kinda heart of what our struggle is.

So in your experience, what is the most significant disadvantage Americans families face in achieving the american dream?

We kinda touched on some of those things.

But if you could, like, narrow down to this is one of the biggest hurdles we have to overcome.

What would that be?

Yeah, absolutely.

We have 37 million Americans living in poverty.

And poverty, Keith.

37 million.

Wow.

You know, we are the most advanced nation on the globe as it's defined by GDP.

So our GDP is almost twice what China's is.

Even though China was gaining for a period of time, it's still a little over half of what ours is in America.

So we get all paranoid about Chinese and, you know, they.

And the Chinese, not the Chinese per se, the chinese communist party, the People's Republic of China.

And let's, let's put it in perspective that it's criminal that we do that.

Where does it start?

It starts in poverty.

So you've got 67% of african american children are born into a single parent family.

Okay, you know, the book.

The book.

Anybody who is a Christian, as you are, as I am, and anybody with any faith, whether that be Judaism, whether it be Muslim, it doesn't matter.

Anybody that understands there is something bigger than us, right, gets it.

They get that.

What chance.

You know, every other day for six months in the summer, I was in Three Rivers stadium, the old crappy concrete ashtray, as I called it, before they walked to the innocent park.

I took seven or eight weeks to get it.

I was terrified until I found Meg, who was becoming a teacher.

So she was in college to become a teacher.

And Meg was fantastic.

She knew how to work with kids and she knew how to motivate them and get them.

They'd done their homework and all the rest of it and make good meals and take care of the kids.

I mean, and I was terrified.

What about that poor teenage, pregnant young lady, you know, what about the poor guy who, because it's not just about the girls and women, it's about the caregiver.

So what are the things we have to do?

Number one, we've got to restore the dignity of work and give a parent or a caregiver the chance to be able to raise that child.

And probably only one child.

I mean, if you're talking about two, three, four children, you're talking about a need for way more money, but just that one child.

And allow them to have one job, 40 hours a week, full time, minimum, $30,000, which is what $15 an hour does.

So you don't have to have the second 3rd job.

What does that mean?

It means now I can.

And we have to educate them on food.

Deserts are not where you go for healthy meals for you or for your kid, you know?

So here you got to go to a real grocery store, which means you gotta have transportation, and you've got to be able to have buy fresh produce and vegetables and fruit and know how to prepare it and know how to do that.

I mean, McDonald's on Monday, Domino's on Tuesday, and out of a can on Wednesday is what too many of these poor families are going through, because that's all they can afford and it's all they know in terms of so many of them.

When you look at the social challenges in american society, invariably they have been repeated, just like we have repeated generations with no generational wealth.

We have repeated generations that are, this is what my mom cooked me, or my grandmother or my aunt cooked me, and that's what I'm going to do.

And that has to be changed.

And we'll talk in a minute about the suggest program for changing that.

But it starts there.

So we created the Aspire Difference foundation, and we're funding that for single parents with preschool kids.

And number one, it's the mental health of the caregiver.

Finally, we're starting to realize, after post Covid, of what Covid did to the kids, mental health, teenage suicides going through the roof, you know, and the stress on the parents.

So mental health of the caregiver is, number one, they got to be stable.

Number two, they have to be in a solid, safe home, ideally not in the hood, nor when you walk out the door, you've got gang bangers, and that's the influence, and you've got drugs, and you've got crime, and you've got all the rest of it going on.

And obviously, having worked in the NBA league office for four years with the Atlanta Hawks for four years, being around professional athletes that skew so much.

So many of them are from extremely poor, and communities have not been exposed to quality education.

Not all, but a lot of them.

And certainly the majority of them, I understand the environments they come from.

I understand the lack of male role models, and same thing happens in the latino community as happens in the black community right now in America, and sadly, other than rural poor white.

So people don't realize the majority of poor people in America are rural poor white, and suburban white.

There's a reason why they call minorities that.

They're minorities, right?

You know, so they're not the majority of the poor, but they certainly are overwhelmingly overrepresented and therefore have to be our focus.

So it starts there.

It starts with, give them a chance to lead a good life, a roof over their head, clothes and good food, and a parent, even if there's only one parent, that after dinner, can sit down with a book or sit down with a piece of paper in a crayon and allow that child, once they get beyond the scribbles, to do one plus one equals two, or to write ABC and sing the ABC, the EFG songs, so that they go into kindergarten able to read and write, able to do basic math, be socialized, to accept instructions from an adult teacher, and to be able to associate with and socialize with their peers and that's where it starts.

So it, you know, there's a reason why in the book and in the top ten in peer research, income is, number one, money.

And we'll talk some more, Keith, about how do we help that single parenthood or a parent that's just low income with both, you know, both roles in there, whether that's the same sex and two people, two partners in it or whether it's, you know, male and a female doesn't matter to me.

You know, we're all children of God, and so why wouldn't we support them and support that, their offspring, their child, and give them a real head start?

I love that idea.

My question is, because you mentioned something as part of the plan that I, when I worked in inner city, it was hard to get to that level you're talking about, because so many people lived in such difficult neighborhoods with so high a crime.

How do you get that family out of that situation?

Because if I could have moved families out of that situation, yeah, their life would have been drastically different.

But it's so hard to find a place that they can afford to move to that's not in that environment where there's drugs, there's gangs, there's poor education systems.

How do you.

Are you trying to solve the situation where they live or you just trying to relocate them to a place where they can flourish?

Both.

Okay.

Both.

I think, systemically, you have to do both.

You know, so I don't know, Keith.

You know, way better than I do.

You know, I sit here as an older white guy who has lived in middle and upper class, you know, for most of my adult life.

I would say, hey, I created it.

I, you know, I was the primary breadwinner.

I had, you know, the mother of my kids from England.

You know, we got divorced in 88.

I have my amazing wife who works for our company.

And so we got two incomes, and, you know, I have two homes.

So I realize I am not, you know, I am very, very different.

And.

But through the aspire different foundation, we're currently supporting twelve families here in Colorado and four or five in Georgia.

You know, in this way, we go to their homes and we see the circumstances where they are.

And so let's talk about how do we help people in situ, where they are in the hood?

How do they become senior vp of the aspire group?

Tony Garrett makes six figures.

His wife is a professor of communications at Georgia State.

Her family is haitian, brought up in New York and Miami, you know, and they don't have any children yet.

But combined income is probably close to half a million.

You know, black family.

How do we create that?

Tony will tell you, growing up in Franklin, Tennessee, that his mother, his aunt and his grandmother are like, you don't go down to that corner and go on such and such a street.

That's where the gangs are.

That's where the bangers are, that's where the drugs are.

You don't do that.

You come home and latch key, kid, you know, but you and your brothers and sisters come home and stay in the house and do your homework, you know, and I'll whoop your butt if you don't.

Right?

So how do we, to me, it's empowering the caregiver.

It's empowering the parent, first off, telling them, you, you know, it's the Bella Caroly with Gary shrug when she had a broken ankle and she finished the vault in the Olympics and won the gold medal for Team USA.

And Bella Carolli, I think, was it creation of servian whispers in her ear, you can do it.

How do we have the caregiver whisperer?

That gives them the confidence.

And here in Denver, we support a group called thriving families.

They serve 500 women.

It's only women in their case.

We have other groups where we serve men and women serving a grandfather.

More and more grandfathers are being asked to be the primary caregiver of preschool children in America right now.

But thriving families, they meet a couple of times a week, and it's a peer group, led, psychiatrist led, social worker led that you can do it.

We are your coach, and here's how we can help you do it.

Who wouldn't be overwhelmed with the finances of it?

Let's drill down to some very practical stuff.

Keith, how do we, how do we help that caregiver?

First of all, raise the minimum wage to a level where it should be, which today in most communities is a minimum of $30,000.

That's huge.

That's five, six, $7,000 more.

Number one.

Number two, free daycare.

So for many of the, I mean, for many of the inner city, tough situations, you're looking at, hey, I've got a neighbor who takes the kids in during the day.

There's no education there.

You know, that neighbor may be smoking, you know, the food they serve during the day.

I mean, they may have a wonderful heart and mean well, but they're not teaching them.

They're not teaching them to go into kindergarten to read and write and do math.

So we need that.

So that's free.

So ten, $15,000 value right away.

Whatever that cash they're spending on that, that goes away.

That's a minimum $10,000 a year more in disposable income.

Three, babysitting.

So we start that way.

Zero to five, that child gets educated with a chance to succeed.

At kindergarten, they walk in.

My oldest daughter's doctor in chinese medicine, and she got a doctorate in chinese medicine in China.

First sold in masters in Beijing and then in Hangzhou.

And, you know, they put my eldest granddaughter, who's now 24 years old, in fashion marketing.

Now, my two oldest kids, their father was african American.

So I have my two oldest grandkids, a mixed race, and they represent today's american society.

And my eldest granddaughter, she's sassy.

She's in fashion marketing in LA.

She's a piece of work.

And she's the face lover dearly.

She's the face of modern american women.

You don't know if she's Latina, you don't know if she's Middle Eastern.

You don't know if she's African American.

You know, she's mixed race.

And that is the face on all the ads and the face of America today, you know, but fortunately, she's had, you know, mother and I, you know, her father was not present in the home, sadly, but my daughter's remarried and her father now is present in the home.

So you look at that and say, when she was in China, they threw her into a chinese school.

She spoke no Mandarin, you know, you imagine that you walk in there and the Chinese refer to us Caucasians as round eyes.

So every kid wants to touch her eyes because she's got round eyes, you know, and dark complexion, like most of the young kids that were in school.

But she couldn't survive three days in there.

She's like having a fit, you know, in a panic attack.

And that's what we're doing today to so many young kids in the inner city and rural poor that don't have the basic skills.

We throw them into kindergarten against kids that can read and write.

And the teacher then has to teach to the bottom, not to the middle, and not to the top.

So it starts there.

So where does it then go to in terms of our recommendations?

So after free babysitting in school, so there's no latchkey kids.

Kids come home on a late activity bus at six, when the parents home, that parent has had the time to actually prep some food and cook good fresh food for the child.

And then if they've now, because of the 30,000 minimum wage, 10,000 saved on babysitting at least a year in terms of normal babysitting.

And then when the kids have gone into school, the prevention of latchkey kids babysitting.

What do we do before the freshman year?

We have a common experience, like conscription used to be for the military, except at age 13 or 14.

You will spend that summer before you go to high school as a rising freshman.

And you will be taught how to be an adult and how to be an american citizen.

Summer camp, eight weeks sleep away, thousand kids in a military.

One of the military camps will be mothballed.

You know, we take it out of mothballs.

And that would be the summer camp.

And the curriculum would be what are the responsibilities of being an adult?

Every other day you'd have to cook a meal.

So you come back away from there with eight breakfast, ate lunch and eight dinner recipes.

And you would have actually prepped the food and cooked it yourself.

As a 13 or 14 year old kid, you would have sat in classrooms with rich, moderate, poor.

You would have sat in classrooms with black, brown, yellow, white, doesn't matter.

And you would have learned and talked through the tough issues of becoming an adult, becoming an american, of what do we need to do and how do we come together as a united country with those responsibilities that you accept?

You would have got up early every morning and done exercise.

You know, you have no choice, ideally, and you know, I understand the right will go, oh, you know, it'll be a bunch of woke people teaching them.

They'll screw them up.

And the woke will go, they'll be able to.

Right wing magazine, they'll, they'll screw.

No, it'll be exposure to all of the above because you've got kids from families from all of the above.

And it'll be, it'll be real and it.

And you get paid minimum wage.

Then before your sophomore, junior and senior year, these kids have to have a work experience.

Eight week work experience where they work in one private business one year, public company, you know, sort of governmental agency one year and a volunteer organization another year.

Whereas hospital, fire department, whether it's parks and Recs, doesn't matter.

And you got the experience and you get paid minimum wage.

We'll let get banks and I, all my sports and entertainment career, I've got banks doing sponsorships.

I know what they will give for this money.

We incentivize the kids, keep the money in the bank, and you'll get seven and a half percent compound interest.

So by the time you're 18, you will have 25,000 in cash.

There's generational wealth in half a generation that we create.

I love it.

So you can then you know if you've got an entrepreneurial idea you start your own business or you go buy an apartment or condo and you go off on adult life.

And then if you've done that through the four years of high school in good standing you get 15,000 a year voucher to go to college for free.

I mean albeit state college and albeit today, you know, an in state college, obviously not Ivy League, but you can get scholarships.

And for the balance if you academically qualify for the Ivy League or a trade school, go become a plumber, a beautician, esthetician, whatever it may be.

It's free with no student debt.

So for that mom, again tracking back to repeat, you got 30,000 base pay and probably minimal tax.

You pay on that.

You've got your babysitting and child mining while in school all taken care of.

You've got a child that in high school is going to be earning money as a nest egg for them.

Probably about $7,000 in those days.

So 250% growth in the value of the house in those three years to then have my house that I, that I designed had someone build for me in Lawrence, Kansas where I lived my last two years in the PhD program at Kansas that provided the equity that is compounded in all the houses that I've owned and sold throughout my life.

Add something I was thinking about as you told me this proposal.

There's a piece in the beginning that I wonder if you've considered and that is you talk about how do you find quality childcare for the person who's working and with a $30,000 base pay.

I'm wondering if you've considered teaching some of the kids in the community to be nannies that they could be used making minimum wage to learn to care for kids, especially at an early age.

They would then be able to learn to cook the meals for the parent, help them at least do that with them.

If you train them up to do that as kind of really quality nannies, you would then be able to create generational wealth with those nannies that are also in the community sooner as they go through other parts of your program as well cause that first piece of finding quality care daycare for kids is gonna be really difficult.

From my experience in the city, no doubt about it.

I think that's Keith.

I think that's a brilliant.

We call it in the green light thinking community, hitchhiking, taking and taking it to the next level.

And so thank you for your hitchhiker.

It's brilliant.

Yeah.

Let's back up.

Let's look at what that does.

And like you said, one of the greatest thing is when my kids were young, and I got lovely kids, amazing kids, who are now, you know, all in their forties, the eldest about to be 50 next year.

But I used to say we could hire, rent our kids out for the weekend to young couples.

Right.

As the greatest prophylactic you've ever seen in your life.

Because it's like, spend the weekend with little kids.

It's like, oh, do I want this responsibility?

You know?

So I think it's a.

I think it's a brilliant idea.

And the idea currently, as written, Keith, would be we, as the government, would then start to invest in these quality daycare that would follow and conform to all the rules in the community.

Yeah, I think you touched on a lot, and I think my experience in inner city is it's a whole series of problems, and you've touched on a lot of those.

One is, I think the mentorship you talk about is critical, because a lot of the people in the city, and this is not a negative reflection, they don't have the role models that they can do what Ben Carson's mom did.

Some of them did have a strong.

Came from strong homes.

A lot of the homes I work with in the city were already broken.

So they're not going to naturally gravitate toward having that kind of a mindset.

The support is going to be critical, but how do you then provide the family structure that they're lacking to come alongside them to help them lift them up to that new level?

The problem with the crime in the city, honestly, I would say it is a lack of want to on the part of the leaders in the city.

They don't want to clean it up.

And until they get serious, that's not going to happen, in my experience.

And the people who live there don't want to live in those situations, but they don't have the power to take back their communities.

So there is a lot of frustration on their part.

And you start to see that bubble up around the country.

So I admire what you're doing, and I think it's so critical.

It's like, how do you begin to help tackle these issues on a global or a national level?

Because a lot of issues are the same in all those communities.

And what you have here is a great model to begin to start to tackle this.

So for those who are listening to our podcast right now and going, I love what you're doing, how can they connect with you and learn about what you're doing to bring into their communities?

Well, first of, no, thank you for that, Keith, and a couple of other thoughts that build on what you said to Bernie.

Bernie Mullen.

Mu l I n at playfly pl ayfly.com.

that's the company that bought my company, the Aspire Group.

They can certainly go on and look at the Aspire Difference Foundation.org, the, I think probably the single biggest help we're gonna.

I mean, obviously, donations are always good.

And, you know, basically the way I've get it up is I fund the administrator who is also a single parent mom of two boys who are, one now is a junior in college, and the other one is just graduated from high school.

So I fund all those overhead expenses myself so that 100% of the donations go to programmatic help.

And that really, more than anything else, we need connections to politicians.

So I have the senator, James Coleman, who has one of the poorest districts in Denver, an African american, he's president pro tem of the Colorado state Senate.

He's done a podcast with me.

Amazing, amazing young politician, Democrat who's going to be a future star in the Democratic Party, no doubt about it.

But getting the legislature to support the funding, the entire school program, not the college voucher, but the entire school program, because the sophomore, junior, and senior work experiences are funded by the companies or the agencies.

So the federal government only needs to pay the eight week sleep away boot camp experience.

Okay.

And obviously, we'll try and get corporate sponsorship behind it, as you suggested.

All of that is about the same per year that we just gave to Israel, Gaza, and the Ukraine.

I love it.

You've achieved so much, and you could just sit back and look at what you've accomplished and say, this is great.

I'm just gonna, you know, relax and cruise off into the Neverlands.

But I'm curious, thinking about what you're doing now.

What do you want your legacy to be?

Well, thank you for those kind comments, Keith.

I see it more as it's the right thing to do, and it's what I have to do the way I was raised.

So for my life in semi retirement, giving back is important.

It's very much.

And again, people that have faith, and I don't believe you have to be subscribing to a particular religious discipline or any discipline.

You just have to recognize, I think, what I call the four legged stool.

And I've tried to build my life and my kids lives and my grandkids lives around the concept of a four legged stool.

And the first leg of the stool is there's something bigger than you.

For me, it's a higher power.

For me, it's, you know, obviously it's Jesus Christ and God.

But I understand and recognize for a lot of people, that's not there.

But just, it's not about you, it's about the world.

It's about the community.

And I think what we need to do is build bubbles, which is why South Chicago is a whole series of bubbles.

But so, and I would agree, the problem is the politicians want a certain population to be suppressed and down.

And their answer is, keep feeding them.

Keep feeding them and propping them up with, you know, with welfare and food stamps and all the other entitlement programs.

And this book is about, it's not about a hand up, it's not about a handout.

It's about a hand up.

And it's very much, you know, give people a fish when they're hungry, but then teach them how to fish immediately and teach our kids at a young age how to fish.

So we eliminate these problems.

So the first leg of the stool, the anchor is a value system that I'm put on this earth to make it a better place and to serve other people.

Whether that was a CEO of the Pirates, the Atlanta Hawks, the Atlanta Thrashers NHL team.

In my role as senior vp of marketing and team business at the NBA, didn't matter.

I'm there to serve someone else.

So, number one, that anchor and don't compromise your values.

And that's where the mentoring comes in.

That's where the mentoring says, stay the course, don't feel defeated, keep going.

And that's where thriving families in Denver, Colorado does such an incredible job with these young pregnant women and these young mothers.

Free is the vocation your career, whatever it may be.

That for me right now is single parents with preschool kids trying to make a difference, trying to grow.

The funding and support.

All proceeds from all my consulting and the book go to these biodifference foundation.

Like I said, I cover personally, the cost of the overhand for the families, for the administration of the foundation, so that 100% of the donations go directly to people that can benefit from it.

That's great.

Where can people find your book?

Reimagine America's dream, making it attainable for all.

They can find it at Amazon.

The ebook is still on sale, I think, at $0.99, you know, for another week or so.

It is a best seller already in its first week, which is great.

They can find it at Barnes and Noble, and they can find it at Kobo, which is rackatums group.

So just go online.

The hard copy book will be available in July, so within a couple of weeks it'll be available, but they can pre order it right now.

And Keith, I want to say thank you.

Thank you for what you do every day.

Thank you for what you've done in your career, in making your communities a better place to live and work, and thank you for having me on.

Well, Bernie, thank you one more time.

Where can I find you?

Do I connect with you on social media?

Yeah, on social media.

I'm just setting all that stuff up.

So I apologize that I'm an old father and I haven't got up yet, but it'll be set up very, very soon.

I had breakfast with a young lady who is amazing.

She's part native American Indian and part Hispanic, and she's.

Alicia will be my social media person, putting it all together in the very near future.

Bernie mullenlayfly.com easiest way to get ahold of me not to be connected with community.

Here's fantasy politicians about how we can change this dark going on right now.

It can't keep going.

We gotta get.

We gotta change it.

Well, Bernie, thanks again for being on the show and adding such great content and really giving us something to think about in the middle of all this.

Oh, no.

Thank you so much, Keith.

I really appreciate it.

Let me know how I can help you in the great work you're doing.

I will definitely do that.

Have a blessed day, my friend.

All right, you too.

God bless you.

Take care.