445 – It started out as Decoration Day: Tom talks Memorial Day

Episode 445 – Memorial Day
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody. It's Tom here with episode four hundred and forty five of Screw the Commute podcast. This is the special Memorial Day issue. This is going to be a very, very short episode recorded the day after Memorial Day 2021. And you might hear a dog in the background because I had to rescue another dog. So it kind of goes along with this episode anyway. Doing good in the world. And basically, I did it today after Memorial Day because I knew most people would be doing other things and it wouldn't get much attention. So Memorial Day and what it means to me. Well, first, let me tell you my recollections as a kid. I mean, it's all a little foggy, but I recall my mother always talking about Decoration Day and in my small town and all over my front yard, there were tons of American flags. As I've just done a little bit of research, I didn't realize Memorial Day wasn't recognized as an official federal holiday until 1971 when I was in high school. Now I can tell you one thing. There were there were no flag burnings in my hometown. And any kid that disrespected the flag or those that died for it, well, they couldn't sit down for a week. Nowadays, those little pieces of crap would sue their parents. All right. So that's not the way it was when I grew up.

[00:01:56] Now, I was never one to party at all, let alone on a day to honor those that died in service to this country. Now, as I got older, I would always try to do something good for other people, less fortunate, which I felt was the best way I could honor our fallen soldiers. And I've done that so many times, I can hardly remember many of them. So I'll just tell you what I did this weekend. Well, each day, starting Friday at about 6:00 a.m. after I took the dogs out, of course, to the point I could really couldn't see straight at about 10 p.m., I worked on my latest project to do good in the world. I'm doing a pilot project to put four people through my school now. These people have severe physical disabilities. And although I've always felt a quality distance learning school, teaching highly marketable skills would be great for people with disabilities. I really didn't do anything about it until now. Now, if there's one good thing about the pandemic, from my point of view, it brought to light something I've been preaching for 27 years since I started selling online.

[00:03:09] People can legitimately work from home, the pandemic brought this to light worldwide, even though good ol Tom has been talking about it for decades. Anyway, combine that with some alarming statistics about people with disabilities, and I knew it was time to take action, check out some of these stats I got from various credible sources, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and I think Psychology Today magazine, things like that. People with disabilities are three point seven times as likely as the general population to be diagnosed with depression. They have the highest unemployment levels in seven years and they're four times more likely to attempt suicide. In addition, correlation studies indicated that people with disabilities had significantly lower self-esteem, greater psycho social isolation than people without disabilities, as well as significantly less education, more overprotection during childhood, poor quality of intimate relationships and lower rates of salaried employment. Wow. Most of us listening to this are pretty darn lucky, aren't we? So I thought I got to do something about this. I can't stand by and have the ability to do something about it and not do something about it. So I dedicated this weekend and pretty much committed the next year to helping these people change their lives, get them employed and or start their own business or both.

[00:04:55] When this program is successful, I'm taking a grant writing course and right now actually to get big foundations and corporations on board to ramp up the program really big and help way more persons with disabilities turn their lives around. So what was I doing from six a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday? Well, I was working on a crowdfunding campaign to help finance the project. I'm also going to hire people with disabilities to help out with the program. Successful crowdfunding campaigns take lots of preparation emails, social media posts, videos, go fund me kind of platforms to figure that all out and and much more go into it. Now, I'm certainly not faulting any of you listening for taking a break this weekend and having some fun with your friends and family. I'm just I'm just maybe reminding you that the people that died for our country might look down on us a little bit more favorably if they saw us both honoring them and doing good in the world in their honor. Just something to think about. Well, I need to get back to my crowdfunding campaign that will roll out in about a week, and I I certainly hope you choose to support it. I'll catch you on the next episode.
 
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