Rory McIlroy is the new phenom of the PGA tour.  Rory is one day shy of 21.  He’s from the little country of Ireland and has won professional golf tournaments all over the world.  He became the PGA Tour’s youngest winner since Tiger Woods this Sunday against one of the best fields of great players at the Quail Hollow Championship, one of the most challenging courses on tour. He shot a record breaking 62. 

While Rory was staring down the great Phil Mickelson to win his tournament, Ryo Ishikawa was shooting a 58 to win a major Japanese tournament.  And Ryo is the grand old age of 18!

 There is added significance to all this.  A new breed of superstar golfer was born yesterday.  They are young, they are bold, and they are hungry.  As Arnold Palmer was ending his great professional career, he said to me, “it’s harder to keep your interest as the years advance.”  

 There is a price to pay to be among the elite golfers in the world.  It’s very hard for golfers to sustain that level.  Look at the records of the great Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer,  and Tom Watson and you’ll see that their great victories came at the early to middle parts of their careers.  Tiger is approaching 35.  We don’t know if he can reach the levels he has reached in the past.  Many golfers think he played his best golf 6 or 7 years ago.  With the hits he’s taken over the last 6 months, the embarrassment, the public bloodbath, will he be able to regain that finite mental and physical focus that one must have to be the elite player of the world? 

 While he is figuring that out, two fresh-faced Irish and Japanese young men have announced that they are ready to compete at the highest level.

We have been held captive for the past number of years by the oil producing nations in the Mideast, Venezuela, and others. 

We cannot continue to let that happen.  We have the real opportunity now to lead the world in next generation energy that is critical to our economic and social growth.  People and nations that wait for the perfect moment never lead. 

 We have historically been the innovators, the creators, the leaders.  For the past 20 years, we have become the followers, not the leaders. 

We can take back the energy lead, and this article will show you how important it is. 

Read it and give us your feedback.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/30brooks.html?hp

Tim Tebow will make it as an NFL quarterback.  The reason is very simple – he is a playmaker extraordinaire.  He is been a playmaker at every level.  He has played in the toughest college conference in the world, and won two national championships.  Josh McDaniels, his coach in Denver, and Urban Meyer, Tebow’s college coach in Florida, are good friends and share offensive philosophies.  They both push the envelope with new thinking in offensive football.  Josh McDaniel will let Tim Tebow be Tim Tebow. 

Tebow will not look like a typical professional quarterback.  But I can assure you, in my 18 years of playing Hall of Fame level football, I was not your typical quarterback.  You could never fit me into a box.  Tebow will be the same way.  And he will make it work.

What about Ben?

Ben Roethlisberger’s suspension is a good thing.  And Ben’s reaction to his suspension is also a good thing.  This will be a great lesson in life for a young man who has had every good thing that football has to offer.  He has two Super Bowl rings, and has had the honor of quarterbacking one of the elite franchises of the NFL.  And he has had some very serious missteps. 

Here is the good news.  Ben is scared.  He is scared of losing it all.  He now has a sense of desperation that will help him turn it around and make it right.  I believe he will.  The consequences of not turning things around are just too scary for Big Ben. 

He will be a better man for all of this.

Fellow entrepreneurs and business owners,

I believe that you and I –

People who work every day. . .

People who put our hands in the soil…

People who create products and services. . .

People who build businesses. . .

People who pay our taxes. . .

People who don’t create offshore accounts to dodge our responsibilities. . .

Can be silent no longer.  We cannot be a silent majority with no voice! 

I really do believe that Small Business people across America have got to join together with our ideas, our energy, our creativity and our patriotism to bring about the change we need in order to prosper and in fact, survive. 

I need you to be an active participant with me! 

I believe we are headed down a dead end street and from the feedback I am getting, it sounds like Small Businesses like you agree!  Everyone from Ben Bernanke to Billy Bob and Mary Sue know that the spending that started under the Bush administration and is continuing today will drive us into oblivion.  Big Government has never worked, and will never work.  We need some government; we need some laws; and we need some checks and balances. But, what we need more of, is hard working people to be thinkers, creators and innovators. We need Small Business Entrepreneurs to have the freedom to stimulate this country and grow our economy.

Let me define what a Small Business is - it is not a company with 500 or

fewer employees.  A Small Business is really a company with 1 to 20 employees. 

A Small Business is anyone who is self-employed and any home-based business. 

It encompasses all races, all genders, all ages; it is all people.

This is not a political movement; this is a movement about righting the ship.  This is a movement about ensuring a future for our children and our grandchildren. 

As I write this note, I am in the state of California.  California may have the greatest natural resources of any state/nation in the world. The San Joaquin Valley is the breadbasket of the world.  It has the most fertile soil, producing the richest crops anywhere in the world.  The Silicon Valley is the epicenter of innovative technological advances which are the envy of the rest of the world.  With 37 million residents, California’s human assets and natural resources are unparalleled and yet the state is bankrupt because of fiscal irresponsibility.  It has been driven into bankruptcy by unbridled spending on programs which are unsustainable in any economy. 

If California can go bankrupt, America can go bankrupt.  If our nation’s banking  industry can go bankrupt, America can go bankrupt.  We must curtail this spending now!

I have always found that the only way that I can make changes happen is that

I must create a sense of desperation.  At the age of 70, I’m compelled to create a

sense of desperation for this country for all of our sakes.

I believe that you and I –

People who work every day. . .

People who put our hands in the soil . .

People who create products and services. . .

People who build businesses. . .

People who pay our taxes. . .

People who don’t create offshore accounts to dodge our responsibilities. . .can be silent no longer. 

We cannot be a silent majority with no voice! 

We are creating a Small Business movement across this country. 

*         I need your ideas. 

*         I need your partnership. 

*         I need your energy, your goodness, your strength as an American entrepreneur. 

Together, we can make a difference for Small Businesses and in fact, for the future of America!

Visit our Small Business Party page on Facebook to join me today, and feel free to invite your friends, family, and business associates as well!

If you haven’t read what John Linder has sent me about the Fair Tax, now is the time.  You can always find more information at http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer

Also,make sure to stop by my Facebook page to see archived Fox interviews, and check out Tarkenton.com to see and share in what we do for small business.

You can also follow me on Twitter to get updates sooner.

Be sure to join me on Fox Business News today, 4/13/10, for more discussion on Small Business and the government.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/index.html

Friends, you know my focus is on creating and supporting small businesses in America.

Here are some points that have come to my attention lately as I research the Fair Tax proposal and its effect on small business.

• 80% of the new jobs created in this country will be created by Small Businesses

• Small Business has no lobby.

• Wall Street has plenty of help.  Main Street has none.

• Most all of the innovation – energy, technology, consumer – will come from Small Businesses

If you are a Small Business person, you automatically belong to the Small Business Party.  If you are one, you are in it.  Small Businesses hold communities together.  70% of all businesses are sole proprietors.  Small Businesses have prospered with no help from the government.  Big government, politicians, big corporations, our top ranked business schools such as Harvard and Stanford have no clue about this movement.  Most Harvard and Stanford business school graduates become consultants to big businesses, and consultants to Presidential administrations.  Many of these graduates were at the center of Wall Street financial institutions that caused the collapse of this country’s economy.  Ten out of 15 of this Presidential Administration’s cabinet members are lawyers.  Nine of the 15 went to Ivy League schools.  What in the world do these people know about Main Street America?  Most small business entrepreneurs are not members of the green jacket membership of the Augusta National Golf Club.  Our people are not cool enough to be invited to the major social and political events across the country.  But we are the people who will produce 80% of the new jobs in country, who will inspire most of the creativity and innovation that separates this country from rest of world.  We are pillars of our community.  We pay our taxes which means we pay for all the ear-mark programs that get attached to most every bill that Congress passes.  We are the heart and soul of this country but we have no voice.

The WSJ Poll done around the first of the year showed that the Tea Party has more favorability among the American people (41%) than the Democrats (35%) or Republicans (28%). 

Twice as many Americans say the Tea Party is closer to their views than Congress (even though only a little more than 10% of the people say they are in the Tea Party). 

• Most people have lost faith in government to solve the problems facing our nation.  Do you feel that way?

• We are dividing into a nation of those who are self-reliant and those who are government-reliant.  Unfortunately, we are doing so in a terrible recession, in which more than 10% of our people are unemployed.  These are very tough times.  And even more unfortunately, this is happening at a time when our current government would like more people to be more reliant on government … on them.  Which are you … and which do you want your kids to be: self-reliant or government-reliant?

• Obviously, more people want to be self-reliant; the number of people who are self-employed and self-reliant are growing at almost double the rate of population increase.  Are you one of them? 

• So it’s time for a party that represents the self-reliant.  Those who believe talent and invention and hard work is what it will take to make their lives better … not a government program.   They believe those values will make our country better.  Do you? 

• That’s obviously not the current Democratic Party.  That’s the party of big government, Big Labor and the party of the government-reliant.  It’s probably not the Republican Party … which has recently been the party of Big Business.  It may be the Tea Party … whatever they stand for.  But I believe it’s time for a Small Business Party – people who are self-employed and self-reliant are actually growing at a rate that’s double the growth of population.  This is the heart of American Exceptionalism and the hope of our future.  They pay their taxes, pay their bills, pay their health care and still create 80% of the new jobs in this country.  Small business people – young and old, Black and White, Hispanic, Asian; Americans of every stripe – will lead us out of this Recession.  Do you agree?

• This is not about building political power.  Small business people are too independent and too ornery for that.  But it is about winning the freedom to continue to build the American dream and pass it on to the next and the next generation. 

• We’re not asking for more … we’re actually asking for less … less taxes, less regulations and less government intrusion into every aspect of our businesses.  We want the freedom to grow and prosper and help provide for our families and those of our employees and strengthen our communities and provide the life blood of our national economy. 

• It’s time for a Small Business Party in America. 

Fran is going to be a guest on The Fred Thompson Radio Show, a national talk radio program, today at 1:45 PM ET.  The show will be guest-hosted by Dom Giordano, a Philadelphia media personality, and they will be discussing current events as they pertain to small business.

Click on the link below to see the Station Finder:

site

An interview of Guy Kawasaki, a co-founder of Alltop, a news aggregation site, and managing director of Garage Technology Ventures.

Q. At what point in your career did you first become somebody’s boss?

A. I was probably 28 or 29 years old and in the jewelry business. I started my career counting diamonds and schlepping gold jewelry around the world. The jewelry business is a very, very tough business — tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers.

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The thing I love most about America is that there’s always somebody who doesn’t get the word — somebody who doesn’t understand that in a Great Recession you’re supposed to hunker down, downsize and just hold on for dear life. I have a couple of friends who fit that bill, who think a recession is a dandy time to try to discover better and cheaper ways to do things. They both happen to be Indian-Americans — one a son of the Himalayas, who came to America on a scholarship and went to work for NASA to try to find a way to Mars; the other a son of New Delhi, who came here and found the Sun, Sun Microsystems. Both are serial innovators. Both are now shepherding clean-tech start-ups that have the potential to be disruptive game changers. They don’t know from hunkering down. They just didn’t get the word.   View Full Story