Let's start that now, but stop me at any time as we go through today's presentation. Ask questions, and certainly I would encourage you to go out and take a look at the Community Vitality website and the information that's available out there, and I'm part of that entire website that I've got my own, so hopefully that will give you some information. So let's begin. I hope to take about half an hour of time and then just have questions, but like I said, ask anytime. Once upon a time, you always have to tell a story. That's the way they say. You hear a lot about engaging audiences, so we're going to begin with once upon a time, small businesses rule the world. As you think about small businesses, that's how they're used to be. All businesses at one time were probably home-based. We didn't have stores if we go back far enough, and they certainly were small. We did not have large businesses in the sense of what we have today, some of these huge conglomerates we have, so we always talk about small businesses rule the world, and truth be known, it's still true here in North Dakota and actually across our entire country and across the world. It's a small business that makes up the majority of businesses. As you see the North Dakota story, about 96% or more of our businesses are small. And then we also have this unique branch or unique group that I never talked about. When we talk about small businesses and you go to the government and you say, what about our farms and ranches? They would say, no, we don't even think about them. We don't count them, we don't have anything to do with them. Unless they're running some business on the side, my father-in-law ran a used John Deere Combine parts business, so he would have a foot in both camps. It would have had a foot in both camps. But just for the sake, some of us who do work with small businesses, do look at some of our farms and ranches. They are a business, operate like a business. They have unique parts to them. And some people use this under $100,000 in sales to indicate are they a small farm ranch operation. And in North Dakota, if we take a cut at that level, we have another 18,500 businesses. There are about 59% of our farms and ranches are small also. Well, what does that mean here in North Dakota? And here's a map showing by county and we're always interested in how many and how much do they make. And this data is older, but I did it on purpose, picked this older data because this is sort of before the oil boom. The oil boom would change this map entirely, and now we have the oil bust and so it's probably going the other way. And so I just said, let's pick a more stable point in time, about 2008. And you can see that this is number of entrepreneurs and stuff. How many are there out there? And you can see counties such as Cavalier, Towner, Dunn, Logan with those green, they all have more than 26% or 26% or greater of their businesses would be considered small or entrepreneurial. And we'll talk about that later on in the U.S. averages right around 21%. However, what we know about them is they don't make a lot of money. This is the average income. And as you can see by and large, our entire state, our entrepreneurs make 23,000 or our small businesses or less. And this is an income that they're taking out of the business for themselves and stuff. U.S. Average, about 28, so or a little bit below U.S. Average. I just want to take that historical look at what's going on. And like I said, the last few years would have seen huge changes both ways. And today we're seeing disappearing of businesses as fast as we can. Stop. What is a small business? You've probably been sitting there thinking, I don't understand. What are we talking about? And this is one of the most difficult things to think about is defining it.  Well, in North Dakota, you now see why we have such a majority of our businesses being small businesses, because we don't have a lot of businesses who are greater than 500 employees. And you can probably take your hand and start naming some of the ones. The North Dakota government obviously, right on top, the major universities would be there also. So that's what they are. And another way that the small business administration looks at small businesses is also, do they have a predominant, are they predominant in their field? They may not be a number of employees, but are they predominant? And sometimes they look at them and how much do they gross every year. But the street, and when we talk about it, and when you hear it used in most contexts, they're talking about this number of less than 500 employees. So you saw me on a couple slides just before this mentioned this word, entrepreneurs. Well, what's a small business owner and what's an entrepreneur? And yes, if any of you know Margaret Fitzgerald from on-campus, she and I have just finished a little sort of pilot study looking at can we define entrepreneurs and small business owners? Theoretically, there's lots of literature, a fair amount of literature written on that. But we looked at four items, innovation, planning, lifestyle and risk, which are probably the four big items. And we said, yeah, we can define these two groups. And they do differ from each other. However, the literature, as you read it, they're going to switch back and forth all the time, especially the literature, the magazines, newspapers, but even the academic literature, we don't use it consistently as you read some of the texts and everything. The question comes up though, is as a small community, who are we interested in encouraging to come to ours? Are we interested in the small business owners? Or are we interested in developing entrepreneurs? Well, one of the big problems with it is that we don't know when businesses begin who's going to be the fast growth, the gazelle as they're sometimes referenced and who's going to be that slow grower. And so we don't know that. And we really, businesses go through phases. Sometimes they're fast growth.  Life changes form and stuff. The other thing we know what Margaret and I found out is that businesses tend to, the entrepreneurs, yeah, they grow fast. But during the last recession, they also collapsed or went down very quickly. So you got a very roller coaster look, if you think about the look that you would have, it was up and down, up and down. The small business owner was much more stable. They didn't go up so quickly, but they didn't drop off as quickly either and stuff. Their number of employees stayed more static. And so there's a reason we would argue, and that's what the article that we ended up saying, is that if you're in community development or thinking about your small town that you live in or big town that makes no difference, you need a mix. You need some of both. The goal, obviously, from my world and this community development world but from our community vitality effort is part of our goal is to, we want to enhance the economic engine. I mean, that's a segment of it that I worked on. We want to create them. We want to attract them, retain them, help them grow, and then help them whatever we can do to achieve success. And we do that for these reasons, their jobs.  They're bringing money into our economy, our local economy, and they're bringing people. That's paying salaries. That means families and everything that goes with it. Well, but part of that CSR is one of the things that these businesses also do is they have corporate social responsibility. And we're going to talk about some of these in greater detail, and that's going to be one we'll discuss in more detail. They also bring us products and services, products and services that we want to have. People tend to go to the big city because they want certain things. And I'm surprised now as I drive North Dakota, the towns that have a little coffee shop. I was up in Kandu the other week and just a really nice little coffee shop there that that's part of it. That's quality of life. Theater, coffee shops, you know, grocery stores. Yesterday I spent working on the Rural Grocery Initiative. There was a meeting of us to try to decide what can we do in small towns to retain groceries. For many people, that's we may not think about it much, but groceries are important. And you know, so what can we do? We want to build communities that attract that means quality of life issue, that means jobs, and we want to be able to add value to this entire thing. Here in North Dakota, 182,000 jobs are found in the small business world. That's 60% of the private workforce. Of the private workforce, and it is nearly 96% of all state's employers, are part of this small business world and stuff. And again, back to why the community? Well, we like businesses in our community because every dollar spent there, a little bit sticks and a little bit stays around. Money spent outside of the community when you drive off, and I'm only using them because they're used all the time when you drive off to the Walmart. None of that comes back to the community if the Walmart is outside your community. If it is a chain or a franchise located within your community, about 43 cents will stick around. The rest of it moves off outside of your local economic area. And if it's a local business, though, about 68% or nearly 70 cents on the dollar will stick around. And the money circulates. It pays salaries. It buys supplies. It buys maybe utilities if you have a local utility.  So it sticks around and that's what we're trying to get. And as you go down that list from totally outside of the community to local, that how many times it circulates just that number just goes up and up and up. So the more local businesses do business with local businesses, we can even enhance and drive that even further. And by now you're all going, this is all economics. Well, part of it. We're going to get into some other parts of it that are not the purely economic view of it. And that's CSR, sometimes considered corporate social responsibility, sometimes references community social responsibility. And that's what are your businesses doing to help themselves and to help the community grow, build, whatever. And there's three dimensions to it. Typically, the responsibility to consumers, employees and shareholders, the environment and the broader community. The one big issue with CSR that is continually one of the biggest hurdles to overcome are business owners who get upset with what we call the free rider.  And this business over here, Joe's business, he never does any of that. And yet he's getting the benefit. We're doing, you know, joint ads. We're putting billboards out in different places to come shop and in our community. He's not doing anything. And he's getting some of that. And so the enlightened self interest model says, we do this for the good of our business. It is good to support our community beyond just being there and hiring people and, you know, doing business in the community. There is reason to do this. Yet the big hurdle, the big issue is this free rider. And sometimes that will be the issue that will cause everything to sometimes come crashing down as people just get tired of the free riders. So one of the things we can do as extension is if we hear people talking about this issue of free riders, there is no answer to it. I mean, they will be there. They are there. It's just to help people recognize that the more you engage at time, we can slowly win those people over. I do believe and we've seen it happen. But it does take time. But you'll never be at 100%. You'll never get everybody. CSR is measured by the business commitment to community. The amount of personal leadership that these business owners take in the community. They're elected officials. They serve on boards. They serve on social welfare groups. They serve on your JC's or your Chamber of Commerce, whatever. They have community collective actions. They get involved with whatever festivals you have. They help the school system. They help the local library system. They may help build the local library. They donate material supplies and also they support the other businesses. When a new business comes to town, they say, hey, what could I buy from these businesses that supports us? My first job, I ran a nursing home and the board was very specific and very clear to me that that was my job. That last one was to the nursing home previously, had always done its business wherever it could get the best deal. And they said, do business local. See what you can do. So we did. I think we changed a lot of minds over time. They saw the nursing home as a much more active in the community. We went to the Chamber meetings or I went to the Chamber meetings and we started to buy local. And also, though, when I paid the monthly bills, I just didn't stick it in an envelope. It was a small town. I walked up and down Main Street and people called me the sidewalk inspector. I walked up and down and handed them the check and had a conversation with them so they could see that we were active in the local community. To the business, it means all these things. Obviously, goodwill is one of the biggies, but it means the ability to attract new customers, new employees, make your customers your ambassadors. That's a biggie. And to the community, it means families, individuals coming in. It means morale of the community, quality of life. I guess they do have it on the list. It means more volunteers, more ideas. It's just a win. And so, extension and I guess the people I work with, in extension and here in North Dakota, all of us have this opportunity to bring CSR to our community from our businesses by working in the area and stuff. So, you know, when people say, well, what can I do? This is just part of it, is tell the story. We talked about, you know, some of the other things it brings, products and services. And this is just a list of the different ways that, excuse me, can, it can serve our communities, to help serve our communities. I turned off the mic so I could cough a couple times there. It doesn't build lakes, but it allows us to have the other things we not want when we go to the lake. Small businesses add value. More and more, our local foods people are reaching out. They are small business owners. And looking at, you know, what can they do? I just had before we came on. It's a little home-based business here over in Mandan and I just got their list of, hey, we're having, you know, it's our weekly time to shop here and they've got Salad Mix and Spinny Screens and lettuce, excuse me, and sourdough bread. And that's a biggie for me. So, they had value to what we're producing here. And it's taking away, changing the chain from shipping everything out and then bringing it back in a process form. I know a young woman up in the northern part of the state who even grinds her own wheat, and so she takes it off her dad's farm, grinds her wheat, and then bakes it up. So, what's our role? And really, that's what we're here to talk about most today is help with change.  Help with change so that they recognize what's going on. Help with change to encourage them. Many of you have heard me talk about business owners need to be in the online world to help them get there, to let them know they are there because there's probably reviews about them online. So, that's certainly one thing is to help with the change process, to help them through that over time. We can be their ambassador. You know, for me that I'm always pushing small businesses, writing articles about them, whatever I can do, I'm going to be their ambassador, I'm going to market them. But I'm also going to tell them at times, you know, you can be a really good ambassador by saying, I was in your store today and, you know, this just didn't look right or this didn't work right or you may want to think about this ad you ran or, you know, ambassador doesn't always mean just shouting their good qualities, but also helping them on a one-on-one to say, here's something you might want to try. And when we're marketing, you know, just throw in the marketing, use all the tools. I try very carefully not to look like I'm giving pushing one business or anything, but I'll certainly push an industry. And once in a while, I just need to talk about a specific business. Because of something I see, I use them as an example and stuff. Our Subaru dealer over in Mandan. Recently, I did a blog post about them because this was such a such a cool idea. I walked in and here they have bikes sitting there and I'm going, what are you selling bikes now besides cars? And they said, no, these are for our customers. So when you come in, and maybe you don't want to use your shuttle car or they sit right down to ride down to Mandan to the Fort Abraham Lincoln, there's a trail. Hey, you want to go ride a bike? They've got helmets, they've got bikes, take them out, give them a spin and they'll work on your car. And I thought, oh, what a cool idea. And so something that that they can do, but use all the tools. And I just list that we have the traditional way of the online. And we have the you, which is the business owner, but also you as an extension educator, as extension specialist, can put yourself in that mix and think about helping them in all those ways. Do reviews, you know, of your local businesses. That's important. I don't know. A lot of people when we travel now, that's how we decide where we're going to stop to eat, where we're going to stop to sleep, or we're going to go to buy something that we're going to use as our plumber. Who are we going to go? You know, who's our dentist? It's word of mouth. And but it's it's online reviews. About 75% of people don't buy anything anymore today. That's now where they get these numbers. Once you get in the online world, it's all sort of iffy. But about 75% of people they say will go online and check, check out what's being said about it at various sites. Ignite the passion. Help people. A lot of people have that idea. I want to do this. You know, that's just I've always wanted to have my own business. I want to X. Well, encourage them, especially with our youth, encourage them to think about being the entrepreneur. What could they do? And we have a lot of youth who start as you know, the lemonade stand or something like that. If you see one, stop and talk to him about that and buy that cup of lemonade. And I'm not always good about that myself. But show give them role models, you know, do what do what we can here. Any questions? I'm just rambling along here just. And of course, we have our traditional role. facilitate learning anytime any place from the traditional classroom, you know, get it being up in front. Most people when that week, I talk about, you know, teaching some part of a small business, they a lot of people get quite nervous about that.  Those are the things that are important to business owners as much as just getting them together. And starting a conversation, which is where we excel is starting these these conversations amongst people about things. And then small business owners are like anybody else, it probably will just take off on its own. But so when you get a chamber together, don't just have them sit there and go through their old meeting and nobody, you know, talks to each other, take 10, 15, 20 minutes and be a facilitator and give them some good leading questions to start a conversation about on that. And then of course, the online world. We're going to need to be there for them. Small business owners don't have a lot of time. They may have nobody else in their shop, or they may have very few people so that they can get education. So they're going to turn to the online world.  And that is a picture of me doing just about that. But, you know, we have to think about every, you know, anytime any place type learning for them. We also have to eliminate the myths. And maybe that's, I talked about some of the things we can do. The greatest question I get is this one on free money, whereas the free money, it's died down some. I don't see it quite as much as I used to. There is, you know, the bottom line answer is when people ask you, where's that free money? The best answer is there isn't any.  Yeah, there is a little bit out there, depending upon what you're doing. And we can try to guide people to that, or send me an email and say, hey, where can I and, you know, we'll try to figure it out. It might come at certain times of the year, though. But basically, the easy, correct 95% of the time is there is no free money.  The part that goes with that is you need to tell them they need to have money of their own. They're going to have to put up some money. And so if you don't have a good credit rating, and you don't have some money in the bank, though, that's probably what you have to start at first, rather than just getting this free money. Get rich quick? It doesn't happen quick. Yeah, there's always David is saying for inventors, there are funds, but more so it's less expensive dollars, low interest loans. Yeah, quite often, it's a loan, it's not a it's people want the free money.  And as Dave points out, it's loans more often. Yeah, we can get the interest rates down. But Dave wants free money too. Yeah, don't we all. So get rich quick? No, it doesn't happen.  Why would you sell that store, how to do it? If you really could do that on a consistent basis, so you make it maybe one time and then you just sell the book and you forget about the rest of it. If you build it, they will come that goes back to the marketing. People aren't going to find you if you just build it. It's not like the field of dreams has us believe in stuff. The myth of you have to be born an entrepreneur. No, you do not or a small business owner. We can teach you entrepreneurship, small business ownership. It's all teachable. Yeah, you have traits that make it a little easier or a little harder or you're going to have to overcome some things, but anybody can successfully run a small business if they have the passion and if they want it and are willing to take the steps needed. If people come to you with, I have all this free time, so I'm just going to start a business, suggest where they could donate their time. Maybe the school needs some volunteers. Maybe you need a, you know, a library and you know, it's not, not where you go spend your free time because what it's going to cost you is a lot of time and a lot of money. And in the end, you're going to have lost time and lost money if that's the only reason you're is behind you pushing you. And it does not get easier. One of two things happens to a business owner. One, their business is very successful or successful. Well, that doesn't make it any easier because now you've got employees, you've got more probably more loans, you may have to think about more space, you know, growth may have to think about production lines expansion. So that doesn't get any easier or the other side that's going to happen as you fail and that's not easy either because now you feel bad is depressing and you got to sort of pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start all over again. Other potential roles and this is just a laundry list. One is you know, we're doing it today just by awareness and promotion of this whole idea. Go to your chamber. I don't know if you attend chamber meetings, but I would at time show up at the chamber meeting and help people network and connect with each other. Be a resource spot where they can get information or know where to go to get information. Another great resource that you can be. It could be a manner. You can just if you don't have the SBA coming to your town or the SBDCs encourage them to stop by make you make your town a regular spot where these entrepreneurs, small business owners can come in and get answers to their questions and stuff. If possible, or at least know where to call them, how to get in touch with them. Resources, obviously the center. I mentioned Dave already Dave layman is on the line. He's got his manufacturing extension. And Dave, why don't you put in your your I forgot to put his you can get it through CCV website. But Dave stick your manufacturing extension direct link in there for people to see. I apologize for that. These slides will go up on slide share. And then as I said, I am recording this. I've got a small business website. Julie Garden Robinson is this very good book or booklet starting your own food business in North Dakota. That's often one of the things that people want to start their business around this food. Because we have the world's greatest you know, jams, jellies, mixes, what have you. Carrington Research Center has horticulture. Kathy up there, you know, has horticulture. The extension horticulture specialists and other specialists are all there to help you. I always mentioned horticulture because a lot of people the food business gardening. Those are big things that I see. And right now we're starting a high tunnel project. Those are those big plastic bubbles to extend season and stuff. And you heard me talk about this young couple that has their ad out today for me. You know, they're high tunnel. So I had my first salad greens in March, this year, early March. And Dave's got his website up there, agnesu.edu slash manufacturing. So it's just that slash manufacturing. Other resources obviously in North Dakota, and this is just a partial list. Dave could give you a lot more if you're into the manufacturing. And so if you are, you got somebody who wants to go into manufacturing or as an inventor, you know, have them contact Dave, but Department of Ag, Farmers Market and Growers Association, Commerce, State Bank, Secretariat State, and it goes on. And then the Feds has USDA World Development and the Small Business Administration. And they have to two groups that have their own bodies, their score and the Small Business Development Centers. So it's small business, big impact.  And there is a reason why we do need to support them. We do need them. If we want to have growing Earth Dakota, we need growing small businesses.  We don't know who's going to be the next big manufacturing company. And Dave has got a Facebook site for North Dakota Manufacturing News there. Another site there. We don't know who's going to be that big company. What we need to do is we got to keep the funnel going and keep new businesses coming along here and stuff. Yeah, the success rate is not the greatest. We'd love it to be higher, but that's just reality. And it's not when we say businesses, they don't fail necessarily. You hear all this, you know, 80%, 60% of businesses fail. No, they don't fail. A lot of time, these business owners simply quit being a business. It's not as profitable as they want. They find another opportunity. They realize that this is not going to be the business or they need to take a step back. And so it's not a failure. They learn something and then maybe off to something else that looks like a better alternative. So is there any... Oh, the one thing I wanted to point out is that this is a good segue this week to have this today because next week is Small Business Week, National Small Business Week, May 1st to the 7th. So I would encourage all of you, the one takeaway you can do from this webinar is next week, go up and down your main street and just say thanks to these little small business owners for who they are and what they're doing for your communities and stuff. And those who are not as much involved, encourage them to join the chamber, come to some of your meetings. And those who are heavily involved just say thank you and that you appreciate what they're doing to help support community and community development and families in the state of North Dakota. So, any questions? Thank you, Linda. I'm going to find a report for the Bremmer Grant. Yes, yes. Yes, it should help you. Glad to hear that. I just want to thank everybody for being here. Go ahead. Oh, this, Lisa, I have kind of a question. The one thing that kind of I was thinking about as you're talking about farms and local foods and that kind of topic. And I don't know, maybe this isn't an appropriate question for this group either. But when I start thinking about this, one thing that resonated with me is when you said that farmers kind of fall in that crack between they're not really, people don't really consider them small businesses, but they are because they run as such. And, you know, kind of thinking about a advocacy and really getting the word out about what agriculture is and what farmers do.  You know, some way we can kind of connect them together. You have your job. I mean, that is one of the challenges that that we see across the nation is to bring these two group of farmers together and to help realize that it's going to take both. People are not going to, you know, some people will never be local foods people. Some people will never be big egg people. Just to accept and recognize who we are, it's it is a huge challenge. I know of one big egg farmer who I will say who did take about 10 acres of his land and he's allowing a young local foods producer to farm it simply because the way his land developed. I mean, it's not like he's this is all good on his part. It is good, I mean, but it was so small that he couldn't turn around his big equipment. So he just said, you know, it's a little nook off one of his fields and so he said here go do this and we need more of that to have happened. We need more of that. And so you are right on, Alicia, with we need to bring these two groups together because they're both there. They both have a place.  I don't know the answer though. I'm working on it. I guess I grew up big egg, but now I've really been heavily into the local foods the last few years, but it's tough. Our land, my dad died and so we're renting out the land and it's big egg. I think that was one kind of ironic thing that I think seems to be coming up as people don't consider each other farmers or that the big farmers aren't contributing to the food supply and I don't know that kind of thing. But the other thing I kind of question I had too was with online businesses. Are we, is Extension working with online businesses or when you're talking about these small businesses are they mainly the brick and mortar types? Extension as a whole, yes, there are some movements to work with the online businesses. I've done a few workshops talking about getting online, being online. And one of the communities and it's just a lot of businesses say we don't have to be there. Everybody knows us. Yeah, but you're forgetting people who are driving through or new people in or you look at the people and you may be one, you're younger, do you even have a landline? Which means do you even get a phone book? People do not go to phone books anymore. Yeah, my wife does, but a lot of people just Google it. I mean that's the way of the world and stuff and so but anyway I went to this one town and it said that this little restaurant, it gave me the directions to this little restaurant. And the problem was is I knew that restaurant was really the where the pin had marked it, you know, for the old Google map. Yeah, the pin was in the middle of the Chevy car dealers lot. They were off by two blocks. Well, if I miss it by two blocks it's only 30 miles to the next town. I'm not turning around to go back. You know, that might be the mindset of some people. So we need to think for all businesses that no longer really is a question of do you have an online presence? Yes, you do. It's just what type of online presence do you have? And certainly if you're not going to do anything, at least read what people are saying about you on the review sites and be ready to respond. So I'll be glad to help anybody. There is work going on, not a lot, but there is some. Thank you. You bet. Well, thank you everybody for taking some time on this Wednesday. And I hope you have a great rest of your week. And remember next week is what? It's small business week. David said real businesses especially need to be online. And but part of it is in your community. One last encouragement is to get fast internet service. Anything we can do and sell service. You know, those are things people are looking for. So with that, I'll just sign off and thank you again and once again repeat. Have a good day. Take care. Bye.


What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health, and I'll explain why I'm doing this video.  And if you care about mental health, subscribe and turn the notification bells on, all right? So we are coming up on Super Tuesday, and I've been watching videos about, you know, the elections and everything, like in case you didn't know by the title of this video. I am a Democrat or, you know, I'm more liberal leaning and all that kind of stuff. But anyways, I was watching some videos and I'm just like, I'm not the type of person who's gonna go out in like canvas and go door to door or make phone calls, but I'm like, wait a second, I have a platform right here, so why don't I discuss this? So one of the primary reasons I'm making this video about Bernie Sanders, mental health and all that is I've noticed something for a while, just talking to people, all right? And it feels like a lot of people support the person, but they don't support the policies, right? Like a lot of people support policies that Bernie Sanders is trying to get past, but they're supporting politicians who don't support those policies. So I wanna discuss that a little bit in this video. So I will be talking about Bernie Sanders, I will be talking about mental health. I'll touch on a couple other policies as well. But anyways, if you want a video that's more heavy on statistics and everything like that, I highly recommend you go check out Tiffany Ferg's video. She is a creator on this platform. You probably heard of her already. She makes awesome videos. So go check out her video on Bernie Sanders. I'm gonna link it down in the description below. All right, so anyways, let's talk about this. So Bernie Sanders, he identifies as a democratic socialist, right? And something that he talks about is the Scandinavian countries and kind of replicating their model, all right? So the first thing I wanna talk about, which I don't hear brought up enough, is I think as Americans, we have this kind of ego, right? And I don't know if that hurts the campaign or what, but it's like, oh, you wanna model ourselves after these countries? No, we're America, right? But we have to realize a couple things, okay? Like, since mental health is my thing, I'm constantly looking at the rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, drug addiction. Like suicides and drug addiction in the United States are just snowballing and they haven't slowed down in years. Why is that? It's because people are miserable. People do not commit suicide because they're happy. People do not become drug addicts because they are happy, right? So when we're talking about modeling, you know, the United States and some of the policies after the Scandinavian countries, like, let's take a look real quick because a lot of politicians are gonna be talking about like, we're gonna get you jobs, we're gonna put more money in your pocket, we're gonna lower taxes and all these other things. Like, I don't care about any of that stuff.  So rather than looking at the GDP, this is something Andrew Yang talked a lot about, instead of looking at the GDP, let's take a look at the world happiness report, okay? Who are the top seven countries with the happiest citizens, okay? So as of 2019, the top seven countries are Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, okay? What do all those places have in common? They are Scandinavian countries. So when I look at Bernie Sanders trying to model our policies after that, I'm like, okay, cool.  Do you wanna know where the United States ranks on the World Happiness Index? 19, okay? So it's not the lowest, but when we're talking about mental health, we need to start talking about what's making these people happy, all right? So let's talk about Medicare for All. Something that doesn't come up enough in Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All policy is mental health care, okay? Mental health care people, like a lot of you who are subscribed to my channel, you care about mental health. We have to realize that Medicare for All means mental health care for all as well. The number one reason I see from my audience that they don't go to therapy isn't because they're afraid to, isn't because they don't wanna get better. It's because they don't have the money, all right? Medicare for All will help you get therapy. It will help you see a psychologist. It'll help you see a psychiatrist, right? What about all the drug addicts? Currently, state-funded treatment centers, they are backed up for months, even detox centers. It might take you a month or two just to get detox, all right? But if we have this all-encompassing Medicare for All system, you can get the mental health care that you need and you can get the treatment that you need if you need to get off drugs and alcohol. Speaking of drugs and alcohol, guess who wants to decriminalize marijuana? Bernie Sanders, okay? So Joe Biden just won in South Carolina, all right? And Joe Biden has been very vocal that he has no plans on decriminalizing marijuana. Many of you know that I am sober, I don't smoke weed, I don't drink, none of that stuff, but I'm from Las Vegas and we've passed a law, what, almost, yeah, four years ago in 2016 to pass a law to make weed recreational. There are dispensaries all over the place and everything like that. That tax money is helping the schools, it's helping the city and all this other stuff. Like listen, alcohol, prescription opioids, benzodiazepines, those have all been legal for years, but if you look at the overdose rates, guess which ones are up there, okay? Alcohol, not so much overdose, but there's a lot of deaths related to alcohol, such as heart disease, liver failure, drunk driving accidents, other accidents that you have when you're drunk and I'm not saying to criminalize alcohol, but I'm just saying when we're looking at marijuana, we need to decriminalize it.  So the next thing let's talk about is free college, okay?  Why don't you go back to school? Why don't you go back to school? I haven't made a full video on this, but 10 years ago, before I got sober, actually a little bit longer than that, I racked up a lot of student debt because I was a drug addict trying to go to college and I went and then I dropped out, then I went again. I have a lot of student debt and I cannot get any type of student loan or financial aid until I pay off that student debt, which is over $10,000. And for me personally, I cannot apply for loan forgiveness, okay? So I need to figure out a way to pay off that debt just so I can go back to school. But we also need to realize that there are so many people who can't afford school or you are put in a position where you gotta rack up student debt, which you might be paying off for the rest of your life, all right? So Bernie Sanders is trying to get free college. So anybody who wants to go to college can go to college. Okay, and it's not a policy saying that everybody can go to Harvard or MIT or Yale.  So that in itself is going to help people because a lot of people, there is a correlation, not a causation, but a correlation between being uneducated or undereducated and depression, okay?  It can make you feel like you're not good enough. You don't have as many opportunities and all that kind of other stuff. So I'm gonna link down below, the link to Bernie Sanders page, where you can look at the policies.  Like although I'm liberal and I'm registered as a Democrat, I voted for Republican senators here in Nevada just because they had better policies. Like I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. Policies are what matter. So the last thing that we're gonna talk about is how are we gonna pay for it all? How will we pay for it all? Now, if you hear about Bernie Sanders, you often hear about taxing the rich, okay? That whole narrative gets like spun and all sorts of out of control. Most of us sitting here, we are not rich, but yes. He's not trying to make the rich poor. He's talking about having the rich pay their fair share, okay? Because for those of us like, I don't know about you, but I can barely afford a tax person, right? Tax people are expensive as heck. But you have these billionaires who have like teams of lawyers and finding every single loophole possible to get through the cracks and not pay their fair share. So Bernie Sanders wants to do that, so that'll help fund the policies that he's talking about. But more importantly, and this is not brought up nearly enough. It's not brought up nearly enough, but we also need to understand that Bernie Sanders doesn't want to keep us in these endless offensive wars, right? And also he wants to decrease the military budget a little. Under Trump, we have increased the military budget and here's the thing. Like, it's like being the buffest dude in school or buffest woman in school and then taking steroids.  Dial it back just a little bit. Like, look at these graphs. Look at these graphs about where America is with the size of our military compared to other countries. Like, we got this, we're good, okay? We are fine, right? Like, I respect, I love our troops, fighting for our freedoms, trying to help out other countries and all that other stuff. But, but we don't need a ton of new tanks. We don't need a ton of new weapons. We don't need all these drones and everything like that. Like, just chill, maintain what you got. So, if we look at how much we're spending on the military, just taking a fraction of that, just a fraction of that will be more than enough to help pay for Medicare for all. And remember, that includes mental health care. That includes rehab. All right, so I'm gonna repeat what I said at the beginning of this. People in the United States are miserable. You can tell by the stats, okay? We have so many people struggling with depression. So many people struggling with anxiety. We are experiencing so many suicides each year. There are tens of thousands of drug overdose deaths every year as well. What if we can help make America's citizens happier so we quit trying to kill ourselves? You know what I'm saying? And that's one of the reasons why I support Bernie Sanders. And check it out. If you don't agree with me, that's cool. The only thing I ask is down in the comments below, just please be civil, just please be civil. But yeah, I just wanna make this video, do my part. I will link down below Tiffany Ferg's video on Bernie Sanders. I'm gonna link a video from Secular Talk. He's one of my favorite political commentators. I'm gonna link a video that he did, think a year ago about what democratic socialism actually is, because there's a lot of misconceptions about it. And then I'm gonna link a video from Samore News. He's hilarious and he recently did a video on Bernie Sanders not being electable. And just kind of like the smear campaigns and everything like that. But anyways, I would love to hear your thoughts if you have anything that, if I'm missing something, if there are other candidates who support making citizens happier than they currently are, which doesn't just mean money, because obviously we know money doesn't make us happy. But if you can point anything out that I'm missing, I'm more than happy to take a look. What I try to do, I'm constantly trying to see what other people are saying. Like other supporters are saying, I even check and see what Trump supporters are saying and conservatives are saying. Like I want to understand where they're coming from. But again, I wanted to make this video because I hear them saying one thing, but they're voting in a different direction. All right, we need to support policies and not so much politicians, okay? Like not just their personalities. We need to know what they stand for, okay? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon, as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at therewiredsoul.com and The Rewired Soul Merch. All right, thanks again for watching. Go out there and vote, and I'll see you next time.