FreedomWorks

My name is Michael Higgins, and I am an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is
providing for oneʼs own needs and desires. It can sometimes involve others, but you
decide who is on your team.

I am not employed. I am not unemployed. I am definitely not self-employed. By
definition, an “employee” is a slave. An “employer” is a slave-master. Weʼve only moved
a short distance from the plantation to the “plant.” I think itʼs time that those conditions
ended, and I have worked hard to ensure that they definitely donʼt apply to me.
In a free-market economy (as if we still had one), it is up to the individual to utilize his
skills, ideas, and determination to create something in the marketplace which will
support his needs, and eventually provide for his dreams. It doesnʼt require a license,
unless one works in alcohol, tobacco, firearms, or explosives, or other area of federal
jurisdiction. As upheld by the Supreme Court, it is a right to work, not a privilege. The
Constitution of the United States prohibits States from passing laws that interfere in the
obligation of private contracts (Art I, sec. 10). The federal government has no authority
to do the same either (Am. IX, and X). Private contract is the core of commerce, and we
as a nation need to get back to basics.

My choice of product/service is music. In my music, I remind the listener that the only
rights one has, are the rights one is willing to proclaim and defend. While “common
knowledge” says that we need to get good grades, go to college, and get a J.O.B.
(justify our boss), it is the group who ignores that mandate that actually makes real
progress in the world. Westinghouse didnʼt wait for a degree; Henry Ford dropped out of Yale, and Walt Disney, Bill Gates, and Milton Hershey didnʼt get their genius in college.

The key to successful entrepreneurialism is to surround yourself with others who have
the skills that you donʼt. If you are an idea person, but canʼt keep a schedule to save
your life, then partner with someone who is very organized. If you can imagine the end
product, but donʼt have any mechanical engineering skills, then partner with a craftsman
who has the skills you lack. Not many people can do it all! The universe is plentiful, not
scarce, and there is enough wealth to share.
Life is too short to be unhappy in a J.O.B. It isnʼt the destination that matters, but the
journey. If you had a choice, wouldnʼt you do what you loved the most and get paid to
do it? You DO have a choice!

I had a J.O.B. for over ten years. It was in the missile and satellite industry, and it paid
well. After eight years, I was given the opportunity to get a degree, and have my
education paid for by the company. Since I was at the top of my pay grade and doing
the job of a degreed engineer (without the corresponding engineerʼs pay), I decided to
get my Computer Science degree. Sixteen months later, I graduated with a Bachelorʼs
degree (Summa Cum Laude) and showed my piece of paper to the HR manager. Boy,
was he surprised! He thought it would take seven years (going part time) to achieve

what I did. Thatʼs when the lid on the box was opened. I was told that the company
couldnʼt make me an engineer in the same department, even with the degree. It was at
that time that an epiphany occurred. I wanted to stop contributing to the death of my
fellow man, and start living every day with joy. I wanted to stop jumping through hoops
provided by my employer at every turn, and start determining my own rules and goals.
I retired in December of 1990 at 32 years of age, and began looking at what would
make me happy instead of what would help me accumulate nothing but material wealth
(and bad karma). Multimedia was an emerging industry, and I fell into it quite by
accident. A radio station contest (paying a $10,000 first place award) introduced me to
the process of music video creation, including the steps of story-boarding, video taping,
editing, and home recording studio technology. By the end of the project, I knew that I
had found my calling. I had never had so much fun in such a short amount of time. A
technicality prohibited me from winning the contest, but the lesson learned turned out to
be priceless!

As a guitarist/keyboardist/drummer/vocalist, I had always dreamed of being on stage to
entertain large audiences. As an amateur lecturer on the Constitution and Declaration of
Independence, I enjoyed educating those who cared about what this nation was
founded upon. What if the two could be put together? It was then that I coined the
phrase “edutainment” and began to work on a way to put music and education into one

product.
I was side-tracked from 1991 to 1995 putting together CD-ROM based curricula for the
K-12 market, but never lost the goal of producing the edutainment product in hopes of
reaching our youth before the concept of liberty was lost forever from the public school
system curriculum. In 1996, the band I wanted to create finally formed in its first
iteration. Called Element 115, because of the unlimited power it contained, the band
started writing and recording songs which entertained, but also educated those willing to
listen closely to the message. That first version of the band was missing something to
make the project stand out among its competition though.

In 2001, the concept of incorporating a virtual character into the band came to me, and I
started using my accumulated skills in computer programming, animation, video editing,
and digital audio to create the character AL, who is a UFO ALIEN with a love for
drumming and classic rock. The first version of AL was an extremely tedious process
involving frame-by-frame posing and rendering for every drum and cymbal hit that a
drummer would do for each and every song he was to play. At 32 man-hours of
programming time per song minimum, I soon realized that the task was unreasonable
for the equipment and time I could dedicate to it.

A more efficient process needed to be created, so I developed a MIDI to animation
converter program. This allows me to sit at my digital drum set, play the song into the
computer which creates a MIDI file, and then give that MIDI file to my program, allowing
AL to play the file in real-time. Now, a song takes 20 minutes to go from my head to a
completed animated movie for the stage. In addition, I wrote another program which

lists all of the songs in our playlist, and allows me to select the order of performance on
the fly, so the show can be tailored to the audience response, song by song.
The result is an amazing show with an animated virtual character playing drums with his

human band-mates. What could be cooler than that?
Remember the concept of surrounding yourself with talent that you donʼt have yourself?
Since I canʼt play every instrument live on stage, I needed like-minded individuals with
the same goals, who had the talent to do what I canʼt. My wife played some piano, and
had always wanted to play bass, so she taught herself to play bass guitar. Our son, who
has been home-schooled from 3rd through 11th grades, including music, wanted to play
guitar and piano. He joined the band at 15 years of age, and has become an
accomplished guitarist/keyboardist. With a family of multi-instrument musicians, and an
ALIEN drummer, Element 115 has become a reality and has performed at the 2007 and
2008 Roswell UFO Festivals, and several concerts in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and

soon in Nevada and California as well.
The service of our live performance is accompanied by the products of CDs, T-shirts,
autographed photos, refrigerator magnets, and other goodies with ALʼs face on them.
With the recent release of formerly classified UFO documents in Britain, Europe has
joined Russia and Japan in its increased interest in the subject. Element 115 intends to
make itself available to the world and share the knowledge of self-determination, and a
return to “ma and pa” commerce.
Entrepreneurialism is the providing for oneʼs own needs and desires. It requires selfdetermination,
a careful analysis of oneʼs own abilities and skills, and the willingness to
join with others when necessary or desired to share the success and joy of providing for
oneself. It is the antithesis of government “cradle-to-grave” mentality, and counterproductive
government meddling in the business affairs of the people. In a time where
tens of thousands of employees are becoming unemployed every month, and megacorporations
are rife with corruption and greed, entrepreneurs could be the salvation of
this countryʼs economy, and its honor.

http://www.Element115theBand.com