Host Tom Bronson takes a break from his normal weekly business advice in this special episode of the Maximize Business Value podcast. In honor of the 245th 4th of July celebration, he starts by giving you 10 fun and interesting facts that inspired how the holiday is celebrated today. Then, Tom reads the entirety of the Declaration of Independence, which you might be hearing for the first time in many years. The story of the nation's independence is filled with hardship, perseverance, freedom and triumph, and is very similar to what it takes to start a business from nothing. Take some time during this holiday to reflect upon your business' journey!
Tom Bronson is the founder and President of Mastery Partners, a company that helps business owners maximize business value, design exit strategy, and transition their business on their terms. Mastery utilizes proven techniques and strategies that dramatically improve business value that was developed during Tom’s career 100 business transactions as either a business buyer or seller. As a business owner himself, he has been in your situation a hundred times, and he knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Want to chat more or think Tom can help you? Reach out at tom@masterypartners.com or check out his book, Maximize Business Value, Begin with The Exit in Mind (2020).
Mastery Partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to Maximize Business Value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we’ve learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom so you can succeed.
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Tom Bronson is a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He is currently the founder and President of Mastery Partners, Mastery Mergers & Acquisitions, and the Business Transition Summit. All three companies empower business owners to maximize business value and serve business owners in different capacities to help them achieve their dream exit. As a business owner, Tom has been in your situation a hundred times and knows what it takes to craft the right strategy. Bronson is passionate about helping business owners and has the experience to do it. Tom has two books to help business owners on their journey to a dream exit: "Maximize Business Value Playbook," (2023), and "Maximize Business Value, Begin with the EXIT in Mind," (2020). Both are available on Amazon.
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Announcer (5s):
Welcome to the maximize business value podcast. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners, to maximize business value so they can transition their business on their terms. Our mission was born from the lessons we've learned from over 100 business transactions, which fuels our desire to share our experiences and wisdom. So you can succeed. Now, here's your host CEO of mastery partners, Tom Bronson.
Tom Bronson (36s):
Hi this is Tom Bronson and welcome to maximize business value. A podcast for business owners who are passionate about building long-term sustainable value in their businesses. In This episode, I'm going to take a little break from our normal weekly business advice. This podcast is released on July 5th, 2021. The day after we celebrated our 245th, 4th of July as a nation. The story of how the United States of America went from being a group of English colonies to an independent nation is filled with hardship, perseverance, freedom, and triumph.
Tom Bronson (1m 19s):
Very similar to what it takes to own a business from nothing came, something. I want to start by giving you 10 fun and interesting facts that inspired how we celebrate the 4th of July today. And then I'm going to read the declaration of independence. Some of you may be hearing this for the very first time. We all studied it in school, but I can tell you that I was surprised as I read through it myself. So here are our fun facts. Number one, July 2nd is when the governing body of the 13 colonies voted for independence from Britain, the document, however, wasn't finalized until the fourth.
Tom Bronson (2m 0s):
That's the date on the document document and the official date that we celebrate. Number two, president John Adams refused to attend July 4th celebrations as a matter of principle because he thought the date was July 2nd. He of course died 50 years later on July 4th. Number three, the clause pursuit of happiness was originally pursuit of property, but we can think Ben Franklin who convinced Thomas Jefferson, that property was too narrow. A notion.
Tom Bronson (2m 41s):
Number four, even though Thomas Jefferson is known as the author of the declaration, it was written by a five man committee, three of whom you already know Jefferson, Franklin and Adams, and two other founding fathers. You may not know Roger Sherman, who was the only person to have all four great state papers of the United States. The continental association, the declaration of independence, the articles of Confederation and the constitution and Robert Livingston who administered the oath of office to George Washington. Our first president number five, the average age of the signers was 45 Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Tom Bronson (3m 28s):
And Edward Rutledge of South Carolina were only 26 when they signed it. And Ben Franklin was the oldest signer at 70 number six after the reading of the declaration by George Washington on July 9th in New York city in front of city hall, a riot broke out a statue of king George. The third was torn down and use to make 42,000 musket balls for the revolutionary army number seven, July 4th, 1777 was the first official celebration in Philadelphia. At the first celebration.
Tom Bronson (4m 9s):
13 cannons were fired. One for each of the colonies. Bells were rung and fireworks were set off. Number eight, 2.5 million people lived in the U S on the first 4th of July, 325,700,000 of here today. Number nine, Americans spend over $1 billion on fireworks every year. Number 10 American eat approximately 150 million hotdogs on the 4th of July. That's enough to stretch from DC to Los Angeles, more than five times.
Tom Bronson (4m 53s):
And I thought I'd throw in an extra bonus number 11. And this one is a shame. In my opinion, China makes the majority of American flags, approximately $3.3 million worth each year. Now I'm grateful to live in this great country. And so my gift to you, as we continue to celebrate this holiday is the declaration of independence read here from the original unedited text. I hope you enjoy it. And I'd like to know at the end, how many things you thought were surprising and how many words you had to look up. I'll give my answers at the, yeah, here we go.
Tom Bronson (5m 34s):
Congress, July 4th, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another. And to assume among the powers of the earth, the and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes, which impel them to the separation.
Tom Bronson (6m 17s):
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. And to Institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.
Tom Bronson (7m 19s):
And accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves, by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. It is their right. It is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security such has been the patient sufferings severance of these colonies and such as now the necessity, which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.
Tom Bronson (8m 13s):
The history of the present king of great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having indirect object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public. Good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation until his ascent should be obtained.
Tom Bronson (8m 53s):
And when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people. Unless those people would relinquish the rights of representation in the legislature, right in estimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies of places, unusual, uncomfortable, and distant to the repository of the public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Tom Bronson (9m 38s):
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people he has refused for a long time after such disillusions to cause others to be elected whereby legislative powers, incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large, where they're exercise the state remaining in the meantime, exposed to all dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within you has endeavored to prevent the population of these states.
Tom Bronson (10m 20s):
For that purpose, obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners refusing to pass others, to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his ascent of laws by establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone or the tenure of their offices and the amount of payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and to eat out their substance.
Tom Bronson (11m 8s):
He has kept us in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independence and superior to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his ascent to their acts of pretended legislation or ordering large bodies of army troops among us. For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment, for any murders, which they should commit on inhabitants of these states for cutting off our trade in all parts of the world.
Tom Bronson (11m 58s):
For imposing taxes on us without our consent for depriving us. In many cases, the benefits of jury by trial work transporting us beyond seas to be tried or pretended offenses. For abolishing the free system of English laws in the neighboring province, establishing their end and arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries. So as to render it once in the example and fit instrument, we're introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies. For taking away our charters abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments versus suspending our own legislators and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us.
Tom Bronson (12m 53s):
In all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun with the circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most Barbera's ranges and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
Tom Bronson (13m 38s):
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, and to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and he has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers. The merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. And every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms are repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
Tom Bronson (14m 29s):
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act, which may be, which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people, nor have we been wanting an intentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarranted jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of circumstances of our immigration and settlement. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these user patients, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
Tom Bronson (15m 22s):
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity we must therefore acquiesce to the necessity, which denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war. And in peace friends, we therefore the representatives of the United States of America in general, Congress assembled appealing to the Supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare that these United colonies are and of right ought be free and independent states.
Tom Bronson (16m 14s):
And they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is, and ought be totally dissolved. And that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may have. Right. Do, and for the support of this declaration and affirm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
Tom Bronson (17m 5s):
Boy, that is an amazing document. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. What are the things that you thought about? What are the, what are the things that come up that you haven't thought of, that you hadn't ever read? Anything in there that you found surprising? Well, this is the maximize business value podcast, where we normally give practical advice to business owners on how to build long-term sustainable value in your business. Be sure to tune in each week and follow us wherever you found this podcast, and be sure to comment and tell us anything that you thought was surprising in the declaration of independence.
Tom Bronson (17m 50s):
And if you're brave enough Nellis, how many words you want to go look up? I can tell you impression time in the, in the words of our famous first president, George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. I looked up green words, happy independence day until next time. I'm Tom Bronson reminding you to reflect on your freedoms while you maximize business value.
Announcer (18m 22s):
Thank you for tuning into the maximize business value podcast with Tom Brunson. This podcast is brought to you by mastery partners, where our mission is to equip business owners to maximize business value so they can transition on their terms. Learn more on how to build long-term sustainable business value and get free value building tools by visiting our website, www.masterypartners.com that's master with a Y masterypartners.com. Check it out.
Announcer (18m 52s):
<inaudible> that was perfect. I wouldn't make any changes.