David Collinsworth

I was born and raised in Chandler, Arizona, back when there were around 30,000 people living there, and probably just as many cows. Today, it's a modern city with a population of around 275,000 people. For the first 5 years of my life, my family lived in a mobile home, literally on the wrong side of the tracks. Shortly after that, my dad, Dan Collinsworth, started his own house painting business, and my parents worked tirelessly over many years to pull our family up into the middle class. Growing up, my 3 siblings and I had the opportunity to see how hard work and small business ownership could result in the attainment of the American dream. There are many paths to the middle class and beyond, but the one my parents chose taught us a valuable lesson: we could create something from nothing. It's a simple truth about life that has stuck with me all these years, and one that I put to work in my own life 12 years ago.

14 years ago, I went back to school after many years in restaurant management and a few years in construction. 2 years later, I was nearing the end of 2 simultaneous associate degrees (120 credits in 2.5 years) when I had my first big idea, something that didn't exist yet. The details aren't important (if you ask nicely, I might show you the prototypes), but what is important is all of the life lessons I learned. Taking that product from idea, through multiple prototypes I built myself (one of my degrees is in fabrication, the other is in science), to writing a patent application (because I didn't have enough money to hire a patent attorney), to finally attempting to sell the idea to several extremely large manufacturing businesses that you know and love. At the time, it was truly an epic journey, but looking back now, it was only the start of a vastly bigger journey. It’s a journey that I am still on, and one that I don’t expect will end until my time here is done.

So what did I learn? I learned that if I was willing to climb over every barrier in my way, I could do something really big; I could turn an idea into something real. I also learned that pushing myself to my limits in every way, and ultimately failing to get the outcome I desired, wouldn't kill me. The disappointment wouldn't break me. In fact, because I learned so much during that process, and honored that spark of creativity within me, my ability to take on bigger and more complex problems kept growing. That process of having a big idea, struggling to make it a reality, and learning from my failures repeated multiple times over the last decade. It has been a brutal process, but it has also completely altered the trajectory of my life. I've overcome an unbelievable number of obstacles and it has turned me into someone with an extremely wide and deep set of skills and knowledge, and because none of those big ideas resulted in massive success (yet), it also kept me fiercely driven.

You would think that pushing yourself to the edge physically, mentally, and emotionally for over a decade would eventually break you, but it has had the opposite effect on me. Because I've put in over 10,000 hours (on top of running my home repair business full-time) of constant entrepreneurial grind over the last decade, I've become unbreakable. It's my unbreakable mindset, and my wide-ranging knowledge and interests, that finally collided with a new interest in 2015, politics.

Like many Americans, I was not a fan of talking about politics. It always felt like a circular conversation with no clear answers. For someone like me, who is constantly solving problems, talking about politics felt like the definition of insanity. Why talk about something when it makes no difference? Why bother learning about policy when there's no mechanism to influence policy without writing big checks to politicians? The system has gotten so bad that we don't vote for a candidate because we believe they will fight for US; we vote to keep someone worse out of office, if we vote at all. Trust in our government, and the people that we elect to run it, is critically low. Things are so bad that a small, but significant, percentage of Americans think that political violence might be necessary. It's utter madness. 

Like many Americans, I went from being completely turned off by politics in 2015 to deeply concerned about where things were headed in 2016. It was during this time that I had my most profound idea yet. A completely new, simple (the best ideas always are), yet all-encompassing approach to politics that would give real legislative power to The People without violence and without requiring the permission of anyone already in power. A political movement powered by the people, ALL The People, from every political persuasion. If you want to have your voice heard, and count everyday, not just election day. If you want laws that reflect what is in the best interests of ALL of US. If you want a clear path to creating a better future for our kids, there is a platform for that and it's appropriately named Stakeholders Voice.

Creating a platform that puts the legislative power to create public policy into the hands of voters is definitely a big idea. Unfortunately, having real power in the policymaking process isn't enough if you want to turn that policy into laws that actually make your life better. Passing laws requires a direct path to seats of power; you need a structured, grass roots movement for that. That's why Stakeholders Voice is a platform to learn about, and create, policies at every level of our government. That's why Stakeholders Voice is also an online, and offline, movement made up of every type of American that wants their government to start representing them instead of the interests of those already in power. That's why Stakeholders Voice is also a political party that takes regular people, just like you and me, that are Stakeholders Voice Members and elevates them to elected positions of power where they pledge to represent the will of their fellow Members above all else. But that's not all; a pledge is only as good as the mechanisms in place to enforce it. That's why the final pillar of the Stakeholders Voice Movement is accountability. We have lawyers to enforce the contract signed by each Stakeholders Voice Candidate before they ever get a chance to run for elected office with our backing, and we will also hold them accountable in the media if they fail to follow the pledge they took.

Stakeholders Voice is a layer of direct democracy that sits right on top of our current representative democracy. It doesn't break our current system in any way, yet it still manages to create transparency and accountability at every level of our government. I came up with the term Directed Democracy to accurately describe the hybrid nature of it. Directed Democracy adds informed policy creation, transparency, and accountability to the traditional framework of representative democracy. Unlike pure direct democracy, which relies solely on the direct participation of citizens in decision-making, Directed Democracy maintains our current structure of elected representation but enhances it with mechanisms that ensure government actions and policies accurately reflect the true Will of The People.

Think of Directed Democracy as the secret sauce in politics. It mixes in clear expectations, transparency, and accountability. It's the perfect ingredient to make our government work for ALL of US. There has never been a time when this type of hybrid approach was more needed than today. Lucky for us, the technology exists to make it possible.

I hope all of this doesn't come across as some sort of peacocking. My goal is to show you how someone that came from nothing could go on to one day make a dent in the world. Indeed, some of the greatest men and women in history have come from the same or worse conditions through a combination of sheer determination, hard work, and being ready when opportunity presented itself. My goal is not for you to envy me, it's for you to really see me.

I truly hope your journey to meaning and impact is faster and less painful than mine has been. I don't wish my journey on anyone, but at the same time I wouldn't go back and change a single thing because it has molded me into someone that can solve big, complex problems. Maybe your journey is to take my torch and carry it farther than I can; maybe your journey is to make a dent in a completely different way. We all have the ability to start today, and never stop becoming the very best versions of ourselves. Never forget, if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. If you aren't satisfied with your life, or the world as it is, use that as fuel to become the best version of yourself.

There's obviously more to my story, including a myriad of personal obstacles that I’ve had to overcome, but those are stories for another time. I truly hope that every single person reading this will be part of the rest of my story. I truly hope that I will become part of YOUR story.

Grateful for You,

David Collinsworth