Closing the Generation Gaps Feat: Gramps Jeffrey

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hosted by Dr. Dustin Steffey co hosted by Jaden Norvell this is chopping fire the number one business and self development podcast on Apple podcast finds at www.choppinwithfire.com Without further ado enjoy the episode what is going on shop nation welcome back to another episode shopping with fire co host Jade Norville, and your host Steffey Doctor,

doctor doctor sorry

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Yes. So you guys got excuse the staff. He's got a little blue crook in his voice today. But in doing so, why don't you introduce our guest he's devastate.

So yeah, we're excited. We are about to kick off a guest. He goes by the name of gramps Jeffrey for his pen name. He's written a numerous amount of books. He is specialized in the baby boomer generation. And his strategy is getting the baby boomer generation more involved in bridging the gap between that generation and our current generations. I'm going to introduce Mr. Gramps, Geoffrey, on with us. We appreciate having you. How are you today?

I appreciate you inviting me. It's gonna be fun.

We're very excited to have you on this Jeffrey's and I appreciate you coming in. We've been doing our research. So this is going to be an exciting topic I think needs to be touched on, especially for older listeners. We want to do all we can to help and this is kind of a good step away from crypto. We've been doing a lot of crypto talk and it's been amazing. And if you guys are looking for more crypto from us November, I think we've week before Thanksgiving, or week after this before it before. If you're in Fort Collins, we're gonna have a lecture, open discussion with all majority of our guests that we've had on to discuss crypto. More information will be available as we get closer to that, but it's never too early to get the word out.

But I mean, I'm excited to shift gears, let's get back to our roots, which is entrepreneurship. Yeah. So Mr. Jeffrey, if you could go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know some information.

Yes, my latest adventure is writing my children's book, which is I don't want to turn three. And the reason I wrote this book is you know, living this past year because of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 isolation except for being able to be with my family and give me special time to kind of watch and interact with all my grandkids. I gotta tell you what a trip because I've got six of these kids and they all have a different personalities as you guys all know, the one thing they do have in common is their sense of curiosity. how excited they get when they do accomplish something, you know, watching them grow year to year and how they interact with each other really is the basis for this book. I don't want to turn three, you know, what goes through a toddler's mind that the parents are so desperate to understand? When does a toddler really start to understand the difference between me and us? You know, this for the book kind of find, can fill that out, you know, what out is a family find that out together. Now, as a baby boomers, we talked about myself, trying to understand the world has evolved since I was three years old is really also part of the story. You know, my parents didn't have cell phones. They didn't have the internet, they didn't have cable TV, they didn't have remotes, so I was my dad's remote, he say, Son, go change the channel, you know, I'd be the remote of the day. So, so my parents definition of discipline, and it's quite different from the parents of today. You know, as today's world made for a better place for children to grow up, I'll let your your listeners kind of answer that question. You know, how we retreated when I was growing up versus how we're treating our kids today? So that's really the theme of this book is, you know, it's about when does any one of us begin to take responsibility for our actions? Is it three years old is 13 years old? Is it 23 years old? You know, again, I got plenty of baby boomers that are 63 years old, that still don't take responsibility for their actions. And so that's really the theme of what this is all about. How do you

feel about the current landscape of Business and Entrepreneurship right now versus kind of when you were growing up? Like, what are your thoughts and feelings?

Well, I guess, probably go go back deeper into my background. And I started my life in business. When I was growing up, I joined a retail chain stores. And I spent the early part of my life and the retail business and also the wholesale business. And then finally decided that I wanted to be an entrepreneur myself. And interestingly enough, my parents were entrepreneurs. So I went back to my roots, where my parents were entrepreneurs. And I decided to do my own thing. So I started a couple businesses, one business I sold to investors and the other business I took public, and the company that I took public, became the premier business to business site on the internet, where we sell in case quantity that small businesses all around the world, shipping off at the state round and 40 foreign countries, our customer base, or the moms and pops are survive and thriving as the chains. So during this time, when I wrote my first book, it's called the secrets of retailing, how to beat Walmart. And this book is a step by step guide on how to open a business. So there's 15 chapters, each chapter talks about something different, how to hire the best people, where to find your location, how do you find your suppliers and negotiate with them? How do you do marketing on the internet? How do you do marketing in real life? And the last chapter is the exit strategy. How do you sell your business? So that was my first book. And that was, that was my life into into entrepreneurship. And the reason I wrote the book is because our customers were calling me saying, how do you run a business? What do you need to do? And so I figured the smartest thing to do would be to write a book. So going back to being an entrepreneur today versus an entrepreneur before, today, in my mind, this is the best time in our country's history for people to become entrepreneurs. You know, why do you say that? Why is this the best time to become an entrepreneur? Well, you know, I gotta tell you what I did. 20 years ago, when you were 20 years ago, when when you were opening a business, you know, you would open up a business in your small town, and your customer base in your small town. So you may have 100 customers, a couple 100 customers, but today's world being on the internet, you have the opportunity to reach 1000s and 1000s of customers you had no chance to reach 20 years ago. I mean, this is what the internet has done for us. This is what this is why this is the best time. I encourage any of your listeners that if you're going oh, this is the time to open up a business. Because you can find customers that look like your customers all over the country all over the world. So that's my philosophy right now. You're thinking about opening a business, no matter how old you are, no matter what generation you come from, do it.

So how do we we know that there are different generations in the workforce right now multiple generations? How do we take all of those generations and bridge the gaps? So we all can learn from each other and be the best workforce that we can be best entrepreneurs that we can be? best people we can be because we have so many differences. And I feel like the differences are what makes it negative for us almost because we can't get past.

Well, interestingly enough 40% of today's businesses, small and medium sized businesses are owned by baby boomers. And so there's going to be a dramatic shift over the next 20 years in entrepreneurship in business here in the United States, because these baby boomers are going to die, and they gotta pass it on, or they're going to get tired of it, and they're gonna sell it. So, you know, this gives all the other generations an opportunity, number one to buy their businesses, or take over for their businesses. Because, you know, when you start a business in today's world, it's very difficult. As you all know, 50% of businesses fail in the first five years, I mean, that's a scary number, who in the right mind is going to take a chance where, you know, they have a 50% chance of failing. Now, if you step back a second, and take a look at what causes failures in businesses, you know, the the most common reasons the businesses fail, is there's no market for your product, that's 40% of the time, that's why businesses fail. So what happens is, and I learned this early on being a buyer for a department store, is, when you buy when you look fine products, it can't be what you like, it's got to be what customers want. So many of us come up and pick up, we think we got the greatest idea since sliced bread, and we develop a product, but we're the only one that wants it. So you're always gonna go beyond that, you got to figure out what is it is that you've got to carry or run a business that the other people want. So that's why 40% of these businesses fail is, you know, they don't have the right product, and they don't have the right service, and they're not in the right place, you know, 30% of the businesses fail, because they have a lack of capital. If you're going to start a business today, you know, you've got to make sure that you've got six months of salary and operating expenses in the bank, before you even open up your doors. Because you got to just figure you're gonna have six months and with no sales, so you've got to have the capital, and many of us go into businesses to become an entrepreneur. And you know, we got this great idea, but we don't have the money to do it, and we run out of money to sell. So that causes 30% of why small businesses fail, then another 25% of small businesses fail, because you don't have the right teamwork. You don't have the right, you know, communications. Yeah, the one thing you have to do, if you're an entrepreneur, is you need to realize what your weaknesses are, and find people to support that. Because none of us do well, when we're doing our weaknesses. You know, don't take me for example, I don't like accounting, I just, I can't be there for eight hours a day just doing numbers. You know, if that if I had to do that I would have failed, I have to find somebody who loves that, you know, my passion is marketing and sales and all that kind of good stuff. But if you gotta surround yourself with people that do things better than you do, and once you bite the bullet and say that you can't do it all, you know, then you get over this. But yes, today is the best time to open up a business in my opinion.

We know technology is beneficial. In my studies, though, there's a gap with respect to technology based off of which generation is using the technology. Now this isn't to say that nobody in the baby boomer generation isn't smart with technology, but they weren't born with a computer coming out of the womb like some of us were right. And so how do we bridge that gap? So we're all on the same page, while we're trying to learn together and pass down this wealth of information to be successful?

Well, you're absolutely right. The the this generation coming up these kids one to 10 year old today, they are going to be the greatest generation this this world has ever seen. Because boom, they pop right out of the womb, they're on the internet, they're on their cell phones. They're understanding all of these electronics. These kids two, three and four year old, they could do things that we can't do is Baby Boomers just an amazing thing. So, so, you know what we as parents, and we, as grandparents, have got to be able to balance these kids with the outside world, you know, athletics, we've got to be the ones that push him to go outside and play. You know, we're the ones that have to, you know, to do things with them that you You know, that they normally would do because otherwise they'd be just stuck doing the internet all day long, you know, and that's what we as adults have to do. And probably the best thing we could do as adult with these kids, is as soon as they are one year old or less, start reading books to them. Now, books are the way to balance all this electronic stuff, which is great that they are learning. Now, when you think about why is it so important for us as parents and grandparents to read bookstore kids? Well, you know, it gives you there's all kinds of reasons why we do that, and I'll take it from a grandfather's kind of view of baby boomers kind of view, you know, you got a little kid sitting on your lap, you got him for 20 minutes, you're opening up a book together, you know, the first thing it does, it creates a lot of bonding. And, you know, it gives you that special time, nice time to spend together, that the two of you can just be there for 20 minutes, and Bond, you know, and that's what every generation needs, they need to be able to bond with their parents, their grandparents, and so forth. So you start that off at a very early age. Another reason that we need to be reading books to these kids, as soon as they come are born, is it supports listening skills. Now you and I know, as we get into our adult world, that listening skills are the best skills that we have. Now the words, you're doing a podcast, you have to listen, before you could ask the questions, you know, you've got to do that. And I'm trying to build a business. All right, you gotta listen before I do. So. So listening skills, if we can get this into these little this newest generation as fast as possible, so that they listen, before they act, it's going to just increase our influence on them, and how they grow up. Another reason we need to be reading these books to these kids all the time, is it helps with the cognitive and language development. You know, there are plenty of words in these books that these kids don't understand. So gives you a chance to explain them to them. Now, there's plenty of words in these books, I don't understand, I gotta go look them up. But you know, it just gives you that chance to communicate. And, you know, we tell you, Yes, the question, what do you do, we have to communicate, you know, we have to be talking to each other, we can't assume we all know everything. So this is what books are good for. And you know, the other reason is, when you think about it, 234 year olds bounce off the wall day long, you got him in your lap, you got him there for 20 minutes, it helps with the attention span. If you think about your attention span, you know, he concentration, self discipline, whether you're an athlete, or anything else, you've got to have this attention span. So I would encourage all of your listeners to step back and think about how can I communicate with all the different generations? Let's start with the youngest. Let's teach them how to communicate, let's teach them how to read, let's teach them how to listen how to how to get involved. And if we can start doing that. And then obviously, it's gonna bleed out through all generations,

how are we getting the Baby Boomers to participate in passing down this information? What are some of the things that you're doing? Aside from obviously, the website, and your books that you're writing? How are you getting people to get up and take a call to action?

Interestingly enough, not enough baby boomers really care. There are 30% of the baby boomers of today that are constantly called Remote. Okay, that means that they only get involved maybe to go to a birthday party for a kid, maybe they go to Christmas for a kid, but they only they're not really involved in, in the raising of these kids. Think about that. One out of every three baby boomers and seniors just are not involved in passing on their knowledge. Yeah, that's a that's a very scary thing. What what causes it? So you know, why, why do that? Well, a lot of this is caused by the baby boomers themselves, okay, and their relationship with their own children. Now, a lot of baby boomers don't like the spouse that the their their child marry, you know, so they said, I'm not gonna get involved with that, you know, they divide spouses and cause generations anxiety by you know, giving unsolicited advice to mom or dad, that they really don't want to know or they they, they disrespect their kids by all of a sudden is showing up their house gives them what that stuff anymore. So baby boomers are being pushed away a lot of it by themselves, but some of it by their own action, you're undermining the parents authority by challenging what a parent is teaching their children. You know, parents question the parent their kids values and family structure that causes this third of 1/3 of the grandparents just to be pushed away in a tendency to play favorites and money. populate kind of siblings, you know, we all have favorite grandchildren. We shouldn't verbalize that you don't say that out loud. You know, you got your favorites, keep it inside, you know, because this causes problems. You know, we try to buy our kids or grandkids through money, yes, vacations, doesn't work. We don't have an overall empathy. We that we don't understand. I want to share feelings with our little kids. Know that let's do it. And then you know, this is very crucial. When you're a little kid, you need empathy, you need understanding, you need the hugs, you need the love. So we don't do that grandparents who demand a grandchild comply or respect them that causes a big divide. So, you know, think about it, you got 1/3 of baby boomers and grandparents. So just, you know, they figured, hey, I raise my kids, they're good enough, they'll raise their kids, I got my life to live. And, you know, in today's world, we gotta go get involved. It takes a village to raise a kid, you know, there are a lot of single parents. And so the grandma and grandpa have to get in the ball and aunts and uncles need to get involved cousins have to get involved, you know, because that's a total experience of what a kid finally grows up. They see it all. And so I guess that's my message, not a question

about the next generation. So they're growing up with phones in the internet that can answer any question they have. He knows it and everything's based off algorithms. So the first question is, are they really? Are they getting smarter? Or are they getting dumber because they're able before, if you're curious about something, you go library, you could go to get a book, and there'd be words in there, you didn't understand, and you become smarter. But now with internet, it's an algorithm for what you understand already. So they're not, there's not as much challenge I feel like. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on that if if you think technology is good, we have things like Google where you can search anything you want, or is the old fashioned way of having to do it yourself better in the long run,

technology is great, never lose sight of that it gets better every day, we get smarter every day, you get smarter, I get smarter, and we'll get smarter. But we have to balance that our role as adults, whether you're the uncle, or the grandparent, or the parent, is it's necessary for us to teach children how to think not what to think they're going to learn to do that. But we need to teach them how to think so even when they go on the internet looking for actions. You know, they're learning how to think. And it goes back to you know, I just encourage your listeners, make sure they're reading through their kids, because that starts the process of teaching them how to think, you know, before you even sit down to read to your child, you want to say to them, what do you think's going to happen to this book? Alright, so start getting to the thing, you know, again, that's, that's one of the reasons you should be reading for once. You know, once we're in the book and reading, you know, you asked your child, what are the characters in this book? What are the settings, see if they can read? Again, we're teaching them how to think, you know, there's anything in this book sound familiar to you? Keep asking, keep asking questions. And then you know, at the end, much like you should be doing every night at dinner with your children, ask them how their best day was, you want to ask them? What was your favorite part of this book? And why teach them how to think if we teach them how to think, and they use the internet, they're just going to get so much smarter, because they're going to start to challenge everything that they see.

You said 1/3 of they don't take the time with their child. So what would the effects be if someone didn't take the time to teach your child how to think and then they were using the internet,

the effects could possibly be that these kids grow up, just very into themselves. They don't have the relationships, it's you well know. You need relationships and everything you do in sports, you need relationships, you gotta have your team, you know, unless you're playing tennis, you know, you're you're out there as a team. And so you've got to have these relationships. So we've got to build these relationships as early as possible.

That leads spread to my next question. You said your parents didn't have phones, they didn't, you know, they didn't have anything, Facebook, none of that. So the social aspect was very different. How do you think it's affecting kids now with technology and just being able to text your friends? How has that changed?

Well, I think the social aspect is different today. Because we're so scattered all over the country with our families. And when I was growing up, I grew up in a small town in Ohio. And my uncle lived up the street. My grandmother lived a couple blocks away and we were we were, there was a great family kind of thing, but in today's world, Take me for example, I live here in Scott Still Arizona. I've got a couple of my grandkids here in Scottsdale, but I got two more in Austin, Texas and two more in Orlando, Florida. You know, we're apart. You know, how do you how do you keep in touch? How do you even influence them? When they're not down the street? You know, so it's a whole different dynamic than when I was growing up.

It's crazy. I mean, 100,000 miles apart, just call somebody like two seconds. Oh, you know,

here's, here's what I did, to kind of keep in touch with my kids don't live here. You know, again, you know, they're all here for about six, seven here for six weeks during the pandemic, because we're all stuck together. Okay, so the chance to really understand our hackers they lived in our house, they lived in our house, they saw exactly what we're doing. And one thing I found out before kids, two, three, and four or five years old, the one language they have, we do not have is they all love dinosaurs. If you talk to a little kid today, 2345 years old, they know everything about dinosaurs, they, you know, a little three year old can give you a long name on a dinosaur, and they can tell you, if the meet and who their friends were and all this, you know, I know dinosaurs are small, medium, and large. I mean, they they are really in the dinosaurs. So I was able to take that philosophy where all these kids just loved dinosaurs. That's their language I saw even when they went out to play with other kids, dinosaurs came up almost immediately. So what happened was when the kids left for Texas and Florida, you know, we figured out how are you going to keep in touch with these kids, because you know, out of sight out of mind, they don't call you. When you're two, three years old, you don't pick up the phone and call it you gotta keep calling them. So we decided that every night, we were going to have We have six dinosaurs here in the house, we were going to have the dinosaurs do something different every night. So one night they were in the refrigerator eating blueberries the next night, they were at the sink with grandma, washing dishes with soap on their nose. Next night, they were playing the piano the next night, they were walking up the steps. So we have 50 different nights of these dinosaurs inside the house and outside the house, that we're doing something different. So what happened is we became part of the routine of my kids in Texas in Orlando, you know, they would take their bath, they were parents would read a book. And then they would say their mom and dad, what are the dinosaurs doing tonight? And so they call us on my wife's phone and we would do FaceTime. And they say, Where's gramps was Gramps? What are the dinosaurs doing tonight? You know. So that's our way of how we communicated. I'm sure your listeners can come up with other ways to do it. So you can stay connected? Because that's the key in today's world with us being all over the country. You know, how do you stay connected? And how can you influence his greatest generation because, again, they are going to be the smartest generation this world has ever seen.

Let's the swinging back to business here for our entrepreneurs, and especially baby boomer entrepreneurs, if they're doing the How could they start a business advice for starting a business now, as an entrepreneur versus you know, back in the day with technology, what are some some suggestions you'd give our listeners,

I immediately tell you to go on the internet and search your business on the internet today. Reason being is that again, 20 years ago, if you had a business, you had 100 customers in your town, now you can talk to the world. So all you really need is a good idea or a good product or a something that is just a little bit different than everybody else. Because number one, you can sell it on all the the marketplaces whether it's Amazon or Etsy or eBay, there's plenty of outside places that you can make arrangements with to sell your product, you can sell your own product on your own site. You know, back 20 years ago, it was expensive to open a business, you had to find a location, you had to hire people, you had to stock the inventory, he had to pay your rent, you know, the market. Those expenses don't exist to date, if you're smart enough to use the internet. So if any of your listeners are just thinking about going into business, and only have a few dollars, that's where you begin, pick a product, pick a service go after on the internet. That's what this great technology has done for us. We can now communicate to the world where before we could only communicate in our neighborhood.

What's your favorite book that you've read written out of all of them? Which one do you I'm sure you like them all. But which one do you gravitate towards the

most I'm gravitating towards the most. I don't want to turn three. I reason being it's a it's a book. It's a true story. Okay. In other words, this is the book and it's based on a true story of my six kids. All the pictures in the book are pictures that I took and I sent them to the kids and I sent them to the illustrator and she made them into a cartoon, but you know, like the The cover the book is Jackson and Levi in the bathtub. That's when Levi loves wearing goggles in the bathtub. So that's why that's all about. But, but that's what it's all about. It's a true story. You know, it came from my kids. And it's a story of, you know, it's a kid's book. So it's 20 takes you 20 minutes to read, it's 32 pages long. But the story is that Jordan is turning three tomorrow. He's stealing all this cousin's toys whenever these with them. And then they finally find that he, that he that he has all these toys stolen, in the family comes together, and the dad calls them together. This is where dad is really the hero in the book. And cause what are you gonna do about this? You know, and Olivia, who was eight at the time, came up with the idea and this is again, true story that they should donate all of the their toys and all his birthday gifts to the homeless kids downtown. And so that's the whole theme of the book and, and recruits I've written over 100 articles for The Huffington Post, and a lot of my articles around the nonprofit world, homeless, the, you know, the education, animals and things like that. So we've got things like that. Here, I'll read your pages book, this kind of this will tell you this, I'll tell you what it is. So this is a this is a page in the book. And this is when Olivia finds that, that her cousin took all of their toys. Then all of a sudden Olivia screams what are my dancing shoes doing in Jordan's room, the entire family runs to my private bedroom and Jackson yells my dinosaurs and Levi shrieks, my sea creatures, Baker ball struck Grace cries my dolls. And mommy looks at me like today will be my last day ally. That's why I gravitate to this book.

What's what's a couple of ways our listeners can get a hold of you, if they have questions. And then of course to buy your books, social medias?

Well, obviously, you can buy either one of the books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble about 100 other sites, come to my sites grants jeffrey.com Or I didn't want to turn three.com or if any of your listeners want to continue this conversation, just email me at Graham's jeffrey@gmail.com Be glad to talk about that. But you know, my latest adventure is along with three other baby boomers, we are starting the site, baby boomer.org. And this is a site that's going to live now if any of your listeners want to go into but we really launched it next month. And it's a site to bring all the baby boomer generation together 70 million baby boomers out there. It's a big number of people. And it's it's about talking about, you know, all the things that we as baby boomers have in common, you know, and that's really the reason we built a site. I mean, the generation Baby Boomer generation is just as diverse of the generations that we have before us are just as diverse is that as soon as your generation or the generation is growing up? So whether it's in politics there is diverse, their religion is just as diverse. But the one thing the baby boomers do have in common is a shared experience. Okay, in our generation, I mean, you can say what your what your shared excitement, but in our generation, you know, we have both of the Kennedys assassinated, we lived through that we had Martin Luther King assassinated you know that we had the landing on the moon. We had birth control became starting to get widespread during our generation. Vietnam, you know, that was that influenced both sides Kent State where the Four people were killed. I mean, that was all part of our generation. We had rice and streets. We have now two but we had major ones back in the late 60s. We put the music holds us together, you know whether you're Elvis, Beatles association of Beach Boys or Three Dog nighters, Supremes, you know that holds us all together? You got movies that hold us together you know whether it's which cast the Sundance Kid or JAWS or any of the Spielberg movies or animal house or Star Wars at the godfather? I mean, those are all generational things and we have so so that's why we're we built the baby boomer.org is a chance for all the Baby Boomers to get together and yeah, your generation to should sign up and it's free to sign out so because there's going to be a lot of you know, what other people do how can we help the younger people what so it's really a generational kind of site. So that's that's what I'm working on right now.

Awesome. I checked it out it looks really good. Interesting stuff there you guys check that out. As always guys, you can reach us at chopping feiyr.com Same thing for Instagram check out our YouTube we'll have the video Mr. Joseph up. So make sure you check that out, as well as donate cystic fibrosis@cff.org backslash donate.

We will have more information to come on our live event and November. As always, we appreciate the support. Mr. Jeffrey, thank you so very much.

I appreciate you inviting me. It's been fun. While we

definitely had one thank you