Gramps Jeffery talks about his book "I Don't Want to Turn 3". Among other topics, he is also an accomplished author of business books.

hi, welcome to this episode of author echo I'm Travis Davis, your host.

Tell us your story.

Hey, everybody.

Welcome to another episode of author AKA.

And today we have grants and I'm gonna let him introduce himself and divulge whatever

information he wants about himself and his books that he writes in his

organization that he really supports it.

I'm excited to hear about wraps all yours.

I appreciate you inviting me.

So my latest book is a children's book called I don't want to turn three.

Now, the reason I wrote this book live in this past year because of the pandemic

caused by COVID-19 and isolation, except for being able to be with my family,

gave me a chance to watch and interact.

And with my grandkids, I got to tell you what a trip that was all

six of my grandkids, I have completely different personalities.

Now, one thing they do have in common is the curiosity sense of curiosity.

How excited they get when they do accomplish something or see something.

So watching them grow to year and hear how they interact with each other

really is the basis for this book.

I don't want to turn three what goes through a toddler's mind?

The parents are so desperate to understand when does a toddler.

Really understand the difference between me and us.

This book explores how the whole family finds this out together as a baby boomer.

And you're a baby boomer too.

So we go through this

I also tried to understand how the world has evolved since I was three

years old, and that's also part of the story they didn't have cell phones.

They didn't have the internet, they didn't have cable TV.

They didn't have remote.

I was my dad's remote.

He's his son go change the channel.

I was the remote at the time.

And so it didn't have indoor.

Oh really.

That's a whole different world.

Now.

My parents' definition of discipline is so quite different than the parents of

today has the day's rule make me for a better place for children to grow up in?

I'll let your listeners kinda answer that question.

How are we treated growing up versus they were treated today.

So that's a synopsis of the book.

Is it explorers?

The children really learning.

So what?

So I have seven grandkids and they are all different.

All different.

So how did you come up with the age and they range by

mine range from age six to 22.

So how did you come up to age three?

So what was age three?

Was that just a, as you see it in your grandkids, it's something

with evolving day or why age three?

I'm interested in.

When I wrote this book, the kids were one to eight.

There were a bunch of them, two, three, and four.

And it was like, you could just see it happening at age three.

That's when they started to start questioning things but

the book is based on.

Yeah, it's called I don't want to turn three.

And the book is based on a true story.

This really is what happened.

Oh, these are children's books.

I can tell you a story.

Yeah.

And it's a Jordan is going to be celebrating his third birthday and

he was interacting with his other.

Kids.

And they were playing, he kept stealing all their toys.

It's what happened.

And and then they all came together and they found out on his birthday

that he had his pile of all their toys and they all got upset.

And so the father got them together in a circle.

And the oldest son Livia who was eight at the time it says

that they all should donate their toys to the homeless kids down.

And that's what actually what happened.

So that's what the story is based on the all the there's still

hope for the next generation.

There's still hope.

Oh, I don't think pictures are all based on pictures.

I had taken like the one on the cover is Levi and Jackson in the

tub Levi loves wearing his goggles.

So these are, those are based on real stories, but yeah, there, there is hope

when you think about it, I am thoroughly.

That this generation of children though, kids one to 10 years old today are

going to be the greatest generation this country has ever produced.

And why?

As soon as they come out of the womb, they're on the internet.

They understand electronics.

I can get on the internet until I was 40 years old here.

The you've got these kids coming out and that they've got this.

So what we as baby boomers, grandparents, We have got to

get involved into their lives.

We have got to be able to create that balance of you got all this great

information you're learning on the internet and through electronics let's

round you out and teach the things that we knew when we were growing

up, because that's, what's going to make us the greatest generation ever.

Yeah, I agree.

It's it's interesting.

We were up in Arkansas visiting my grandkids a couple of weeks ago.

We're all sitting out in the front porch and no, normally

we sit inside or something.

We were all sitting outside.

It was hot, but everybody was playing outside.

Not one of them was on their phone.

Not one of them was, they were all just and I remember that.

That's what I remember as a kid, with my friends or my cousins.

We just play outside until it was time to go get lunch, then we'd go play again.

Or it got dark.

We had to go back home.

I really liked that.

So what, how do you write.

During the day or what did you do anything else?

So tell us a little your background.

What I really got me into writing it, wasn't the craziest thing is

when I was in college, my best friend and I decided we were going

to do a backpacking trip through.

Yeah.

So we went to spent 11 weeks in Europe.

We were riding the trains.

We were sleeping in the youth hostels and even running motorcycles and

everything you did when you were a kid, whether it be that you could do that.

But I decided that time I was going to keep a journal.

So I kept a journal.

For every single day that we had and I wrote this journal and it was a journal

about people and meeting and all that.

The first travel blogger, I wrote this journal, a college kid.

I I gave a copy to my friend put away.

He called me about 10 years later.

You got to read this journal.

He says what you wrote and what you observed.

He says, you got to make this into a book.

Excellent.

I'm a business guy.

I, that was spending my early career in a department store and

off-price retailing and wholesaling.

So I was a corporate guy doing this kind of these things.

And then I decided that I wanted to be an entree.

And so I went out and I started a couple of businesses.

One I sold to investors.

The other one I took public.

And the one I took public became the premier business to

business site on the internet.

We sell a case quantity to small businesses all around the world shifted

in all 50 states, around 44 countries.

Our customer base, where the moms and the pops are surviving.

Thriving is a change.

So we have this site, I had this business.

And I was getting these phone calls like 30 a week.

How do I do this?

These are entrepreneurs and small businesses.

So I decided to write a book.

So my first book was a book called the secrets of retailing, how to be Walmart.

And this is a step by step guide has 15 chapters involved on.

Open the store.

How do you hire people?

How do you find location?

Where do you find your merchandise?

How do you do your marketing online?

How do you do your marketing?

Traditionally.

And so in the last chapter, the 15 chapters, how do you sell your business?

How do you exit it?

How do you get out of it?

So that was really my really first book.

And and it was.

Alright, Arianna Huffington thinner had read it.

And she asked me to contribute to the happening with posts.

I've written over a hundred articles for the Huffington post

on all kinds of things for small businesses and growing businesses.

But most of my articles have been about nonprofits.

And the reason being is the nonprofit world found our site.

Yeah, because they could byproducts at wholesale, close out prices.

We're able to help them stretch their dollars and service more people.

So a lot of my articles are about the the homeless

teaching children and all that.

And so that's why I w I was excited.

Then my granddaughter, Olivia came up with the idea of giving

all their toys to the homeless.

Cause I fell right into what that's how I went from a writing professional.

Book to writing about kids because you probably saw people in the boardroom

that were acting like kids, the shift, like a belts, Hey you need to turn 30.

You throw up.

So that's interesting dichotomy that brings up really the main

reason, the main lesson in my book, my children's book at what age?

Do we actually begin to take responsibility for our actions?

Is it three years old?

Is it 13 years old?

Now it was a 23 years old.

We as baby boomers, we know plenty of people at 63.

That's still don't take responsibility for their actions.

That's a, that's one of the key messages in this book.

That's interesting.

I, as a baby boomer, I can relate to this.

Cause I think there's a, there is a untapped wealth of knowledge.

People that are the baby boomers, that a lot of businesses

have just discarded, right?

When they do a lay offs or when they do any kind of downsizing

that they look at, that they have to look at the age and everything.

I think there's a loss of tremendous loss of knowledge and corporations

today by trying, just to keep the people that are probably paid the lowest

because they're entry level, they're the younger people, which I agree.

They all need to come up and really start.

Yeah, but they need mentors and those, the baby boomers, and the ones who

after the baby boomers are the mentors that need to be kept in and then

business and industry and business world.

Let's take it a step further.

Let's talk about we as grandparents the reason the baby boomers maybe smart

is because we made so many mistake.

If you take a look at it, if we take every decade, if you look back at each

one of your decades and you've made a bunch of mistakes, but you've learned.

And that's why we have to share all that information and you're talking about

the boardroom and I'm talking about grandparents we've gotta be able to

share that information with our grandkids.

Yeah.

And the sad part is too many grandparents.

I really don't care.

There the latest survey has 30% of grandparents are classified as remote,

which means they don't really get involved in their children's needs.

When you think about that's one out of every three of us, every

three we say it, I'm sure you've talked to other, your friends.

I raised some great kids.

They'll raise the kids.

I got my own likes to live.

I got some things to do.

I got I got places to visit.

I don't have time for that, that means one out of every three of us are

not involved or they may show up at a birthday or they may come in at Chrysalis,

but that's it, so you got to ask.

What has caused that?

Why are there so many of us just not involved in it?

And a lot of it is caused by us.

We may not like the spouse or child married.

So all of a sudden we've got stress and followed my son-in-law's.

I'm going to get that on record.

I love my son in laws and make sure he listens to this.

Okay.

They better listen to it.

Unsolicited advice store our children.

You know what I mean?

They, they don't want that.

We, we may show up on just drop by their house one day they don't want that.

So we cause a lot of those issues when you think about grandparents and

what we should be doing with our kids we undermine their authority by

how they're teaching their children.

They don't want us to tell their children something different than

what we're telling them know.

We tend to play favorites.

You.

And I both know you got semi, I got six.

We can't stay who our favorite is, but we do have a favor.

There's a favorite out there, but we can't talk about it.

And it shouldn't show that because once you do that, you're

causing problem with these kids.

I know the one thing that I've done with my grandkids,

I don't know how it happened.

They love to compete with me.

From bowling to play in pool, They love to compete.

And when they beat grandpa, it's like you gave them a gold medal in the Olympics.

So my grandson would down a couple weeks ago for his birthday, 22nd

birthday, my grandson in 2022, he spent the last two birthdays with us.

He likes spending his birthday with his grandparents.

And so what I did, I take them bowling, but if I win, I'm making,

carry my ball out to the car.

And I take pictures of it and send it to his mom.

The last two birthday, she'd got a picture of him carrying my ball out to the car,

even though he's a fantastic bowler.

I changed the game as we go a little bit, but I like to see the competition

cause Hey, that does something for me.

It makes me stay in shape.

It makes me want to be more active, but then again, it makes them be

competitive and I do not let them win.

They have to.

I don't have to, dude, you're not, I'm not going to give you anything.

It goes back to what you're talking about, mentoring.

That's part of our mentoring job.

Those are the lessons we're teaching them if you think about

it we disengage our grandkids by controlling them through.

Gifts to vacations.

We have male overall lack of empathy.

The, these kids need meets that.

Now we have feelings.

So grandparents may make compliant children to do

certain things, respect them.

Yeah.

So we turn that off if anybody's listening to this and you're a

grandparent, please think about what are you, what can you do to really

be more involved in your kids' lives?

Because again, We are the ones that teach them the lessons like you, did

you just, those lessons are, they're not going to when for years now he's

going to remember that and that's going to be the, that's going to

be the lesson that she taught him.

The legacy that you passed on.

So are you writing any more children's books or what's on the horizon?

What do you got planned?

I've got a I'm working on, I don't want to turn.

So that's the next book, but interesting.

My granddaughter, Olivia came to me last week and she says, Gramps, I

got a great idea for our next book.

And I said, what's that?

And she's 90.

Yeah.

She says, Jesus our new books is, I don't want to turn 10.

And I said, why, oh why don't you want to turn 10?

She says I've got to start worrying about learning, how to drive.

I said, that's seven years away.

Why are you worrying about that?

Now?

She says and I worry about, I got to start picking out a college.

I said, that's nine years away.

Why are you worrying about that now?

And she says in the fifth graders, I said, They got a lot more

homework than us, fourth graders.

And as I said, she says, I think we can write a book.

I don't want to turn 10.

But when you think about that, we all have those.

I don't want to turn 21.

I don't want to turn 70.

I don't want to turn 39 there's themes for all of us, because we're looking

back at what we did and we're looking to the future and it's uncertain.

So that's going to be the themes of my upcoming books.

And so the stories are through the lens.

Of the children or through the lens of you watching them, or is it it's the

lens of the Jordan is the star of, I don't want to turn three through his eyes.

He's the one that's writing the book.

Yeah.

And that kind of goes back to the theory of why we have at early

ages, grandparents and parents got to get our kids into reading books.

Coming off the internet, they got to do that.

So what can we do?

The best thing we can do is making sure that reading a book it becomes part of

these kids' routine and it only takes you 20 minutes to read a book at the most.

But it creates all kinds of benefits.

So picture you as a grandpa, you got your child on your lap what's going on?

First thing is creating spot.

Yeah, it's a nice way just to spend time with your kids much, like you're

going bowling with your 22 year old.

This is a great time just to sit there and spend time with your

child one-on-one to keep that going.

Another reason that we need to be reading books to our kids all the

time is it creates listening skills.

Now.

You.

And I both know, as we grew older listening skills, it's the best skill we

can have you as a podcast, sir, you've gotta be able to listen to what you're

doing to create what you want to create.

So you've got th the listening skills I need to have listening skills just

for selling or buying or whatever.

Yeah, we create those early on with these little kids.

That's a legacy we can leave.

We got to read kids books to kids because it creates cognitive

and language development.

There are plenty of words in these books.

These kids don't understand.

So it gives you a chance to explore.

That's funny words in these books.

I don't understand.

I've got to go look up.

It's just a, it's a great way to create that bonding in the

language and development and just help improve who they are.

Another reason is attention span.

They just get 2, 3, 4 year olds.

They bang bounce off a wall all day.

Give him your lap for 20 minutes.

Concentration.

Yeah, you conversation, you got a self-discipline, it's

just great way to do that.

So I would encourage any of your listeners that make sure you take the time to read

to your kids and teach them to read.

And it's just that thing that we can add to make so much more sense.

Yeah.

I think that's interesting when you said listening, right?

I don't know how many meetings I've been in professionally.

With sales folks and they're just talking, I'm like, be quiet.

Let the customer say something right.

Just you gotta listen to be able to formulate your next question or your

next move or whatever you want to do.

And I, I think reading actually does that.

Cause when you can read and you can visualize what you're reading, it's almost

like you're listening to him, say it and.

As you're reading it, it's that whole process of just not reading reading

a bunch of words, but putting that all together into a story and then

visualizing it in your head and actually playing it out as a person.

When I write, I can actually visualize what I'm writing I really am.

Then I try to get all the details.

Like I'll put something down and I'll go back later and then add a lot of details.

Oh, they need to do this.

Like she leaned over and picked up.

Right or that it was sunny outside because I want the purse, the reader to

feel that they're in then, or that they're in that situation with that person now.

And I think that's part of the listening, watching, observing

everything that you need to do.

And I think I learned a lot of those skills in the middle.

You really hit onto it as salespeople listening is your number one skill.

And it really because you do what your customers want you to do.

You don't do what you can't tell them what to do.

So you have absolutely it's not like you ever say I have a solution

for you and you're like your customers, like how do you notice a

solution for me in whatever it is.

Yeah, but.

I do the kids' books and this month is a childhood cancer awareness month.

And the toughest thing for, I have ever done as grandfather was visiting

my granddaughter in the cancer ward.

But that is tough.

If you want, people's, I'm having a bad day or you're having a bad day

go to children's hospital and sit in a cancer ward for about 30 seconds

and it changes your whole demeanor on what you think is a bad day.

People listen to this.

And watching it highly recommend even if you don't have grandkids or kids

somebody that does and get involved and stuff like that, because you never know.

It's like meteoric, right?

It hits you right then.

It's important being a grandkid grandfather or grandparents before,

after, and during all, everything of the turbulence of life.

And not only are you a grandparent you're still a parent to your kids.

So you've gotta be able to do all that.

You gotta be apparent all the time.

No matter, I don't care how old they are.

My daughter is 40 I still give her advice.

She gives me advice now what, you're just crazy mother.

Daughter's turning 40 this year also.

So it's interesting how everything kind of works.

It's taking your thought about the turbulence of life, because we are in

a tremendous amount of tournaments.

Just think about what this pandemic has done to our lives.

The average age of people today.

Two years because of the deaths that have occurred because of COVID-19 in

2019, the average age was 78 years and 10 months in 20, it was 77 years and three

months 21, it was 76 years in one month.

Think about the, what has happened.

So we as parents and grandparents.

We're here to date.

We could be gone tomorrow.

There's all kinds of reasons we could be gone tomorrow.

That's why we have to jump in and take responsibility and share our knowledge.

This pandemic has kids reading less, according to the United nations education

scientific culture organization.

I think they call it a UNESCO 584 million chills.

Worldwide are experiencing reading difficulties, put

that number in your head.

That was before the pandemic 416 million.

So that's a 20% increase in kids that are having problems reading, just because we

went through this pandemic that wipes out.

Years, two decades of educational gains that this world has made the

Stanford graduate school of education released a report saying that the

second and third graders fluency today is 30% less than before.

Yeah, 20% less.

That's why we have got to get involved.

It takes yes, mom and dad raised the kids, but it really takes a village

in today's world, especially with all these single parents grandparents

have got to get in the fall to help raise the kids, uncles, aunts, cousins,

we all have got to get involved.

And think through that, as we, as baby boomers are selfish,

doing our own little thing.

We've got to get back involved.

These kids lives, a family is a team sport, right?

It takes a team to raise a family.

And whether that family is your kids or your nieces or nephews or

grandkids, it's all a team effort.

My wife, when our son was born, my wife's German, so she taught

him German was his first language.

So she'd read him books in German.

And now he fluent in German.

Of course.

But he knows these stories in German from a German perspective.

And so he he's done very well for himself, but I think that's all about

learning different languages or reading take five minutes and 10 minutes and set.

When you let's say you don't even have a kids book, whatever book you have.

That's age appropriate.

Of course, whether it's a business book how do you close a sale?

Cause you're you're selling yourself all the time, whether you're needed

or not, your everybody's in sales and what's better what you're trying to sell.

But so I highly recommend or go down to the local bookstore,

get you a nice children's book.

I don't want to turn.

And yeah, that's a fantastic one.

And by the same time I get the secrets of retailing.

So when you're not with your grandkids, you can read that and then sit down and

just read portions of a book and watch the expression on the kid's face as you're

reading it, because you could see, they're like what's next what's going to happen.

And I think that's important because then that builds those skills of anticipation.

And I highly recommend that.

Now I'll say I'll write something and I'll send it to my son

who goes, write it like this.

I'm like, man, where'd you learn how to write?

Cause I, don't not for me taking advice from a 22 year old, 25 year old.

But that's Rachel Gramps.

I think it's been great talking to you today.

This one place I would never had thought of especially

with the professional side.

Cause I think there's a lot of knowledge out there that can be still

tapped and cultivated, and then bringing that younger generation

up where they get inquisitiveness.

A sense of adventure, a sense of learning about other things that

is outside of their sphere outside their immediate environment is.

And whether it's learning about another culture you're writing as a blogger

from travel, people are probably read that today, going, you know what?

I think I want to go there.

I want to check.

Is it still there?

What's changed.

So I think that's, I think that's very cool to me.

That's.

Great.

It all pulls together for any of your listeners that are baby boomers

are becoming one, myself and three other partners have put together

a site called baby boomer.org.

And it's a place for you can learn all kinds of things.

Take learn from the knowledge of us, baby boomers and there's

articles, podcasts, and all kinds of things that the listeners can see.

But the kind of pool all this together too.

So have you people check it out and it should be a lot of fun.

Yeah.

So that's baby boomer.org.

That's right.

Baby boomer.org.

Excellent.

Bob, I'm looking I think I might have to pick that book up and my grandkids

are like to read so I'm gonna have to pick a book up and I appreciate

the time, especially on labor day.

So folks we're doing this on a holiday.

So it's important for everybody.

It's important for us to make sure.

So again, I want to thank you very much grants and folks check out his book,

go to the website, baby boomers.org, and everybody have a fantastic day.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to author echo.

There'll be another episode next week, please stop.

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