The Water Trough- We can't make you drink, but we will make you think!

Reigniting Curiosity: Gramps Jeffrey on Business and Life

• Ed Drozda

Share episode

Curiosity isn't just for kids! In our new episode, Gramps Jeffrey of babyboomer.org  and I explore how staying curious fuels business success and personal growth at any age. Don't miss this inspiring conversation! 🔍 #SmallBusiness #Curiosity #GrampsJeffrey 

Welcome to the Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Draws to the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've all. Always wanted.

Ed Drozda:

Welcome back to The Water Trough folks, this is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. Today I'm joined by Gramps Jeffrey, the pen name for Mark Joseph, whose first book, the Secrets of Retailing, How to Beat Walmart was written to help entrepreneurs and small businesses compete against the big guys. Gramps Jeffrey's children's book, I Don't Want to Turn Three, explores what goes through a toddler's mind that parents are so desperate to understand. It's based on the true experiences he has had with his six grandchildren by his three millennial daughters. Gramps is the co-founder of a new site, www.baby boomer.org, which pulls together news and resources for the baby boomer community. The one thing baby boomers have in common is a connected, shared experience. Our generation has interest in many things, chief among them giving back and the legacy that we'll leave behind. Gramps and his wife Kathy, live in Scottsdale, Arizona, where two of his grandchildren also live. He has two more in Austin, Texas, and two in Orlando, Florida as well. Mark, welcome to the show.

Gramps Jeffrey:

I appreciate the invitation. Thanks for inviting me.

Ed Drozda:

It is a pleasure to have you here. I'm grateful for this opportunity, and I would like to get started by posing the question to you; how is it that you're able to get into the heads of three-year-olds? That must have been quite an interesting experience for you.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Well, I had the experience because I wrote this book during COVID, and one time I had all six of the grandkids here for about six weeks. So I had a chance to really get into who they are and what they do, you know? And all six kids had completely different personalities. But the one thing that they did have in common was a sense of curiosity. When you think about it as we grow older, we all need to have that curiosity sense. Even as we get into the baby boomer ages, keep being curious, and that's one thing I learned from them. I also learned how excited they get when they do accomplish something. Watching them grow year to year and interact with each other is really the basis for this book,'cause it's a true story. What goes through a toddler's mind? When does a toddler really understand the difference between me and us? So this book explores how my family finds all of that out.

Ed Drozda:

Very cool, and go down the curiosity path. You mentioned that for children, obviously this is probably the hallmark childhood, and it is something that's valuable to us even today as baby boomers, but many of us have lost our sense of curiosity. What is your perspective on curiosity and success in business?

Gramps Jeffrey:

I think that it goes back to when we learn how to read books to our kids. The greatest thing that we as grandparents or parents can do is sit down and read to children. Read to'em every night if you can. There's all kinds of benefits of reading to children, which we take into our life today. It's all part of that curiosity you talk about. The most important thing that I see in it is that when you read to a child, it requires them to listen. Now you and I both know that as we've grown older listening skills is the number one skill we have. You as a podcaster have to listen to your people that you're interviewing, so you can add in intelligent questions. I have to listen to our customers on our side of baby boomer.org to make sure that we've got the best content for them. So it all starts when you're a little kid. And you as a parent or grandparent reading books to kids can instill this listening skill to them. This is a skill, much like the curiosity skill that they're gonna have for the rest of their lives, and it'll help drive their lives. Another reason why we should be reading books to kids when they're little like this is for cognitive and language development. There's plenty of words in these books I don't understand. I gotta go look'em up. But there's other words that you can sit there and explain to these kids. So make sure you're reading to kids and let'em be curious about these books. And the last reason you should read to'em is attention span. When you're 2, 3, 4 years old, you're running all over the yard. But if you can get'em in your lap for 20 minutes, helps develop concentration and self-discipline, and again, as we know as adults, this is what you need to be successful in life.

Ed Drozda:

Indeed there's a lot of fundamental development. Well, fundamental development of course, is the basis of childhood and that is the basis of future development in life. So the curiosity is something that we take with us throughout our lives; we start at a young age, and as you say, you're inspiring that curiosity, feeding it by reading to, which is a great way to instill the notion of curiosity. As we get older we forget what it was like to be a child, to have that wide-eyed wonderment about what is new and unique. We lose that sense of excitement that we once took for granted, because that's just the way it was. Right. And here we are today again, people like yourself and myself, we're baby boomers. We've been around for a little while, post World War II babies, and we are moving on to a stage where the loss of that wonderment is effectively a loss to us. In my opinion, I think we've lost that spark, not necessarily all of us, but I think there was a tendency to have lost that spark. How do we reignite that? With your proximity to these grandkids, and of course they're growing every day, how do we reignite that spark in us old folks?

Gramps Jeffrey:

We gotta realize that we're not really old, we're just getting aged. And so we can do the same things that we did when we were younger, but maybe not play pickleball as fast as we want to, or throw the ball as hard, but we can still do that. Okay? So don't lose sight that we have a whole bunch of life left to live. One of the reasons that we created baby boomer.org is because the one thing that baby boomers do have in common is the shared, connected experiences that we all grew up with. You touched upon it; we were growing up as baby boomers, much like I'm seeing what my grandkids are growing up through their young age and they're having different experiences. We were there for the Kennedy's assassinations. We were there for Martin Luther King when he died. We were there for landing on the moon. We were there when birth control became widespread. That was our generation; we had to go through Vietnam as well as Kent State. We all experienced this. At the same time, we have things that we really have in common. The music. Think about it. You had Elvis, the Beach Boys, Beatles, Three Dog Knight Association, Supremes, we experienced all that. We had the movies, landlines. That's how we communicated with each other. We didn't have cell phones. We only grew up with three television stations. So we got all this information as a group together. We learned all this together, and that's what's so unique about our generation. We were molded together.

Ed Drozda:

We were molded together and we have certainly banded together. I guess like other generations before us, although I get the sense, maybe because I am a baby boomer, that we're a bit more bonded than other generations since us, and maybe again, it's just a selfish interpretation because I went through it. As time goes on the population of baby boomers will age out, which is a nice way of saying that we will no longer walk the face of this earth, but we will have another place somewhere. There's a Woodstock in the sky for all of us, and I know we're headed there, so, we'll be fine. But having said that, as these baby boomers, are we looked upon as the elderly? Are we looked upon as the wise? Are we looked upon as folks who have things to offer those who are younger than us? Which do you think?

Gramps Jeffrey:

That's an interesting question because it varies with how you have a relationship with your children and your grandchildren. Mm-hmm. Some of them think that we're very wise. Some of them think, hey you guys really spoiled the earth, we gotta rebuild it. But don't lose sight that out of the 70 million baby boomers, there are still 12 million baby boomers who still own businesses. Mm-hmm. They are driving the economy. It's hard to believe that 12 million businesses are still owned by baby boomers. So they do influence, they do mentor others. They do understand what we're doing,'cause when you think about that, that represents 60% of all small business owners in the us. Yeah. And there's gonna be major changes. I mean, you're right, we're gonna die. So what are we gonna do with these businesses that we own? Are we gonna be passing'em on? Are we gonna be selling them? Are they gonna disappear? Our generation is expected to transfer 30 trillion dollars in inheritance. That's the largest wealth transfer in the history of the United States. So how are we gonna do that? Are we gonna do it because of the legacy we wanna leave? We gonna do it because our kids deserve it? That's another question this generation has to deal with. All of this has to do with the question you ask: how do they look at us? Do they look at us, hey, there's the bank. See you later. Those are all heavy questions that we all need to think about.

Ed Drozda:

I think that's fascinating. By the way, I had not heard that 60% of businesses today are actually boomer run businesses. It's quite amazing. I'd have to say that as a generation, we've done pretty well for ourselves. Now, we had more time to accomplish this too. In all fairness to those that came after us, we've had more time to put those things together. But I do think that puts us in the position of being tremendously influential, not elderly, but definitely wise, and that we have, I would say, a responsibility to share our wisdom with others who are younger than us, who are moving along into the same spaces that we occupy

Gramps Jeffrey:

Interesting that you bring that up because think about entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur. What do you do if you wanna be an entrepreneur? You gotta realize that if you wanna open up your own business, and that goes back to curiosity, it goes back to wanting to lead, it goes back to wanting to share, but you're gonna realize that 20% of new businesses fail in the first year. 50% fail in five years. So you gotta say what causes these businesses to fail? And one of the things I suggest to all these younger people that wanna open businesses is bounce ideas off of the baby boomer generation'cause they've gone through it. We've got a lot of knowledge. We have learned from our mistakes. Now ask yourself, why do businesses fail? Well, 42% of small businesses fail because there's no market for their product or services. You may have developed the best sliced bread in the world, but if nobody wants to buy it, you've made a mistake. And that's why most businesses fail. You didn't do your research, you didn't find out exactly is there a market for my great idea. 29% of businesses fail because they don't have enough capital when they're building their business. If you're an entrepreneur and you wanna open a business, you've gotta say to yourself, I need six months of cash as if I had no sales. Mm-hmm. So that's another reason why these businesses fail; there's not enough money to sustain the business. 23% of small businesses fail because they fail to communicate and they don't build a team. If you think you're the best entrepreneur in the world, you gotta be able to communicate. You gotta be able to tell people what you think. And then at the same time, no business can run by itself. You need other people to help you. So you've gotta be able to build a team of people that trust you. Those are all traits that if you're new to the entrepreneurial world, ask one of these 12 million baby boomers, how'd you do it? Why are you still around? How can you mentor me to make my business successful? So I'm not part of that 50% that fail in the first five years? So that's one resource that others can use our generation for.

Ed Drozda:

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Regarding entrepreneurs and communication, it is a discussion in and of itself. Entrepreneurs, broadly speaking, are folks that are accustomed to a certain degree of independence, and I'm not suggesting that they're completely enfolded upon themselves, but that there's definitely an ambition to be a self succeeding type of a person. That said, the importance of communication is often lost or is not well cultivated in that environment. There is a challenge in many cases because there's a sense of ownership and pride about the thing that I've developed, my concept, my product, my service, whatever it might be, and letting go of that and sharing that with other people is often a challenge. What kind of advice would you give to the young entrepreneur in that regard. About the necessity for communication and how it might be a challenge for them?

Gramps Jeffrey:

Going back to a kid sitting on my lap and before you even read the book to them, you should ask them, what do you think's gonna happen in this book? Okay. That's what an entrepreneur should be asking? What do I think's really gonna happen if I could bring up this concept? Once you start reading to the children you gotta ask them, who are the characters in this book? Where is the setting in this book? Yeah. So again, as an entrepreneur, you gotta be curious, you gotta be asking these kinds of questions. Then you ask the little kid, does anything sound familiar to you in this book? Which really opens up lots of talk. Same thing with an entrepreneur. Yeah. And then after reading the book to these kids, you need to say to them, what is your favorite part? Why is that your favorite part? These are all questions that we should be asking ourselves, as we are developing concepts to open up businesses and to become entrepreneurs. Keep that curiosity alive.

Ed Drozda:

That's really cool. What I'm hearing you say it's taking mentorship to a significantly deeper level than mentorships often go. It's really asking people to go back to the very basics, what brought you here? Why are you here? What was your inspiration to be here in the first place, and now that you're here, does it look the same as you thought it was gonna be when you got here? You're asking very basic questions that people sometimes are inclined to say, oh, that's too simplistic, it doesn't matter. When we both know, oh yeah, it matters completely.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Yeah, it's what you do on the ground. It's the basics that you take care of first in order to build a successful career or successful business. You can't skip over those things. You really need the time to ask yourself those curiosity questions.

Ed Drozda:

Absolutely. I think that's a great lesson for people of any age, for sure. Again, we may have had more time to sort through these things. We have had more opportunity to be exposed to the shortcomings if we don't do this. But I think that it is really, really important to drive home for younger people who really are faced with so many competing elements, so much frustration because the speed of things is so fast, things are so accelerated. They often don't have the time to step back and just go, wait a minute, I didn't think about that. At least be aware.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Absolutely. You hit right on it. Be aware.

Ed Drozda:

And that is the crux of everything, isn't it? First, to be aware.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Oh, you need to be aware of your surroundings. Be aware of where you want to go. When you think about your travels through life, the only reason that we that are in our fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties may have a little more information is because we've made more mistakes. We have learned from those mistakes and it's up to us to communicate to the younger generations. That's our legacy. When you think about it, no matter how much money you've made, when you die what do you leave behind? They're gonna inherit it, so they'll forget about that. But what is your real legacy, because you can't take any of this money with you. What are you leaving behind to your kids and your grandkids? That's what you've always gotta keep in mind. What can I pass on that I have learned by my mistakes so that they don't make the same mistakes? Now whether they listen to you, that's a different story, but at least you should be able to share that with them. And that's the kind of relationship as we grow older, we need to have with our kids and grandkids. No matter all the potential we may have had over the years, keep in mind that's our legacy. We want this generation to be better than we are. I'm telling you, these kids that are one to 10 years old today, they are gonna be the greatest generation this country or this world has ever seen,'cause when you think about it, as soon as they come out of the womb they've got a cell phone, they're on the internet. They've got all kinds of technology given to them. I didn't get onto the internet till I was 40 years old, so they are so far ahead. Of any of us. So we as parents and grandparents need to make sure that we are adding to that, again, they're gonna be much smarter than we ever were, but we still gotta teach'em to go outside and play. We still have to teach'em how to talk to each other. That's part of our legacy too, is what can we do to really grow these kids outside of all this electronic stuff that they will be and are much better than we ever were.

Ed Drozda:

So baby boomer.org, your site. I'm curious if you have things set up in such a way that baby boomers are in a position to be mentors to business people. Is this part of your plan?

Gramps Jeffrey:

We've got on our site, 492 different topic departments. So our topic departments go from travel to health, to business, to playing pickleball, to movies, music, and everything that we as a generation have been exposed to and we wanna learn more on. If you think about, just in our business selection, it's different today than it was a couple years ago because AI is an influence. If any of your listeners in the business world embraced AI, you have got to be able to understand AI and use AI. It is the greatest transformation in our lives. It may even be greater than the introduction of the internet. It is going to influence all of us and how we run our businesses. So if you're a small business owner, you have to make sure that you understand how to use it, because it can help you very quickly. If you think about it as we were growing up and growing older in our early business career, we did all the research. And now that the Internet is doing most of our research, now you got AI who's gonna be even better than that is. I encourage if anyone's listening that has given second thoughts to AI, you gotta get involved. If you want to be the success of tomorrow, you have to make it as part of your plan.

Ed Drozda:

I agree that AI is definitely going to be part of the plan because basically if you don't keep up you'll fall behind. Everybody else will be doing it and they'll have access to information that you will not have access to. So it's very, very important. But at the same time, I think it's also important for us to realize that gathering all this information does not substitute for our ability to process this information. AI can help with that, but I believe that it's important that we don't lose sight of our role in processing that information.

Gramps Jeffrey:

You're absolutely right. It's the human input that's the last steps to being successful. 30 years ago we gathered information, then we made decisions. Same thing as now, gather information to make your decisions. The AI just helps you possibly make better decisions and helps you avoid some more mistakes that you would've made.

Ed Drozda:

Absolutely. Consider all the information that is out there and AI has the ability to bring these things together, process them in such a way as to present them in a relatively cogent fashion, yes, there's definitely an advantage there. I believe, and I am concerned that there's the risk that some folks will think that it is an end all, be all, take it as it is, and that which it provides without giving it that interpretation, without providing that human interpretation and processing. So I think for me, it's a cautionary tale. The information is valuable, it's important, but it does not excuse me from the responsibilities that I have to make sure that it's used wisely and effectively.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Yeah, what you're saying is technology is there to help us achieve our goals.

Ed Drozda:

To help us, correct. Not to achieve them for us, but to help us achieve those goals, absolutely. So we are getting to the end of our time here, and in the interest of that, I would like to ask you if you have anything in particular before we go that you'd like to leave us with?

Gramps Jeffrey:

The theme of my children's book, and again, it reflects on all of our ages, the theme is at what age do you begin to take responsibility for your actions? Is it three years old? Is it 32 years old, is it 63 years old? Plenty of my contemporaries still don't take responsibility for their actions. Step back and think about that. We are here to improve this world. One of the things that my grandfather always told me when we went camping, he said, make sure you leave the campsite better than you found it. And that's what we really need to do. What are we doing to make the campsite better than we found it? That's what we should all be asking ourselves.

Ed Drozda:

Very good. Well, I appreciate that. Mark, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with me today. I appreciate this conversation. I look forward to learning more about baby boomer.org myself. As a little plug to babyboomer.org, I am also featuring my podcast on your site for which I'm grateful. Thank you for that. I want to thank Mark Joseph, also known as Gramps Jeffrey being my guest today. Gramps, it was a pleasure to work with you.

Gramps Jeffrey:

Thank you again for inviting me.

Ed Drozda:

And thank you. This is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, and until we meet again, I wanna wish you a healthy business.