Tag: Magnus Albrecht

Why I changed the dedication in my book at the last minute.

In December of 2021, I accomplished a long-term goal when I published my first book. The book, titled What Does Your Fortune Cookie Say? is a collection of 80 important life lessons the universe has shared with me. And because the great lessons of life are typically dispensed after enjoying some egg foo young and chop suey, the book title was obvious.

Surprisingly, one of the more challenging aspects of writing the book was deciding who to dedicate the book to. I’m sure that doesn’t seem that hard. Especially when compared to say, writing the rest of a 290-page book. But it was.

The Reasons:

First, I didn’t know how good the first book would be. After all, the first pancake on the griddle always turns out a little funky. So I didn’t want to dedicate a subpar book to someone really important to me. Although, I wouldn’t dedicate any book to someone unimportant to me. Hence the conundrum.

Second, from the beginning, I planned to write several books. So ultimately there should be several different dedications. Pairing each book with the proper dedicatee complicates things.

Finally, I wanted a simple, focused dedication. Not a long list of everyone I could ever thank. I would save that for the acknowledgements section in the back of the book. And for when I win an academy award.

Despite the challenges, I initially wrote a dedication that I liked. But late in the process, I altered the dedication several times. Which included both who I dedicated the book to, and what I wrote to them.

9 months after publishing the fortune cookie bookie I had more or less forgotten about the dedication dilemma. That is until this week.

A couple of days ago I opened the original digital layout of the book I received from my publisher, Ripples Media. The layout featured the original dedication. And while I am very happy with the final published dedication, I liked the original one too. It was playful. Yet meaningful. It featured both a pop culture reference and some humor. Which is my favorite kind of writing.

Instead of taking this dedication to the grave with me, I’d like to share it with you as a sort of deleted scene from my book.

The Published Version:

Dedication

To my children Ava, Johann, and Magnus. I hope this helps.

The Original Version:

Dedication

I’m dedicating this book to Casey Kasem. It’s a long-distance dedication.

But if I weren’t dedicating this to Casey Kasem (which I am), I would dedicate this to my grandfathers, Alton Archibald Albrecht and Kenneth Adam Sprau. The process of preparing the eulogies for your memorial services changed my life. It made me think about what is important and what lessons I will pass down to others. (I’m not sure if I have to mention that my grandfathers have both passed away or if the eulogy part made that kinda obvious.)

Why The Change

Ultimately, the fact that my grandfathers were highly unlikely to read the book, while my kids would at least crack the cover to see if their names were in the book, inspired me to dedicate it to my offspring.

Truth be told, Ava, Johann and Magnus are the reasons I wrote the book. I wanted to pass along a collection of the best lessons I have learned to them. Because even though I can’t be with them everywhere they go in life, they can always have the book with them. Even in prison. And as the book came together I could tell it was good, valuable, and something I could be very proud of dedicating to my children.

Key Takeaway

When you write a book, make it great, and dedicate it to people who may actually read your book. Who knows, it may inspire them to empty the dishwasher. At least that’s the dream.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

The money lesson I taught my son that he then shared with his class.

Over the past year, I have been able to spend more time with my family than ever before. For several months I conducted all of my work from my home office. Which allowed my 3 kids to see more of what I do during the day. This created interesting new opportunities to talk to them about work, business, and making money.

As an entrepreneur and business owner, I couldn’t resist talking to my kids about the challenges the pandemic was causing for businesses. And how toilet paper didn’t grow on trees. (They corrected me). But more importantly, I shared how much opportunity there was for businesses to innovate, solve new problems, and benefit from helping others.

As the stock market went into the toilet like a dooky, I shared that this was an amazing time to invest. My kids asked me if they could invest some of their money. So I helped them buy their first stock.

We also read books on money, investing, and wealth. I was surprised by how interested they were in the topic. And it gave me hope that someday they may be able to afford to put me in the good nursing home.

I was even more surprised when my youngest son Magnus came home one day and told me he wrote a story in school on how to get rich. I was curious to read it. I wanted to know what his 10-year old mind was thinking. When the paper finally came home I was tickled, like Elmo, to read what he wrote. I have reprinted the story here in its entirety with permission from Magnus.

How To Get Rich!

The first thing you need to know to be rich is the difference between what you need and what you want. Another way you can put this is you need to know the difference between an asset and a liability.

A asset is something that makes you money. A liability is something that wastes your money.

Some assets would be starting a business, buying stocks, set up a lemonade stand, or any stand, mow someone’s lawn or sell things.

But buying stock is the most efficient way to make money. Especially at a time like this when all the stocks are down.

If you don’t know what a stock is, it’s something you buy on any device and without doing anything you make money. You can also hold on to your stock and get paid four times a year.

My stock pays me 30 cents four times a year. When I bought the shares of my stock each one cost me $3.75. So in total I paid $37.50. And that stock has went up so high that last time I checked it was worth $120 if I sold it.

You can sell things, but I sometimes wouldn’t recommend it. What my Dad taught me is sell when it is high, buy when it is low.

A book I would recommend to get you started is called, Rich Dad. Poor Dad. That was the first book I read about how to get rich. So after reading this get up and ‘Act Now!’

-Magnus Albrecht 3-9-21

Key Takeaway

Teach others what you know. By sharing your knowledge you raise the intelligence and confidence of others. Talk to kids about important life lessons and skills, including financial literacy, when they are young. They are like sponges, primed for learning. Make it fun. Make it interesting. And you can make a positive, life-long impact. It may just be the most valuable investment you ever make.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message please share it with them.

Find the things that make you feel alive.

My son Magnus is 10 years old and loves football. I have been coaching his flag football team for the past 3 years. It is our favorite thing to do together. And our best bonding time.

This fall I was looking forward to another season of coaching with my fellow University of Wisconsin alumni Dr. Michael Brin and Josh Hunt, both of whom played football for the Badgers. Their sons Josh and Hudson are both great kids, great athletes, and we have had a really good team together. But by late summer we heard that the flag football program was cancelled. Boo.

Me, Mike, Josh and our boys, with pre-covid splits. Hudson is doing his funhouse mirror impression.

When we learned the flag had been pulled off the flag football season I contacted our local tackle football program. The league starts in 5th grade. But roster space permitting, they will also accept a few 4th graders if they meet the size requirement. Magnus is a sizable boy (a sizable boy they all say) and has met the 5th grade size requirement since 2nd or 3rd grade.

When the tackle program was green lighted, there was room for Magnus. So this fall, instead of playing flag football, video-game football or paper triangle football, he has been training in full cleats, helmet, mouthguard, shoulder pads and boy part protector.

Yesterday Magnus had his only scrimmage of the season. His 5th grade team played the program’s 6th graders. Which meant that Magnus, my 4th grader had his first full-contact tackle football experience against kids 2 years older than him. Because sometimes life just works out that way.

The highlight of the experience occurred as Magnus was playing defensive end. A 6th grade ball carrier broke past the line of scrimmage and began running down the field. Magnus turned in hot pursuit as if the kid had stolen his lunch money. Magnus caught up to the running back, leapt, landed on the 6th grader and brought him decisively to the ground. My friend Matt Joynt, who was standing a social distance from me said, ‘That looked like a lion jumping off a rock onto a gazelle.’

I instantly cheered my little 4th grader’s first-ever tackle. As did my wife Dawn and daughter Ava. It was an exciting moment for our family. And for a kid who just weeks earlier looked as if he would have a football-free fall.

After the scrimmage, when Magnus rejoined us, I asked him about his tackle. A broad smile lit up his face as he replied, “It was so awesome! I still feel like I have rainbows in my stomach!’

Key Takeaway

Life is short. Pursuit your interests, curiosities and passions like a lion chases a gazelle. Find the experiences that fill your stomach with rainbows. Pack your life with joy and fulfillment. We only get one chance to play this game. Between the opening whistle and the final tick of the clock, I hope you are flooded with positive feelings that are beyond your ability to articulate. That’s how you win this game.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.

When was the last time you became a different person?

My family and I just returned home from a 4100-mile road trip. It was one of the great adventures of my life. I know that sounds dramatic. But the trip itself was dramatic. And I don’t just mean the dramatic splattering of bugs on the front of our car.

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Hiking at the Badlands National Park in South Dakota wasn’t bad at all.

We pulled into our driveway last night just before 6pm, parked and began unloading our Family Truckster. As my 10-year-old son Magnus and I were walking into our home for the first time in a week and a half he turned to me and said,

I feel like I am a different person now. -Magnus Albrecht (10 y/o)

I told him I felt the same way. Over the past 11 days we had seen and done too much to be unchanged. We had seen a Jolly Green Giant and the world’s largest Holstein cow. We had seen famous presidents’ faces carved on a mountainside, creating the greatest marketing tactic in the history of state marketing.

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Magnus didn’t get the memo that he was supposed to wear green.

We got an all-access tour of my cousin Rita and her husband Joe’s 2000 cow dairy where my kids got to pet wet and wobbly calves the moment they were born. If you want to follow a really great blog check out Rita’s blog So She Married A Farmer

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Me and my cousin Rita and a crop of kids.

We chased Lewis and Clark across the land and water they first navigated over 200 years ago. We saw fields of sunflowers, and I heard Post Malone every time.

We saw the world’s only Corn Palace. So there’s that.

We visited the Minuteman Missle National Historic Site and learned about all the nuclear missiles that dotted the Northern Great Plains, designed for peace, but ready to destroy the Earth and its inhabitants in just 30 minutes. Like a Dominoes pizza.

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Yellowstone blew Magnus’ mind.

We had close encounters with moose, mice, mountain goats, elk, bighorn sheep, a fisher, prairie dogs and a dead snake.

We were surrounded by a herd of buffalo at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. We swam in glacier-fed streams in Montana. We went cliff jumping. We saw geysers and gal-sers, glaciers and bubbling mud volcanoes.

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Being among the buffalo at Theodore Roosevelt National Grasslands was wild.

We hiked to a lake fed by no less than 6 waterfalls. We hiked in badlands that looked like the moon, only closer, and less made of cheese. We camped just feet from where dinosaur fossils were found and can still be seen, and we lived to tell about it.

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My son Johann and a bit of scenery at Glacier National Park.

We connected the dots of 4100 miles of America. As a result, our brains, our lives, and our image of our country and our planet will never be the same. We developed new mental maps that showed the connections between previously unconnected places, experiences and ideas. Which is exactly why we adventure in the first place. To see, do, learn and grow.

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Me and Magnus at Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. We were both disappointed to not see any avalanches. #FalseAdvertising

Key Takeaway

Experience as much of life as you can. See the world. Understand it. It will help you grow and expand your views and thinking. It improves creativity and innovation. It will make you more compassionate and empathetic. It will help you relate to others. It helps you refuel and reset and come back smarter and more capable than before. You know, like a whole new you.

I’ve been teaching my son about business. And here’s what I have learned.

Being a dad can be hard. One of the great challenges for me as a dad is not laughing at the really funny but inappropriate things my kids say and do. Potty humor has not lost its power over me. I regularly get in trouble with Dawn, my parenting partner, for laughing at things I’m not supposed to laugh at. I am told that I am encouraging my kids’ behavior. But hey, I want to be an encouraging Dad.

To counterbalance my chronic immaturity, I also try to be a good influence and teach my kids important life lessons. I have been reading Dale Carnegie with my 13-year old son, Johann. I have read Rich Dad. Poor Dad. to my now 14-year old daughter Ava. And I  am currently reading Rich Dad. Poor Dad. with my 9-year-old son, Magnus.

Magnus is really fun to teach about business. Even though he is only 9 he is displaying the same type of interest in business ideas that he has in sports. Which is great, because business is the ultimate competitive sport. And because Magnus is now my retirement plan.

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Me and Magnus and our hair and some wind in Astoria, Oregon.

As we read Rich Dad. Poor Dad. Magnus is fascinated by the good financial advice offered by the book. He now knows that assets are things that make you money and that liabilities are things that cost you money. He knows that poor people work for money and that rich people make their money work for them.

Over the past few weeks, Magnus has shared a steady stream of business thoughts. He has a notebook that he is filling with ideas. The ideas range from a garage cleaning business to a business idea for boys with long hair. Because Magnus has long hair, like his father. And like 9-year-old girls. Which I expect is why he likes wearing baseball caps. And why he doesn’t like wearing pink dresses.

Magnus and I have talked about business processes, research, pricing, margin and the value of good employees. What started out as a father wanting to teach his son a few important ideas about business has turned into a son asking lots of great questions to extract more information in order to help him paint a more complete picture in his head.

Last weekend as we were working on a yard project, Magnus revealed with great excitement that he came up with a business that he and I could partner on. I was proud and curious about what he was thinking. So I asked him to tell me more about his business idea. He started by sharing that he picked out a great name for the business already.  Curious, I asked him what the name of the business was going to be. He said, ‘We’ll be Madams! It’s a combination of Magnus and Adam’s!

It tried not to burst with laughter. He was so proud of his name. It was the perfect mashup of our first names. But little did little Magnus know that it also sounded like this 9-year-old boy thought it would be a great business idea to run a brothel. It seems I have much more to teach. 

Key Takeaway

Take time to teach your kids, nieces, nephews and neighbors what you know. Whether it is about business, how to fix a lawnmower, applying first-aid, or any of the millions of things in between, your knowledge is valuable. Pass it along. You may be surprised how enthusiastically a child responds to your teaching. It can help develop confidence and prepare them with life skills. But it could also expose them to a career path or hobby that will positively influence the trajectory and quality of their life. Who knows, you may also enjoy a good laugh along the way. Because kids say the darndest things.

*If you know someone who could benefit from this message, please share it with them.