Preface

I wrote this book to keep a promise I made to a twelve-year-old boy in 1959.
The young boy had only two memories of his biological father. He remembered being
beaten with a belt at six years of age because he wouldn’t drink his milk. And he
remembered his mother sobbing because of the abuse.
One day, when he was seven, his biological father was gone. There was no explanation.
The boy didn’t care.
A few years later, his mother married another man, who became his stepfather and who
later adopted the boy. This man was kind and supportive, but he was an alcoholic. Many
nights, their tiny home was filled with screaming and arguing, usually about money and
alcohol, which grew louder as the drinking continued.
One such night in the middle of winter, the boy lay trembling in his bed in the open
basement. There were no curtains on the small windows and all around him the laundry
was hanging on lines to dry. A car passed by and the headlights shone through the
windows, creating shadow monsters of the laundry. The boy pulled the blankets over his
head and retreated into his dreams. That night, he made a promise to himself: if he ever
figured out how to make his dreams come true, he would share what he had learned with
others.
That young boy was me. I had three dreams: to find a girlfriend and have a loving family;
to start my own business and make money; and to travel the world.
At sixteen, I dropped out of school and left home, to escape the chaos and pursue my
dreams.
At nineteen, I was a lonely, penniless, unemployed high school dropout, living in a
basement room and clinging to the hope that my dreams could still come true.
In my early twenties, one profound insight changed the course of my life in an instant. I
realized my past did not have to define my future. I began the journey to live my MAGIC!
At sixty-three, I’m living my dreams. My wife Janet and I have been married for thirty-
five years. We have two wonderful adult children, Jennifer and Stephen. I started my first
business in 1974, which became part of a business group in 1978 of which I’m president
and CEO.
Janet and I are financially independent, and we travel six months a year. We have visited
every continent except Antarctica (the Antarctic seas are too rough for Janet, but we
waved to Antarctica from the Strait of Magellan as we passed the southern tip of South
America). This book is part of keeping the promise I made to the twelve-year-old me.
For over forty years, since I was nineteen, I have kept a journal. These journals were
sometimes ten-cent coil notebooks, sometimes leather hardcover volumes, but more
typically were small, hardcover notebooks I would carry in my pocket.