You might be reading this as a 70-year-old, or you might be 25 years old wondering how you can get the most out of life. Either way, we’ll learn something together.
First, who is writing this?
My name is Luke and I founded MemoirGhostwriting.com, a ghostwriting service for business leaders and celebrities. You know those books you see in Hudson News at the airport? We write books like those. The problem is those projects are very expensive (like $75,000), so they’re out of reach for most people. That got me thinking: What if I were able to offer a mass market but highly personalized memoir writing service? What if I could do this for those in their 70s–but particularly grandparents who want to capture their life story for their future adult grandkids–at a price a lot of people can afford? After a ton of number crunching, my team and I came up with Grandkids.com, a service for grandparents to have their life story captured professionally, so their grandkids know their story, what they believe, where they come from, and more. Here's a sample of our work.
If you're interested in this for yourself, we offer your first interview and the first two pages of your memoir 100% for free. Fill out this simple form to get your free interview.
What does all of that have to do with regret?
Well, it just so happens that once you and your team have interviewed tons of people in their 70s and 80s, you start to notice trends in what you hear. Some trends are positive: Like having and supporting children is one of life’s greatest joys. But some trends are negative: Like the regrets we hear time and time again, especially the regrets that people are working to solve even in their golden years.
So, without further ado, here are the three greatest regrets of people in their 70s and 80s:
Regret #1: Not Capturing Their Life Story All in One Place
The thing with not capturing your life story is that once it’s lost, it’s lost basically forever. Sure, your descendants could hire a genealogist to dig deeply into the past but that’s expensive, can leave huge questions unanswered, and will only ever reveal the facts–not the emotions and humor that your own anecdotes will.
After hearing so many people talk about their fear of losing their story to the sands of time, I implore you to avoid excuses like “I’ll get around to it” or “I don’t need to; I have photos somewhere.”
You exist because your great-grandparents gave birth to one of your grandparents who gave birth to one of your parents who gave birth to you. That's a chain full of stories and history and, even if it hasn't been captured to date, it can start to be captured with you. Family and personal histories are important and once they're lost they're lost forever.
We know firsthand that young people regret not asking for this information and grandparents regret not providing it. Both are fixable.
Fix this issue now, whether it’s deliberately sitting down at your kitchen table with a recording device or by hiring an unbiased service like Grandkids.com that can bring a team of interviewers and writers to solve the problem. If you’re at all curious about how Grandkids.com can help you capture your life story for eternity, just fill out this form for your 100% free first interview.
Regret #2: Not Taking Steps to Be Remembered in a Specific Way
This is similar to Regret #1 but different enough that it needs to stand on its own.
People want to be remembered in a certain way and they want to be remembered for something.
Are you a person who has injected kindness into the world? Are you someone who maybe wasn’t home enough but worked tirelessly to support a family? We’re all imperfect and none of us are superheroes but all of us want to be remembered for how we made the world a little bit better.
Even if you’re not yet sure how you’d like to be remembered, we all would like to be remembered. It’s important to our own psyche. In fact, there’s a rather crass phrase: “They say you die twice: Once when you stop breathing and then again the last time someone says your name.” We all know deep down that taking steps to be remembered helps us make peace with the fact that no one stays on this ride forever.
The not-so-fun possibility that one's contributions, stories of love, and pearls of wisdom might dissipate into the ether is profound and hard to wrestle with. We know this because during countless interviews with those in their 70s, we've heard that the interview process is “cathartic” and “relieving”; we’ve had people tell us that they feel “at peace” knowing that their story will live on forever. Grandkids will read it but so will their kids (and their kids, and their kids). Even if no one were to read it, they know that their story will live on forever.
And, we've managed to get the price for this professional, highly detailed oral history work down to just $495. But, for a limited time, you can get your first interview (and the first two pages of your memoir) 100% for free. Just fill out this simple form.
Regret #3: Not Being There For Family
For people who have made family a central part of their life, not being there is hard to make peace with. After a whole life of supporting those you love, there is, for many, a sense of “anticipatory regret”—regretting that we can’t continue that supportive role forever.
If you’re an older grandparent, you might not be there for your grandkid’s wedding or the birth of their first child, but there are assuredly things you’d like to tell them. A lot of people wrestle with the thought that the wisdom they’ve gained through struggle and strife won’t make it to their descendants when they need it at life’s most trying moments.
We’re in the fortunate position of being able to assure people that it will.
Call it a fear, call it an “anticipatory regret” (I like that because it makes me sound smarter). Whatever you call it, we know people want to be there to support family forever.
When writing a “mini memoir” for a grandparent, our professional interviewers ask people what concerns they have about their descendants' future and then we ask custom followup questions about what advice they’d like those people to know. Every interview session is customized to you.
So, on their wedding day, you as their grandparent can “speak” to them through your book. They’ll be able to read exactly what you want them to know. This narrative becomes a bridge, allowing them to feel your love and learn from your experiences long into the future. This isn’t just your book—it’s a conversation between generations.
For a lot of people, this helps tamp down any anticipatory regret about not continuing their parental or grandparental roles forever. Be there for your family and avoid regret with your own memoir.
Let's Talk About How Grandkids.com Can Easily Help You Avoid These Regrets
We’ve developed a one-of-a-kind service with professional interviewers, transcriptionists, writers, and editors to help those in their 70s (and their children) wrestle with or altogether avoid these regrets.
And, we do all this relatively inexpensively: Grandkids.com, the only high volume “mini memoir” service for grandparents, can capture one’s life story for just $495 (we do have more involved packages for about $1.8K, but I’m not trying to hardsell anyone). Your personalized memoir will look something like this:
Our goal is to help you and your family prepare for saying goodbye by capturing all of your best anecdotes and key family details so when your grandkids want to understand who you were and what you stood for, they can pick up your book.
And, I practice what I preach. I started Grandkids.com because I have two sons:
That’s a fake picture of my sons because I don’t love posting photos of them online but that is what you get when you Google "royalty-free image of two brothers with exceptional hair." Now you know. :)
My sons are the grandkids of six grandparents. Unfortunately, they realistically won’t have all six grandparents still around when they start to wonder things like…
- Where was grandpa born?
- Why did Pop Pop join the military?
- What was Nana’s famous apple pie recipe?
And, selfishly, I wanted that information too.
That’s actually me; I chose this dorky looking photo because, again, it makes me look smart.
I wanted my parents to know that they’ll be remembered forever and I wanted a single, unalienable compendium of life info about my parents. Grandkids.com is how I got that for my family and how you can get that for yours.
If you’re like, “Luke, I get it. I need to capture my life story.” Great! Let's do your free interview right away. Just fill out this form and we'll interview you and write the first two pages of your memoir 100% for free.
If you’re like, “Luke, this is a bit long. Are you going to ramble on forever? Doesn’t your wife tell you to wrap it up?” Yes, a bit more, and yes, she often does.
Grandkids.com has three great packages to capture your life story:
A bronze package that is simply some interviews and transcripts – This is to get the facts down expediently and inexpensively. Here’s a sample (anonymized, of course). ($495)
A silver package that’s a 40-page memoir (so, a book you can read cover to cover and understand the individual at the center of it all). Here’s a sample. ($1,795)
A gold package that’s at least 50 pages with a special chapter that intentionally contains info from interview questions about what you want your grandkids to know about how to live their lives. And, here’s a sample. ($1,895)
So, if you’re sitting there thinking there’s even just a small part of you that might regret not taking steps to capture your life story, not taking steps to be remembered as you want, or not being there for family, then fill out the form below and let's conduct your first interview 100% for free:
Fill out the simple form below to schedule your free interview so we can write the first two pages of your memoir (again, for free):
P.S. (Does a blog post have a P.S.? Nope, but this one does because why not.) The Grandkids.com memoir writing process has been called “rewarding,” “a breeze,” “unexpectedly cathartic,” and “deeply meaningful.” It's almost like therapy but a whole lot more fun.
P.P.S. If this isn't for you but you know someone else who might be interested in immortalizing their story, please share this page with them. Thank you!
