Todd Albertson

 

Dr. Todd Albertson was born on April 10, 1965, in Great Falls, Montana, USA as the only child of a middle class family.  He spent his youth in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he attended high school, lettered in wrestling his sophomore year, and was active in student government.

Todd graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle with a degree in International Business in 1988.  He earned an M.B.A. from Seattle University in 1995.  In 2005, he graduated from Trinity Theological Union Graduate School with a Ph.D. in Theology & Culture.

Out of college, Todd worked for a Swiss venture capital firm and then as an evangelist for Microsoft Corporation.  In 1995, he started a transportation and logistics company called Transportics Corporation.  Todd received an honorary commission as an Admiral in the Nebraska Navy by then Governor Ben Nelsen for his company’s role in community investment.

After that Todd founded Small Town TV, an entertainment dot com and has been active in the motion picture industry since 1999, earning credits as a director, writer, and producer.  Two of his projects, the 2002 documentary SIDEWALK SOLDIERS and independent feature SOLILOQUY received critical acclaim as creative and purposeful entertainment.

More recently, Todd was busy doing relief work in Asia and now makes his living as a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur.  His passions are friends, family, cooking, surfing, and making the world a better place.

THE GODS OF BUSINESS is his first book and in it, he maps the intersection of faith and the marketplace.  In plain and easy to read language,
Todd analyzes the world's major religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Secular Postmodernism, Shintoism, and Sikhism—and how these religions influence business ethics.

The book’s website is http://www.thegodsofbusiness.com.  You can visit the author online at http://www.toddalbertson.com.

 

PageOneLit.com:  Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life?  Who were your earliest influences and why?

Todd Albertson:  I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska and both reading and writing were a big part of my life.  As a child, my parents and grandparents were always voracious readers of newspapers, magazines, and books.  My earliest influences were, however, less than “high brow“ literature.  I developed the reading bug from the original HARDY BOYS series by Franklin W. Dixon.  To a 12 year-old kid, those books were page-turners and much more entertaining than television!

Writing seemed a natural progression for me.  In Junior High School, I wrote articles and interviews for a science fiction magazine.  In High School, I moved on to covering President Ronald Regan’s trip to Nebraska.  I had a Press Pass from the 1,500 subscriber WILBER REPUBLICAN newspaper.  I felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction by being able to put my experiences of that trip into the written word.  I was hooked however, when people (adults) told me they read my story and enjoyed it. 

PageOneLit.com: Why do you write? 

Todd Albertson: In my twenties and early thirties, writing was more of means to an end than a passion.  I paid for college by ghostwriting business plans and corporate reports.  And in my first few jobs out of college I found that by writing well, I got better assignments and promotions than my peers who didn’t write well.  It was all very Pavlovian!

By my mid-thirties, writing became more of a cathartic expression for me.  I enjoyed the creative process, being able to escape the chaos of real life as well as the ability to touch and inform others through my work.

PageOneLit.com: Your new book (THE GODS OF BUSINESS) is EXCELLENT!  Why did you write this book and what was the inspiration behind it?  Why did you title is THE GODS OF BUSINESS?

Todd Albertson: I was interested in whether or not religion played any role in business ethics and explored that idea more in my doctoral thesis, THE IMPACT OF RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEW ON BUSINESS ETHICS AND PRACTICES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN SOCIETY. 

At the same time, I found myself lecturing and teaching about different religions and what they believed.  A lot of my students wanted to know how a specific religion would influence the way a group did business.  I kept getting asked if there was a book available that explained all of this.  And there wasn’t one - at least one that was readable by an average person.  Consequently, I thought I’d write that book.

I came up with the title after hearing a guy satirically talking about “taunting the gods of business.”  I thought to myself: “What a great name for my book” because everyone has a god (whether they call them that or not) who influences how he or she does business.

PageOneLit.com:  In THE GODS OF BUSINESS you write that that this book may frustrate some because you do not 'spoon feed' the reader - Please explain.

Todd Albertson: There is a trend in non-fiction literature today to spoon-feed the reader.  By this I mean that the author, usually an “expert” in something or another, thinks their audience can only read at a 10th Grade level, are dumb, and don’t have the intellect to synthesize or process information on their own.  That book is written with an attitude of “you’re too stupid to figure this out on your own, so let me tell you what you should think.” 

I take a different approach.  I assume that people are inherently smart and have the ability to understand something more complex than comic books.  I also believe that people can draw their own conclusions about cause and effect and given the basic understanding of a religion and its belief system can predict how adherents of that religion will respond to ethical situations in the marketplace.

PageOneLit.com: What are your personal ideas/concepts/perspectives to running a business, whether it is a global company or a one-person business?

Todd Albertson:  It’s all the same – focus on the customer.  Treat them as you’d like to be treated.  Provide them with an exceptional product or service at a fair price, give them respect and dignity, and keep your word.  A successful business always starts with the customer.

PageOneLit.com: THE GODS OF BUSINESS reads like it was researched extremely well -- Talk a little about your research and how you went about it - Did you research first and then write the book or did you research as you wrote the book? 

Todd Albertson: The process of writing was research, then write, then research again, then write again, and so on.  Religion is an extremely complex subject.  You could write thousands upon thousands of pages about any particular religion and still not even be at the tip of the iceberg in terms of being a comprehensive work. 

In THE GODS OF BUSINESS, I tried to objectively cover the basics of each of the nine world religions, while trying to balance being too general with getting caught-up in the quagmire of too many details.  As such I tried to keep things as tight as possible, which meant I was constantly going back to re-research things that were previously researched just to be certain that I was being accurate while still being concise.

PageOneLit.com:  In THE GODS OF BUSINESS you write that "Religion has a lot to say about sex and politics" -- Please explain

Todd Albertson: Religion has a lot to say about everything.  Everybody has a worldview, the way an individual views the world and interacts within it.  And religion is a large component of everybody’s worldview. 

If your religion teaches that sexual intercourse with multiple partners is a good way to worship your gods then your ideas about sex will be radically different than if your religion teaches that it is wrong to have sex with anyone other than one spouse.    

In the same vein, if your religion teaches that all people are made in God’s image and therefore equally worthy and loved, you will govern or rule differently than if your religion teaches that some people are better than others.

PageOneLit.com: What did you learn from writing THE GODS OF BUSINESS?

Todd Albertson: What I really learned is how much work it takes to get a book “just right” and ready for publication.

PageOneLit.com: THE GODS OF BUSINESS looks at nine religions --- Were there any religions left out?  If you could have added a 10th religion what would it have been and why?

Todd Albertson: Of the top 15 religions (in terms of adherents), I excluded: Primal/Indigenous, African Traditional & Diasporic, Juche, Spiritism, Baha’i and Jainism.  Additionally there are tens of thousands of other religions (and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, if you include sects and offshoots of the major religions out there).  I left out the ones I did, because in my opinion their practitioners and worldviews are not major forces in the global marketplace (at least compared to the religions which I included in the book).    

If I could have had a tenth religion, it would have been Jainism.  Jainism is like three other religions in THE GODS OF BUSINESS - Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism - a religion originating in India.  Jains are fascinating folks  – they are completely non-violent.  They take this to such an extreme that Jain monks walk barefoot and sweep the ground in front of them to avoid killing any insect that they might accidentally step on while walking. 

Many Jains cover their mouth to prevent the possibility of swallowing small invisible microbes when they breathe.  Because of this extreme take on non-violence, Jains generally don’t work in professions where there is a possibility of killing anything whatsoever (such as farming).  Therefore, there is a high concentration of Jains in professions like banking and business.  They are generally sought after in business because others, outside their religion, believe them to be honest, competent, and reliable.

PageOneLit.com:   What's next? 

Todd Albertson:  I’m working on two books.  The first deals with economic globalization and how it has damage America’s core business infrastructure and our future standing in the world.  The second is about “doing business the Christian way.”  Christianity has the highest moral standards of any religion, yet most of the times its practitioners have the lowest standard of business ethics.  I find that an interesting paradox.

PageOneLit.com:  What was the last book you read? 

Todd Albertson: IMPERIAL GRUNTS: THE AMERICAN MILITARY ON THE GROUND by Robert D. Kaplan.  It’s a fascinating read about the American fighting man and woman and combines historical insights, a day-to-day journal, and political discourse into an intriguing, informative, and very readable book.  I can only hope that THE GODS OF BUSINESS is as good as IMPERIAL GRUNTS! 

PageOneLit.com:   Do you have any hobbies?  What are they?  How do they enhance your writing?

Todd Albertson:  I have lots of hobbies.  Probably too many!  Today I was able to go surfing so that one is fresh to talk about for this interview. 

Surfing enhances my writing in three ways.  First, I love the water and just by being on the ocean, I feel refreshed, renewed, and more energetic about writing.  Second, in order to “catch a wave” you have to wait for the waves to come in towards shore.  Waiting teaches patience and perseverance which I need to be reminded of often when writing because I never get as much done as quickly as I had hoped and planned.  And third, surfing seems to spark my creative juices.  Some of the best ideas I’ve had for transitions and points seem to happen when I’m out there on the water.