Growing your Business with GENEROSITY with John Ruhlin
# Swell AI Transcript: John Ruhlin - Meta Performance Institute (First Edit).mp3
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Welcome to the Beyond High Performance podcast featuring content and conversations from me, Jason Jaggard, along with our elite coaches at Novus Global, their high performing clients, and the faculty of the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching.
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On this podcast, you'll hear some of the world's best executive coaches and high performing leaders, artists and athletes discuss how they continue to go beyond high performance in their lives and businesses.
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In this episode of the Metta Performance Show, I sit down with international keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and author of the best-selling book, Giftology, John Rulon.
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John is my personal patron saint of generosity, a value that is close to my heart and one of our most important tenants at Novus Global and the Metta Performance Institute.
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From a young age, John has been turning gift-giving into one of the most important tools a business can use to build longevity and success.
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It all started with a sales internship at Cutco, where some feedback to start intentionally giving away smaller ticket gifts to establish relationships and encourage sales grew to John becoming the highest selling intern in the company's history of over two million salespeople.
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Conversation, we talk about how to turn gift giving into an art form that can not only enhance the success of your relationships, but also your company.
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We get into how gifts can grow your business, making generosity not about yourself by slapping your logo on everything.
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The right time to receive a gift.
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learning how to give gifts without strings attached and why generosity towards your employees is just as important as your clients and much more.
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I am so excited to share this conversation with you and to encourage you to check out John's book, giftology available wherever books are sold and to use this giftology recipe to cook up your own gifts for the people in your life and business.
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Enjoy the show.
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The wait is finally over.
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Our new book, Beyond High Performance, what great coaches know about how the best get better, is available for purchase wherever books are sold.
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This USA Today bestseller is more than 250 pages
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of expertise, anecdotes, and insights from Novus Global coaches, as well as faculty from the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching.
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We are so excited to put our proprietary framework that has helped thousands of leaders achieve more into your hands.
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And we can't wait to see how you'll use the book to enhance your life and leadership.
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To learn more and obtain this essential resource for yourself, visit novus.global.com.
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John Rulan, thank you.
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Thank you.
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Thank you so much for being on the show.
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I have admired you both up close and from afar for years, and I'm thrilled to finally be able to introduce you both to our clients and our community and also our coaches.
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So thanks for being on our show.
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Thanks for having me.
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So as you heard in the intro, John is... And I mentioned this to John before we started recording, but John is my patron saint of generosity.
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For those of you who've been listening to our show for a while, you know that generosity is a big value for our firm and for me personally.
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And it's a work in progress.
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We can always grow.
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We can always learn.
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And when I intersected with John,
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Really, John, you were the first person to kind of canonize that idea and crystallize that idea and to package it in a way that lets people really dive into it the same way they would dive into playing the piano or learning how to coach.
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It really is an infinite
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pursuit.
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And so we're going to create as much value for people as possible in our conversation.
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So get your notes out, your pen, your notepad.
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By the time we're done, you're going to have some really great takeaways for how to upgrade your generosity game and why.
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But first, John, let's go just a little biographical.
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So what would you say is your history with the idea of generosity?
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And if you want, you can start with your dad.
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I know that's a significant element of that.
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But I'd love for the audience to get to know your journey with generosity.
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Yeah, well, I think what's interesting is I didn't grow up necessarily in a generous family.
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They weren't ungenerous, but I grew up poor.
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Like a lot of entrepreneurs, you learn what you don't want.
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You don't like to be poor.
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You don't like to have resources.
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I grew up on a farm in the Midwest in Ohio, 47 acres, milk and goat.
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So I wasn't hanging out at the country club, or galas was not in my vernacular.
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Like, hey, we're going to go to a charity event.
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Hey, we're going to go meet to a foundation.
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Like, those were all very like, what?
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Maybe in a movie.
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I grew up that way and didn't want to be poor.
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So I was going to go be a doctor or a lawyer.
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And when I went to pre-med in college, my life kind of changed because of a mentor.
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And it was my girlfriend's dad.
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And he was a law firm owner.
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But when you're poor, you notice when people are generous.
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And he was like the guy that would like find a deal on noodles.
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And he didn't just buy a box, he bought a semi-load.
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And everybody at church, 250 people are walking away with like a year supply, like stacks of noodles.
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And as a 20 year old, I'm just like scratching my head, like, this is weird.
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I'm doing the math in my head.
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I'm like, that's like 40 or 50 grand on noodles on just a random Thursday.
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It wasn't like Christmas.
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It was just in the middle of like April.
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And so, I remember going to Paul and being like, Paul, like, what is up with, like, what are you doing?
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Because I'm thinking I got college to pay for, like, I could use an extra 40 grand.
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And he just had this smile on his face, it wasn't tactical for him, it was just like, hey, this is, I just love making people smile, like, this is a cool thing to do.
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It's just normal for him.
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So, for me, that was like the first kind of light bulb moment of like,
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Oh, this isn't like, you don't have to be like Warren Buffett or you don't do this like when you die, like give things like you can do this all the time.
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And then I just saw like people smiles and people flock to him.
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And I just noticed like deals came his way of people that he had done something for with no strings attached, like 30 years before when they weren't in a position to necessarily be like valuable.
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He treated the receptionist at the same level as the CEO, like he just who he was.
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And I remember just kind of thinking like,
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I want to be Paul when I'm 60.
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Like that was like this internal, like, I think God's blessed me with the ability to like look at angles and be like, oh, they're doing something.
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I like that.
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I like the results of that.
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And it kind of gave me permission to start kind of testing it.
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And at the time I was interning with Cutco.
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So I'm like, working up the courage, like, you know, anybody that thinks coaching is hard to sell or insurance or financial services, try pitching your girlfriend's dad knives.
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That's the weirdest, you know, like, hey, Paul, will you be generous with me?
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Well, just for a second, let's define Cutco, because some people, I'd never heard of it before I met you.
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Come on.
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I know.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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So, Cutco, you know, they're like the Rolex or the high-end knife company, made in New York.
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They've been around since the 40s.
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So, like, they're like a full Cutco kitchen.
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It's like 12 grand.
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So, this isn't like going to like Walmart and buying a, you know, 1995 or Target.
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Like,
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And I didn't realize at the time, but there are knives out there.
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You can buy like chef knives for like 20 grand, handmade over the course of a year.
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So people were like, that's expensive for knives.
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I thought it was like a million dollars when I heard how much Cutco was.
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But Cutco is about a $300 million company, privately owned.
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Actually, the owners are faith-based, like Christian dude, all family owned.
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To me, they're like the Tony Robbins of people development for college kids.
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So, they have an internship program for college kids.
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They are direct sales.
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And so, you can learn sales and marketing and all these different things.
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So, out of desperation, a buddy of mine who was a seminary, he starts selling the knives.
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And I'm like, Steve, you couldn't sell anything to anybody.
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You couldn't give, you know, sell water to somebody in the middle of the desert.
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And he's like, the training's really good.
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So I interned out of desperation to pay for med school.
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So Cutco has worked with about 2 million sales reps over 70 years on the internship program.
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So the founder of, whether you like his leadership or not, the founder of Uber, Travis Kalanich, his first job when he was 18 or 17 or 18,
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as an intern was selling knives.
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Alrod Miracle Morning.
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Like there's this underground like Cutco Mafia, you know a bunch of the guys now.
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But it's because like if you can go sell high-end knives in somebody's home when you're 20, handle objections, build a relationship, all this stuff.
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I mean, you can be a CEO, a coach, you can be a leader, you'll find your non-profit like so.
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But for me, it was out of desperation.
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So, I pitched knives to Paul
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your girlfriend's dad.
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Girlfriend's dad, law firm owner, radically generous.
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Yes.
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Please have mercy on me, Paul.
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So, he buys a set for himself and his three unmarried daughters.
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And he didn't make me feel uncomfortable.
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That was like the key was like, he just was like, yeah, this is great stuff.
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I'll buy a set.
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I'll buy a set for my three girls.
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They'll eventually have a home.
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Yeah.
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So, then he comes back to me.
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This is like the most generous question.
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John, I want to help you hit your goals, but I don't know what else I can buy.
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But I want to help you.
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And so a week later, before church, I come and pitch him knives again, thinking he has all these clients that own companies, and they're all into the outdoors, hunting, fishing.
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Maybe he'll buy these $200 pocket knives that Cutco has.
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And so weird, Paul, what do you think?
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He's like, I don't want to wear pocket knives.
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I'm like, OK, I get it.
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And I'm thinking he's shutting me down.
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He's like, I want to order 100 of the $100, $200 paring knives.
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And I'm like, in my head, I'm just like,
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You're going to give a bunch of dudes that are running million-dollar companies, some cases half a billion-dollar companies, a kitchen tool, like it just didn't compute to this farm kid.
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And he said, John, the reason I have more referrals, deal flow access, all these other things, I figured out that if you take care of the family in business and are generous with them, everything else seems to take care of itself.
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So that was like the lightning bolt moment.
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It wasn't about the stupid knives.
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Although to this day, we still do millions of dollars in knives on the agency side.
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Paul understood the idea of how to pour into relationships and what they really care about and family.
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And so I just started to mimic what he was doing.
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And by the time I was a senior in college, we became their number one rep in the history of the company globally.
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Wow.
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By really applying these generosity principles in business,
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And so med school got put on hold and I started an agency and I've been working with companies on thoughtfully engaging their relationships ever since.
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Okay, great.
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So then there's a few pieces I want to get on the table as we tear this apart.
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But first, let's just give some value here.
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So what are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're thinking about generosity in business?
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Yeah.
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Well, I think that there's a bunch of mistakes.
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And what's interesting is people use the excuse of, well, I need to get marketing.
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I need to get value out of this.
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And so, they make it about themselves.
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And generosity or gifting or whatever you want to put the attachment to it.
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Like at the end of the day, all of these things
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a mentor and friend of mine, you know, is one of the best-selling books on the planet.
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It's a Christian marriage book, but the five love languages, all of those are just acts of love, whether it's words of affirmation, or if you're not familiar with the book, service, or a physical gift, they're all just loving on.
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It's all about them, not about you.
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Like, right?
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Like most people give love the way they like to receive love.
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So if you're all about physical touch, you're giving everybody a hug.
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Meanwhile, they're like, you know, like, I want you to speak
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I want words of affirmation, and a lot of times we marry our opposites.
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But even in business, like humans are humans, and we like all of them, but we have a primary and a secondary typically.
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And so I think most people, when they're doing gifting or generosity with their employees or their clients, they make it about themselves.
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Like, what do they do?
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They're like, hey, we were really generous with our 10,000 employees.
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We gave Patagonia jackets for $300.
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On the chest of this thing, they put a logo the size of a softball of like Ernst & Young.
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Like, right?
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Yes.
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And what they don't realize is that's no longer a gift.
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It's no longer being generous.
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You just give them a uniform.
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That's right.
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And you think you're the king, right?
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Like, oh, we just dropped $3 million on jackets or vests or name the piece of swag.
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You took a gift, a generous thing, and turned it into a manipulative thing.
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Yes.
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You may not have realized it, but you're trying to turn them into a billboard
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for your brand.
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How does that feel?
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It feels gross.
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Even if you're like, oh, I like Lululemon.
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I like a Lululemon jacket.
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And maybe you even wear it, but you don't identify that as being generous.
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You identify it as a promotional product or a swag, even if it's a Rolex.
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Like I've seen people give out Rolexes to their dealers, to their clients, to their franchisees.
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And they're like thinking they're Daddy Warbucks, man.
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They puff their chest out.
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But as soon as you put a logo, like Domino's gave out Rolexes.
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Really?
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On the white Airface King, they put the Domino's.
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Guess what happened?
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Yeah, that's gross.
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It's just, right.
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Even if you work for Domino's, do you want a Domino's Rolex?
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Probably not.
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No, I don't want to rep cheese pizza on my wrist.
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On my wrist, no.
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So what they do, they traded them in.
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And so you'll see that like, but here's the challenge is that this one particular thing, people are honest about a lot of things.
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Like if you go to a restaurant and there's a fly in your suit, the waiter is going to get that feedback, right?
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If you're an accounting firm and you F up at somebody's tax return, they're going to let you know.
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But when you're generous,
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in quotation marks, when you give a gift, when you take somebody out to dinner or a ball game or whatever, they are very rarely honest with you about what's really going on inside their head, because why?
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It feels like a douchebag to say, the gift you gave me, I threw away, I re-gifted, it made me feel less of a person, it made me feel like you don't even know me.
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A thousand percent.
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Right.
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You never get that honest feedback.
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So people make generosity about themselves.
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They puff up their chest.
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They give things in their company colors or logo or, Hey, we've been in business a hundred years.
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Nobody cares.
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You care.
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You care.
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Cause it's your baby.
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Like, right.
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Your great grandfather started the company or whatever it is.
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And there's nothing wrong with that, but you're like giving out gifts thinking you're cool, but you're not communicating in the language of the other person who's your client, your supplier, your dealer, your employee, your prospect.
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What they care is about themselves.
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They care about their legacy.
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They care about their family.
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And so almost all generosity is about the giver versus being about the receiver.
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And in doing that, you end up getting a negative consequence even if you don't realize it.
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Like, you'll get a few people that like free stuff.
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They're like, oh, I love this thing.
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But 98% of your affluent clients are like, really?
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That's pretty tacky.
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That's cheese ball.
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So, rule number one, it's not about you.
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Don't brand it if you want it to really be generous or if you really want it to be a gift.
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Well, I want to double click on that just for a second because I love the insight that you just said around we give feedback in almost every other area of our life.
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The place we're least likely to give feedback is when someone's being generous towards us.
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And by the way, just to add on that, because it feels ungrateful.
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It feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth or whatever.
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Just say thank you.
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And your parents teach you that.
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Your parents teach you, just say thank you.
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So you don't really ever, have you found a way to get feedback from, or is the only solution just to be more clairvoyant and to be more emotionally intelligent and to give better gifts?
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Or is there a way to solicit feedback?
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Yeah, I mean, you can look and see,
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like a year from now, are they still using it outside of your presence?
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Because sometimes people get the polo shirt and they'll wear it once a year on the company golf tournament or whatever else.
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And some of it, I think, is just psychologically, like we know that like when we say somebody's name, if I say, hey, Jason, there's a dopamine hit, right?
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You're like, psychologically, you love hearing your own name.
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So there's certain rules that you can follow.
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In our opinion, there's a recipe.
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Now, it's not guaranteed.
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Like, but there's certain things that as a human being, the way God's wired us, that if you follow these recipes, these rules, these filters, now there's always reasons to break.
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And people are like, well, I did this and it worked.
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I'm like, great.
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I also break my own rules occasionally, but I do it intentionally versus accidentally.
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But we all know that if you send somebody something and it's personalized with their name on it, whether it's a Rolex or it doesn't matter, there's automatically a personal, this was made for me versus this was an afterthought.
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We all know that we want to be thought of as one-to-one, a human-to-human.
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So there are certain things I think you can do to put the odds in your favor that is likely to land as not a thing.
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Because really, the amount of people that are like, John, I don't care about gifts.
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As a business owner, I'm running a $13 million business.
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I don't give two rips about gifts.
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And I'm like, great.
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I own an agency that does gifts, and I don't care about gifts either.
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It's not even in my top three love languages.
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Yeah.
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But you do care about relationships.
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Yes.
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Because most businesses rise and fall on employee relationships, banking relationships, their law firm, their supplier, their clients, their influencers, whatever it is.
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And if you care about humans, then you care about how you show up for those humans and whether that's experientially with dinners and trips and conferences and summits and retreats and masterminds, like those are all just excuses for humans to get together for an experience.
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It's a gift.
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But what I see, and the reason I think that our agency even exists, is people suck at the physical element of gratitude and generosity because they don't think it matters.
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But it's a physical delivery vehicle for the emotional connection of the value you place on that relationship.
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And when you start to realize that, the reason a diamond ring means something to a woman when they're getting proposed to is because it signifies
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If this is for you, one person, I care about you.
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It's like the value I placed on the relationship and a lot of guys mess that up like diamonds don't matter.
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It's like no, but this is a representation and it may say like, am I taking this relationship seriously?
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Yes.
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I actually messed that up early on.
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The giftologist, I was almost ready to go bankrupt 15 years ago because of a bunch of business stuff during 2008.
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I was like, doesn't matter about the ring, but it matters to the other human.
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That's why I think that people F up and they mess up and they think, I don't care about gifts or swag.
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But if you want to influence the heart of a human,
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then you better show up powerfully, uniquely, generously, creatively, whether that's in the physical realm or whether that's in the experiential realm.
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And most guys as leaders, but really all businesses in general, they go so hard.
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Like nobody's taking their clients out to Motel 6 and McDonald's.
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Like it's Ritz-Carlton, it's Four Seasons, it's Super Bowl.
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And then physically, one's at a level 12, or like it should be, and one's at like a negative three.
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And it basically communicates you're spending dollars to say, you don't matter.
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I don't care about you.
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You weren't worth my time to do something.
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And that's like, I'm gonna talk about like a negative return on investment.
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That's like horrific, but we don't think about it.
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We think, oh, I'm just checking the box at Christmas.
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I'm like, no, you're communicating either value or not value to that relationship.
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Actually, that reminds me of two other mistakes I've heard you talk about, and I want to click on these real quick.
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One is, you mentioned Christmas, people give gifts at the wrong time.
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Can you talk a little bit about the quote, right time, whatever, but the right time to give a gift isn't what people think?
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I think timing is just as important, maybe more important than anything else.
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I think half the impact
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of anything you're going to do for any relationship.
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Like if you think about in a marriage context, if you have a significant other and you show up for, you know, in your case, in my case, your wife's anniversary, birthday, and Christmas, Valentine's day, do you earn brownie points for showing up at those times?
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No, those are like, those are table stakes.
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Those are expected.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
And if I want to wow my wife, I need to show up on a random Tuesday and say, hey, honey, I got the four girls.
SPEAKER_00:
I booked you a spot.
SPEAKER_00:
Make it about her, what she would want to do.
SPEAKER_00:
But I did it out of intentionality and because I wanted to, not because I needed to, not because I was in the doghouse.
SPEAKER_00:
I did it because, and so so many clients, so many companies are like, John, I don't need to.
SPEAKER_00:
I got good relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, when you show up for the relationship because you wanted to, as in just because, it means a thousand times more than, hey, we signed a million dollar business deal or a billion dollar business deal.
SPEAKER_00:
I just talked to somebody the other day, yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:
They're like, we closed this huge deal.
SPEAKER_00:
They bought us.
SPEAKER_00:
And then they sent us this weird, like half their company, half the other company's piece of art.
SPEAKER_00:
The founder was like, what the hell do I do with this?
SPEAKER_00:
They didn't tell the private equity firm.
SPEAKER_00:
No.
SPEAKER_00:
they just threw it in the closet or threw it away.
SPEAKER_00:
And it probably costs thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_00:
So everybody says, I don't care if you're selling toilet paper, if you say, are you in the relationship business or the transaction business?
SPEAKER_00:
Everybody, even if they sell toilet paper, like we're all about relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
And I'm like, let's map out your relationship plan.
SPEAKER_00:
When do you show up for relationships?
SPEAKER_00:
At transactional times, when a deal's done, when a referral is given.
SPEAKER_00:
Somebody gives you a referral, you should say thank you, but that's not the time to give them a gift or show gratitude.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
If you want more referrals, you show up for relationships before the referral happens as a just because and you inspire 10 times more referrals because it wasn't a give to get, it wasn't a transactional thing.
SPEAKER_00:
You don't wait till Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:
Why?
SPEAKER_00:
Because everybody is showing their gratitude out of guilt and obligation and expectation.
SPEAKER_00:
Yes.
SPEAKER_00:
You cannot wow somebody when they know something's coming.
SPEAKER_00:
Like the Ritz-Carlton, what are they known for?
SPEAKER_00:
Surprise and delight.
SPEAKER_00:
If you do things at expected times, anniversaries, we say no ABC gifting.
SPEAKER_00:
Or if you wanna do ABC gifting, don't expect the law of the harvest to come into play, the 100X return, because it's expected.
SPEAKER_00:
You ruin, especially with affluent people, so timing, we call it planned randomness.
SPEAKER_00:
I will map out for employees, clients, partners, doesn't matter their relationship.
SPEAKER_00:
When would they not expect something and I'm gonna choose, you know, you VP of sales or you CEO.
SPEAKER_00:
Don't wait for Christmas to give something.
SPEAKER_00:
It's like a bonus at Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:
What does that become?
SPEAKER_00:
It becomes part of their salary.
SPEAKER_00:
An expectation.
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
You get no upside, only downside.
SPEAKER_00:
Whereas if you show up on a random Tuesday in the middle of February and say, hey, everybody, or you send something to everybody's home that works for your company and say, hey, not because of record profits, not because it's Christmas.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm just appreciative of you being on my team.
SPEAKER_00:
Now you could send something to 10,000 people in your company and they're like, what the heck?
SPEAKER_00:
It's not my birthday.
SPEAKER_00:
It's not, I didn't work here for seven or 15 years.
SPEAKER_00:
Like anniversary gifts in corporate America are disgusting.
SPEAKER_00:
Like you wait for somebody to work for your company for 10 years and then you give them a catalog of crap from China that they can buy it from target for like $72 and they just put in 20,000 hours with you.
SPEAKER_00:
And you're going to, because they put in this time, here's some crap to pick out what you want to signify with our logo on it.
SPEAKER_00:
Yes.
SPEAKER_00:
Like that.
SPEAKER_00:
And so you don't understand like the timing showing up out of choice, out of intentionality, out of, out of like, I wanted to do this for you completely shifts any relationship because they see like, oh my gosh, you didn't have to do this.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, yeah, I know I didn't, but I wanted to do this.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:
Well, the question after this question I'm about to ask is dealing with the slime effect and the tension to manage around giving to get versus a no-strings-attached.
SPEAKER_04:
But I do want to talk about budget because I know another mistake you've mentioned is that people just have a budget.
SPEAKER_04:
Let's say for our coaches, let's say they've got a budget of $10,000 to be generous to their clients.
SPEAKER_04:
And then what they do is they say, okay, $10,000, I've got 20 clients, so then 500 bucks for each client, and you just spread it equally.
SPEAKER_04:
And you say, don't do that.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:
Talk about what is the quote, right way to do this.
SPEAKER_00:
I think all humans have value, right?
SPEAKER_00:
I think we're all equal as far as like our value, whether it's before a creator or just as humans, like whether you believe in a guy or not, like we have, but in business, we're playing a game of like, you know, profits, not a bad word.
SPEAKER_00:
We like, and so not all people are created equal as far as importance, especially on the client side.
SPEAKER_00:
Now, you may have baseline things that you do for all of your employees just as like for us, like every employee that works for Giftology, we're like, what can we do for them that everybody would want?
SPEAKER_00:
We pay for their house cleaning every other week.
SPEAKER_00:
And like people don't brag about their 401k and their health insurance that cost a business owner 20, 30 grand per year per employee.
SPEAKER_00:
What are those?
SPEAKER_00:
Those are table stakes.
SPEAKER_00:
But we try to find creative ways to show up for our employees, and we do that for everybody.
SPEAKER_00:
But there are times, like for our clients, like I might have 1,000 clients, but I have 40 that produce 80% of my revenue.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm not going to send a calendar of 1,000 people.
SPEAKER_00:
I'd rather go take the 40.
SPEAKER_00:
If any one of these 40 left, what would be the impact on what's the lifetime value of each of these 40 relationships over the next decade?
SPEAKER_00:
It's worth a million dollars over the next decade.
SPEAKER_00:
Great.
SPEAKER_00:
Well, I probably should be reinvesting a percentage of that million dollars back into them, A, to keep them.
SPEAKER_00:
And a lot of companies don't have retention issues, but some do.
SPEAKER_00:
Two is to grow with them, like cross-sell, up-sell, like, hey, we're getting this much of their business.
SPEAKER_00:
We're probably not getting all of their business.
SPEAKER_00:
And then the third part is when you invest in those relationships that way, you start to flip things from a reciprocity perspective where they don't just like you, they actually care about you and your company and they want to see you win, which is where you get what I call active loyalty.
SPEAKER_00:
People think they have loyal customers or loyal employees.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, if your employees and clients aren't recruiting their family and friends to come work for you or to come do business with you, you have passive loyalty collecting a paycheck or just working with you in a transactional business.
SPEAKER_00:
But we all know when somebody is a raving fan or an ambassador and they're going out of their way to send you referrals or talk about you on the golf course or at the board meeting or going out of their way to connect the dots for you.
SPEAKER_00:
I'll take one of those relationships because now I have an unpaid sales rep for my brand.
SPEAKER_00:
But that doesn't happen by sending a bunch of swag to everybody a couple of times a year, or, hey, we're having a conference, here's a bunch of notebooks, or here's a bunch of backpacks with our logo on it.
SPEAKER_00:
It comes from saying, hey, the value of these 40, or 400, or 4,000 relationships is this.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm going to take five.
SPEAKER_00:
We have clients that do upwards of 20, but we say 5% to 15% of net profit, not revenue, net profit, reinvested back into the top relationships that you have.
SPEAKER_00:
to do those three things, keep them, grow them, and to get them to be a sales rep.
SPEAKER_00:
And so that's all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I could, if I wanted to, this relationship that I've been sending peanut brittle to and Patagonia vests, I could actually send them 10 Rolexes and it still wouldn't be enough.
SPEAKER_00:
And that's where you can start to say, Oh my gosh, what are the things I could do for my relationships based upon the value of them?
SPEAKER_00:
Not because I have to, but because I want to.
SPEAKER_00:
And that this should be a business metric and a strategy that you employ, just like you do with Facebook ads or like any other metric that you're like, I put a dollar in, I want to get $3 back out.
SPEAKER_00:
It's usually only humans when you think this way, where you can put a dollar in and actually get $100 back out.
SPEAKER_00:
It doesn't happen through Facebook ads, it happens through relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
We call it ROR, return on relationship.
SPEAKER_00:
And that's where things start to get sick.
SPEAKER_00:
And we've all had those relationships in business where we, for whatever reason, we connected with them and we could not repay them for the generosity that they've brought back to us.
SPEAKER_00:
But we don't intentionally go out and create those kinds of relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
It happens accidentally versus intentionally.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:
So then just a few things to make sure our audience is hearing this.
SPEAKER_04:
One is you want to have a gift budget, a generosity budget, like step one, create a budget for this, get it into your line items, get it into your profit and loss.
SPEAKER_04:
And then what you're also saying is you're going to want to take, if you can, you can probably work your way up to this, but 10 to 15% of your net profit, you want to invest in cultivating the relationships with your top 20%
SPEAKER_04:
of the people who are creating the revenue of your company, your business, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:
It could be 10%, it could be 30%, but you look at all of your relationships, and that even includes employees, right?
SPEAKER_00:
You lose a good employee, or you're having a hard time keeping employees.
SPEAKER_00:
It's like, well, am I investing in relationships differently than my competitors?
SPEAKER_00:
Not just pay.
SPEAKER_00:
Most people don't leave a company because of pay.
SPEAKER_00:
Pay is fourth on the list.
SPEAKER_00:
They leave most of the time because they don't have a good relationship with their manager, and they don't feel like they have value and that they're being appreciated.
SPEAKER_00:
And so, like this is a, yeah, like a strategy that you look at all of your relationships but especially, and here's the other thing I'll just mention right now is don't treat your external relationships like the Ritz-Carlton and your internal clients, your employees aka like the Motel 6 because you'll create discord, you'll create resentment.
SPEAKER_00:
So, my recommendation is actually to start internally first.
SPEAKER_00:
And then those people have experienced generosity.
SPEAKER_00:
And guess what happens when people have experienced generosity?
SPEAKER_00:
They get it, it unlocks for them.
SPEAKER_00:
And they start to say, now when you say, hey, we're going to reinvest 10% of net profits back into these relationships externally, you have buy-in because the internal customer has experienced it and they want to go bless and take care of other people.
SPEAKER_00:
But that starts at the leadership level.
SPEAKER_00:
It has to be genuine.
SPEAKER_00:
You can't be a douchebag and give great gifts.
SPEAKER_00:
It has to be the leaders being the right person.
SPEAKER_00:
that cascades down across the organization.
SPEAKER_00:
This is who we are.
SPEAKER_00:
Not a tactic.
SPEAKER_00:
This isn't for six months.
SPEAKER_00:
This is who we are.
SPEAKER_00:
We're going to budget for this.
SPEAKER_00:
We're going to reinvest our dollars this way.
SPEAKER_00:
And then 10, 15, 20 percent, you're like, it becomes a game.
SPEAKER_00:
It's like, how can we outgive each other?
SPEAKER_00:
How can we, it's like the group that we were part of.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, it's a bunch of dudes that just want to like,
SPEAKER_00:
over give to the other relationship, but internally first, budget properly, don't do like, hey, you know, what do you have for $17?
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like a handwritten note, like don't be cheap.
SPEAKER_00:
Don't be stupid.
SPEAKER_00:
And then the external stuff starts to happen on its own.
SPEAKER_03:
Hi, my name is Mike Park, and I'm a proud graduate of the Metta Performance Institute for coaching.
SPEAKER_03:
The faculty of the Metta Performance Institute not only provided the training tools and experience to learn how to coach people toward powerful growth and thrilling results, but also advocated for that kind of growth and results in my own life.
SPEAKER_03:
I had the
SPEAKER_03:
unique opportunity to have world-class executive coaches invest in my development both professionally and personally.
SPEAKER_03:
It's a privilege to be part of a tribe of coaches fiercely committed to exploring what we are capable of together.
SPEAKER_03:
If you're looking to become a coach or to set up your coaching practice to reach the next level, I highly recommend the certification from the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching.
SPEAKER_03:
To fill out a free assessment of your abilities as a coach and to connect with someone to find out if the Metta Performance Institute is for you, check out www.mp.institute.
SPEAKER_04:
Well, then speaking of starting internally, some people listening to this, we were in Vancouver with our team, which is an amazing experience.
SPEAKER_04:
We spent several days there just building into each other and enjoying each other's company and going out to eat and all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_04:
And there was a moment when I realized this is years ago, there was a moment when I realized that I was treating my clients better than I treated my family.
SPEAKER_04:
in terms of the intentionality, the creativity, the brainstorming sessions, the teaming.
SPEAKER_04:
Now I have conversations with teams about how can we be generous for certain people or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:
And I was not doing that for my parents, as an example, or for my immediate family.
SPEAKER_04:
And John, can you talk a little bit about... I'm imagining it's concentric circles.
SPEAKER_04:
So you have vendors, clients, that kind of a thing, more towards the outer circle.
SPEAKER_04:
Then the inner circle is your immediate team, like employees and the folks who you are working with.
SPEAKER_04:
And then you have your
SPEAKER_04:
the inner team, like if you're married, you have a spouse, your kids, family, whatever, friends, even close friends.
SPEAKER_04:
I know most of the giftology stuff is oriented towards business and business development and those types of things and how to thrive as a business using giftology as a method.
SPEAKER_04:
Can you talk just for a second on what this looks like in your family and adventures of generosity outside of the realm of transaction and business?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Well,
SPEAKER_00:
What I would say is that it's probably, well, especially for me, like my wife knows all of my, like how I scale thoughtfulness, right?
SPEAKER_00:
She knows all my tricks, my tactics, my hacks.
SPEAKER_00:
So business is easy, actually.
SPEAKER_00:
Like the business side, like, you know, when you start sending gifts to your vendors and they're like, you spend millions of dollars with us and you're sending us
SPEAKER_00:
super thoughtful gifts to us and our entire engraving department or packaging department or shipping department like who does that yeah we should be sending you things but once again like guess what those suppliers start looking for ways to save you costs or open doors with leads or like it becomes like a family like you realize most companies don't realize
SPEAKER_00:
if all of your suppliers went away, your bank, your accounting firm, your law firm, your vendor, you have no company.
SPEAKER_00:
But most people don't flip the script and are beating them down on price and mother effing them.
SPEAKER_00:
And they treat them like an adversary, which is so dumb.
SPEAKER_00:
I remember... Anyway, but I think that
SPEAKER_00:
whether it's your kids, your parents, your neighbors, like, if you start working what I call the gratitude muscle in business, there's no way, like, unless you silo yourself, which to me is so silly, like, I think most leaders want to be the same type of person in their church, their charity, their family, their company, like, they want to be consistent across those.
SPEAKER_00:
But if you start to see the results in your business of like, wow, when I make investments in that relationship, it flourishes and great things happen.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, more so, like, who wants to, like, build this amazing business?
SPEAKER_00:
And you see it happen, right?
SPEAKER_00:
Like, I talk to mentors, like, I put too much energy into building a great business and I didn't put the energy into building a great family.
SPEAKER_00:
But if you make intentional, thoughtful choices and don't just show up for your spouse or your parents on expected days, like, I did these crazy things that you know about them.
SPEAKER_00:
They're these $2,000 artifact mugs.
SPEAKER_00:
And I was doing them for all my clients and all my employees and I was like,
SPEAKER_00:
John, your parents are getting up there in age.
SPEAKER_00:
You love your parents.
SPEAKER_00:
Why have you not done one for them?
SPEAKER_00:
The automatic thing is I'll wait for like their 80th birthday or wait for their like, and I was like, dude, you teach to do it as a just because, because you wanted to.
SPEAKER_00:
I was like, nope, I need to make these.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm not gonna wait.
SPEAKER_00:
And even to see them, I wanna just like, cause you don't know what, nobody's guaranteed tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00:
So I mailed them off to them cause they live in Texas now.
SPEAKER_00:
And of course they're crying and like, why did you send me this?
SPEAKER_00:
You know, like, it's not Christmas, it's not a special birthday.
SPEAKER_00:
And it was like, no, because, you know, I'm grateful for who you are, what you did for me, like, being my parents, like, I love you, I care about you, and I don't want to wait till from some special thing.
SPEAKER_00:
And so that could bleed into
SPEAKER_00:
you know, showing up for your neighbors in a different way or the teachers at school, but you start to see and notice where people are mentioning needs or challenges, and you start to see the opportunities.
SPEAKER_00:
And rather than waiting for like, oh, we got to wait for a special holiday or some stupid thing on the calendar, it's like, no, like, if I can do that, and I think that's where Paul was great was he would just say, can I do this?
SPEAKER_00:
And if he could,
SPEAKER_00:
If it was picking up the tab at the local pizza shop for everybody after a basketball game, if it was buying noodles for everybody, if it was buying enough tickets where he was guaranteed to win the Harley Davidson at the school auction, and then what are we to do?
SPEAKER_00:
He's like, I don't need a Harley.
SPEAKER_00:
He'd just donate it back to him.
SPEAKER_00:
And so, but what does that create?
SPEAKER_00:
It just creates like this vortex of like goodwill.
SPEAKER_00:
And we all want people to speak well of us at the school board meeting or at the parent-teacher conference or wherever we're not at, but we're not necessarily taking the intentional steps
SPEAKER_00:
And it's not that I'm perfect, like there's some times where like I screw up or I don't show up powerfully and creatively or generously, like I'm not like, my wife would be the first to tell you, like there's some times where I mail it in because I'm a human.
SPEAKER_00:
But I think that if you can take care of, and I think that's one of my core principles even with the giftology is, it's not about just taking care of your employee or your client, it's taking care of their inner circle.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Say more about that.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
If you look at 80% of the things we recommend, like to this day, we'll recommend the knives and people like, dude, I sell million dollar insurance policy.
SPEAKER_00:
What does that have to do with knives?
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, well, you have humans here.
SPEAKER_00:
They probably break bread together with their loved ones.
SPEAKER_00:
Like all humans do in their kitchen, in their home.
SPEAKER_00:
And so like the idea of like taking care of the spouse and the kids.
SPEAKER_00:
and their assistant, and their team, and their pets.
SPEAKER_00:
I think that a lot of the things that we do work really well, because most people only have a business mind.
SPEAKER_00:
And they're like, I take people golfing.
SPEAKER_00:
I take people to drinks, and wine, and hunting trips, and conferences.
SPEAKER_00:
And I'm like, I don't care about that stuff.
SPEAKER_00:
I would rather be the person that says, hey, what about your wife?
SPEAKER_00:
What about your husband?
SPEAKER_00:
What about your significant other?
SPEAKER_00:
How about we do something that includes your team or your kids or your pets?
SPEAKER_00:
Because so many people naturally in business get neglected, their inner circle gets neglected.
SPEAKER_00:
And when I come along and help a leader say, hey, I don't care about your employees, I care about their entire world.
SPEAKER_00:
And when you start to show up for those people around the people, guess what?
SPEAKER_00:
Spouses that have never met you are like, you're never quitting this company.
SPEAKER_00:
Or that spouse is saying, you better be looking out for some deal flow for that person.
SPEAKER_00:
You have these internal advocates where the inner circle starts to take over.
SPEAKER_00:
And you have these ambassadors.
SPEAKER_00:
We all want ambassadors inside of companies.
SPEAKER_00:
I want ambassadors inside the home.
SPEAKER_00:
I've literally had people where they call me and they're like, John, I feel like I'm sleeping with your sales rep.
SPEAKER_00:
My wife never met you and she's asking about you.
SPEAKER_00:
How is this happening?
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, because I'm honoring you and the people you care about.
SPEAKER_04:
Yes.
SPEAKER_04:
So very simple.
SPEAKER_04:
No, this is great.
SPEAKER_04:
And actually, two questions from now, I've got a question around team, because there's two pieces here.
SPEAKER_04:
There's serving people's teams, which includes their family, their kids, and their family, even pets.
SPEAKER_04:
That's fun.
SPEAKER_04:
And then also, there's serving as a team.
SPEAKER_04:
But before that, I do want to click on the thing I promised our audience for a few minutes ago around the slimy part, because I do feel like there's this tension around
SPEAKER_04:
having generosity be a business development strategy, which I actually think people can sense.
SPEAKER_04:
People can feel it when you give them something because you want something.
SPEAKER_04:
And so, how do you navigate the, I guess, spiritual tension of
SPEAKER_04:
of being generous.
SPEAKER_04:
In your mind, when you're giving somebody something, are you thinking, I better get a 10x return on this?
SPEAKER_04:
What's your relationship to that moment when you send that mug?
SPEAKER_04:
We'll talk about some of the specific crazy stuff that you've done and that I've hired your team to do with some of our clients, some of our team.
SPEAKER_04:
Let's talk about how to detox from the slime factor.
SPEAKER_00:
Well, if you're keeping score, like I think that everybody says they play the long game, right?
SPEAKER_00:
Like Vaynerchuk and all these guys, it's cool to play the long game.
SPEAKER_00:
But most people's long game is like days, not decades, right?
SPEAKER_00:
And if you're a publicly traded company, you're managing to the quarter.
SPEAKER_00:
We got to have quarterly profits.
SPEAKER_00:
And so a lot of our best clients are not publicly traded companies.
SPEAKER_00:
Why?
SPEAKER_00:
Because they're
SPEAKER_00:
A privately ran company can invest for a three-year return or a five-year return or a 10-year return because they know if you take the horizon long enough,
SPEAKER_00:
If you do this, like it's a world, it's a global universal principle of like you reap what you sow.
SPEAKER_00:
And oftentimes it comes back a hundredfold.
SPEAKER_00:
You plant the acorn, we know it has the possibility of turning into an oak tree.
SPEAKER_00:
It might not turn into an oak tree, but if you plant 20 of them or 200 of them or 2000 of them, you only need a few of those to turn into oak trees to basically dwarf all the other stuff.
SPEAKER_00:
But most people, they're playing this give to get, or I put the dollar in, I better get this.
SPEAKER_00:
And that generosity doesn't always work that way.
SPEAKER_00:
Sometimes it does.
SPEAKER_00:
We have some law firms that will, they start taking care of their referral partners, whatever else, and one of them popped up, and within six months, they landed an $10 million case.
SPEAKER_00:
We can afford a lot of gifts when you get $10 million cases to pop up.
SPEAKER_00:
But it doesn't always work that way.
SPEAKER_00:
And so I think that as you're thinking through the slime factor, are you giving with an open hand?
SPEAKER_00:
Yes.
SPEAKER_00:
And so if you give something and are pissed or frustrated or annoyed, like whether it's your wife or husband or whether it's your client, you give a gift and then expect something that wasn't a gift.
SPEAKER_04:
Yes.
SPEAKER_04:
Say that again for the people in the back.
SPEAKER_00:
I mean, it's true.
SPEAKER_00:
Like if you give something and then expect something, there were strings attached.
SPEAKER_00:
Yes, right.
SPEAKER_00:
Now, in that, there's also the tension of you're running a for-profit company.
SPEAKER_00:
You are a steward of these resources.
SPEAKER_00:
But here's what I saw Paul do, and this is like, I have metrics that I measure of what percentage I'm gonna reinvest back into relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
So I know those numbers of who I'm gonna put $1,000 into or $10,000 or $50,000 into one relationship.
SPEAKER_00:
But I have enough of those relationships and irons in the fire that I can't keep track of.
SPEAKER_00:
It's almost like I plant so many seeds, I don't know which one's gonna hit.
SPEAKER_00:
I don't know which one or when it's going to hit.
SPEAKER_00:
Like some of our biggest clients, D.R.
SPEAKER_00:
Horton, we were gifting different people there for seven years before they became a client.
SPEAKER_00:
The Chicago Cubs, seven years.
SPEAKER_00:
So if you're like micromanaging and like, I did this, now I better get this, it ain't going to work.
SPEAKER_00:
You're going to drive yourself crazy.
SPEAKER_00:
And the other person, to your point, like when you're, and I didn't realize this, you know, we've been doing this, you know, having the agency side doing it for companies for 23 years.
SPEAKER_00:
The first 15 years, I didn't realize,
SPEAKER_00:
You could take the exact same gifting program for two people in the same industry, calling on the same relationships, and one will get 100x and one will get a 5x.
SPEAKER_00:
Why?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, what's the difference?
SPEAKER_00:
The person who gives the gift, who they're being, who they are as a human is part of the gift.
SPEAKER_00:
If you get a gift from, you know, General Schwarzkopf or some other general that maybe is not as well respected, both same positions, but the person that the gift is coming from has a value in and of itself of like, oh my gosh, I got this thing from this person who's an amazing human.
SPEAKER_00:
They are the leader.
SPEAKER_00:
I respect them.
SPEAKER_00:
I love them.
SPEAKER_00:
It's like why your wife could give you a gift.
SPEAKER_00:
I could give you the exact same gift.
SPEAKER_00:
and your wife's gift will have a hundred times or a thousand times more impact.
SPEAKER_00:
Why?
SPEAKER_00:
Because of who the person was that gave it to them.
SPEAKER_00:
And I discounted that.
SPEAKER_00:
I'm like, no, there's a recipe.
SPEAKER_00:
And yes, the recipe works in general, but the person that they're being has an impact and an influence on how that gift is being received.
SPEAKER_00:
And so into that point, somebody can tell if you're making deposits in the relationship and wanting to further and deepen the relationship.
SPEAKER_00:
And when you're like,
SPEAKER_00:
pissed or annoyed or frustrated, even if you don't say anything, you can tell.
SPEAKER_00:
And so my recommendation is like, hey, get your heart right and say, I'm going to play this game and think in three year increments at least.
SPEAKER_00:
Like I won't take on a client that's thinking in 30 days or three months because I want to get them out of the mindset of I have to get this thing because it ruins
SPEAKER_00:
the opportunity, the reciprocity nature of it.
SPEAKER_00:
You don't give it the opportunity for it to actually click in.
SPEAKER_04:
To breathe.
SPEAKER_04:
It is like a sowing, to go back to the ancient metaphor, like you are planting seeds.
SPEAKER_04:
I think people plant the seed and then dig it up.
SPEAKER_04:
They plant the seed and they dig it up.
SPEAKER_04:
They plant the seed and they dig it up, and they can't figure out why there's no harvest there, there's no fruit there, or vegetables, whatever you're into.
SPEAKER_04:
And so there is a waiting period, like what you said about the way of being as well, and getting your heart right.
SPEAKER_04:
So I mentioned earlier the giving to teams.
SPEAKER_04:
I do not want to talk about giving as a team sport and gifting as a team sport.
SPEAKER_04:
And I think I'm going to say this.
SPEAKER_04:
I think you may say this, but I want to say this on your behalf.
SPEAKER_04:
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make
SPEAKER_04:
unless you're just like a naturally awesome gift giver.
SPEAKER_04:
And there are a few of those out there, but even those folks still have a lot to learn.
SPEAKER_04:
But most people are not like just naturally awesome gift givers.
SPEAKER_04:
And so I'm certainly not.
SPEAKER_04:
And so I think one of the biggest mistakes we try to do is we try to do it on our own.
SPEAKER_04:
And I've got to figure it out.
SPEAKER_04:
And usually, on my own means, I'm not even going to talk to the other person.
SPEAKER_04:
So Christmas is coming up.
SPEAKER_04:
I'm going to sit in a room by myself and think, what do I want to get for my family?
SPEAKER_04:
And one of the things I like about your agency is you are a partner with people who want to take
SPEAKER_04:
generosity and gifting seriously.
SPEAKER_04:
And so talk a little bit about how we need teams and even just brag about yourself a little bit in your process of how you work with companies and individuals to really step their gifting game up, both obviously to create an ROI or ROR, but also just for the joyful sake of being a great gift giver.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
I come at it from a different perspective of like, I'm not naturally a great gift giver.
SPEAKER_00:
Like I was milking goats.
SPEAKER_00:
I wasn't picking great gifts.
SPEAKER_00:
I don't like wrapping gifts.
SPEAKER_00:
I don't like any of that stuff, but I like the words of affirmation side of me.
SPEAKER_00:
A, I didn't have the right network and I wanted to grow a network and wanted to grow a company.
SPEAKER_00:
And I realized like,
SPEAKER_00:
when you give amazing thoughtful gifts, like the words of affirmation that come and the doors that open and all of that.
SPEAKER_00:
So like as a poor farm kid, I was just like, I was just trying to figure out like business.
SPEAKER_00:
And I just realized this was an angle that was unique and different.
SPEAKER_00:
And so if you're thinking like, I don't know that like, this is for me.
SPEAKER_00:
This isn't like, you know, you don't have to be a great gift giver or even want to be a great gift giver.
SPEAKER_00:
But if you care about people, then this is a tool that should be in your tool belt, whether you have it, whether your team is trained in it, or whether like you outsource it or have a partner.
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
I don't really care.
SPEAKER_00:
Like I give away the whole recipe in the book.
SPEAKER_00:
Like you don't have to have an agency.
SPEAKER_00:
You don't even have to buy the book.
SPEAKER_00:
Like we're walking through the fricking recipe right now.
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
Right?
SPEAKER_00:
But I think most people, because they're busy, they don't have the time and energy and resources to put together, because they think, oh, if I pick a cool gift, then that's it.
SPEAKER_00:
And the physical thing itself is 50% of the impact.
SPEAKER_00:
The other 50% is all the other things that we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:
There's all the times where people are like, I gave expensive wine.
SPEAKER_00:
I gave expensive watches.
SPEAKER_00:
I gave expensive leather goods.
SPEAKER_00:
But they didn't put the handwritten note with it.
SPEAKER_00:
They didn't provide the framework and meaning and context.
SPEAKER_00:
They didn't personalize it.
SPEAKER_00:
It just felt like somebody was trying to buy or bribe.
SPEAKER_00:
So it's not just the cost.
SPEAKER_00:
The cost matters.
SPEAKER_00:
Nobody wants the second best anything.
SPEAKER_00:
You give somebody a Seiko watch and they're wearing a Rolex, it could be the nicest Seiko in the world.
SPEAKER_00:
You've spent $1,000, you're super proud of it.
SPEAKER_00:
And so there are certain things that just people haven't necessarily, they have maybe 80% of the recipe, right?
SPEAKER_00:
And they're like, why am I not getting, it's like baking bread and like, you don't put yeast or you forget one of the ingredients, you don't get bread, even though you do it over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00:
And so I think that's where the attention to detail, the consistency, all of that matters.
SPEAKER_00:
And so really at the end of the day, all we're like doing is trying to help save somebody the time, energy and resources
SPEAKER_00:
and help think strategically like they do in any part of their business.
SPEAKER_00:
So part of it is just identifying the who.
SPEAKER_00:
The who matters more than the what.
SPEAKER_00:
It's like, who matters in your business?
SPEAKER_00:
Have you ever done a 360-degree view of all your suppliers, all your dealers, all your franchises, all your mentors and advisors?
SPEAKER_00:
Who got you to the dance right now?
SPEAKER_00:
Like where you're at, you're at 20 million, you're at 10 million, whatever, you're at 200 million, but you want to get to a billion, who are the relationships you have to invest in that maybe aren't even on the list yet to get to that next level?
SPEAKER_00:
Who are the mentors you need to have?
SPEAKER_00:
Who are the suppliers you want to have?
SPEAKER_00:
Who are the companies you're going to need to acquire that you need to dig your well before you're thirsty and start investing in those?
SPEAKER_00:
You know, they might not be ready for five years, but if you wait for five years, they're going to have a whole host, you know, 20 different competitors.
SPEAKER_00:
Whereas if you invest in the relationship now, it's setting aside the whole like gifting thing and saying, Hey, what's your strategic relationship plan?
SPEAKER_00:
And how am I going to invest in these relationships and do it like it matters?
SPEAKER_00:
And that's all we're like, anybody could go do it.
SPEAKER_00:
But when you start to do that, even the exercise of identifying the who, sometimes people come back and they're like, John, that exercise is worth a hundred grand to us.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
Because we just had never identified the who.
SPEAKER_00:
We always like, it was ad hoc lists at Christmas and I delegated it to an assistant and said, Hey, here's 20 grand, like go to Harry and David or edible arrangements or wherever, just like send some crap.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_00:
on December 15th, right?
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
That's most people's plan.
SPEAKER_00:
Hey, we have a conference coming up.
SPEAKER_00:
What do we have left over in the budget?
SPEAKER_00:
All right, get everybody a sweater, a sweatshirt, a hoodie.
SPEAKER_00:
There's no thoughtful strategy around the relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
And therefore, the thing doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00:
And so I think that's where our agency helps people think and quarterback and have the plan and really even think some of our best clients to get the best, like we're laying out like five and 10 year plans.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, hey, the next five or 10 years, these are the relationships that matter.
SPEAKER_00:
Here's what we're going to do in year one, year two, year three, year four.
SPEAKER_00:
And that may change.
SPEAKER_00:
But when you start to think that way, all of a sudden, people are like, wow, they're just like, this starts to get fun and cool.
SPEAKER_00:
And it's like the 4D chess game.
SPEAKER_00:
You're like, they start to get addicted to the feeling of the relationship, not that they care about gifts.
SPEAKER_00:
And so I think, you know.
SPEAKER_00:
if your audience wants to like have at least some frameworks to work from not even buying the book and start to identify like why the things they think are cool like alcohol and food and gift cards like
SPEAKER_00:
You can go to thegiversedge.com, The Giver's Edge, and we walk through.
SPEAKER_00:
Here's why the 10 worst gifts.
SPEAKER_00:
If you're just focusing on the thing, at least avoid these 10 things.
SPEAKER_00:
And if you need some tips and tricks and like just to start to get your team's mind around this is not a gifting thing, but a relationship thing and revenue thing, then that we give all of that away.
SPEAKER_00:
Because the more somebody starts to think generously and the faster they're growing selfishly, the more they're like, we don't have time for this.
SPEAKER_00:
Can we just outsource this to an agency?
SPEAKER_00:
Not because we couldn't do it, but because we don't have the time, energy, and resources, and it's actually costing us money to worry about this stuff that we're just not built for.
SPEAKER_02:
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SPEAKER_04:
No, and I love that.
SPEAKER_04:
That's why I mentioned at the beginning that it's like playing the piano or singing or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:
You watch people in a domain, whoever you admire who's better at you at the thing that you do, you notice all these little granular things.
SPEAKER_04:
You and I do some public speaking sometimes, and when I look at public speakers who are just better than me and the gap between me and somebody else, other people may not notice, but I know how hard it is to do what they're doing.
SPEAKER_04:
I know how much time and energy and reps and intentionality and the gesture, the placement, the tone of voice, the pause, you see the Picasso-ness of it.
SPEAKER_04:
And gifting and generosity is like that.
SPEAKER_04:
There is this, you know, I like what you said earlier, some people are into cars or whatever, and oftentimes I'll say, like, you know, some people are into cigars, some people are into wine, and this is aspirational, but like, I want to be a connoisseur of generosity.
SPEAKER_04:
I want to be a connoisseur of giving.
SPEAKER_04:
And
SPEAKER_04:
meeting you, it's like, oh, wow, it didn't occur to me that that could also benefit me in business.
SPEAKER_04:
I just wanted it because I think that's what it means to be human.
SPEAKER_04:
That's one of the most fulfilling, rewarding places to experience joy in the human experience is generosity.
SPEAKER_04:
The fact that you've now
SPEAKER_04:
wedded those things with business, I think is just a really powerful combination.
SPEAKER_04:
And I want to say this too, if you're listening to this, you're really missing out if you're doing the solo gifting thing.
SPEAKER_04:
And so whether it's, first of all, for sure, by the book, I highly recommend it.
SPEAKER_04:
I have read it multiple times.
SPEAKER_04:
That's part one.
SPEAKER_04:
Part two is go to thegiversedge.com and check out some of the free stuff that John's got there and the giftology people have there.
SPEAKER_04:
And also, you know, check John out in terms of opportunities and budget and that kind of thing to partner with him long term.
SPEAKER_04:
I'll say this briefly, John, I've worked with you
SPEAKER_04:
several times, and I know there's more available to me, but how explicit can you be?
SPEAKER_04:
You've mentioned the $2,000 mugs.
SPEAKER_04:
Can we talk about that or is it a little bit of a secret?
SPEAKER_00:
No.
SPEAKER_00:
So, people will be like, and we have this, like, oh, the knife is the secret sauce.
SPEAKER_00:
Okay.
SPEAKER_00:
And so, they'll go buy Cutco knives or they'll buy a knife and they'll send them out to their customers or employees or whatever and they're like, you know, it's working but I'm like, you know, did you follow the full recipe?
SPEAKER_00:
Like, well, we did giftology-ish.
SPEAKER_00:
You know, we did as well as we could.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
They didn't do the note, or they didn't engrave it the right way, or they gave it the strings attached.
SPEAKER_00:
And so, like I said, I can tell you the things.
SPEAKER_00:
To this day, we do knives.
SPEAKER_00:
And I used to do a lot of, hey, one knife to everybody, and now we're like,
SPEAKER_00:
you'll start to see like guys like Thiebaud or Ed Milad, these guys are getting like the full $10,000 set.
SPEAKER_00:
And even the knives weren't enough.
SPEAKER_00:
It was like now they're in a strong box, which is like a $3,000 wood box that has history to it with the video screen talking about and even the messaging in the video.
SPEAKER_00:
of talking about multi-generational impact.
SPEAKER_00:
So I can talk about the mugs.
SPEAKER_00:
I used to think mugs were the, like, I literally made fun of mugs and water bottles and backpacks as like some of the worst possible, because everybody gives them, they give the cheapest version.
SPEAKER_00:
They put Hershey Kisses inside a $5 mug from China and they think they're being cute.
SPEAKER_00:
And I'm like, you can only drink out of one mug.
SPEAKER_00:
If I was ever to give a mug, it would be the nicest mug on the planet for like, you know, 50 bucks or whatever.
SPEAKER_00:
And then an artist,
SPEAKER_00:
Listened to like 80 of my interviews and then like emailed me cold and I looked at him He looked like he was 16 years old on a you know on Twitter saw the earth Christian, dude And so I gave him the answers and he made Hand-delivered drove nine and a half hours hand-delivered two of these two thousand our mugs and made me and my wife cry Yeah, the clay is worth 50 bucks
SPEAKER_00:
Why there's so much is he literally, like, carves into these pieces your faith, family, core values.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, I've had billionaires literally, like, week receiving one of these, not because of the cost, but because of the thoughtfulness, the meaning, the story, the legacy.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, he just taps into the essence of who a human is.
SPEAKER_00:
And so people are like, John, I can order one off Etsy for a hundred bucks.
SPEAKER_00:
And I'm like, you can order a mug, but are you looking to give something to somebody?
SPEAKER_00:
Or are you looking to like fuse this relationship in a way that they're thinking about you 50 years from now?
SPEAKER_00:
That's a very different, you know, equation.
SPEAKER_04:
Yes.
SPEAKER_04:
And even to share about my experience, of course, you can talk to John's team about this, but also you can learn some of these principles.
SPEAKER_04:
And I invite you to play with this.
SPEAKER_04:
One is because you're going to love it.
SPEAKER_04:
Two is I think you'll see how difficult it is.
SPEAKER_04:
And that's why it requires a team, whether it's John or anybody else, or even just your friends, frankly, if they're any good at this kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_04:
So if you're doing a mug or... I only know about the mugs.
SPEAKER_04:
I know you gave me a set of knives.
SPEAKER_04:
And so I'll be honest, John, I wasn't planning on saying this, but when you gave me those knives,
SPEAKER_04:
I didn't even, because I don't cook.
SPEAKER_04:
I don't do anything like that in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_04:
I can't believe I'm telling you this.
SPEAKER_04:
I've never told you this, but my nephew loves to cook.
SPEAKER_04:
And so I got these, and I think at the time when I got them, I didn't even know who they were from.
SPEAKER_04:
And so then I gave those knives to my nephew.
SPEAKER_04:
And then he let me know, maybe like six months later, he's like, hey man, those knives are engraved.
SPEAKER_04:
And they're engraved with Proverbs on them, because I love wisdom, like ancient Proverbs.
SPEAKER_04:
I love wisdom.
SPEAKER_04:
I've been working on retranslating kind of the book of Proverbs, the Hebrew book of Proverbs over the last two years.
SPEAKER_04:
And you found that out somehow, and you engraved these Proverbs, which are so important to me, on these knives.
SPEAKER_04:
He goes, do you want these back?
SPEAKER_04:
And I gave them to him, you know, so I can't...
SPEAKER_04:
I take the gift, retrieve the gift.
SPEAKER_04:
No, so he's got this knife set, but the reason why I mentioned that is the intentionality and the detail of thoughtfulness and uniqueness from even the knives.
SPEAKER_04:
The knives aren't just knives.
SPEAKER_04:
The knives are like a representation of understanding someone and valuing them and giving them something they can look at every time.
SPEAKER_04:
And then to double click on the mugs,
SPEAKER_04:
There's this whole process, you and Mike Abramson have given me a mug and I've given several of your pieces to other people in my life.
SPEAKER_04:
And there's a whole process of, there's like 50 questions.
SPEAKER_04:
And I remember for one of my clients, they went through a really challenging time, and we did actually the vase for them.
SPEAKER_04:
And we got to talk to... We got to interview multiple people in their life around this vase, and then we gave it to the artist.
SPEAKER_04:
And the artist integrated hours of conversation around the uniqueness of this particular painful event and this particular person.
SPEAKER_04:
They lovingly crafted it.
SPEAKER_04:
And then I don't want to rush past this.
SPEAKER_04:
Then they get it in this gorgeous box,
SPEAKER_04:
they open the box and there's a screen and the artist is holding the mug and they walk you through the details.
SPEAKER_04:
Like there's all these pieces and he's my friend now, we worked together for years and now he's my friend.
SPEAKER_04:
They loved it so much, they rewrapped it and then opened it again for another special occasion so that other people could be a part of it.
SPEAKER_04:
Now, again, I didn't do that to get anything.
SPEAKER_04:
You know, I love this guy and his family and what he's up to in the world and I just wanted to honor this moment that had happened in his life.
SPEAKER_04:
But man, that felt so good
SPEAKER_04:
to create a moment for somebody else where they cried and then rewrapped the gift and then opened it again and cried again with other people.
SPEAKER_04:
It's like, hook that up to my veins.
SPEAKER_04:
That's addictive.
SPEAKER_00:
Oh my gosh, you know, there's, God's wired us to be a visual, like when there's something about tangible, physical things, like, you know, like you go to Chick-fil-A, you point to, I want that, right?
SPEAKER_00:
And when you have things in people's homes, our kind of like filter is like, would somebody consider grabbing your thing if their house was on fire?
SPEAKER_00:
What do you grab?
SPEAKER_00:
The things that have the biggest story meaning, the representation.
SPEAKER_00:
You don't grab the most expensive things that insurance could replace.
SPEAKER_00:
You grab the things that have the most meaningful story around them, like pictures or your dad's flag from the military or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00:
And that's like, so like the knives, like, I think it's funny that you gave away.
SPEAKER_00:
And sometimes people get upset because they find like, they give out gifts to 200 people and they hear the three people that were like, I don't like knives or I don't cook or, you know, whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00:
And like, what they miss is like, what about the other 197 people that it went like, if you're going to scale thoughtfulness, if you're going to do this, there's risk involved.
SPEAKER_00:
And even somebody like me, I could send out something to 100 people.
SPEAKER_00:
I would like, you'll never bat 1000.
SPEAKER_00:
You could send out 100 Ferraris and at least three people would be like, I wanted yellow and you sent me red.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
And what that does is deters people from being generous or doing what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00:
And because our minds naturally gravitate towards the negative.
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
And we miss
SPEAKER_00:
all of the opportunities of like, who cares that three acorns didn't turn into oak trees?
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
Like, I know by doing this, A, it feels great, but B, it produces results over the longest period of framework.
SPEAKER_00:
And so like, and a lot of times people will get something and they don't, like maybe like the card got misplaced or whatever else, but they don't see the meaning or they like, I've had times where like we sent one to James Altucher who has like 15 books and one of the biggest podcasts in the world.
SPEAKER_00:
We send him the knives from a client, he doesn't like things at all, but he puts the knives away and then he started to pull out the knives later and he started to realize they were quotes from his 15 books.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
And it was six months later that he freaked out.
SPEAKER_00:
Yep.
SPEAKER_00:
Because he was like, oh my gosh, I thought it was a cool gift, whatever, I'm not really into knives.
SPEAKER_00:
But then he realized, what about the knives?
SPEAKER_00:
And he pulled out one and read both sides, and he's with his girlfriend, and they're just out of their mind.
SPEAKER_00:
And so, yeah, I think the focusing on the thing and not understanding the intentionality, the process, the ripple effect, the long term, all of that wrapped together is what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_04:
That's right.
SPEAKER_04:
And even just to summarize, one is thanks for letting me share the knife story.
SPEAKER_04:
I've been holding that for years.
SPEAKER_04:
First of all, there's a few principles here in play that we've been talking about this entire conversation.
SPEAKER_04:
One is, I never told you, and we never talked about it, because people don't give feedback on GIFs.
SPEAKER_04:
So remember that.
SPEAKER_04:
John and I are friends.
SPEAKER_04:
I know John, and I didn't give him feedback.
SPEAKER_04:
Two is, it did land
SPEAKER_04:
in a really fun way.
SPEAKER_04:
First of all, I actually really loved giving.
SPEAKER_04:
I knew they were nice knives.
SPEAKER_04:
I had to ask somebody, because I had never heard of Cutco before.
SPEAKER_04:
I had to ask somebody, like, these are really nice knives.
SPEAKER_04:
And I really did want to invest in my nephew's culinary life.
SPEAKER_04:
He loves to cook.
SPEAKER_04:
And even today, he looks at YouTube recipes and everything.
SPEAKER_04:
I really love that part of him.
SPEAKER_04:
And so it was meaningful to be able to give that to somebody else.
SPEAKER_04:
And then months later, when he says, hey, bro, these are really special.
SPEAKER_04:
You know, my teenage nephew is telling me how special it is.
SPEAKER_04:
That lands for me.
SPEAKER_04:
All of a sudden, in this weird way, I'm like, wow, John, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_04:
Even though now I kind of screwed myself because I gave away.
SPEAKER_00:
Right?
SPEAKER_00:
Dude, it's so funny.
SPEAKER_00:
I mean, like to me, that's humorous and it's the reality of humanity and the messiness of relationships.
SPEAKER_00:
But if you're not going to give honest feedback to me, nobody's getting honest feedback on any of this stuff in any way, shape or form.
SPEAKER_00:
As you're the boss, you're the owner, you think your employees are saying, I thought less of you when you gave me this, this or whatever, like maybe a really ballsy one, but in general, you're not getting honest feedback about any of this.
SPEAKER_00:
And so like having guidance, everybody's flying blind for the most part.
SPEAKER_00:
That's right.
SPEAKER_00:
But I think it's hilarious.
SPEAKER_04:
And you mentioned too, and I know we're wrapping up here, but you mentioned if you listen to people, if you watch people, and you know, cause you live in St.
SPEAKER_04:
Louis, I live in LA, we're not really, I don't even know if we've ever been around each other physically.
SPEAKER_04:
Did we go to?
SPEAKER_00:
No.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
I mean, we've been on dozens of video calls, but, but, uh, but no, we've never actually.
SPEAKER_04:
I have no idea how tall you are or anything like that.
SPEAKER_04:
Right.
SPEAKER_04:
So I've seen, I've seen a lot of shots of you in a minivan.
SPEAKER_04:
with your kids doing calls with our buddies.
SPEAKER_04:
Actually, two things here real quick.
SPEAKER_04:
If you listen to people, they will tell you what they care about, and you can customize things.
SPEAKER_04:
And what I love about your process, John, is you give people a process for listening to someone else, a thoughtful process for how to really listen to what they value, what they care about, and how to make something that matters to them.
SPEAKER_04:
And then the other thing, too, for listeners, most people are really awful at teaching people what matters to them.
SPEAKER_04:
You know, actually, there's a guy I'd love to connect you with, my buddy Paul, and recently we were on a call and he said he really, really, really cares about veterans.
SPEAKER_04:
And I was like, bro, like, I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_04:
Like, you tell me you care about veterans, I will fly to Montana, and I will donate time, energy to the thing that you care about.
SPEAKER_04:
And now if I were ever going to give him a gift,
SPEAKER_04:
It'd be oriented around that somehow.
SPEAKER_04:
It'd be like, how can I really blow Paul's mind in terms of how we are advancing his cause of caring about folks who are willing to fight and die for our country?
SPEAKER_04:
It's interesting.
SPEAKER_04:
I told Paul, I've known the guy for years.
SPEAKER_04:
Why have you never talked about all the philanthropic stuff that you do?
SPEAKER_04:
He goes, well, it's just so personal and private to me.
SPEAKER_04:
And on the one hand, I get that, it's sacred, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_04:
On the other hand is, man, if you don't let people know it matters to you, you're really robbing them of the opportunity of loving you and serving you well.
SPEAKER_04:
And what I love about your conversation, John, with giftology and generosity, is you're elevating, you're making public a conversation that's oftentimes so private.
SPEAKER_04:
Gifting can be so intimate and so private, and it should be more public so that we can all learn how to do it better.
SPEAKER_04:
I'll leave you with the last word, but anything you want to say to our audience in terms of something we can take away, or just a summary of what we've been talking about?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, well, I would just say that sometimes listening to conversations like this, every business leader, really every leader, has a lot of things on their plate, right?
SPEAKER_00:
It can be overwhelming to be like, gosh, another thing I didn't know that I needed to think about, or like, oh, I thought I could just get away with thinking about that with my family, or my church, or my charity, or whatever else.
SPEAKER_00:
Now I got to think about this.
SPEAKER_00:
And so I think it's overwhelming, but I think that my challenge would be to start, if you have a gratitude practice or a journal or something where you're writing down, just start writing down for 30 days.
SPEAKER_00:
three or four people that you're grateful for that have allowed you to be in business, to be employees, past clients, mentors.
SPEAKER_00:
But you do that for a month, now you've got 100 people.
SPEAKER_00:
And if you did it for a year, now you're talking 1,000 people.
SPEAKER_00:
And so identifying the who is a great place to start.
SPEAKER_00:
And it doesn't have to be a physical gift.
SPEAKER_00:
It could be like sending them a video of appreciation or taking the time to handwrite a thoughtful note.
SPEAKER_00:
There's a lot of elements of giving, like I talked about the five love languages.
SPEAKER_00:
But I would at least start to work that gratitude muscle of, OK, I'm going to identify the who, and then I'm going to start taking action on them.
SPEAKER_00:
And maybe it's working with an agency, but maybe it's just like, I'm just going to start writing a note a day, or I'm going to start sending a video a day, or I'm going to start a week.
SPEAKER_00:
Maybe it's not even a day.
SPEAKER_00:
But I think when you start going that direction, you'll start to build the list.
SPEAKER_00:
You'll start to say, wow, I liked how that felt when I did acknowledge that person.
SPEAKER_00:
And you may, once you have the list established, you may start to take more bold action.
SPEAKER_00:
But I think that start small, but do it consistently, and walk before you run.
SPEAKER_00:
Even the mugs, you don't have to start with a $2,000 mug that makes somebody weep.
SPEAKER_00:
A lot of the things that we're doing are baseline.
SPEAKER_00:
On a scale of 1 to 10, they're like a 5.
SPEAKER_00:
But everybody else is playing at a 1, so it feels like you're at a 12.
SPEAKER_00:
But there's a way to get into a rhythm of this.
SPEAKER_00:
But don't set it on the back burner, because I think that a lot of people are leaving a lot of opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:
They're walking over all this gold.
SPEAKER_00:
They don't even realize all these people that they could be loving on and taking care of and moving things forward in a significant way.
SPEAKER_04:
That's right.
SPEAKER_04:
Well, and John, thank you.
SPEAKER_04:
You know, we scratched the surface.
SPEAKER_04:
This is the beginning of the conversation.
SPEAKER_04:
But I do want to thank you, John, for inspiring me.
SPEAKER_04:
Thanks for your generosity towards me, not only in the friendship, but also, you know, with the specific gifts you've given me and folks I love and care about.
SPEAKER_04:
And thank you, by the way, for being
SPEAKER_04:
a conduit of generosity, like you've inspired me and you help me and our team to be more generous to the folks around us.
SPEAKER_04:
So if you're listening to this, check out John's book, Giftology, buy some knives and check out the thegiversedge.com.
SPEAKER_04:
And I think that'll really help you make 2024 magical.
SPEAKER_04:
Thanks a lot, John.
SPEAKER_04:
Thanks for being on our show.
SPEAKER_04:
Thanks again.
SPEAKER_04:
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