John Ruhlin and the Power of Gift Giving

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marvels. My name is Brad Hart and I am super stoked today to have on John Rule. And John is an awesome individual. He has created some amazing things over the years. John is an expert gift giver. He's a wonderful networker. He's an incredible human being. He's from Ohio, but he doesn't live there anymore. And I want to dig into what's brought John to. I don't want to give it all away. It's like so exciting. I just like, I feel like I have this gift. I want to unwrap it slowly and carefully and make a YouTube video and then make millions of dollars off the ad revenue from it.

I wish my daughters could do that on all those unveiling, unwrapping gifts. Right.

What people do, they just tear into it like Tanzanian devils, probably, I'm guessing.

Yeah.

I love it. How you been, John?

Everything good, man? Things are things really good. Yeah. I just got back from a couple weeks in Austin, took more time off this summer than I had probably the last three summers combined and spent time with my three little girls and my wife. And so, yeah, I mean, with growth there's always challenges, but I'll take those any day of the week.

I love it, brother. Well, tell me what's new in your life and what is happening in your career and what you're excited about right now.

Yeah, I would say, I mean, giftology came out 14 months ago and I didn't really know what to expect. And I would say I've been very fortunate for it to land us some really massive stages. We're getting ready to speak at Conscious Capitalism down in Austin, which is like a bucket list kind of event to 250 CEOs. We're speaking at MIT and we're actually launching a year early, a pilot program that'll start in the next couple weeks for giftology. So it's a six week video course that Danny Ayni from Miracy is helping us with.

I love Danny. We did his last promotion, actually. I got a. He's one of the best gift guys, by the way, in the world. Like, he sends you brownies, he sends you really cool notes. He sent me this really awesome card that was a TV inside and it had a personalized video to both of us, my business partner and I. And then it was a whole thing.

It was great.

I love Danny.

Yeah, Danny's stud. So, yeah, so I get to know Danny through Mastermind talks and so yeah, so the course goes live. He's been doing all the heavy lifting, kind of ripping apart the book and turn it into a deeper series. And so, yeah, I mean we're just. I'll be. See where I be this fall as well. I'll be in New York for interbrand. So, yeah, I mean, feeling very fortunate, coming off a great relaxing summer and then going into kind of our time to shine and, and then family time again for the holidays and you know, really excited about what we got brewing for 2018.

So yeah, I think summer's time to glow. I was half time traveling too. Went to Greece, Italy, Mexico. Just came back from house build. I get it like, but now it's time to harvest, right? You grow it all that grows crops. They're. They're ripe. Let's harvest them. Let's do it. Let's get on stage, make it rain. Let's help the people do all the things. Let's make all the marbles. I love it, John. It's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been, I've been following what you're up to. Yeah. How the house build thing.

God, what a rewarding experience. Unbelievable. We did other stuff too. We actually like donated to some migrant camps. Took a bunch of food. I just basically, you know, threw as much as I could in a cart and brought it all out there. And so did everybody. We got some amazing, just opportunities to help with. There's like one guy down there who just single handedly American guy. He went down there like I don't think 11 years ago and just started a school for children. Just 52 kids that just didn't really have any school opportunities. And he's just in this community and he's finally like, you know, now getting to the point where he's got a foothold in the community as far as they've accepted him. It's been 10 years, like 11 years. So he, he was telling us, you know, I feed the kids. It's always hard, you know, there's always a lot of challenges. I do what I can. And I'm like, well what do you need besides like food and money obviously. He's like, I need a school bus. And he was like right there. He knew exactly. I'm trying to take kids to the beach. And I got this van. I'm trying to put 52 kids in this van. I need a school bus right now. So what we're going to do and maybe, you know, somebody can help out with this is we're going to try to find like a bus that's, you know, on its way out but still has some legs. Or maybe it's just, you know, one of the school districts won't use it anymore. They're going to sell it and then stuff it full of food and water, drive it down, hand them the keys. I think that'd be really cool. So stuff like that, you know.

Wow. So is it in Mexico? Is that where it was at or where was it at?

Yeah, it was about two hours south of the border. I'm in San Diego. So we drove about three hours to Rosarito area.

Yeah, I've heard of it.

Family in need through Baja Bound is the organization that we worked with. It was just a great opportunity for 30 people to dig in and just build a house over a weekend.

Wow. I've heard of other similar organizations where entrepreneurs taking their kids that are like 10 years old to go and, and, you know, every year they take a dip, take a different kid to kind of show them, hey, we're very blessed here. We have a lot to be grateful for and thankful for. And it's a bonding time. Like, I just took my daughter on my. For her first business trip. She's six. She's the oldest of the three girls. And that one on one time doing something like that, that's meaningful even on a business trip is just, it's cool. So that's, that's awesome. You're taking time to give back.

That's awesome. Well, it really shows you that, you know, you have no problems and it's not even right. That's not even my initiative. It's the Greatness Foundation. I get to give Mike all the credit. And Jenny and everybody at the Greatness Foundation, Mandy, because they've just been so stalwartly fearless and just going out and finding the best charities to work with and doing these trips. I think this is like their 13th house build. They're doing another one in December. If anyone get involved, just reach out. The 8th to the 10th. I think it's really easy. It's a weekend. You go down, you knock it out, you come back, and then you, you, you cleanse the Mexico from your body over the next couple of days. It's pretty interesting. But we're here. We're. It's podcast day. I'm holding it together. It'll be fine.

I can imagine. Dude, I could totally imagine that. Yeah, there's some after effects, so.

All right, so enough of us, you know, messing around and getting up to speed. John, tell me, you know, for people listening at home who may never heard of you, how did you get to where you are today? What's kind of the hero's journey that you'd like to share? What are some of the key turning points along the way?

Yeah, yeah, I would say that. I mean, I didn't have the sexiest upbringing. I mean, a lot of people are like, oh, cool gifts. And they hear the pro sports teams, all that kind of stuff. Like, I grew up in Midwest. I am an Ohio boy. As you mentioned, I grew up on a farm. Milk and goats every morning. We heated our house with wood. We had a one acre garden. We ate off the land. We had 45 acres total. And we have every animal under the sun. So I did 4H. And I learned I didn't like manual labor all that well. Like, I like doing it for a weekend, man. I just. Just kind of did not enjoy that process. So I was an overachiever, got good grades, thought I'd go to be a doctor. My life really changed. I was desperate. I went to go work with Cutco because I wanted to make money, but I wasn't really a salesperson. And Cutco has this amazing sales training. But I didn't really realize that going into it, I was just doing it for the cash.

Dang it. I forgot my scimitar I had last time.

You got what? Remember that?

I had the Cutco scimitar. I was ready.

Oh, yeah.

Our last interview, we had the technical difficulties. I'm gonna run, go grab it right now. No, I'm kidding.

Yeah, it all changed with a knife, man. So I was desperate. I was pitching my girlfriend's dad at the time, he was an attorney, and he was like this attorney that had every deal in town. He was like a referral machine. And he was always giving things away. Like he would literally buy semi loads of noodles and give them away to entire church. And so I'm like nervously pitching my girlfriend's dad to buy pocket knives for all his clients. And he said, john, what about the paring knives? Could I order those now? Mind you, Paul had already bought $3,000 worth of knives for him and his three unmarried daughters. So that's the kind of generous person that he was. And I'm pitching him yet another product and he's asking me Can I buy this instead? And I'm like, oh, why would you buy kitchen items for CEOs? That's weird. They're all men. They're all in the outdoors. Like, why would. That's weird. He said, In 35 years in business, the reason I have more deals than I can ever handle is that I found if you take care of the family, everything else in business takes care of itself. So for me, it was like, that was my lightning bolt moment, at least one of them, when I realized Paul understood relationships at this deep level, that it really wasn't about the knife, although the knives are amazing. He understood how to connect with people and the reciprocity effect that Cialdini and his book Influence talks about. And so I just latched onto it. I'm like, if Paul's this successful from being this generous, like, that's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of legacy I want to leave. And so as a college kid, I'm investing. Instead of beer and alcohol, I'm investing in $200, carving sets for prospects. So I would engrave the CEO of a company, like a $200 million company I'd want to go get meeting with. And I'd engrave his name, his wife's name, his family name. And I put a little handwritten note inside that said, carve out five minutes for me. I promise it'll be worth your time. And two weeks later, I'd get the phone call back from his assistant. I'd walk in at 21 years old. The guy's, like, in his 60s, and he's bewildered because he's like, what is this young pup walking into my. Like, he couldn't have sent me that gift. So he's like, are you here to sell me knives? Like, what's going on? I'm like, no, I'm here to help you and your thousand sales reps do exactly what I did to you and your top 10,000 relationships.

Boom.

And he would just be like, yeah, jaw on the ground. Like, you know, he's like, you're right. That's a really good idea. And so I'd walk out of the meeting oftentimes with an order for hundreds or thousands of pieces of cutlery. Not because of the knives, but because the result kind of the idea. You don't buy a drill. You buy the hole, you know, like, you want the result. And so we started to land pro sports teams. And by the time I was a senior in college, I was Cutco's largest distributor. Out of a million and a half people that had walked through their doors over the last 70 years. Ironically, I'm an introvert. So the speaking, writing, all of that, like, has come later. Because I'm not the life of the party. I'm not the guy that's, you know, like, I've had to push myself past to become a salesperson, but really I was a problem solver. And I look at problems very uniquely. And so I thought, I need to make a lot of money. I want to be generous. I need to sell a lot of knives, these knives. You know, Paul seems to build great relationships, taking care of the family. How can I turn this into a business? And after a few years of it, I was like, I'm never going to med school. Like, that would be insane. Why would I go spend 12 years in school? So I could go, like, sit into like a little white room talking to people. Like, I can go talk to whoever I want now. And this whole entrepreneur thing just became very apparent that this is the direction and path I was supposed to be on.

I really love that, John. And it resonates with my own story because I started, I have a degree in biology. Most people don't know this about me. I went to Binghamton, did the pre med thing. I applied.

Yeah. So we took a lot of the same classes.

Yeah, exactly. Organic chemistry at 8am I got an A though, you know, and one of the reasons I did that is I sat in the front of the class and this professor was like, notorious. Everybody hated him because he gave bad grades. I would just sit in front of the class and I would ask questions until he literally, like, gave me an A. Like, all you had to do is just be interested and perk up and just ask questions. Oh, what did you mean by that? Oh, you know, could you clarify? And he loved it. He just loved the interaction instead of his rote thing. And then I would kind of go up after him and I would say, hey, okay, I want to just be clarity, clarify and verify what's gonna be on the test. And, you know, how can I study best? How can I get my group together and I lead study groups. I just knew my strength as people. I wasn't the smartest guy in the room, but I could bring people together and do it. So, like, there's so many ways, guys, to leverage relationships towards what you want by knowing what you're good at, you know, in your case, John, you know, you may not be the most extroverted guy in the world, but you certainly can you know, come up with a brilliant strategy that gives you more leverage than anybody else. And that's why.

Yep. Period. Yeah. Figure out what your weakness is and figure out what tools can you create or invent or leverage. Like when I send a gift, people have to engage me and they tend to give me words of affirmation, which is ironically my love language. So like all the things that are weaknesses, in most cases, I've leveraged to be strengths by building systems and tools around them. So. Yeah, exactly what you're talking about. I wasn't the smartest kid in, in school either, but I had the best relationships with the teachers. I didn't lead the study groups. I wasn't that extroverted. But. But all the teachers liked me because I took an interest. So you're.

I just wanted all the smart kids on my team. We could win together. That was it. I just knew I was a dummy.

Well played.

Yeah. And it's always, you know, that's why the reason, like when we went to China, brought 52 China people to China in, in April to learn about the, the other Canton. Canton fair to learn about product sourcing from Amazon. I brought all the people that wanted to go anyway. I said, hey, we're going to train you. I got an expert who built a million dollar business inside 18 months. You're going to get the videos, you're going to get the training, you're going to get the trip. You, you handle all your stuff and we're going to all learn together. So inside of two weeks, we raised 35 grand, went to China, I went for free, and we put together a trip. I learned everything I needed to do and guess what? Now I have the whole team of people that want to do it. And we went and got a deal worked out with a $500 million products company where we're going to be their Amazon marketing arm. And guess how much I know about Amazon. Not nothing. I know a lot now, but you know, when I started out.

But you understood that you became the conduit for. And the other people loved it because they probably never spent much time in China. China's a wonderful country. I mean, it's a, it's like the wild west of what we used to have 100 years ago here. It's pretty, pretty crazy.

An economic standpoint, it's wide open. From a, it is human dignity standpoint, not so much. I really value, you know, liberty and freedom and, you know, getting my coffee the way I want it. You know, the funny thing about when you order Coffee in China is, the answer is no. If you want anything that's not on the menu, the answer is no. And they're very stern about that because they don't have that, like freedom and personal liberty to make choices that. So the answer is you get in line or you don't get what you want or anything at all for that matter. It's pretty interesting culture. I learned a lot from that. Just, you know, negotiating.

Just know. Yeah, we do a little bit of stuff in China. We. Fortunately we have a broker who, like, she's based in Hong Kong and she. But she is raised in China and so she has like, she's like this really nice woman, but she's like a bulldog when it comes to negotiating. So she doesn't take no for an answer on the back end. She says yes almost everything to us. But it is a really unique culture and framework. And. Yeah, um, you did that, you did that recently.

Yeah, that was in April. We just got back and then I've been just kind of building a team around it for the last three months and we're about to launch our first few products. My goal is to have five products in store by the end of this year. We'll have five products by the end of this month easily. And then my goal is to get to five products a day. I want to create a massive machine for these people and anybody else listening out there that has products that aren't selling on Amazon yet. We got the team to make it to Dreamwork, so it's a great marketplace.

Wow. Yeah. Well, I would say that Amazon's an interesting company. I have a separate consulting business. My business partner is a coo, CFO for other companies and one of them is a big E commerce company. And Amazon is the most customer friendly company on the planet and they're one of the worst when it comes to suppliers. So my own, they can be brutal. They're like, they're worse than Walmart. I mean, they are like if they want to change the rules, they change the rules when and how they want to at any given time.

It's their platform, interests of the customers. Right. So the customers, when. And I kind of respect that. I mean, there's a reason Jeff Bezos was the richest man in the world for like three hours a couple weeks ago. And he's winning, right? It's, it's working because he's putting the customers first. He knows what they want. They want it better, cheaper, faster. They want it tomorrow, today. Drones, whatever they want, they're going to get it and everybody else, honestly. And I get that. I really do understand it because if you don't make it driven by customers and desires, you're not gonna have a business.

No, for sure. But I think that there's, it's possible, I mean the conscious capitalism concept, it's possible for everybody to win. I mean I don't think it'll be interesting to see how the Amazon buying Whole Foods because I think that they maybe flip some things and I think, I don't know if you follow Verne Harnish or not, but I think you can have it. So the shareholders win, the customers win, the supplier, everybody can win. You know, from a long term sustainability. I don't know if Amazon has that or not. On the supplier side. Like I would be, I would be scared to death if my only revenue stream was flowing through Amazon only. And I think that ebay and a lot of the other ones have are, you know, being way more nice to play with in the sandbox because they have to to keep up with Amazon. So it's an interesting kind of. Yeah, I'd be interested to learn what you guys are up to and doing and maybe there's some crossover.

We'll sidebar that for sure. And if anybody out there listening is interested in put products on Amazon, we'll definitely have a chat. But yeah, so for me, I'm the make more marvels guy. I want to create better systems to serve more people. There's an old saying, capitalism or democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones. Well, it's the same for capitalism, it's the same for everything else. We just need to create better systems to serve more people. And this is an example of straight up aggressive capitalism. At the end of the day, it's all about growth, it's all about taking up market share. And that's a way to win, but it's not a way to sustain. Right, so how do we move? Like I think it was a Vern Harnish that does the zebras or gazelles?

Gazelles, yeah, those.

Right. So there's this idea that reminds me of like this, this unicorn versus the zebra mentality, right. You go to Africa and you go out on Savannah, you see a zebra and you're like, oh my God, it's a zebra. That's so cool. And then two minutes later you've seen 5,000 zebras. You're like, forget zebras here. But what you never see out there is a unicorn. You can look your whole life and maybe never Find a unicorn. But zebras are sustainable. If one gets eaten or one dies, there's 5,000 more to take its place. They are naturally suited to their environment. Much like cash flow businesses, much like sustainable relationships, much like, you know, the businesses that all the rest of us have. Yeah, sure, there's the Amazons and the unicorns and they kind of push forward into the pioneering spaces that they do. But most of us will never, ever, ever be part of that. We don't need to be to sustain our lives. And as these create more wealth and more ways to serve more people, we will ultimately come out of that better systems. Even though they may be harmful in the short term, they create opportunities for better systems to come from it. Because we learn from our mistakes too as humans.

Yep, no question. No, I admire the Elon Musk and the Bezos of the world and I love at one of the events with it, Naveen Jain, the guy who's doing some of the moonshot stuff and you know, started I think three different companies that billion dollar market caps and like I love learning from those guys. They make me think bigger and push, push the envelope. But I don't know that I have a desire to try to start the next Amazon. But in my own little world I want to dominate the niche that I'm building.

And you are, you're killing it. You know who you remind me of and you might know this person because you're in the sports world. I just got introduced to him not too long ago. David Meltzer used to work with Lee Steinberg. He has Sports One marketing with Warren Moon.

Oh, I've heard the name before, but I don't, I don't, I don't know.

Like I really want him to be my mentor. If you're listening, David, I'd really appreciate it if you'd mentor me because you're awesome. And he just embodies that, you know, connected to goodness. Just everything flows. Relationship first, you know, gifting, all of it. He's just a great guy like that and he's built a huge career just doing that. Just people.

David, what's his last name again?

Meltzer.

Meltzer. Where is he based?

You know he has a house in San Diego. Yeah, does he beach house down here? I don't know where his main house is, but that's the one I met him at. David Meltzer and I got connected to him because he was part of a board of a startup I was asked to be on and I thought he was another guy here in San Diego. David Metzler. Who I knew. And I'm like, hey David, tell me about this company. What are you talking about? I'm like, aren't you David Metzler that's on this board? And he's like, oh, that's David Meltzer. This happens all the time. Why don't you reach out to him? And then we ended up at his beach house and meeting all his people. It was really cool, kind of coincidence. But again, nothing doesn't happen for a reason.

Dude, that's awesome. I know a Denny Metzler that lives in just north of San Diego and at one point time he owned some of the, the most, I think most valuable farmland in all of north, in all of California and is involved with Young Life and some other more faith based organizations. But apparently the Metzars and Meltzers and they're killing it. Whatever. Yeah, they're definitely killing it.

Something in the water.

Yeah, love it.

All right, so I want to make sure that people come away with that. We could shoot the crap all day here, but I'd really love it if people came away with some really actionable strategies similar to kind of your knife hack to get in the CEO doors. What are some of the things that you've seen over the years that people just won't even think that way that you come across that are just really working well for people who are getting started in business?

I mean, I think what's interesting is 17 years later, we've been doing this almost 18 years and even to this day, I'll send out this year will probably be close to $360,000 thousand dollars worth of gifts. And our whole thing is we drive it based upon metrics like this isn't a warm fuzzy like hey, just sit around a campfire and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We want to drive revenue. We are capitalists. And so even to this day we still do a lot of the knife thing because I'm looking for gifts that don't just target the executive. I want the inner circle taken care of. So assistants, I spend a lot of money on spouses. Ton pets are like kids to people anymore. So if they don't have kids but they have pets. I just recently was talking to somebody and they said, you know, they wanted to get to a billion dollar CEO and they found out she wasn't married, but she had this puppy and loved the puppy. And they sent her like probably, I don't know, $500 worth of toys that were all personalized to the dog. And I'm like, that's brilliant. That's smart. That's like what we teach because people, I mean I'll send personalized collars and things that are over the top. I think that the low hanging fruit though is that most people don't take care of their current relationship. So a lot of times once somebody comes in the door, whether it's a financial advisor, whether it's insurance company or tech company, really doesn't matter. Once we have somebody as a client, we'll spend just. I mean I sent somebody asana to get their attention one time but most people will do that and spend 90% of their budget going after their new clients. They don't realize is that they should be reinvesting 5% of minimum net profits back in to keep their current clients to grow them. And I don't advertise. I'm able to drive massive amounts of revenue because most of my clients have become salespeople for me. So I don't cold call really anymore and I haven't for probably close to a decade because if I want to get to somebody, I probably have somebody in my network that I've loved on so much that's already a client paying me that they're looking for opportunities to reciprocate back and to open the door for me. And so I mean I have clients that, you know, they're already paying me money, but I'll send them whether it's knives, leather goods. I used to make fun of mugs, but now we have these amazing like hand carved mugs that like tell somebody's entire life story. They're like $400 mugs, but they're like one of the nicest gifts I've ever sent somebody. Like literally I would choose to send somebody mug over a Rolex based upon the value of this mug and what it ties into. But when something, when you love on people that way and you do it the right way, you make it about them. You don't put your logo on it, no logos on anything, unless you're the Chicago Cubs or Under Armour. Like nobody gives a crap about your tech company or your accounting firm. Our rule of thumb is if it doesn't add value to the product and make them want it more, like Harvard gets away with it because it's people. It's an honor to have gone to Harvard. You know, maybe even Elon Musk and Tesla can get away with putting their logo on it because they've built such a, you know, they're one of the unicorns. But I would argue that even Amazon shouldn't Be putting their logo on stuff, because do you really want something with Amazon on it? Probably not. Even if you work there, it's questionable. So make the gift all about them, personalize it, their name. And even a lot of times, people will give the objection like John, I don't have $7,000 to spend on Brooks Brothers clothes to send to somebody like Cameron Herald. And I'm like, you missed the whole point. Number one, it didn't cost me seven grand. Ended up costing me nothing. And number two, I will choose to spend three dollars on my metal business cards because that's like the unicorn concept. It's like Seth Godin's concept of the purple cow. Most people have never seen a $3 business card. Or now we $9 letterhead. It's a sheet of steel. When somebody. When we send a handwritten note to people, it's very. Most people never get handwritten notes anymore, but it's going and being world class, best in class, all in. Even on the little insignificant detail. So if you're going to send a mug, send the best mug on the planet. If you're going to send. If you're going to do a business card, do the best business card. Our book, Giftology. Like, when I rolled it out, I wanted to impress and thank guys like John Maxwell and Darren Hardy and Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk, guys that were either friends, clients, mentors, or mentors from afar. And so our first 50 books that we did were handmade inside a leather bag inside a linen box. And they were $200 a piece. And I had people that were like, why would you spend $200? You can get a book for $2 printed here. And I'm like, well, the last time I checked, this book is part of my legacy. And this is some of the most important things I've done and witnessed. And it's my entire playbook. It's like 17 years worth of work. Why would I spend $2 on it? I want to spend the most I can on the planet. Because when somebody gets it out of the thousand books they receive, like Michael Hyatt said, I literally get 5,000 books sent to me or thousands every year, and they all go to Goodwill. He's like, john, yours is the first book I actually cracked open and read, and I'm blown away. And I gave it to my entire team. Now Michael Hyatt has hundreds of thousands of people that he influences, and he's talking, you know, like we're supposed to do a podcast together. And he's Talked about using us for gifting now. But I think that in general, most people, all areas of their life, whether it's relationships at home with their spouse or their kids, they hold back 5 or 10% and they say, what's the least I can get away with here? And they don't put the energy and effort in to appreciate. Like everybody says, feel gratitude and write it in your five minute journal, which I agree with. But you got to go take the five minute journal and then go do something with it. Don't feel something. Go do gratitude. Yes, there you go. Five minute journal. It's wonderful. Write it down. But you got to go do something with it. And most people hold back and are lame. They're lame with how they show gratitude and appreciation. And then they have the kahunas to say that relationships are their most valuable asset when they give C level gifts. It's not congruent. And so I think if you read giftology, what you'll see is we're not perfect. Sometimes we suck and we screw up. But in general, if you talk to most of our clients and people that we interact with, we were willing to eat our own dog food and walk our own talk when it comes to showing gratitude. And because of that, we have more referrals and deal flow. And, you know, our speaking went from five to 7,500 now up to like 25 grand for a keynote. Not because I'm a better speaker, but because we built these relationships and nobody's talking about this. Like, everybody wants to talk about sales and marketing, whatever else. Like how you treat people matters. Whether it's your employee or client, your prospect doesn't matter. It's a human being. And how you treat people will basically determine whether or not you're successful or not, in my opinion.

I agree with you 100%. And I think this even expands to service providers as well. Who expects that when you send somebody a check and then you get off the phone and they said, oh, you know, my plant just died. I've had this plant for seven, eight years. And then you send them a plant, shows up in their mailbox, and they send a picture out, they're like, well, you just paid me. And you were listening when I said, my plant died and you sent me a plant. And like, that'll blow you away. And then guess what? Down the road, if you need anything from that service provider, that's not exactly the terms of the agreement. Guess what, you're gonna get it.

Of course. Yeah, you treat him like a human being. And Everybody says they're listening and they care. I'm like, if you like. We had one guy who leads, actually, you may know him. Scott Gerber leads. Yec. You know, like, when I met with him for the first time, he was. He was just beside himself because he runs his whole business off of his iPhone in the iPhone service repair company. Had his phone for a month and still hadn't fixed it properly. And so they gave him an iPhone like four generations ago to use. He was so angry. He's using this little tiny, like iPhone4. So we went and, you know, I went and reached out to some of my service providers on the phone side, and I had waiting for him the next day on his provider, the exact phone that had gotten cracked waiting for him at the hotel. And he has a book coming out called Super Connectors that goes live, I think in February. The whole story's in there. He's promoting it to the entire world, but it's listening. When people are in pain, if you have any way that you can solve their pain, I mean, they'll throw money at you, they'll throw doors open, they'll beat down doors, they'll go out of their way. It's not about being the cheapest.

It's not that hard either. I mean, I got this notebook as a. It's a custom leather notebook, hand way. It's got a symbol on it that's all custom. I buy the pieces on Amazon and in book, I literally write everything that I want to manifest and I take notes when people say things, I write them down and I put stars next to things that I can take action on. Like just in this example, this conversation, which is meant to serve my audience, but also to serve you, John is Ryan Moran star next to it. You talk about conscious capitalism. He's got capitalism dot com. He's in Austin. You were just in Austin. I think there's a few things there. I might reach out to Ryan, say, hey, you want to meet John? I'm sure if you don't know him already, that'd be a great connection. We just hang out at Burning Man. He's a great guy. David Meltzer. I already mentioned another person just like that. No logos on anything. That's something that I'm gonna go and do right now is like, I'm just gonna stop putting my logo on stuff. I just had a whole bunch of marbles made that say, make more marbles on them. I think they're kind of cool, but maybe not everybody would appreciate it as much as I Do. There's always a way to grow. There's always a way to just make an impression on people and show that you actually get.

Yeah, it's caring. It's caring and actually doing something about it and not just saying, you know, I have thoughts for you, like, that's great. And I do believe in the power of, you know, positive thinking and prayer. And from a faith perspective, being a Christian, like, I think the prayer is important, but you know, like he gave us two legs and two arms. Whatever your faith background is, go do something. And I think that on the gifting side, most people just view it as like, oh, it doesn't matter, you know, it's a warm fuzzy, it's a nice to check the box once a year. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'll tell people. Time. A hundred dollar gift card versus a really thoughtful, well thought out, handwritten note out of nowhere. People will save the handwritten note in many cases and look at it years later. They'll never forget that. And $100 gift card to Ruth, Kris or Starbucks if they even get a chance around to using it or don't lose it. Like it's gone, it's forgotten about. Bottle of wine, you know, it's remembered for five minutes. Most people don't understand the power of doing something that can have that artifact appeal and that trigger for years to come. And a lot of it comes down to just, you know, everybody wants things automated, which is why ruling group exists. We help people automate their gifting, but they still have to care and they still have to have the right relationships to where like we're just the cherry on top of Sunday. They can, we'll pick the gift and write the note and all that. But if they don't care, like what we do actually becomes harmful to their business because people can tell you're giving the gift after the referral, expecting another referral. Like now you're making it slimy and transactional versus, you know, gifting people because of the relationship. And is it just because. And so, you know, a lot of what we put into giftology, you know, the book is like, make sure that your heart's right first and if it is okay, like actually start budgeting for it, like it does matter. And then, you know, start getting a trickle down effect of your whole team behind it. And a lot of it, frankly, anybody can do, like I'm a farm boy from Ohio, like I don't, I'm not blessed with some gifting talent. Like I've just thought about gratitude and appreciation for 17 years. So my gratitude muscle has grown to be pretty fricking strong. But anybody, I don't care who you are, who you're married to, what background, I see it because I see people like start to get addicted to it of gifting and they start doing it and they're like, I had no idea I could be this good at it. I'm like, it's because it's not rocket science. Anybody can be good, they just have to care.

Right. And like Tony Robbins says, the secret to living is giving. That unlocks all the doors, it makes all worthwhile. And that's really the art of fulfillment, is you make it, you grow it, you protect it, you give it away.

Yep.

You know, it's not a difficult system to master, but you got to care, you got to really care and start with that. And you know, I'm an entrepreneur who I have a team and I don't have enough time to really follow up as much as I'd like to. And I get these little pieces. I'd really love a service like that. Could you explain to people how it works, what goes on and what the kind of customer facing perspective is in working with Giftology? Is it meant only for high level people or is it kind of their entry level as well?

Yeah. So I think that there's a misperception when they see the Cubs and Google and Morgan Stanley on the client list, like obviously like we pick the clients that are out there that we've worked with that people know and recognize and it's sexy. But our sweet spot of clients is small to mid sized companies. Oftentimes either faith based or core values driven CEOs of 5 million to 500 million dollar companies. So we have financial advisors, insurance agents. A minimum engagement for us is somebody that has 20 relationships they want to appreciate twice a year. Average cost per gift, all in of us selecting it. The gift, the handwritten note, the logistics is about $250 per gift. So an entry point for us is 10 grand. So if somebody wants to spend 10 grand a year on their most important relationships, then they're an ideal client. If they're not, doesn't mean they're bad people. It just means that they're not a fit for kind of our consulting, execution, strategy, logistics, end of the business. But they can take the book or we have a course going live called Giftology that's developed with Danny Ayni and the whole training there to really lay out over six weeks what you know, what to do on your own. Go, take it, run with it. Get your relationship action plan, which is really just a plan of attack, just like you would in any other part of your business to go do. But we have, I mean we have a lot of eo ypo vistage guys that are entrepreneurs or even solopreneurs. They just have really valuable relationships that they want to take care of. Kind of like Danny, I mean he's got affiliates and other key influencers like you that he wants to love on. And so now we work well with small and mid sized companies, not just the whales.

I love that. And the fact that you're always thinking ahead to serving more people because you can take that course and Maybe that's a $500 investment, whatever it is. And then in a few years it makes sense to spend ten grand on your most valuable relationship. So you're kind of building a top of funnel type of deal. So it's not just for the top of the top. And then you got the book as well, which is easy mass market. Where can people find your book and when is your next speaking opportunity? How can they connect with you?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I would say that we actually created, you know, because I think that there's sometimes people get overwhelmed with even when they read the book, they're like, there's so many things to think about. And I'm like, and sometimes it's easier to say what not to do than to tell people, here's all the things you need to go do. So we created a free download for your tribe. It's essentially if you go to giftology book all one word. So giftologybook.com marbles. You'll be able to download the 10 worst gifts to avoid giving. And it talks about gift cards, it talks about, surprisingly enough, apple and why. It's gives a why. So there's always, people are like, what about this situation? I'm like, there's always anomalies. There's always times when you can break the rules. But these are like if you want kind of the I have three girls, we go bowling, you need the little bumper so you don't get gutter balls. Like here's the framework of what to kind of work off of. And it's, you know, it's just a simple one page PDF that somebody can use or they can at least share it with their team or their assistant or their marketing team. As far as speaking goes. Our next speaking engagement is at Baby Bathwater out in Powder Mountain. And that's, that's coming up here in September. Here and then in October we're in Austin at the CEO Summit for Conscious Capitalism. We're at MIT for a key executive leader program and I think we're a few other places. But as far as buying the book, Amazon's the easiest place to go. Check it out, Audible, Kindle, all that kind of stuff if you want to just check out the book. But the free download is a great place to start.

I love that. John, thank you so much. And since this is Make More Marvel's podcast and we want to be just reciprocating and generous and grateful for everything that you've given to us and all these wonderful strategies and resources. Giftologybook.com Marbles what are some of the things in your life that you'd like to open doors to next? Whether they be connections, resources, opportunities, people, systems, Crops is my little acronym for that. Or anybody listening can connect you to that can help you further your mission in life.

I would say that a bucket list item, I mean Conscious Capitalism was a stage I wanted to be on, but I would say that ted, the main TED stage is something that got me excited really. Any speaking engagement where I can impact leaders that can go do things and impact thousands and literally millions of people. And so the bigger the stage and people that actually go do something with it. I don't really want to go speak to 10,000 accountants at an association, that's fine, but that's not. I want to speak to entrepreneurs, CEOs, VPs of sales, guys that are like really gonna do something. And I would say that other than that, you know, buying the book and buying, I mean giftology, what I didn't realize titling it giftology is how many people buy the book and give it out as gifts to their top 10 or 20 or 100 relationships and how sticky that's become. I think that's one of the reasons we're signing an international book deal with a big agent out of New York as a self published book within 14 months is kind of crazy. But I think that there's just momentum around the book and so that's kind of. So the more that that happens and starts to go viral, you know, international, like I'd love to travel with my family and expose my kids to other countries. And so that's kind of an exciting thing to think about and do. And it's a really generous question that's not usually asked. Wasn't really prepared to say, like here's.

The I never tell them ahead of time. I always got to get the real answer out of them.

Yeah, yeah.

No, man, we're genuine this way because everybody needs help with something. I don't care if you're Richard Branson. I met them all. You know, one of my goals is to have a six. I'm sorry, ten hundred million plus net worth individual mentors. Less have six so far, including two well known billionaires. And one thing I know for sure is that every human being has needs, wants and desires. And most of them have nothing to do with money, connection, status. It's just, you know, some of them just need somebody to be there and to be a safe space sometimes.

Yep. Yeah. The higher, I think the higher up the food chain you go, the more lonely it is. I think that's why, you know, these mastermind groups and even YPO EO like these leadership things where you can go and share confidentially because it is low. It can be lonely when you're leading the company and or an entrepreneur by yourself, solopreneur. Like it gets lonely out there. Like we all, you know, we all thrive and you know, with human connections. So dude, you're spot on.

And that's why make more models exist, right? Because we can all win together more if we just get rid of that idea that we're all in this together as individual actors and competing against each other and actually just get together, be like, hey, we have a lot in common. We can help each other and we could share this resource and blah, blah, blah, then the whole world is better as a result and the entrepreneurs, all individual, become this entrepreneurial movement that changes the world. It's a really cool thing.

Agreed.

One crazy guy's idea, I think.

Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of other guys out there that are, that are in line with you and in feeding off your juice.

All right? But if we're gonna be the Avengers, I'm Nick Fury. I just, I call right now. I am that guy. You own that or Thor, whatever you want to be. I'm Nick Fury. That's what's happening.

All right, done. I'm not, I'm not gonna fight you on that one. I'll relent.

Unless Samuel Jackson wants to get involved, he can have it. Thank you, John. And I really appreciate you. I just, I love finding living examples of people for whom gratitude is literally the thing that makes them so successful. And just to show that, as my friend Mike Sherbakov of the Greatness foundation, we just, at the Mexico house build together would say, a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles and that what you appreciate, appreciates and you're just like you said, you've been building that gratitude muscle for 17 years and it's just an amazing story. It's amazing work that you're doing in the world and I'm so, so grateful for you as a human, just shining that light for others. And thank you so much for being on the show on behalf of everybody.

In the Make More Marvelous community, man, Brad, thanks for. Thanks for having me, dude. This time went by super fast. Thanks for. Thanks for bringing me on.

My pleasure, John. And we are. Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marvels podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life and your health, wealth and relationships, whatever that means to you, head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or Google Play wherever you listen to your podcast. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.