John Ruhlin - How To Grow Your Business Through Giving Gifts

All of business, almost. I don't care. The industry, it's all relationships, it's all referrals. It's all. Even in all with all this digital stuff we still like before we hire and make a huge decision. You can read 100 video testimonials. What do you do? You start calling around your network of people that you trust and you say, hey, are these guys legit? Will they follow through when it goes sideways? Which thinks do. Will they follow through? They step up. Will they take care of you? Will they fix it? Because nobody's perfect. And so it's the behind the scenes back chatter that lands you the six figure seven, figure eight figure deals or not. It's not the. It's great to have cool graphics and cool websites and great brochures, but at the end of the day, you got to have the people behind you. That's the foundation.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Wiki, wiki, wiki. It's podcast time.

All right, podcast red lights on. Let's go.

Today we are podcasting.

Oh, surprise.

This one. This episode is a gift to our audience.

Why would you say that? Aren't they all?

This one is more of a gift.

More. The most giftest of them all.

This is the giftiest episode ever.

Well, it must be. I guess that's what John has made a career doing.

John Rulin. That is John Rulin of Giftology. So John is on the show and he's going to give you many gifts of knowledge and how he gives gifts. So he has a.

You said gifts way too many times already.

I'm gaming the SEO ness of audio. If that's a thing in the future. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. So John Rulin's on the show today from Giftology, and the guy is absolutely amazing when it comes to thoughtfulness and business and staying top of mind, growing relationships and referrals all through the art of gift gifting.

Yeah, and he set up a. He has like a checklist thing. I actually haven't opted in for it yet. But you've actually taken a look at it over@giftologysystem.com. so I'll shout that out real quick. But what was like, what do you get when you get that when you go there?

So if you go there and when you go there, you get a spreadsheet actually that they made and it's like, I don't know, like 8 to 10 tabs on this spreadsheet. Each tab is a step during his giftology process. And John even said on the show that's something that he gives away his very high tier clients because he works with some big companies, he has a whole agency in the background, but he's essentially giving you the framework. But you'll see how quickly realized if you do this at scale, you're probably going to need a little bit of help, but you're going to see the entire process from just basically, steps are what determine the roi. So figure out what the intention is, what's your strategy? Is it one off, who to send it to, what's your budget, what's the gift, all these other different steps associated with it. Get it. It's worth its weight in gold. And even he said it's like giftology. The book is also great. It's a little bit more theoretical. Whereas giftology system.com, that spreadsheet is very practical. So you can actually use that thing as a tool.

Cool. Yeah, go get that. I'm gonna go get it. I haven't yet, but I will as soon as we finish recording this intro that we're doing. Yes, but yeah, so with John, we go de this topic of giftology, like how to pick the right gift for people, how much money to spend, what if you have like a very small budget or you're just starting out, you.

Know, you're in luck, don't worry. Yeah, as a small business, you're probably at an advantage. Yeah.

We're going to cover all of this and we're going to talk about the power of gifting and how the power of gifting comes back to you and how you can sort of justify the cost so that, you know, you get ROI or ror, return on relationships and.

You can even learn how to gift better to your spouse.

Yeah, we do touch on that.

So I asked John, okay, well, you're the rainmaker when it comes to gifts. How do you still impress your wife if she knows your tricks? So if he can pull that off with his wife, then I'm sure you can with your spouse or significant other.

So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot packed in this. And at the end of the day, like he wants people to show gratitude with action and not just words and lip service. And you know, there's more to it and you know, this is something that can last and, and like you were saying, generate returns and referrals and business and all that stuff. Ror and be top of mind.

It really Made me rethink the amount of Hustle and Flowchart shirts that we send out to people.

I know. I think, yeah, it's interesting because we send a lot of swag and we know it's swag. We know it's not like a personalized gift. And we will occasionally. I said occasionally because we don't have a great system around it. Send like a handwritten note or something along with it. But yeah, this is definitely going to.

We're.

We're going to shift some things around. I've definitely been gifted numerous times. I was talking about one of them on the show and that stuff just sticks top of mind.

Yeah.

And typically, like, it's not going to be that much more expensive or I mean, it's not rocket science, but the impacts are felt for a long time.

Yes, sir.

So check out giftology system.com and get the notes. We always have them. So the two. Two weeks, by the time this episode goes live, it' they'll be free for you. If you go to hustleandflowchart.com comp c o m p hustleandflowchart.com Comp or text, use your texting device and rotary phone. That one works. That's Matt's now. I gave it to you. I gifted it. You'll appreciate that.

You gifted me the rotary phone?

Yeah, you can't have. Because remember, that was always my thing. I gave it to you. You just don't remember or have it yet. Maybe got lost in the mail.

I think I re gifted it.

Damn it. All right, well, I was trying to keep your social media usage down. So you have a rotary phone. You can't really get to the. Yes. So get your rotary phone out and dial the number 3 or whine the number 38470. 38470. Just one time to the word comp. Send the word comp C O M.

P And on your rotary phone, you, you know, you do the little.

And then you just yell comp.

Yeah, that works.

Yeah. If it's a rotary phone, you just have to yell comp as loud as you can into your phone.

And until the operator connects you yes to your. To your free notes and then we.

Have some automations that happen in the.

Background and somehow it finds its way to you.

Somehow.

Yeah.

It'll arrive in the mail.

Good.

Maybe.

So 38470 is the number in the word is comp or hustle and flowchart.com cop whichever you choose, be quick.

If you yell loud enough, Joe will hear it and just mail you something.

Smoke signals work sometimes, but there's a lot of weird fires in San Diego, so I might get a little confused. Don't use smoke signals.

Don't use smoke signals.

Just yell. Just yell like a crazy person.

I was going to make a different joke about the smoke signals, but I won't go there.

That was for the will episode.

Chatting with John today.

Let's go chat with John.

Hey, John, we're live now. Make sure all the recording things all set in place.

Nah, man.

Feeling good.

I have to do this twice, though.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Well, you just came back from vacation, so props on spend some time time with us, man. Big, big respect for doing that. And because I know you got some wise words that I think a lot of folks just aren't aware of. You know, this whole paradigm shift in marketing and relationships and just generosity and gratitude. I think it's going to be interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, man. Well, I'm excited to be able to pour into the tribe and, yeah, I'm coming back fresh after 10 days away, so hopefully we can, you know, we can come at it from a different angle and do some fun things here.

Yeah, super fresh. You said you just got off the plane, what, a couple hours ago?

Yeah, three hours ago. Yeah, got in, got our, you know, 20 pieces of luggage with our four kids home, settled, you know, tucked them in, had some Chipotle and.

The office. So, yeah, it's literally hours ago.

Nice. Well, let's. Yeah, big shout out to Chris Komitzo, one of our buddies, for making this connection happen. So I know whenever someone comes from Chris, always fascinating. So give us a scoop, man. You have an interesting background, and part of it involves something I spent, like, I think a day or two in Cutco, you know.

I did.

Yeah.

And Matt's like. Because I was like. Was that with Matt? No, it's another buddy of mine. But that was like, way before I started any online entrepreneurship stuff. But then I heard, oh, you're the number one guy. Or were. I don't know where the stat is, but, like, you're the baller of.

Yeah, yeah. So that was one of my starts. And I started on a farm. You know, I'm a. I'm an Ohio farm boy. I didn't grow up in the city. I didn't grow up in San Diego. I was one to live in San Diego. Growing up, it's like, man, I would be near the ocean, you know, it'd be amazing. But, yeah, I, out of desperation, I interned with Scott Joe back 20 years ago, literally, I started June 6th of 2000.

Whoa.

And I was 20 years old and was going to go be a med student. I was going to go be a chiropractor do. And an intern with Cutco to pay for med school. And. And I thought if I lasted a summer, it'd be like a miracle. That honestly was like. Because I. I didn't really have any sales background. I'm a farm kid. I was milking goats. Like, I was like, you know, some, like, slick sales guy. Like, I. I just didn't come from that background. But. But my life changed because of that. I mean, I didn't realize at the time they had some of the best sales training literally, in the world for college kids, like, entrepreneurial training. You know, some of my best friends in the world. Twenty years later, Hal Elrod, you know, we vacationed together, wrote Miracle Morning John. John Broman from Front Row Dads. Like, if you look at the list of alumni guys that have gone on to do interesting things, there's. There's about 1.5 million people that have sold Cutco in 70 years. And so my life changed because the training, but also because of a mentor. I was dating a girl, and her dad was an attorney and he was a rainmaker. And so I pitched him the idea of giving away. Because he was always giving away things. Like, he was super generous. I pitched him the idea of giving away. So pocket knives, all the clients. So they're all like CEOs of companies, and they're into hunting and fishing and. And Paul was like, I don't want to order pocket knives. I want to order 100 pairing knives. Now, these are not like 50 cent paring knives. Like, as you know, they're like 60, 70, $80. One night.

Yeah.

So I'm like, paul, you want to give a bunch of dudes, like CEOs, like, of companies, like, a kitchen tool? Like, why? And he's like, John, in 40 years in business, the reason I have more referrals, deal flow, access, all these things is if you take care of the family in business, everything else takes care of itself. So that became like the kind of the lightning bolt moment of like, holy crap. This wasn't about knives. This wasn't about, like, gifts. This was about relationships. And I learned, you know, very quickly all businesses of all sizes rise and fall based upon their relationships with clients, employees, media investors, mentors. And so I started to mimic what I saw in Paul. He was 60 at the time. And I'm like, I'm 20, I'm going to mimic what this dude's doing for the next 40 years because I want to be him someday. And by the time I was a senior in College, out of 1.5 million reps, I became tucked to his number one distributor in history of the company by applying these relationship building principles. So it's not like these woo woo ideas that like were born in academia. They literally like we've been applying these and we decided to put med school on hold, built this agency that helped companies and small businesses outsource their gifting and using gifting that is a check the box but as a true business strategy. And so the last 20 years, that's what we've been up to. But it all started with a knife.

Wow.

As crazy as that, crazy as that sounds, as silly as that sounds, it started back then.

So med school's not. Is that going to happen, what, next year?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, go. Half a billion dollars in debt in wait 10 years with residency and all this other stuff. Now what's interesting is I've always still, I still like, I just did like 35 days of like the Carnivore diet. Like, I take health really seriously. I hang out with a bunch of dudes that are like, you know, like Ben Greenfield. These guys are like superhuman. So I still love those sorts of things. I just don't need to go to med school for 10 years. I like glean, I glean the wisdom from the people that are doing the, the research and the studies and whatever else and then go apply them versus, you know, paying a half a million dollars to, of course, you know, my medical career.

Well, now you know why we have a podcast. We can, you know, learn all sorts of.

Exactly. Yeah.

It's a selfish thing.

Yeah, it's, it's very subtle. Very. I guess it's, you know, it's a two way street.

That's right. It is three wave. And with the, the listener too. So yeah, it was a win, win, win across the board here.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So med school's on hold permanently someday, but fair enough. Yeah.

Give you the pass.

So let's talk about. So with the, with the Cutco thing that you were talking about, you were giving away like these $60 knives. So can you go a little deeper on that? Like, how did, how does that come back to you? Like, like what, how does it work?

Yeah, well, so what we realized was that in business and Seth Godin talked about this, Gary Vee talked about this, like, everybody talks about being unique or being A purple cow or giving value or standing out and being memorable. And yet in business, most people, you know, a lot of business is done by a bunch of dudes. And guys are very linear. It's like, hey, we take people golfing, we take people to take dinners, we go to conferences. We give people, you know, golf balls and swag. They do the same crap over and over again. Women, on the other hand, are actually very, like, way better at giftology than guys are because they understand the little things matter. The handwritten note, the details, the packaging, the time, all these other things. And so we started to apply. Like, I would get. I'd want to get a meeting with like a $200 million CEO of like, a insurance company, and I'd invest $300 in a Cutco carving set. And the key was I would engrave on the side of this, on these blades like CEO's name, spouse's name, family name, and packages a certain way. Handwrite the note, carve out five minutes for me. I promise it'd be worth your time. And I'd mail it off to him. I'd mail it off to his assistant. And I'm 20 years old and I would start to get phone calls back from these companies saying, hey, we got your package. We're blown away. Like, we want to take a. And I go in, in the one suit I have on and, you know, walk in and the CEO walks in. He's like in his 60s, like, are you the John ruling that sent me the knives? Like, I'm like, yeah. He's like, man, I thought you'd be like some 50 year old sales executive. Like, are you here. I'm confused. Are you here to sell me knives? I'm like, no, I'm here to help you and your thousand sales reps do exactly this to your top 10,000 relationships. Because everybody says they're generous. Everybody says they're a giver, Everybody says they're unique. Then they send, you know, they send out a polo shirt with a logo the size of a softball on it to a bunch of dudes making a half million dollars. You know what happens to those? All that swag and trinkets that you spent money on, invested in branding and marketing. They get worn once a year at best, or they get given to Goodwill, or they're, you know, the bottom of the dog cage. Because most people will do their event or their brochures or their cars or their suits at like a risk Carlton level. And then they're gifting their generosity, their ways of appreciating people are done at like a Motel 6 and they don't understand that. What they're like, they're communicating is, you don't matter. We don't walk our talk. Like, we don't follow through. We're not thoughtful. And so what we realized was the knife, if it was done the right way because it's handmade, all these other things, but the engraving, the packaging was the delivery vehicle for this emotion that would communicate to the CEOs, these executives that were clients or prospects or referral sources. Holy crap. Like, like, in some cases, like, I would get a meeting with like a, you know, $100 million company. I wouldn't ask for anything. I'd meet with a CEO kind of, you know, to. Just to learn from them. And I would send them a 500 gift afterwards and thank them for carving out the time. The CEO would say, my best, my biggest client, my biggest vendors don't send me a gift as nice as this 24 year old. Just. And they don't even hand write the note. They send it from Amazon. And so guess who gets a phone call returned immediately, anytime for the next 50 years, me or my clients. Because I walked the talk in a way that was unique and different. I included. One of our core principles is the inner circle. The reason to this day, like people say the New York Times ask, it's like, john, what's the hot new sexy gift? And I laughed at like, stupid knives. And they're like, come on. Like, seriously, like, what do you send now? Like, what are your clients buying the most of the. I said, the stupid knives. And they're like, are you serious? They're like, why? And I'm like, last time I checked, most people were married. Most people have a kitchen. Most people have stucky knives that they got for their marriage, their wedding 13 years ago.

Most people are foodies and they entertain. And the hub of every house on the planet is the kitchen.

Yeah.

And so when I include somebody and engrave their wife's name or their husband's name and their family name and their favorite Bible verse or their favorite quote on the back of these blades or whatever it is, they get it. And they're like, you know what? I would never go buy this for myself, but this is awesome. And then they use it every single day for the next 10 years, that's 3,600 impressions. You want to be top of mind with somebody. Like, everybody says, I want to be life trusted. Top of mind. I'm like, great. You know, like, you have A great product, you have a great service, you have a great personality. But that person's getting 30,000 messages a day. Guess what they're not thinking about is you refer you business.

Yeah.

But when you get them something in, their wife or their husband is raving about you every single day. Guess what they can't stop thinking about is this stupid kid selling knives or the stupid kid that wrote a book called Giftology. So people like, you know, how are you landing these big speaking gigs? Is it bureau's? I'm like, no. All my clients and all my speaking buddies refer us all of our speaking gigs. I've never booked with a bureau one time. And yet we're speaking in some cases for $85,000 for a keynote when seven years ago, I was begging to speak for free. That's a brag. I say that because we eat on dog food. We've invested in these relationships the way that my original mentor Paul did 20 years ago. And so people are like, oh, I played the long game. I'm like, your long game is days. My long game is decades. And you play the long game for decades. Like Paul did, like my original mentors did. That's what I was like. I got 40 years to get there. And, you know, Gary Vee's made it sexy to talk about the long game, but very few people actually put that into practice. So it started with a knife. But it's not just the knife. The item itself people get so hung up on. And I'm like, that's only like 20% of the gift. The other 80% is all the details around it that make it land a certain way or that make it feel like swag.

Yeah. I mean, this is. Yeah. Like, most of our businesses come through referrals. At least our network, you know, that's how we get folks on our podcast, the ones that, you know, we feel like we don't have an in with. Well, you know, just because of the cool stuff we've done for other people. Chris is one of those guys, he's.

Like, gotta have job, everybody.

Yeah, yeah. He's a good guy to know, so.

And I get respect level with people, too, so if he suggests something, it means something, because there's a depth to the bond. It's not surface level.

Right.

Like that.

We don't second guess people from a source like that. And I'm sure you wouldn't either. Like, it's kind of this weird bond.

No, I just said, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because Chris has got, like, we speak a lot for eo and YPO groups in these big CEO groups. And Chris is like open doors. He's like, he's just a giver. Like he's a true giver. So yeah, I mean all the business almost, I don't care the industry, it's all relationships, it's all referrals, it's all, even in all with all this digital stuff, we still like before we hire and make a huge decision, you can read a hundred video testimonials. What do you do? You start calling around to your network of people that you trust and you say, hey, are these guys legit? Will they follow through when it goes sideways? Which things do? Will they follow through? They step up. Will they take care of you? Will they fix it? Because nobody's perfect. And so it's the behind the scenes back chatter that lands you the six figure seven figure eight figure deals or not. It's not the. It's great to have cool graphics and cool websites and great brochures, but at the end of the day, you got to have the people behind you. That's the foundation that is.

So you mentioned opening doors to like speaking engagements, $85,000 a pop, things like that. Obviously you, it seems like you have a good system on how to identify who to send these gifts to. And not every gift is created equal. You know, I know gone through some of your stuff there. So chat about how you identify, I guess the, the connectors like that hub that can lead to all these different things in the future.

Well, the simple answer is I would say most people, you know, this is a common cliche phrase, you know, paralysis by analysis. So some people will say, oh my gosh, I better only send gifts to the perfect people. And so they have this spreadsheet and literally that spreadsheet gets doctored over the course of years and they never do anything. So my, my rule of thumb is like if there's an opportunity to love on somebody, like this year we're, but we budgeted, there probably be close to 600 grand that we'll invest personally in gifts.

Nice.

I guarantee there's gifts that are going out to people that will not produce anything in the next three to five years. There's times, like there's times where I'm just doing it because I know it's the right thing to do. Or oftentimes like a lot of my budget goes towards taking care of somebody's spouse or assistant or team. And what's interesting is some of my biggest deals have come from not the executive, not the perfect Connector. It came as a direct result, like, I can think of, you know, just on Donald Miller's podcast, Storybrand Amazing marketing Podcast.

That's right.

And when I, she, his assistant, organized a bunch of stuff for this group of, like, Ryan Holiday, like, there's a group of eight authors and speakers that get together for this mastermind group that we all just kind of come together to share best practices and ideas. And it's all our guys, like John, Gordon and Donald and whatever else. So Melissa's assistant, like, made it super easy. Just did great things. So I sent her a gift just to say thank you for orchestrating climbing scenes. I never met her. I have no idea why I'm sending her a gift. Like, I don't. Other than she was kind. Now, what was interesting is they were going to release the podcast in July, and I'm like, gosh, right after 4th of July, the worst time to have a podcast go live. So I reached out to Melissa and said, hey, is there any way that we can push this up by three or four weeks? And she said, for you, no problem. She completely rearranged the schedule. Now, when I sent the gift, I had no need for anything from that person. I didn't give with this expectation of manipulating and getting something back. And so what I would say is that if you have the opportunity, people are doing great things in the world, and there's people around them that are doing great things in the world. Like, I try to focus on givers in particular, because there's a multiplication effect. So I avoid takers, even if there are people of influence, because I'm like, I know they're not necessarily going to go out of their way to advocate and reciprocate, and they're just not fun to work with. A lot of times they're douchebags, they're idiots. They're pain in the butt to work with. So not saying I've never given to a taker before. There have been times where we have, either on accident or whatever else. But in general, I try to focus on. And I try to focus on as much as possible. Most people will go whale hunting and focus externally. I take care of my employees like gold. So we do things like pay to have all of our employees get house cleaning every other week.

Oh, wow.

To have their houses clean. And my feeling is, is that you can't. You create bitterness if you treat your clients like the Risk Carlton, and you treat your employees like McDonald's and you expect them to deliver Risk Carlton service that doesn't work and so I start war market internal customer first. So your team and then you go to your clients, you know, your people of influence, centers of influence, investors, mentors, advisors, cool people you meet on airplanes. Like the people that you've already have some sort of warm market relationship. Most people flip the script. They don't do anything for their employees, their customers. They do the least that they can get away with. And then they go whale hunting and do all these amazing things for prospects and people that they just met. And I'm like, if you would just love on your clients, not because you had to, but because they're actually paying your bills right now and took care of those people, they will go be salespeople for you. They will go out of their way through advocating open doors. I'm like, you're. They're basically buying their own gift. Like you guys like, like, people are like, oh my gosh, like, why would I send somebody a gift that I already have? And I'm like, because you, like, if they go away, that's going to cost you 15 grand next year. And do you multiply that over 10 years, that's $150,000 in profit. That will go away for forever. And so the warm market first focus and focusing on the inner circle, which would be spouse, kids, pets and assistant and team and focusing there 80% of your dollars. And then if you want to go like whale hunting, like I met somebody on vacation who Director of sales for Fruit of the Loom and they own like Russell Athletic. I have no idea what that's going to turn into, but he was the kindest dude. We met him on the airplane. He kept giving shells every day to my girls and like, was like a hero to my daughters. I'm going to send him a gift.

Heck yeah.

I know what's going. I don't know what to turn into, but it's not going to be like a $3 gift. I'm probably. It's going to be if I took him out to a nice dinner or took him out to a nice lunch with wine or whatever else. It's going to be a two, $300 gift. Nothing crazy.

Yeah.

But it's also not going to be like an Amazon gift card for $25, which is most people do. Hey, here's Starbucks. Go buy a coffee on me.

Like, that took no thought.

Yeah, no thought at all thought just to go to the stack of cards. Like, they're going to forget about it a week from now. So, like it's. It's taking care of the warm market first and it's going all in on a smaller number of people and it's not keeping track and keeping score because that, that also ruins it. And you guys are married.

Sure.

If every time you do something nice for your wife, you expect something back, how does that work out?

We'll be in the doghouse all the time.

But we do that in business.

Yeah.

Hey, here's a gift. Hey. Hey. The kindest, you know, compliment you can give me as a referral, like it's the lamest thing in the world. Give a gift and then ask for something like yeah, yeah, it feels manipulative, it doesn't feel good. And people will sometimes say thank you and maybe even give you a referral. But are they going to give you the level of referral that you really want? No, they're going to give you a down tier referral. They're going to refer somebody down. They're not going to refer up somebody that's the best in their network because they're like, I don't want to put him or her into that circle of people if this is how they're gonna play.

Right.

And so they don't realize what they're communicating by how even they're gifting like that communicates what level of player you are. Because if you get like a king, you get treated like a king. If you gift like a manipulator and a douchebag, guess what? You get put into a different category.

So you put out into the world.

Yeah, that's what you put into the world. And it's, I mean it's sad. And I've, you know, I've done that before early in my career. Like I've done gifts where it was a manipulation. And I'm not saying we're perfect now but, but I think the intention behind the gift and the way you position it matters on how it's going to bear fruit over the years into the future.

So I'm really curious because first of all I want to shout out giftology system.com for you because that is like a full blown baller system in spreadsheet form with like, I don't know, eight tabs along top and it's like a whole friggin system for doing exactly this. But.

Really quick, I wanted to just highlight the Fruit of the Loom guy that you met on your trip. I know there's a full process to this and I don't want you to go through every little detail, but what's your thought pattern into? How are you going to approach this? What gift are you going to send them? What's the mindset there with this new connection of yours?

Yeah, well, here's the interesting thing is people. I could send the same. To this day, 80% of our budget will be not people. Like, really the knives? Why the knives? I'm like, well, because I want something that's applicable to every single human. Like when I don't know somebody intimately. Well, like we have some crazy gifts. Like we have these thousand dollar mugs and 2500 bases that tell somebody's whole life story. They're called artifactmug.com you can go check them out. I love them. They're amazing. But guess what? Like, if you start and give stuff, you know, it's like starting at the super bowl, like you, you start at the pinnacle, you almost make people feel uncomfortable. Like you can get, you can over compensate with something with a new relationship. It's like basically meeting somebody on the first date and saying, hey, you want to have 10 kids with me and get married tomorrow?

And so. But there, there's also the other level, which is like automating something and just sending like some swag, which is what people do with their book launches. And they just make me gag. Like, hey, there's a bunch of stuff with my logo on it, like to inspire you to want to go talk about my book or my course or my whatever. It's like, oh, that's not a gift. Like, that's a, that's a. It's trinkets.

It's promotional material. Yeah.

Not a gift. It's all about you, not about the recipient. So. So in this case, we'll send two or three knives. Well, I'll look up and find out. I didn't meet his wife. I did meet his daughter, who was sweetheart, she was playing with our girls and like she's getting ready to be a teacher. A kindergarten teacher for the first year this year in Kentucky.

Oh, wow.

So I'll, I'll send a few knives. I'll personalize with his name. I don't know if he's a person of faith, but he's. I just got that feeling that he was like just his like demeanor and spirit bomb. So do a little research or my team will. And focusing on the who is more important than the what. Like once again, in western culture, anything you're going to send somebody, they can go buy for themselves, like if they're an affluent person. So if you don't focus on the person and realize most people are married so I'm going to get his wife's name, family name, something that's important, maybe important quote or whatever else. He works for Fruit of the Womb, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Like, we're going to get this picture. The handwritten note is going to be just as valuable as the item because he go buy his own knives, but because they're engraved a certain way with the family name. Now they go from like, everybody, like even like Roland Frazier, from traffic to conversion digital marketer. You know, we went and spoke for his war room group and you could tell, like, he was like, John, like the knife thing, like, who cares? Like, I like wine. I give everybody wine. You know, I love somebody. I sent him a $500 thousand dollar bottle of wine. That's my thing. Well, afterwards we sent them, like me and Pete Vargas sent him a $5,000 knife stuff. And he opened it on Facebook live with his wife, who's never in.

I saw that.

And he's like, now I get it. Because all, all 32 knives, each side was engraved with a quote of wisdom that he had spoken on a stage somewhere in the last 30 years.

That's so cool.

And all of a sudden, this is. These knives are now an artifact that his kids will someday fight over who gets the knives? Not because the knives, it's because of all the memories that were created with the knives. And then what's engraved into them makes them personal to their family. And that's what creates the essence of something that's worth keeping, something that's worth, like saving in a fire because of the meaning behind it, not the item.

Yeah, so.

So in this case with, with Greg, the guy from, from through the loom, I'll send him a few knives that he's going to use every day with his family for the next 30 years, but because the engraving, the handwritten notes that will go with it, that will honor the fact that, hey, thanks for caring to pour to my girls and they feel special and you know, like every day he was like, hey, teach him about different shells. I had no idea what these shells were. And. And so now all of a sudden, instead of having to fly to Kentucky and rent a car and go airplane and waste time away from my family, I can, I can hit somebody in another city with a little bit of thought and with two $300, you know, two, $300 didn't mean buy your plane ticket, doesn't even pay for your rental car and your dinner and all these other things that everybody else does. Now there's a. There's this tangible reminder of this great experience that we had together in Florida that he's now telling stories in his circle of people that he's running with Walmart and Berkshire Hathaway and all these other places. And so that's where the ripple effect starts to take place. So people will focus on the what, like the knives who care. All of the other little things that we coordinate. And that's where people are like, john, gifting's not that hard. I'm like, yeah, it's not hard if you do it for one person. Anybody could do what we do for their spouse or for their biggest client. If you want to take and do what I'm talking about and you want to multiply that times 10 or times 100 or times 10,000, that's where people start cutting corners. Like, I can't handwrite that many notes.

Right.

Oh, I can't engrave that many engravings. Oh, I can't reshift and reship and reship that many things. Oh, I don't want to gift wrap that. Oh, I don't want, like. And so they start saying, you know what, let's just send out a bunch of swag, a bunch of, you know, Bose headphones or a bunch of whatever. Because it's the personalization at scale.

Yeah.

That. That really drowns people. And so they end up either doing nothing or they do it halfway. And then like, then they come back to me like, giftology doesn't work. I'm like, you didn't follow the recipe, dude. Like, if you don't follow the recipe, that's like baking bread. If you don't put yeast and bread, guess what? You don't get. You don't get. You don't get bread. And if you don't follow the little details of giftology, don't expect your relationships to flourish and for referrals to fall from the sky. Like, that's not how it works. This is a recipe that takes years to develop. This isn't like a one and done, like check the box type thing.

Yeah.

Now I have a question. So if somebody was just starting like a brand new business, they're just kind of like fresh into building something new. And maybe they're a little more concerned about budget. They're like really watching where every penny is going because they're so new they don't know what they're doing yet. You know, what sort of advice would you give those people?

People.

Honestly, the advice is the same now. The zeros are different. And so let's just say you're a small company and last year, you know, you eked out a $40,000 profit. Paying yourself, like, that's all you could. You know, that's what, you know, owners take in, you know, 40 grand, you still made 40 grand. Now, let's say, like we say, it should be a reinvestment of profit back into relationship. So I say 5 to 15% of net profit should be reinvested back into your warm market. Employees, clients, partners, investors, mentors. And so 40 grand, you know, 5 to 15%. Let's hit in the middle to 10% of 40 grand. That means 4 grand that you have to invest. Now, it's a lot because it's out of 40 grand. It's like, dang, now I'm down to 36. But if you do it the right way, you keep those clients in relationships, you grow those clients and relationships. And the secret sauce is where people start becoming your own personal sales force and going out of their way to advocate. And so what I would say is, you're. I have college kids that reach out to John. What should I do? And I'm like, instead of buying beer and stupid stuff and, like, you know, buying drinks at the club, you know, and take a thousand dollars. You know, like, you can scrape together a thousand dollars over the course of a year, right? And take that thousand dollars and don't go buy stupid, you know, like stress balls and, you know, magnets and such. Take that thousand and invest it into your four most important relationships. And that's $250, same cost as if you took somebody out to a nice dinner or whatever else. Like, people say they don't have money to invest, but. But if you look at their P. L, they're investing it somewhere. Might be Facebook ads. It might be, you know, parties. It might be sponsoring things.

Gotta be something. Yeah, there's a leaky bucket somewhere.

There's a leaky bucket somewhere. Or there's money that they're spending that isn't getting the ROI that they want. So when I. When I tell people, like, you know, look at your cost per impression. Look at your return on relationship. You know, everybody measures ROI and all these different things. I'm like, I've seen people get 10,000, 100,000% ROR over time. And so I'd say, take a thousand bucks and go all in on four people. Make sure you go all in on the handwritten notes. You know, you don't have to outsource any of it. You can do it all yourself. You can do the research. Like people like through conversation, social media, and building a relationship with their, their assistant or somebody else, you can get the data to make the gift crazy personal.

Yeah.

And what I would say is, you know, don't go buy somebody that wears a Rolex or Breitling a, you know, $250 watch. You think it's awesome. It's a Seiko and whatever else. You know, it's like, go best in class in a category. Like, I would rather send somebody $100 luggage tag than a $500 watch. Most executives. And the reason is, is $100 luggage tag is probably the nicest luggage tag anybody's ever made out of leather. And like some great crazy leather shop. It's brass, got the family name. It's something that, it's a piece that people put on their Toomey bag or the rim wall or whatever their luggage is. They'll keep that for the next 20 years. Whereas a $500 watch, like, it's, it's going to be gone. It's. It's not going to wow somebody. You know, they may say thank you out of gift guilt, like, feeling of like, oh, I better say, because people want. Right. But nobody's like taking your Seiko watch and be like, oh my gosh, like, I'm gonna pass this down to future generations.

It'll be a re. Gift probably. And probably silent gift.

Yeah.

In their circle.

Yeah. It's gonna go to the Goodwill or the whatever. But if you can go into a category that most people think doesn't matter and that's why the knives work. Most people, like, go buy a nice set at target for 20 bucks and we send somebody one knife that costs 200 that like melts their face off. Even an affluent person, based upon how it's personalized, whatever else. So even somebody that's starting up, find those people that are, you know, those mentors, maybe even a professor. Like, like those people that are running with other people of influence and, and that you need their wisdom and you need their connections or you need their endorsement or whatever else. Like people, I don't care how young you are, how small your business is, like, you still need to build the foundations of your relationship and go out of your way to show gratitude and it's not out spending other people. Like somebody else might spend $2500 on that person. You'll spend 250 or 100. But based upon the thoughtfulness and the strategy behind it, you can actually have 100 times more impact. Than somebody that can outspend you. So it's not a. I bootstrapped this business. I don't have any outside investors. I have one business partner, about half the company 12, 13 years ago. So I understand what it feels like to say I'm going against somebody that is a billion dollar company. I'm never going to outspend them. But I can out. I can out be more thoughtful than they can by taking the time, energy and effort to do it.

That's a ton. 100% it. You don't need to have the money for it. It's out thinking them. It's out. Out gratituding them with action. I know that was something that you said earlier is like personalizing too. Everything. Yeah. And it's like this. It's not a feeling like you were saying, it's this action that like. Yeah. There's a lot of talk about I'm so grateful for this connection or for you or for whatever this opportunity. It's like.

Yeah, it drives me bonkers. Like, oh, I'm so grateful.

Hey, great.

That's awesome. Gratitude's super important. Like, I love the guys. I know the guys that wrote, you know, the five minute journal.

Right.

I passed out. I recommended the five minutes journal like you write every day who you're grateful for. Other half of that equation is gratitude. Like you said, gratitude is an action. It's a take in, whether it's a phone call, whether it's a handwritten note, whether it's a video. You know, gifting, a tangible gift is a way of putting your thoughts. You know, it's like really at the end of the day, like you look throughout history, like even 5,000 years ago, kings would give other kings, like 10,000 head of cattle. Why? Because the gift showed you how much value you placed on the relationship. And, and that transcends to why do we still, in 2020, why do girls still want, like a huge rock? Part of it is they want to be valued. It's. They want to. They want. They want to be able to show the world that. That their significant other values them enough to invest this much into this, you know, stupid little shiny, you know, sparkly little rock. We all want to be valued. We all want to feel like our lives matter. And yet most people in our transact, like everybody says they're in the relationship business, but most people in western culture are transactional. You do this, you know, you give me a referral. Here's your gift. Yeah, that's not relationship, that's tit. For tat that's trans that you just turn that relationship into a transactional relationship and you didn't even realize you thought you were doing something good, but somebody sends you a half million dollar piece of business and you send them a $500 bottle of wine, you just devalued the referral, you just devalued the relationship. And so there's so much that's being communicated subconsciously and, and psychologically by how we show up. I mean, Robert Cialdini has made a career on talking about influence.

Right.

For what, 30, 40 years. You know the guy wrote influence and pre suasion.

Yep.

Talked about the power of how to build reciprocity the right way and the wrong way and how to do it. And like this is like, this isn't like, woo. Stuff. Like this is based in like, it's science. Like science, man. This is how you know whether you believe in a God or not. Like this is like how human beings are wired. This is into our DNA. And yet like, if you go to most even MBA programs, you'll never see a gifting class. You'll never see like a giftology class. But we're starting to speak and teach at some of these universities because people are realizing like there's power in this and you can use it for good or evil, you can use it the wrong way or the right way, but it's definitely based in science and it definitely matters.

Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you, how do you wow your wife now? Because she probably knows all your tricks.

It's like, what's the secret? Hands down, the hardest, most difficult. Like I've been married in September, it'll be 11 years, we have four kids.

Nice.

And I will tell you that my wife, first off, she's like, she's a farm girl, but like she's super classy. She's super like aware of details. And for the first couple years of marriage, I didn't have anything left in the gas tank. I was the worst gift giver for my wife. It's not a great way to be the giftology guy and then show up as this lame, like B level, junior varsity level gifter at home. Yeah, but, but you're right, she knows all my tricks. But the same principles apply. Like I have to think about it year round. I have to do it not because it's an anniversary, birthday or Christmas. That's the worst time to send gifts in business. It's the worst time to send gifts to your wife. Like, those are table stakes. Those don't get you brownie points. And you have to be thoughtful. You have to think about it, you know, months and even years in advance. You have to plan it out. You have to put just as much effort into loving on your wife as you do your fantasy football league or whatever your hobby is. Like, people like, I remember guys coming up to me like, hey, I need help with my 50th anniversary gift. It's like next month. I'm like, dude, you're screwed.

Like, I can't help you with that. You should have been helping me for the last five years. Are you kidding me, dude? I cannot save this gifting experience for you. It needs to be proactive. It needs to be. And so for my wife, I'm thinking about things years in advance and sometimes I hit a home run. And my wife will tell you, sometimes John is just amazing. And there's other times, man, I think I might get in the frickin throw the basketball. And she just crushes me.

She just like lays me out. Like, John, really, like this is like, she's on to me. She doesn't pull any punches.

Well, why would she? She's making you better anyway.

No question. She makes me. Yeah, she's like, she's like the litmus test and the barometer on things. Like if it passes her bar, like it's good.

Yeah.

If it doesn't, then I'm questioning whether or not it's a good idea or not.

Yeah, man, that makes sense. Yeah. You actually had a really good answer. I was like, damn. I was just super curious about that. And something else that popped up is frequency of gifting. Obviously there's the initial touch, there's the thank you type of gift as well. But what would you say about the consistency of gifts or would you say not to for certain situations?

Well, I think that most, a lot of times people will treat this like the shiny object. Like all entrepreneurs do. We all find this new idea and we're like, oh, we're going to do this? And we get all gung ho and for three months we do it. And then we go back to our habits or we switch to the next shiny object. And what's interesting about giftology is you go do this. This isn't like, this isn't a tactical thing. This needs to be like one of the guys who's a client of ours, we just spoke for his masterclass recently. Michael Mogul, one of the largest marketing companies. All he does is law firm and he's given away in like the last three years. Like nine Teslas and a Ferrari to his client. Those are some of the gifts to give. And so I said, Michael, you're a great example of consistency. Most people will give away this crazy gift to all their clients or their employees and then they go back to it's cricket. So they like hit them with this atomic love bomb and then it's nothing. And basically what it looks like is like, hey, I'm all of a sudden I'm radically generous and then I go back to being Ebony's crew. That doesn't, it almost is worse than doing nothing at all. And so consistency. Same with your, you know, your, like your, your wife, you know, everybody wants to see like is this like a one time thing or is this who you really are as a company, as a leader, as a husband, as a father? Like consistency is key to show up repeatedly. Now there is a point where you can take it too far and you know, if you start sending your white flowers every single week on autopilot, all of a sudden it starts to feel like either it, it doesn't feel the same way as if you. What we call planned randomness. So to me, no more than four times a year if it's a warm relationship. So once a quarter they never know what's coming when. And so you can lay out a plan. Sometimes we have some clients that we've lay out a 10 year plan for them of what's going to go out. And this is proactive. Yeah, that's 80% of their budget. The other 20% of their budget is teaching their team, their sales team, their marketing team to listen for what I call the crazy one off. That's when you find out like somebody has double knee surgery and they're stuck in bed, you want to send a package, you find out somebody's kid gets into Harvard. Those are one off situations that can't be planned for, that you need to budget for. And you need to be able to do something crazy and over the top and really wow them during those times. But that's like those cycles like that you might hit one person one year and not hit them with a crazy one off for another few years. And so having a 80% of your proactive budget, you know, set up to where it, you know what's going out, when and how. And that's how like we do with the niceness all the time. Yeah, we'll take a five thousand dollar nice step. Most people want to drop five grand on one gift, but they'll say we'll break it into 250 or 500 chunks. And we'll build that set over the course of months or years.

Oh, that's cool.

And, and we drip on them and we do the same thing more frequently. If they're a prospect. Now, like, like Jeffrey Gittermer, I want to get his attention. He's a big sales author. Maybe you read the Little Red Book of Sales. Like he sold more sales books than anybody in the last 50 years. He's like in the 70s. The dude's like this crotchety, aggressive. Like he's like a buddy of mine, but he's like from Jersey.

That's cool.

And so when I first met him, like 14 years ago, I sent him an empty knife block and I sent him a gift a month for 18 straight months. I built him four or $5,000 knife set over 18 months, repeatedly. Just carve out time, cutting edge sales. Like anything I could build into this. And, and, and so the frequency when you're going after whale prospects needs to be dialed up to hit them repeatedly. Whereas on the war market, you can spend way less money and still be effective and lay out that planned randomness. And so you still avoid the anniversary's, birthdays, Christmas. You're just picking times. You're sending the gift to them not because the deal is closed, not because it's renewal time. You're sending it to them just because. And so that's the frequency. That's where people get it wrong. They either do too little or they do a whole bunch. And then they go, they, they, you know, the wells dry. And so having that frequency dialed in year over year is where people are like, john, like, you're still sending me stuff. And I haven't sent you any referrals or any deals. Like, why are you still sending me things? I'm like, because I appreciate the relationship. Yeah, dude, you're crazy. Yeah, but subconsciously they're thinking, I got it. You know, if they're a giver, guess what they want to do. They're top of mind. They want to go advocate for you. Not because you put pressure on them or manipulated. Just because of how you're showing up consistently now. It doesn't mean you can have a sucky service or business and give great gifts. And all of a sudden, like, everything's great. Like, you have to have a great business, core business. The gifts are just that little, like cherry on top of the sundae. That's like, people love it and they'll rave about it, but you still have to have the rest of the Sunday in order for the business to work. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, no, it does. And I'm just thinking of, like, the gifts that people have sent me over the years, and one of them actually was Katie Kremitzos, Chris's wife. It was after I helped her out with some podcast stuff. She sent me a freaking custom canvas of my wife and my baby. Like one of the first pictures we ever took. And she just sent it to us and it just came back to me. I was like, yeah, because every time I look at that, I think of them, I think of her. I'm like, oh, that's cool. It works, man.

Hit the heartstrings, man. Totally telling you, women are. Their emotional intelligence is a thousand percent higher than guys are like, you know, what's the line item? What's the budget? Check the box, get my logo as big as possible. Like, they do everything. Everything is anti giftology. Everything that we teach is. Goes against the testosterone driven dude that's like, oh, kill them harder.

Like, you know, like automated. Like, you know, efficiency. It's like, dude, relationships aren't efficient sometimes. Like, sometimes, like going the extra mile for people in the short term looks like a stupid, like, waste of time and energy and resources. Like, women are like, you know, it's like when they. When I talked about before, like, you know, they take the time. Not every woman I'm generalizing, but in general, women's intuition, their. The emotional intelligence of like, the handwritten note, the penmanship, the packaging, the little things. Like, my wife will get something and be like, did you notice the way the box folded together? And I'm like, no, you know, she did and that caused her attention. And that becomes. Oftentimes those little things become like when you go to a restaurant and everything's amazing, but go to the bathroom and the bathroom is a mess. Like, that one little detail can completely change your perception of that entire establishment. Or an amazing company product. And you call the customer service rep, and the customer service rep is a douchebag. It completely. That one little interaction can change how you feel about a brand, a company, you know, and a service, a product, whatever else. And so like those little things like that are so like, you know, Katie obviously got it, like to be able to hit the heartstrings of you and you know, like your first, you know, your first born. And yeah, I mean, and it's right.

Above her changing table. So I see it daily. So it's like I put it front and center. I know that's part of the whole thing.

She's a giftologist, man.

I know she is.

She's a giftologist. That's awesome.

It's so cool.

So when it. When it comes to, like, like, getting people's contact details to actually send them the gift, are you sort of, like, building relationships first, you know, getting to a point where you can ask for the address, or are you kind of going out and sort of prospecting for addresses so you can send gifts to some of the people you want to get in front of?

Yeah.

So if it's on the prospecting side. Yeah. I mean, you're kind of behind the scenes. You're talking to other mutual relationships. One of the reasons that, like, we. We send the same level of gift to the assistant as we do the CEO is we want to build a relationship with the assistant who might be able to get us an address. You know, it's not a manipulation, but it is, like, there are benefits to building relationships with people around them, not just the core executives. But what I'll say is, if it's a warm relationship, you should have that address, whether it's home or business address. And if you don't, you can reach out to somebody and say, hey, you know, I. I, you know, I want to send you a book or I want to send you. And you set the expectations, like, super low. So you don't say, hey, I want to say, like, the amount of people that reach out to their clients and say, hey, what's your address? Or what's your home address? Now all of a sudden, their expectation of, like, oh, he's going to send me something, or, she's going to send me something, and they're thinking it's gonna be swag, or they're thinking, gosh, I hope it's an Apple watch, or I hope it's a whatever. And so their expectations are, like, up here. And then you, like, you, like, send them, like, a, you know, a jump drive with your logo on it. And, like, it's, like, such a disappointment. Whereas if, like, even a sucky gift shows up out of the blue that they're not expecting will exceed expectations. Whereas if you let somebody know, hey, I'm gonna send you something, now, all of a sudden, you ruin literally half of the impact of the gift, which is the prize element. People are like, oh, I'll just let them pick out their own gift. I'm like, are you serious? Do you think, like, you do give your wife a catalog and say, hey, here's the American Express catalog. Go pick up your anniversary gift? No, like, that's the most unthoughtful, unromantic thing on the planet. But people do that in business and they call that. Well, like, they can choose their own gift. I'm like, nice. That's not. That might be an incentive, that might be a reward, but that's not a gift. A gift is knowing the person or being thoughtful enough to be able to send something out to them as a surprise, as a. Just because. So that it makes that deep emotional connection. Otherwise you're just doing the, you know, the AMEX rewards thing. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that does create a little bit of basic loyalty, but it doesn't get what I call active loyalty, where somebody's like, holy crap, I will run through. Through walls for this guy, for this gal. Like, that happens because you connected to them at that emotional heart level, which is, you know, the painting of you and your kid that sits over your changing table. Like, that's going to get you active loop. That is going to get you engaged at a level where you're like, you know what? Katie could ask me to fly to Tampa tomorrow to help with X, Y and Z. And you're like, I'm probably going to jump on the plane and do it.

I'm going to heavily consider it. Yeah.

Because of the depth of the relationship.

Right?

Yeah. And for example, Katie Kremitzos emailed me to get Joe's address. So she didn't go to Joe to get the address.

See, she's a freaking.

That's an extra step. It's a hassle. And people are like, oh, I'll just shoot him a text. And I'm like, you're an idiot. You're ruining it. You're ruining it. Yeah, like, email back and say, hey, by the way, I'm sending you a book. Take the expectations way low and then blast them with something amazing. Don't like, let them, like, wonder. They send me Harry and David basket or they send me my favorite bottle of wine. You know, like even, like, even sucking. Consumable gifts are way better as a surprise than as an expectation or obligation, which is when, you know, most people are like, hey, who's close the deal? Or, hey, here's your birthday. Or, hey, it's our anniversary. Here's your gift. It's like, guys like slain.

So if you are going to ask for the address, do it in a way that sexy expectations super low. So that you. Yeah, yeah. So like, hey, can I get your address? I want to send you a copy of our latest book. Right. They're expecting a book and then they get a painting in the mail.

Yeah, they're like, that's cool.

But yeah, yeah, you can still send the book. Yeah. Like, but. But when. When you set the expectations are everything, right? I mean, if you go to, you know, it's like, if you go to, it's like going to the risk and you get Motel 6 level service. You get a Motel 6 and you get risk level. Like, if you flip the expectations, all of a sudden, the same experience. It's like if you, you know, if you go to Kia and you get like Mercedes level service, you're like, holy crap. But if you go to Mercedes and just get Mercedes level service, you're like, I take that for granted because that's what I'm expecting.

That's right.

That's why that's the bar. And so the more you can set the bar. And that's why I tell people, like, why does gifting work so well? You know, doing it this way? And I'm like, well, because people think they're a 7 out of 10 on gifting, and really they're negative. 3. The expectations are stupid low.

Yeah.

So when you get really good at it and you're just like a 4 out of 10 versus, you know, Facebook ads and speaking and conferences and all these other things, like, there's so much competition and so much noise. It's like the red ocean, blue ocean concept. Like, I want to play in the blue ocean where everybody else, like, there's no, there is no competition versus going and competing. And you might be world class, but if you're 10 other people that are world class at that same level and there's nothing different about what you're doing, then you're fighting over scraps with other people that are probably have a bigger budget, bigger resources than what you have. And so that's why, like, I love the David and Goliath. I love helping, you know, the little guy. Like, we have big clients, but even like our big clients might be, you know, whether they're half a million or some of them are like $500 million companies, which are like, oh my gosh, that's the Goliath. I'm like, no, but they're going up against a $25 billion company, right? So the $500 million company is actually small in comparison to. To their competitors. And so they're looking to say, hey, how can I spend this amount of money? Which to them is a lot. These guys is little to be different, be unique, to invest in these relationships differently. So everybody's perspective is different. But at the end of the day, it's still the same thing as expectations being met or exceeded drastically impact how somebody receives something.

And we're all just humans. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what kind of size company you're living in or where you live or who you are. Yeah, it's just fricking go for it. And the smaller company, I feel like is a little bit more ninja and can apply these things and talk about really quick because I kind of cut you off earlier when I mentioned systemology. What was it? Sorry, not Systemology. Giftology. Systemology is a book that I'm reading.

Buy that domain.

It's a cool book, though. Yeah. Giftology system.com I was combining both. Talk about that spreadsheet really quick. And then obviously the book too. So I think it's a killer resource.

Yeah, I mean, giftology system, it was our resource. It's literally what we charge thousands of dollars when clients hire us to put together. Like everybody has for most businesses, even small business, like, have a financial plan, an operations plan, a marketing plan. I would ask people, what's your relationship plan? And they, I don't care what size company is, whether they have one employee or a thousand. They're like, what do you mean relationship plan? Like, you know, like, if your business rises and falls on relationships, what's your plan to appreciate and show value through your most important relationship? Like, we don't have a plan for that. We just kind of like we have a customer experience. I'm like, no, like, what's your relationship plan? How are you going to love on these people? And so the, like, that plan is what if you go download it for free? Are like, what we took 20 years to kind of figure out is the recipe. Who are you investing in? What's the most important time? Like, how much should you be in investing, reinvesting back into these relationships? How frequently should you. You send the gift? You know, what types of items would be ideal to send out? And. And what's the plan going to be for 12 months or 24 months or 36 months? So our entire recipe, literally, like what it took, you know, two decades to figure out is there for somebody to go steal and go do? People are like, why do you offer that for free? And I'm like, well, if you want to do it for one or two people, no problem. If somebody wants to go do it and think that they're going to do it on their own for you know, 20 or 200 or 2,000 people. People oftentimes when people do that, they realize, holy crap, that's a lot of handwritten notes. That's a lot of reshipping and repackaging and gift wrapping and all of these other things. And so oftentimes they'll come hire our agency, even if they're a small company, because we don't really charge that much more to execute the whole program for them. And so Giftology system is our playbook. It's our playbook of how to build a relationship plan and how to do it, whether you're a small company or a Fortune 100 company. And it's all there for the, for the taken. The book itself goes into a little bit more of the philosophy behind it, the gifts and case studies and stories. And so the book, you know, once again, there's not a Giftology, you know, two coming out anytime soon. We wrote the book literally in 2016 and it's more popular today than it was then because it just keeps gaining momentum because every, like we basically said when we came out with the book, we're going to eat our own dog food. We're going to treat this like a five year launch. And so like we're four years into a five year launch plan.

Nice.

Before we write the next book or you know, do the next thing. Like I'm not a big, I know a lot of authors make most of their money off of speaking. We make most of our money off of the actual agency side. And so I don't need to write a book every year. Like I'll write a book every five years at most.

Right.

But, but the Giftology system is our, is our playbook. And then the tangible form with a little bit more detail is Giftology Book, which you can get, you know, Amazon or really any of the place that sells books.

Super cool.

Now I'm curious a little bit about your actual agency business model. Like we don't have to stick here for too long, but I'm curious, like, how do you as an agency manage to do this at scale for people? Like how do you know what kind of the ideal gifts are and how do you do so many handwritten notes? I'm kind of curious how that piece of the operation works.

Yeah, so I mean, it's really simple. I mean we have our top 10 vendors that we work with. Like I can take that thousand dollar mug that I was talking about before that tells somebody's whole lifestyle story. I could send that to 10,000 people and 9,000, you know, 9,999 of them are going to be like crying when they get it. Why? Because it's personal to them. It's their faith, their family, their, who believed in them first, who mentored them first. You know, what's their, what's the relationship with their kids like, what's their, you know, what's their biggest failure, the biggest success? What are they, what's their legacy? So the clay itself is worth like $10.14. The other $990 in value is the artist takes four weeks to create this beautiful work of art and then describes talking about why it's so important and why their life matters, whatever else. And so the item we know kind of plug and play. Like most people drink coffee or tea, but they're going to use a mug. Most people have a three dollar mug that they drink their coffee or tea out of that's from China, you know, that has some logo or some silly saying on it. And we give them one that like, it's like winning the Oscars.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, it's like this legacy play that's like nobody can touch it. The knives, once again, we can plug and play those. Whether it's one knife or a full set. I mean cut codes, full kitchen. Yeah, like 12 grand. I can build out a program for years with that. So, so the what is very easy. It's the identifying, walking people through. You know what we, we basically charge a couple grand to put together the plan and then they can go do the plan on their own. So literally, like for a couple grand, a solopreneur or a Fortune 500 company has access to a simple plan of what we're going to do over the next 12 months of, you know, who are we in target? What's the investment going to be? What's the theme of the notes going to be? All that kind of stuff. And then most 99% of the time they come back and say we want you to execute it. So we charge an execution fee, kind of a management fee, you know, that's upwards, anywhere from a couple grand up to ten grand to manage the process and then we charge the gifts. So if you want to go buy a sooner dollar knife, like we're in charge of 200 plus the management fee.

Gotcha.

And so, so it allows for people to, once they get us the data, like we have teams of people on site at Cutco and our different vendors that hand write all the notes for us that they, they have dedicated, we have dedicated Staff there that allows for us to not have to ship to multiple fulfillment centers, whatever else. And it. So it creates efficiency and scale. And so Cutco loves it because we're shipping millions of dollars of product.

Yeah.

And they have engraving capability on site. They have all these different things. And so the agency side, really, we're getting paid to manage the chaos and the logistics and the strategy up front of. Well, I. I'm not. You know, my handwriting sucks, or I don't want to write that many notes, or I don't know what to say in the note. Like, how do I tie this in so it doesn't feel cheesy? Or like all of those questions we walk through and handle all of. All those little, like, hurdles and then map it out. And then, like, the people who are receiving the gifts, like, man, Joe, Matt, fricking possible. Like, how do they find the time to send these gifts, these notes and his engravings and all this other stuff? And so we're like, the wizard of Oz behind the scenes. It's not branded as giftology. It's branded as one human sending another human a gift.

Right.

And we're just kind of behind the curtain making all that happen, which to me is like, it's huge, because if it feels like it came from a gifting company, then it feels like you outsourced it. It ruins part of the impact. So that's. The agency people are like, why doesn't everybody know about giftology? I'm like, well, they know about the book. They know about the service. They really don't know who our clients are unless the client goes out of their way to say, hey, you know, like, Chris will sometimes connect with somebody or whatever else. Or, you know, because people are like, hey, here. This is my secret weapon to do this. But the goal for us is to stay in the backdrop and handle things behind the scenes.

Totally.

That's an awesome model, man. And, yeah, it's better to be the wizard of Oz in the background anyway.

It really is. Yeah, it really is.

Well, cool, man. Let's wrap this up. I know you got to get back to your family, man, but wrap it up one more time with us. So we have giftology, system.com, get the book, Giftology, Amazon, and everywhere else. What's another book or something you just find yourself going to pretty often that you recommend, maybe people on your team or even clients.

I mean, I'm an avid reader. I think the people that you hang out with and the books that you read, was that Charlie Tremendous Jones, show me the books you read and the people hanging out with, that's who you're going to become. I mean, give and take was a huge one for me. Adam Grant's book talked about givers, takers, matches. I think that book was fantastic. Joey Coleman's book, Never Lose a Customer is massive. He's a huge. He's a client, he's navigating. He's one of the top 10 speakers I've ever seen speak. But his methodology of how to engage people in the first hundred days of onboarding a client, he works with like Zappos and like huge companies. And he's a lawyer, so he has like this analytical mind of like super detailed. And then he's like one of the most creative human beings on the planet. So he's very creative, very animated. His book is fantastic. You know, right now, you know, rereading.

Story brand, which Donald Miller's book is, you know, like, it's just his mindset of marketing made simple and how to think through, like, you know, you don't make yourself the hero. It's like what makes the client the hero. Like, you're just the guide. Simple concept. But most brands, I think, totally miss it.

That's what I just picked up again. Yeah. To reread because someone in my mastermind, he was like, this has got to be like the best marketing book that's just like kind of underground. It's super simple. But yeah, building a story brand. I mean, it's legit. And then there's a whole plan behind there. Kind of like you have the giftology plan that you could just kind of swipe in for free and use.

Yeah, no, he's. Yeah, Donald's brilliant. I mean, talk about a guy from marketing and. And writer. He's got a heck. And he's got like 30 employees and podcasts, certified people and podcasts. I mean, he's just, he's just, he's just crushing it. And just a great kind human being too. So I love, you know, advocating for people that are world class but also are nice people, you know, people that you actually want to go have dinner with or have your families meet, you know, versus some of these guys that are, you know, they might be successful in one area of their business, but I wouldn't necessarily want to invite them on family vacation. Totally.

Yeah. Well, awesome, brother. Well, get out of here. Go back to your family. Thank you so much. Time for your time. I think this was. It was just crazy, right off a plane jumping onto a podcast. So much.

Appreciate it, brother. Thank you. Thank you guys for, for having me and, and look forward to sharing this with my tribe as well.

Sounds good. Thanks, man.

Thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you dug it. I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do live webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's Easy Webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform. And we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody can register and then it, you know, they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it yet, you know, it's, it's, it's an amazing tool. And Casey is actually hooking you up. He said for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, he's giving 25% off of the membership. To use Easy Webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has. But he's hooking you up with 25% off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle. That's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easywebinar.com hustole. It's a awesome tool. You're going to dig it. So just go grab it. Check it out. Easywebinar.com hustle See? No, not see. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know. I don't know how to close these. Go get Easy Webinar. Talk to you later. Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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