The Art of Authority Podcast with Mike Saunders - Ep 18 -Interview with John Ruhlin Author of Giftology

Welcome to the Art of Authority podcast, bringing you interviews and episodes to help you radically optimize your authority and influence to become the go to expert in your field. Here's your host, authority positioning coach, Mike Saunders.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Authority and Influence Virtual Summit. And today we have with us John Rulin, who is the author of the book Gift Giftology. Welcome to the summit, John.

Hey, thanks for having me, Mike. This is going to be fun. It is.

And, you know, I read your book, and I think I reread. What I do is I read books on Kindle and highlight the sections that I like, and then I take those highlights and put them in my Evernote so that when I want to reread a book, I just go right to the, you know, highlighted without flipping through the Kindle. But I know I've read through your book one and a half times that way, and I just love what you talk about because it is so relevant for today in this age of bots and texts and instant message and clutter and noise and how do we break through that? So give us a little background of yourself, your agency, and what led you to write the book, and then let's dive in and talk about how we can use the book to help us separate ourselves from our competition.

Yeah. Well, I think the book got written after 18 years of doing it. When we've owned an agency since I was in college, and initially, I kind of fell into gifting. I mean, it wasn't like I grew up with my dad doing it or I grew up on a farm milking goat. So I always tell people, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

So.

But I basically want to go to school to be a doctor. I went interned with Cutco, the knife company. So if you know how Elrod Vroman, there's a lot of guys that have kind of come through those doors, and I wanted to separate myself and be different. And fortunately, I was dating a girl at the time. Her dad was an attorney, and he was a rainmaker. I mean, he was the most respected guy in town. Every deal came his way, and he's also the most generous. So I remember pitching him the idea of giving away knives to all of his clients because they're all men. I thought he'd give away pocket knives. And he changed my world forever when he was like, john, I want to start giving away paring knives. I'm like, give away kitchen tool to a bunch of CEOs. Like, that's weird. He said, John, in 40 years of business, the reason I have more deals and I have all this influence is that I found if you take care of the family, everything else takes care of itself.

Wow.

And so it's kind of like what we were talking about before we went live. Like, the family is such a core part of humanity. Like, I don't care if you're a billionaire. I don't care if you live in Idaho or if you live in, you know, Africa. Like, the family unit is so important. So we started to apply these principles to. And I started to send $2 knife sets as a college kid and I started to get referred into nascar was our first pro sports client. And they needed help taking care of all their CMOs of like Pepsi. Like, what are you going to give the CMO of Pepsi that they don't really have? So we really, over time kind of perfected this system and people hire us to do all their gifting for them. But really a lot of people are like, john, we can't afford your services or whatever else. Could you just give us your playbook? And so I'm like, I'm a farm boy, I don't have a playbook. I'm just kind of doing it. But a couple years ago, enough clients, enough people reached out and said, hey, put all of your system into a book. And then. So really there's no Giftology 2 coming out anytime soon. It was all put into that book about two years ago.

Yep. And then you're, and then you're off doing what you do, you know, and that's the best, the best way to show how it works is just to do it. And guess what? When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So if someone reads the book and they don't implement and take action on it, okay, that's on them. They weren't ready at that moment. But when somebody's like, okay, I finally got to do this, let me get that book, read that book, pick up a few tips and techniques. Because it really is just so. It is tactics, of course, but it really is a mentality. Right. And you have to strive to not think it's a one for one reciprocity, you know, formula. Right? Yeah.

Tit for tat.

No talk about that. Because I think a lot of people might feel like X number of dollars, whatever it is, whatever the gift is, whatever the amount is, it's a dollar figure, right. Whether it's $200 or 20, man, I'm going to send this. And of course I want something return. But you don't want to have that feeling of, it's been 10 seconds. Where's my referral? Right?

Yeah. Well, I think what's interesting is people either go really cheap because they're like, I better. You know, I don't want to spend too much. I don't want to feel like a bribe. I don't want to feel slimy, or. Or they're like, I'll spend any amount of money. I want to manipulate the crap out of this guy. And they are like they're trying to take advantage of people. And you can do either one. What we found is similar to really what we teach is a Gary Vaynerchuk style. I mean, I hosted Gary in St. Louis, and I'm like, dude, what we teach around gifting is the same thing you teach around giving value. You give value, give value 100 times over, and then maybe you ask for something in return. And what's interesting, last year I sent out personally just to my relationships, clients, prospects, about $350,000 in gifts. And I know where all that went. But a lot of times people reach out to me like, John, you've sent me like four gifts. I was reaching out to Adam Borenstein. He's like, dude, you sent me this Cubs bag. And I'm like, I don't even remember what I sent you. Yeah, it's like, what else did I send you? Because I'm not. I'm tracking it on paper, but I'm not tracking it from like a strings attached. And that's where people ruin the giftology, is they give a gift and then they immediately ask for a referral or they only give gifts after referral. So basically, everybody says they don't want to be in a transactional business, but that's exactly what you do when you give something and then expect something back, it ruins it. And so we're all about pouring it on. And yes, we know that over time. Like, I've been doing this for 18 years. Like, if you plant enough good seeds, it comes back to you a hundred fold. But you have to wait for the time for things to grow and for things to shake out.

And you meant there's two things that I want to touch on the amount that you just mentioned, the rewarding of a referral. So I want to make sure that we are touching on a couple of these things. But the amount, you can take off a couple three zeros on that. Because guess what? You didn't start off day one giving that amount of gifts.

Right?

So you started off at, you know, one year. I gave you know, $350 worth of gifts, then the next year, 3500, then. So you have to start somewhere and you don't need to feel like you're jumping in. And do you get as specific as saying, okay, X percent of our company's revenue, so let's start with whatever that percent is and then just let that, you know, gifting mentality grow along with the business revenues.

Yeah, it's a reinvestment. So whether it's a client prospect, referral source, supplier, like we take care of our suppliers better than most people take care of their best clients. And guess what? Our suppliers send us more deal flow than most people's referral sources because they, we just love on them. So our minimum is 5% of profits. I don't care what, there's a lot of companies out there like, oh, I'm a, I did $100 million in real estate sales. Okay, what did you actually profit?

Yeah.

So 5% of profit up to 15%. And I view it as a reinvestment. Yep. So if you made 100 grand last year, you should be willing to reinvest 5 grand to 15 grand back into your most important relationship. So it's a, it's really, it's a math equation. If you take, you know, 5 to 15%, plug it back into your most important people and love on them. And for me, I would rather send $300 gifts, so three $100 gifts than to take that $300 and say, I'm going to, I'm going to hit 300 people with a dollar gift. Which is what most people do. They divide their list or their clients by whatever random budget they threw at the wall that day. And they're like, I guess we got $2.73 to spend. And what I found is it's better to have one raving fan. Tim Ferriss talks about having. You didn't need to build a tribe of a thousand people, but start with 1, start with 10. Get those people bought into you so much so that they'll run through walls for you. And so, but we do really base it on a real metric, a real equation. And when you do that, it's systematic. It's like when you have an automatic withdrawal out of your account. You don't even think about it because we built it into all of our processes, all of our systems. And it doesn't hurt when you've planned for it. It hurts when you're doing things very reactively, which is how most people gift.

You know, and one aspect Too that I want to touch on there is the timing. So I've. I talked to a client once that said, oh yeah, we give a referral thank you gift when business closes. And I said, good job, but you're missing something. When referrals close, you got money and you think, okay, now I'm going to reinvest back in and thank that person. But that person thought of you the first time, made an introduction. You know, John, meet Tom. You know, I think you guys have a great conversation. Well, you know what? Business didn't transact with that introduction. But you need to reward that action so that more and more introductions happen so that then you're in, you know, line to get maybe a deal that closes. So I think that person that I was mentioning missed the boat. They had it backwards. And every single time there is a someone thinks of you to make an introduction or a referral, thank them in that moment, no matter whether business transacts or not. And then when, even when business transacts, then send a little heightened, you know, gifts. So maybe it's a thank you note with a Starbucks card. And then the next time it's, you know, business actually closed. So it's a thank you note with whatever feel on the blank.

Yeah, yeah. Our timing is huge. So I would say there's three different levels. I'd say that you're talking about, like, you know, doing things, saying thank you. I think you always write a handwritten note when somebody sends you a referral or not a potential referral. Like, that's a huge thing. A lot of the gifting that we do, when I talk about that 350 grand, 80% of it is spread out throughout the year. And I send it to people as a. Just because. Yeah, when you get a gift as a. Just because they're like, I didn't send you a deal, I didn't send you a referral. Like, you're just thinking of me. Now. I may take the same knife or leather bag or whatever, and I'll send out a thousand of them across the country. Every person that receives it, because it was just like, we just sent a batch in March. They're like, john, I get all these pings like, john, I didn't do anything. Why did I get this? It's not my birthday, it's not an anniversary. And they, it freaks them out. Now you take somebody that, they get all kinds of stuff if they're an affiliate or they're an influencer, and you only send it when somebody send you a deal.

Now you're lost in that noise.

Now you're lost in the noise. Or it's. It's like, hey, I sent them a million dollar referral and they send me $100 Starbucks gift card. Like, something doesn't feel very good here. And they do the math in their head. Whether they realize it consciously or not, they're thinking, wow, that was kind of. I mean, they said thank you, but they also kind of like, I had people where they've comped a speaking engagement and they sent a thank you note and then they put a. It was a $20,000 speaker. That was his normal keynote fee, comped it for them. He sent a handwritten thank you note and put a $20Amazon card inside. And the speaker was like, pissed. He's like, seriously, dude, like, the thank you note was good, but you cheapened the value of what I gave you by giving me this, like, $20Amazon gift card. Like, how lame is that? Now he'll never tell that person that. So they never get the honest feedback. But they'll tell me and they'll think it. And in their head they're thinking, What a cheap sob. Like, I just comped you 20 grand. Like, just say thank you. They keep it classy.

Yep. You know, and that's an excellent point. I think the, what do you call it, Planned randomness in the book.

Yeah.

Because random means we don't have a set thing. Like, you gave a deal, I gave you a thank you, or it's a holiday, here comes a gift. But you have a plan for that. So maybe internally in your organization, you go, you know what? Every quarter I need to assess, you know, contacts that have done this, strategic alliances that have done this, whatever that little metric is. And so it's planned. So you're going to think about it, but it's going to be random to them. They're going to feel the randomness because it wasn't as a trigger for something. So talk a little bit about how someone can set up or start at least thinking toward making a plan that way.

Yeah, we call it a relationship action plan, which is just a fancy way of saying we have a. We have.

Really.

It's an Excel spreadsheet with different, you know, targets and things about the person and spouse's name and address, all that kind of stuff. And once a quarter, we send out, typically at least to 250of those relationships. And we. It's based on a metric. It's based on. We've. We've built it out and say each of Those is going to be at least, you know, $30,000 worth of gifts going out to these people. And a lot of times it's the same gift going out to them. But you're right. Like, we plan for it, but everybody, most, most surprises in life are not good surprises. Like, most surprises are like, oh, crap, I got in a car accident. I spilled coffee all over myself. You know, my kid didn't get into the college I wanted. Like, those are bad surprises. When you can send something to somebody and they're like, oh, my gosh, this person was just thinking of me. You know, that's what. That's why the randomness is important. Most people, they follow the same playbook. We have an event, we have to have a swag bag. We're going to a conference, we got to do a dinner. We're having the same golf event every year at the same time. Like, everybody follows the same playbook. And it's all, like, it almost becomes obligation. Like, you see it a lot with. With companies with their employees. Like, they have to give a bonus every year because they've been doing it for 20 years, and the employee just kind of like, rounds it into their salary. It doesn't do anything good for you. It only does bad for you if you cut it out. So keeping things random is a great way to keep it from being an obligation and for the other person to actually appreciate what you're sending to them.

And like you said about the Excel file, it kind of reminds me of the old Harvey McKay 66 that he talks about in his books. You know, you don't want it to feel like, you know, every time you talk to someone, hey, what's your favorite? And what's your, you know, you don't want to do that. But as you have developed that, maybe that's some social media research and you found, you know, some of the key things about you are putting thought into it. And it is something where, you know, kind of gets exciting because, you know, it sounds cliche to say, you know, the giver of the gift gets more than the receiver, but you really do enjoy thinking about sending that gift and what the reaction will be and when they ping you up and say, oh, my word, that's so awesome, and you could just reply back and go, that's how I roll. Awesome. Let's grab a coffee the next time you're down, or whatever the case is. So that's really, really huge. You know, here's something to think about as well. I know you touched on this in the Book, we haven't touched on it here, but the impact that it has to have someone receive some custom swag that they get and open up and they, the thought might cross their mind, man, they just went to a trade show and they just sent me one of these chargers with their logo on it. Huh? No big deal. But you teach to put that client's name on that gift so that it totally flips it on them. And they're, they're not seeing me as the giver of the gift with my logo, they're seeing them with their name, their last name, their company, whatever that is. And it totally then cements in the true, you know, goal of giving that gift. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of times people, they confuse a marketing tool and a gift. They try to make both of them go together. And I tell people time, it's like going to a wedding. And can you imagine like engraving your own name on the couple's gift, like, compliments of John Rulin. Given that Tiffany's vase or whatever, it could be the cheesiest thing in the world. And in business we do that, we call it marketing. So if you really want it to be a gift, you know, and you're giving it to them, it's a gift by its very nature is recipient focused, make it all about them. So out of the 350 grand in gifts that I gave last year, not one, not one had ruling group or giftology on it. It always had their name, their spouse's name, their family name, their logo. And it freaks them out. They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, where's your logo at? I'm like, it's a gift. It's all about you. And what's interesting is if you give a world class gift, if you give like koozies and golf balls and throw your logo on it because that's a promotional item. But if you give a world class item every time subconsciously, like I've had people like John, every time I use that frickin knife, I have to think of you whether I want to or not. My wife talks about you and she's never met you before. So if you make the gift about the giver in subconsciously and even like consciously, they'll want to put the spotlight back on you. They never, like, I tell people all the time, if I gave you a Rolex, would I have to put my logo on it to remind you where it came from? Like, no, you would. You would look at the watch and every time you thought it would be like that frickin ruling guy.

Like what can I do to help that dude?

Yeah, what can I do to help him? And that's the goal is to love on them in a way, not turn them into a billboard, which is what promotional crap does. And the other person, a lot of that ends up either left in the hotel room, it gets re gifted or it gets given to Goodwill. Like it never makes it. Nobody wants to wear a frickin polo shirt with a logo the size of a softball on it. Like that's cheesy as I'll get out. So yeah, that one detail alone of personalizing the gift to the person and not to you make all the difference in the world. And you could send the same gift to somebody and have them want to throw it away or want to use it, want to refer you or want to be like they're cheesy just like everybody else. Like that one detail can change it completely.

Yeah, you know, I. And it's like you spend all this mental effort to think about it, then the money to actually get it to them, buy it and all that and then it just, you know, fizzles right out because. And maybe they don't even think that oh this is cheesy because it has their. Maybe it just, it just feels, you know, like ugh. But like you said, when you do it the right way, for the right reason, it just makes all that impact. And so let's even go back. One of the things you talk about in the book is the study, I think it was from Cornell about the tipping with the waiters and waitresses. Again, we don't want to hear this and think when I give a gift I get this. But I want to make sure that people realize it has tangible, actual, real world research behind this. So talk just real briefly about that study and what those waiters and waitresses found.

Yeah, yeah, It's a study from Robert Chaudheen's book Influence, which he's researched all the stuff to the nth degree. But he basically, they showed that when they gave a chocolate with the tip, with the bill, you know, the chocolate cost 2 cents. The percent of increase in the tip compared to somebody that didn't receive a piece of chocolate went up. It was like 30%, like 30% increase in tippage just from it's something simple like a piece of chocolate. And so because it was a surprise, now it's gotten to be to the point now where everybody does a mint or a piece of chocolate, but it's that surprise and delight My wife, she'll brag to the nth degree of. Of the restaurant that we go to because they found out she loved a certain kind of chocolate and gave her a free dessert. And that dessert cost probably a dollar. We spent $300 on steak and wine and whatever else. And all she wants to talk about is this little free dessert because it made her feel special. And so at the end of the day, we all make decisions based upon how we feel in business relationships. I like this guy. I trust this guy. I want to do business. I want that person to succeed. And so if you can get somebody to be emotionally bought in, like, I've seen anywhere from a 2x return to a 2000x return on gifting. So when people are like, John, do you just give gifts and you hope? I'm like, no. Like, the reason the Cubs hire us and the reason solopreneurs hire us, you know, and everywhere in between is everybody's in the relationship building business. And if you want to break through the other 30,000 messages that are coming into that person every single day and get people to act on your behalf, like, I have, like, people like, Sean, your sales team must be huge. I'm like, no, I'm. It's. I have a bunch of account managers, a bunch of giftologists that help our clients, but because we pour into so many people, I have people in the major League baseball, NHL, NBA, in, you know, mastermind groups, all advocating for me based upon how much I've invested in them. And so the roi, like, to me, it's like, oh, my gosh. Like, if people really knew, like, if people understood, like, the payback at some level. I'm excited that most people think gifting is this warm, fuzzy, like, nothing. Because if everybody did this really well, it wouldn't work. Yeah. And so there is, yeah, the ROI is just insane.

But it's just like many things, if people would return phone calls on time, that they would think that much better. But we can rest in the fact that our competition doesn't do that kind of thing, you know, frequently, and they don't clarify their message frequently. And so then the same thing with gifting is, you know, most, you know, it happens. It's. This is not some secret, but the vast majority of our competition, they're not doing it. So when we do it and do it the right way, then it can help us stand out. Yeah, I think that's just such a huge thing to keep in mind is at the end of the day, we do need someone, our target audience to think of us in a positive way differently than our competition. And when you were talking about that, it reminded me of that Maya Angelou quote, which I'll probably butcher, but something to the effect of people will forget what you say to them, but they'll never forget how you make them feel. And I think that that's the end result of this kind of methodology, mindset and approach is you're making people feel good about themselves, about you or your gift and all of that. I think that's just such an amazing thing.

Yeah, yeah. I tell people time like, you can't have a sucky service and not return phone calls and have a horrible product and then give great gifts and think that it all works out.

That washes it all away.

Yeah, it washes it all away. That'll actually make it worse. But if you are, if you operate in congruency and you're like, hey, we're best in class, we're world class. Or I'm a first class sales rep, I'm a first class, you know, coach. Like, this is just the little cherry on top of sundae that sometimes people will brag more about the cherry than they do about all the hard stuff that you do, but it's that one little thing that can make somebody say, wow. Like, I don't know why I like them so much, but I like them. I don't know why I think about them so much, but I want them to succeed. And that's all we're, you know, I don't care what business you're in. Like, we're all trying to be top of mind and stand out and be different amongst the. I mean, there's a lot of coaches, there's a lot of entrepreneurs, there's a lot of service companies. And why is yours going to stand out above everybody else's? And oftentimes the trigger, I call it a tangible trigger. That's all a gift is, is. It's a tangible trigger. Say, wow, that person thought of me, that person loves me, that person cares about me. Not, you know, not in an automated way, but in a way that was really thoughtful and strategic.

So, so we've talked about some of the things we need to make sure not to do, you know, with some of the, to make sure it's thoughtful. What is something that an entrepreneur listening to this, watching this will be able to do to get it started. And I know we touched on keeping track of some of the things that our target audience, our prospects, our strategic alliances, like, and personalizing it. But is There a certain. And again we talked about having a set profit number. So whether it's every month or every quarter that you sit down and go x percent, I'm going to take that and distribute it out. But where's a good place to start? I mean, even from someone that has their database. Do you just do an ABC and go, hey, our top valued clients, prospects, strategic alliances, let's start there. But where is it that you would get the ball rolling and recommend?

Well, somebody has employees. I think that a lot of times people want to start with prospects. And I'm like, start warm market first. If you want to start really warm markets like people, you can't expect your team to give Ritz Carlton service unless they've experienced the Ritz Carlton. So everybody wants to start externally and, and all that does is create bitterness with inside your organization. So if you have just one employee and they're an assistant for you, or a right hand person or a business partner, or maybe you have a team of five people or maybe you have contractors love on them the same way that you'd want your best clients to receive because guess what, you want them to put in the extra five hours when you're in a crunch for a launch or for a product, or you want them to travel across the country for a conference or all of those things. So we're big on taking care of our own employees. I mean, I pay about two grand a year per employee to take care of all of my team to have their houses cleaned every other week. And people are like two grand, That's a lot of money. And I'm like, you'll hire somebody and give them a salary range of 45 to $55,000 and you won't think anything of that 10 grand. When you're talking about salary, how can you love on them in such a way that they want to run through walls for you? So I would start with your inner circle first, which would be your team. And then if you have the resources, then start to budget like, hey, this year we're going to invest $1,000 a month on our best relationships. And I say focus the list down as small as possible. If that's 10 people for you. If that's five people, 50 people, 500. Like everybody's going to be different depending upon their revenue range. But I would highly recommend doing two really nice gifts per year versus doing four mediocre. And most people like, oh, John, I got, I heard John. We had to do quarterly gifts and then they only have a hundred dollar Budget per person, per year, $25 gift.

Right.

I mean, they're going to say, yeah, they thought of you maybe for five minutes, but give them something for $100 one time that they think of you for the next five years.

Yeah.

And so I'm looking at it, you know, the Seth Godin and all these guys talk about cost per impression on marketing. I spend $100 on something. Somebody else spends $100 on a fruit basket or whatever. If mine's around 10 years later and they think about me every day, I win over the person who sent this nice bottle of wine that was consumed and forgotten about. So, but. But do a lot more for a lot less people, and you'll start to see, like, the relationships over time start to blossom. And you have employees, contractors, whoever, saying, I, you know, I worked for this other company for 10 years and I've only worked for you for six months, and you're treating me better. You know, they gave me this pen set that cost $30. That made me really insulted me. Like, I see that kind of, like, dynamic all the time. And so I would start to segment your list down to your top 20, your top 50. And that list can change a little bit over time. It's not like you have to lock in and be like, for the next five years, we're only going to these 10 people. But I think that when you can start to budget, start to plan, start to segment and not overcomplicate it, like, that's the big thing is everybody has these big grandiose ideas of starting with the McKay 66 right from the start. And guess what? They do one or two, and then they stop because they're like, this is difficult. A lot of work. It's a lot of work. So start, start small, do five gifts really well, five people. Start with your team, and then from there you can start to scale it and grow it.

Awesome. Well, John, thanks for your time. Let's wrap up with what's the best way people can get a copy of your book and then also reach out to you as far as your agency to see if your services may help them as well.

Yeah, so I would say that, I mean, obviously there's dozen different ways on Amazon, paperback, hardcover, Kindle, that kind of stuff. Audible. Probably the easiest way to get in contact if you want to start things. Like we have, we've developed for our clients to use different PDFs of, like, the worst gifts to avoid giving. So if somebody just wants to take some of our methodology and plug it in, they don't want to say want to hire us to do all their gifting for them. If you go to the giversedge.com you can get the free downloads of like the 10 worst gifts and all that kind of stuff. But you can also I post twice a week on the best gifts I see out there, the worst gifts, the timing, all the different things that we talk about. Strategy wise. You can learn kind of behind the scenes, behind the curtains of the when we send somebody a sauna and I tell that story, you can learn why we did it that way and then what the impact was. And so a lot of times people gain a lot of value from the giver's edge.

Perfect. Well, thanks so much for your time today, John.

Hey, thanks for having me.

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