Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #123: Why Radical Generosity Will CHANGE The Game For You and Your Relationships with John Ruhlin

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

This man has completely REWROTE my concept of gift giving with his philosophy of Radical Generosity. It’s time to stop giving underwhelming gifts that cost us money and actually damage our relationships with clients, customers, and employees. John Ruhlin is the creator of Gift·ology, the strategy of maximizing customer loyalty and turning clients into active referral machines. It’s about getting out of the transaction business and getting into the relationship business. It’s about going all in on PEOPLE! If you want to stop wasting money and start dropping love bombs, click play!   About The Guest: John Ruhlin is the founder of The Ruhlin Group, a gift logistics company that helps clients like the Chicago Cubs, Wells Fargo, Caesar's Entertainment, Miami Dolphins, Morgan Stanley, and The John Maxwell Company execute year-round gifting strategies.   John's unique approach to relationships led him to become the #1 salesman for a $250 Million direct sales company by the time he was 23 (out of 1.5 Million reps). He now speaks widely about strategic gifting and relationship building and helps CEOs and sales teams drive referrals and open doors to elusive decision makers.   Finding John Ruhlin: Website: https://giftologygroup.com/  John’s website: https://johnruhlin.com/  For the Gift·ology Playbook: Giftologysystem.com  For an Artifact Mug: https://artifactmug.com/  Read Giftology  Contact John at [e-mail]  Twitter: @ruhlin   To inquire about my coaching program opportunity visit https://mentorship.heathermonahan.com/    Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    My book Confidence Creator is available now! get it right HERE   If you are looking for more tips you can download my free E-book at my website and thank you! https://heathermonahan.com    *If you'd like to ask a question and be featured during the wrap up segment of Creating Confidence, contact Heather Monahan directly through her website and don’t forget to subscribe to the mailing list so you don’t skip a beat to all things Confidence Creating!     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

it's the same cost as if you took somebody out to an experiential thing that was world class. You don't take somebody to the public golf course. You take them to Pebble Beach. You don't take somebody to McDonald's. You take somebody to Morton's. Most people are already doing those things. They don't have an event at Motel 6. They have an event at Ritz Carlton.

But most people do their gifting at a Motel 6 level. There's a disconnect there. They don't realize it because nobody's ever challenged them on it. Because there's such a delta there, why is your Ritz Carlton better than my fourth season? But when you're at that Motel 6 level and you start sending Ritz Carlton level, level gifts. Now you're like, you are the purple cow. I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up. Well, I am so excited for this episode today. I'm freaking out. This is my new friend, John Boulin. He's the world's leading authority in maximizing customer loyalty through radical of generosity. He is the founder and author of GIFTology and has been featured in Fox News, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc, and the New York Times. While becoming the number one performer out of 1.5 million sales reps for one of the world's most recognizable brands, John developed a system of using generosity to gain access to elite clients and generate thousands of referrals. He and his firm now help automate this process for individuals, hopefully for me, and organizations like UBS, Raymond James

D.R. Horton, Keller Williams, the Chicago Cubs, and Caesar's Palace. John and the Giftology team can help any individual turn their clients into their own personal sales force to drive exponential growth. John, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure, Heather. This is going to be a blast. This is so crazy. And I just have to share this with everybody right now. I had never heard of you. We live in the noisiest world, right? Like, there's so much clamor. I don't know how I didn't know you before. This is crazy. I get a call from one of my dearest friends, Scott McGregor.

And he says, Heather, I have to introduce you to someone. You're going to freak out. I know you're going to need to have them on the podcast. John, hear my eye roll because I hate when people do. I don't want to have people on my, I know who I want my podcast, right? Of course. So I'm like, okay, Scott. Scott's my good friend.

I have to, you know, if he hands someone to me, I have to see it through. So I said, okay, great. Thanks so much. Now, this is so freaking crazy. And it's so serendipitous. And this is how the universe is. And I'm so excited to share the story. So I happen to be speaking for an event for Scott and his community that week, virtually. Unbeknownst to me, I do the speech, disconnect, whatever I go about my day. Scott calls me that day. He says, hey, someone in the audience has requested your address. Are you comfortable with me giving it out? I said, no, that's creepy. Don't give my address out. He said, they want to give you a gift. And I said, I don't know, it's weird, Scott. He said, I trust this person. Do you trust me? Yes. Okay, fine. Okay. So a couple of days later, John, this is crazy. I get this box. And I'm like, oh, gosh, I hope there's no body parts in here. And I open it up. And it's giftology. It's your book, right? And it's in this beautiful black leather satchel inside like this velvet red box. It was gorgeous. Like it was, I was so taken aback. And I didn't know initially what. And then I looked and I saw it was your name. I thought, oh my gosh, this is crazy. This is the guide that I'm having on the show. Fast forward, you and I speak.

A week later, you send me this unbelievable. And by the way, guys, I'm going to share on social. So go to my social media feeds, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. And you're going to see this video. I open up a box. And I think it's the same box I just opened from one of the people at this event I spoke at. But no, it's not. This box is you.

I opened the top. And I was so taken aback. It's a video of you saying, hey, Heather. It was so cool. It was so personalized. Immediately I'm like pulling this whole thing apart saying, how did you do this? This is, I mean, it was, I've never received such a cool eye-opening thing until, and you're like, Heather, you have me on the show and all you do is talk. Until, but this is just so, it's so crazy to me.

Until you come back to me and say, I want to pay it forward, Heather, and I want to do something nice. Who would you like to give a gift to? You and I decide Scott McGregor. and you have this custom-made piece of art slash mug designed for Scott. We have it sent to him. And he's literally in tears, full circle. It was such an impactful moment for him. For me, it was just what a powerful impact you and your company have on people.

I'm just, it just came full circle to me. I'm so grateful for it. Yeah. Well, your response on like, who wants to talk to the gift guy? Nobody. It's like, because you think of the million people that sell promotional items or swag or, hey, here's a Harry and David basket of crap that you don't want or whatever. So your response is normal. And it's the response when I'm on big stages. You can tell they're like, is this kid like the nephew to the owner? Like, how did he end up on this stage? Because nobody cares about what they think of as gifts. But the core of what we teach has nothing to do with the gift. It's how do you use the gift, the item as a delivery vehicle for an emotion. And obviously we've had a couple of those kind of connections with the VIP. what I now call the VIP 3.0, which is the video screen, and then the artifact mug, which is like one of my, it's like the Super Bowl of gifting. It's like cost a thousand bucks because it takes four weeks to make and it makes some, most people, even billioners cry from it. It's not because they couldn't afford the mug. It's the, oh my gosh, I've never felt somebody think of me this way in a way that's tangible. Most people, it's like, you know, here's your gift card or here's your jewelry or whatever, which is fine, but it's not what we teach. Wow. The impact is so. profound. I can share this. I am completely restrategizing my book launch based on what I've learned

from your book, from what you taught me just in this individual experience. And I'm, I'm so grateful for that. And I want everyone to really listen right now to this. I mean, because John, you're going to break it down for us. Will you share with everyone? You didn't grow up wealthy. You didn't come from this big gifting family and how you really started out. Yeah. Well, I'm a farm kid. I grew up in Ohio. I grew up milking goats every morning. I was one of six kids. Like literally, like, I was the kid that showed up smelly at, you know, crap on their boots at school.

And I, you know, we had a one-acre garden. We had, I bailed hay in the summers. I wasn't going to Disney World or the swimming pool. I was like, we were, like, it was a farm to say survive because that sounds a little dramatic. But, I mean, we were definitely, like, I was on the free lunch program at school, if that tells you, like, the level that we were, that we grew up. And it was, you know, it was slightly embarrassing.

It was definitely not how I wanted to live my life. going forward. And so you grew up in Ohio, I literally looked at the census the other day. And it was like, it went from like 318 people when I was there to like now like 420. So it's grown somehow, one light town. But a lot of like what I teach came out of desperation when I interned with Cutco, the knife company. A lot of people have heard of Cutco knives. I didn't know what it was. But I had a buddy who was a seminary student of all things. He was like going to go be a missionary missionary. And he started selling the knives because they have an internship division for college kids. And I pitched my girlfriend's dad, which is the most awkward conversation, by the way.

And the reason I pitched him is he was the most generous person I ever met. He was always giving things away. He was always like he'd find deals on noodles and buy like a semi load of noodles. And like, I'm like, Paul, that was 40 grand. Are you nuts? So I pitched him on knives because all of his clients are CEOs of companies and they're in the outdoors. So I thought maybe he'll buy the $200 pocket knives.

And a lot of what I teach stems from this one conversation 20 years ago. Literally, I have 20 years old. I'm in the kitchen pitching knives to my. girlfriend's dad, weird. He's like, I don't want to order the pocket knives. I'd like to order a hundred of the $200 each pairing knives. And I'm like, you want to give a bunch of CEOs and like a bunch of dudes. All of his clients were guys. They were married dudes. I'm like, you want to give them a kitchen tool? Like, why? And he said, John, the reason I have more referrals, the reason I have more loyalty, reason to have more engagement, access, you name it. I found out

if you take care of the family in business, everything else takes care of itself. So that was like the lightning bolt moment when I realized it was the item, the gift, the stuff. The gift, the stupid knives. To this day, we do millions of dollars with that same company on our gifting agency. The item is the delivery vehicle for the emotion. It shows that you care about somebody. And there's all these different things that most people do horribly wrong. They spend, like, it's amazing how many companies spend millions, if not billions of dollars to actually annoy, frustrate, guilt, or piss off their most important employee. Like, I had a buddy of mine who sold his company for a bazillion dollars. His wife is a nurse. She worked five years for this great

university hospital and she got after five years that's 10,000 hours just went through COVID it was a pen and pencil set that you could get at target for 1995 and the pen doesn't even work at the hospital because it's the wrong color ink they're not she not even able to use it at the hospital so she gets like basically they spent $20 plus whatever the fulfillment cost were to annoy, frustrate and piss off their most one of their most viable employees and I'm like that's embarrassing. You're spending money to drive your most important people away. And every business rises and falls on relationships. Referrals come from people that trust you. Engaged employees that stick around for 20 years come from people that are bought in and feel like known and seen. And most people do the exact opposite. So a lot of

what we now call giftology stems back to what I learned 20 years ago from this, you know, really relationship master attorney. Wow. And it's so eye-opening. There's been so many occasions in my life where people have sent me a mug with their logo on it. And it goes right into the trash, right? Those are not meaningful things. But thinking about the difference between, you know, promo materials, it's all about the company, all about their brand versus the way you think about it, which is it's all about that person and creating that relationship with that person.

Yeah. I mean, people do things in business for their employees, for their clients, for their suppliers, for their dealers. Like, they're all just human beings. You would never go to your best friend's wedding and on the beautiful knife or Tiffany's vase or whatever, like compliments of Time Warner Cable. Like, nobody would do that. That's the cheesiest worst, horrible thing you could ever, like it'd be offensive. It would be tacky.

But in business, we do it and we call it branding and marketing. It's neither because what you're branding and marketing that you're not thoughtful, that you don't understand what a gift is. So everything that's been taught when it comes to promotional items, fine, but don't expect to connect to someone. somebody's heart. And don't expect it to get your, like, everybody wants more referrals. Everybody wants their employees to take around longer. That doesn't come from head knowledge. Most of the time, people don't leave a company because of pay. That might be number five on the list. They usually leave because they don't have a connection. They don't feel connected to their direct report. You know, the person that's their boss, they don't feel appreciated. They don't feel known.

They don't feel seen. Like, we leave as, because we're emotional beings. So people come to us and like, John, I want to do a program with your agency and they want to do a referral program. and I'm like, are you in the relationship business or the transaction business? Even people that sell toilet paper like, oh, we're all about relationships. I'm like, if somebody gives you a referral and then you send the gift, what did you just turn that relationship into? Transaction, right. That's a great point. I hadn't thought of it that way. Tip for tat. You do this. You get this. Affluent people don't do things because they got some bottle of wine. You know, Scott reached out to you because of the relationship. He's like, I know that this relationship is going to benefit John, but it's really going to benefit Heather.

and it's going to benefit me because I'm going to get the halo effect of the fireworks that are going to come from this conversation. And so there's a, like, everybody wants trust. Everybody wants people to go out and advocate on their behalf. And yet most people do the same stupid like sponsorships and the same advertising and the same dinners at Mortons and the same golf trips and whatever else. And there's nothing wrong with those things, but those are like table stakes. If your anxiety, depression or ADHD are more than a rough patch, you don't need just another

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100x, return on relationship is the most powerful math equation on the planet. Like, you get a Facebook ads, you get a 3x. You do this radio ads, you get a 5x. Show me in any business, in any industry, whether you're a solopreneur or whether you're a $20 billion company, it all comes down to people. It's like, and oftentimes it's not having 10 million followers. It's like these hundred clients, these hundred. partners, these 200 joint ventures, these 50 dealers, make or break, billion dollar companies.

It's not millions of people. It's oftentimes a handful of people. And most people don't understand how to invest in those relationships in a way that makes people feel a certain way and inspire them to go act. And I've literally seen clients of ours get a thousand X return on relationship. Show me where you can invest a dollar and get $1,000 back. There's no other place on the planet other than investing in people. I know what people are thinking right now. Wow, sounds great for these big companies and these billionaires, but I don't have some big line item.

What do you say to those people? I love it. I'm actually, I love the David and Goliath. Like, if I start a podcast, it's going to be David and Goliath. Because the publicly traded companies oftentimes are our worst clients because they're just trying not to get fired. They're just playing the game. Everybody says they play the long game.

I talked to Vaynerchuk about this. Most people's long game in publicly traded companies is a quarter, maybe two quarters. but the long game is not days, it's decades. And a small company, a mid-sized company that's doing whether it's a million dollars in business or it's called, you know, a $50 million company is still small compared to a publicly traded company. And so what I love is that you don't have to have millions or billions of dollars. I bootstrapped this as a 20-year-old. I started out with $500 a month invested this way. That's $6,000 a year. That's a lot as you're paying for college 20 years ago. but what I've found is that most people, they'll hire, let's say you're a small company and you have 20 employees.

I'll see entrepreneurs that will hire two employees and they'll add $150,000 to their fixed cost overhead. 150 grand is real money versus taking 150 grand and investing it into their top 50 relationships. That's $3,000 per person. Sounds like a lot until you go pick up a bar tab in Vegas at a trade show. That costs you $3,000. to sponsor the event cost to 20 grand. To fly your employees to an offsite retreat costs to 25 grand. So it's not like you don't have to spend millions of dollars,

but I see even small entrepreneurs that are doing three million in revenue that have five or 10 employees that start to understand that they could redirect their overall marketing budget and their biz dev. And if they start to take that same amount of money, whether it's five grand or 50 grand or 500 grand, whatever the numbers are, and they start to reinvest it differently into people, And instead of doing the sponsorship or the Facebook ads, like I just spoke to 400 SaaS companies. None of them are doing more than 10 million in revenue individually.

So they're small businesses. And I'm like, you guys will spend all this, you know, your development cost was a half a million dollars for that piece of software over there. What if you also invested, you know, one-tenth out amount, 50 grand in your top 20 relationships? How would those relationships flourish? Great example of this I talk about in the book, but like Cameron Harold, the guy did the Brooks, others experience for. People like, this was 14 years ago, I invested $7,000 to create a Brooks Brooks Brothers experience. I found out the guys, I wanted to impress this one person. I found out a shirt size. I outfit his whole hotel room because he's like one of the top business coaches

in the world. I outfit is Ritz Carlton with everything, jacket, suits, belts, pants, shoes, whatever else. Seven grand is a lot for one person. After that, I invested another 18 grand over 10 years. So 25 grand over 10 years, $2,500 a year. Even a, even a solopreneur, if they really wanted, who could invest $2,500 a year. I mean, that's like, it's like Netflix and Apple and Starbucks. You know, like, it's like what most people like spend on entertainment for the year. They just don't choose to invest that way. So that $2,500, people are like, that's a waste.

Why would you invest that much in one relationship? I'm like, if I wanted to hire Cameron as a sales rep for my company, for one year, he wouldn't take the job for $2 million. Instead, I loved on him with no strings attached. And it cost me $25,000 spent out over 10 years. that's $2,500 a year. And he's gone out and produced no commissions over a million dollars. One relationship, because he decided to go advocate.

So my first, when I was begging to speak for free, he would get double booked. He'd be like, you got to book John Rulin. They'd be like, who's that? Like, you just trust me. Before there was giftology, before there was a giftology book. So my first $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 speaking gigs came because of Cameron selling me better than I could sell myself. All of his CEO clients, guess what he sends them? He uses our agency to send them custom knives and all these other things.

And then he sends him my book that he pays for and pitches me to all of his clients that are CEOs of like mid-sized companies, $10 million company to a billion dollar company. That's like he's like written five books. I don't know if he's been on your show or not. If he hasn't, he'd be like amazing. But 25 grand to have a sales rep that's the best in the world. Go sell on your behalf for a decade. Where can you get that?

There's no other way to do that other than. You know, like Scott would go sell you and probably has sold you based upon the relationship, the trust. He wants to see you win. And what people don't understand is when you can do this thoughtfully, consistently, and pour into your relationships, you inspire them to be the best salespeople that you could never hire. Period. End of story.

What you've done and you're turning friends, family, clients into active referral machines. Yeah. Most people think they have loyalty, but what they really have is passive loyalty. Loyalty, if you think about the people, the teams, like if your kid wants to get into Harvard, you're going to actively go advocate and connect the dots and try to get them into Harvard. That's active loyalty. That's where somebody's going out of their way to find the angle and the connection and open the door and have the awkward conversation. That's active loyalty.

Passive loyalty is, oh, who do you use for your landscaping? Oh, I use Bob. Is he good? Yeah, he's okay. Oh, I'll call Bob. I don't know anybody else. I'll call Bob. That's a passive referral. But in active, somebody that's actively loyal can go out and out sell and out refer a hundred passive loyalists. Because that person, the Scott McGregor's, the Cameron Herald's, if you think about the people in your world, like most people have one if they're lucky. And oftentimes they're a family member. But in business, if you can start to turn your clients into actively loyal referral agents and actively loyal advocates, all of a sudden, like, you can't invest enough in those relationships because they can go out and do things that you could never do for yourself.

And that's where people talk about like one of our phrases is referrals without asking. The only way you can get massive amounts of referrals without asking is by taking these warm relationships that like you and dousing them with, I call them love bombs, like the artifact mug, a thousand-dollar mug, that was a love bomb. When somebody gets hit with a love bomb and then another love bomb and then another love bomb. Like, you don't have to believe in a God or universe, whatever. Like, my faith, like, teaches me in the Old Testament, like, if you pour into relationships, you reap what you sow, and it comes back 100 acts. New Testament, same way. Like, the Bible teaches these things. People

like, John, this is radical stuff. I'm like, you mean the stuff I'm teaching from 5,000-year-old transcripts? Like, it's not radical. We've just forgotten that kings would give other kings a 10,000 head of cattle back 5,000 years ago. Why? Because as human beings, we understand that the value you place on the relationship is shown by how you show up for that relationship. And when you give a thoughtful, over-the-top gift with no strings attached, whether it's to your spouse, your client, or your employee, as human beings, we want to reciprocate. We want to go and see that other person do well, too, because we feel a certain emotion in our DNA wants to go and do it.

It's tribal. I don't care if you live in Africa or Idaho or people like, John, like when we spoke at Google, they're like, does this work in technology? and I laughed. I was like, are there human beings here? And they laughed. The engineer laughed. And they're like, yeah. I'm like, well, then it works because we're humans. And even in 2021, we still crave even more so because everything's so transactional and so digital. And so, like, disconnected that when you can like show up for people, they're like, oh my, like, we just did a gift for Gary Vaynerchuk, CMO, Andrea. And she gave it to her husband. And he bawled like a

baby. And then they're like, hey, we got to, I want to do this for another person. Like, it just creates these ripple effects of like goodwill, but it's not like hold hands and sing kumbaya. It's like, this is how like businesses thrive is with people going out and wanting to see you win. Like there's a reason that like companies like Southwest Airlines is dominated. It's because what's their logo? It's love. It's a big of heart. But they don't just talk about it. They actually like do things differently than their competitors. And not to say that there's anything wrong with other airlines out there. But like when you do this and go all in on people, like the ripple effects of that like come back a hundredfold. It's just how people are wired. When you were just explaining that this goes

back to, you know, five thousand years ago. And it reminded me as a sales leader, I always taught my sales team, send thank you notes. You want to follow up, you know, do the small things that make a difference. In some ways, listening to you speak, I was doing the small things instead of thinking about what's the biggest way I can make an impact? But handwritten note, though, is super rare. Why? Because it takes extra energy and effort. It's easier to send a text.

It's why, like, I don't do Facebook posts on my friends. I send them a personalized video on their birthday. Even though I don't really like in business, I say no ABC gift, no anniversaries, no birthdays, no Christmas. Most people give gifts at expected times. And those, whether it's, I mean, I think about, like, for my wife, if I show up on Valentine's Day and birthday and Christmas, like, those are table stakes. I don't get brownie points for like showing up for my wife's birthday.

Like you better show up for your wife's birthday. You better. And with clients, it's the same thing. Like, oh, you know, employ. You've been here 10 years. Here's the catalog you go pick your gift from. It's lame. It shows no thoughtfulness.

It shows no engagement. It's a transactional. I have to do this because you've been here this long. So if you can show up and be in like do the most that you can do, most people like once they have the client, what do they do they do? They take them for granted. Once they have the employee, what do they take them for granted? And right now there's a talent shortage. And people are like recruiting other people and throwing

money at them. And people tend to only stick around if people have had their back in good times and in bad. And so most people are like, oh, what's the, you know, I'm going to do a gift at Christmas. I'm like, hey, that's the worst time. But let's set that aside. I'm like, what's your budget to show gratitude to these all of your employees? And they're like, ah, we're thinking $47. And I'm like, you think that you're going to woo and wow your employee who just put in 2,000 hours this year with 40 like the cost of a polo shirt like that's how you're going to like earn their loyalty how about you say like what's the most you could do in the situation and and we've started to do that probably 10 years ago with our own employees and we said what would what's

the most we could do for these people that they would never do for themselves a lot of our employees were we've been remote for 12 years and we started to pay to have their houses clean every employee gets it costs it the investment is $2,500 and when I spoke at Google they a couple of people are like, how do you afford that? And I'm like, when you're hiring an employee, even a baseline employee, let's call it 35 to 45 grand, an entry level employee, that's a $10,000 delta that you think nothing of that 10 grand when you're hiring the person, whether you hire them for 35 or 45. That's an extra 10 grand in overhead that you just added. And I'd tell people all the time. Nobody brags about their 401k or that their health benefits.

Like, those are table stakes. You start paying to have their houses clean every other week, like make their life easier, give them time back to be with their family, their hobbies, go work out, go for a walk, whatever. Now, like, you're pouring into them in a way that means something to them. And so, gifting is just that same way. Like, I send $500 headphones to my interns. People are like, why would you do that? We don't even send $500 to our 10-year employees. And I'm like, hey, that's dumb. $500 is a rounding error relative to any employee's salary, like nothing, but $500 to an intern that you hopefully want to recruit someday. And we'll do like the headphones around like finals time saying, hey, we want to help you block out the noise so you can study and crush it.

You know, you don't ask for anything. It's just an investment in them. And when you can show up that way for people in a way that's totally unexpected, when the normal thing to do is, hey, here's your peanut brittle or your Amazon gift card employee or client, and you go and do it 10 times higher than that. In that category, it feels like what Seth Godin talks about, which is the purple cow, It feels remarkable because you took something. It's why our business card stand out. Like in our letterhead, we have letterhead that we write on. It's $9.

People freak out because most letterhead is what, 10 cents. So I took it 90 times higher. My $9 letterhead is still way cheaper than the $90 trinket that you're going to send out to people. And even though it's 90% less, because I took it into a category and went blue ocean, it becomes remarkable. It's why the book, you know, like most people will go take somebody out to dinner, no problem. cost them $300, $500, $500, no problem. I spent on my, when I book got published, I ordered 50 of the copies the way that you got it, the original one that I think Eric sent you.

They were almost $300 each, except they're also monogram to the person and to their spouse. There was no ask. They were handmade galley copies, 300 bucks each. Like, my author buddies made fun of me. They're like, $300 for a book. They're like, they're all bragging about how cheap they're printing their book, and I'm taking it the entire opposite direction. Here's what happened.

Vaynerchuk, I sent it to Seth Godin. I sent to either clients, friends, or people I respected from afar with no ask. And guys like Michael Hyatt, who get, it was in publishing for 30 years, and he gets four to five thousand books sent to him every year. He's like, I read none of them. I give them all to Goodwill or to the library. He said, John, not only did I read your book, but my wife, Gail read it and I ordered 30 copies from my team. And, oh, by the way, I'd like to have you on my show. I didn't ask to be on the show. So $300 in a category where most people don't even spend $3, becomes this mind-blowing experience.

And that's all we've done with gifting is most people's bar. Most people think they're a seven out of ten on gifting. Like, oh, yeah, we're good at swag and promo. They're a negative three. Because nobody is honestly telling them that the bottle of wine that they got and their wife is an alcoholic or their dad was. Or you sent them a $50 bottle and their daily drinker is a $150 bottle. Or you sent them this bottle and they actually drink white.

or they're on a keto fast right now. And now you're just tempting them. So most people are investing all of this money into things that are actually negatively impacting their bottom line. And they have no idea because it feels mean and rude for them to say in a note, dear so and so, I actually thought less of you as a relationship because your gift was so unthoughtful, was so disconnected from who I am that makes me realize you don't really know me. that's not a good investment.

Wow, it's such an epiphany for me to hear this, because all I'm thinking about is my first book launch, John. I sat right here in my condo with UPS, you know, the crappy looking little shipping things, and I would stuff those books in there with the ass. Thanks so much. It would mean the world to me if you would blah, blah, blah, and sent out hundreds.

The amount of money I spent in shipping didn't justify the ROI I got, right? Because most people, like you said, they didn't respond. They just crickets. I heard nothing back. And I thought to myself, this is part of the process. You know, this is the grind, Heather. But now as I'm sitting here going into this window to, you know, launch my second book, no way.

Even if it came down to now with the knowledge that I have from your book and from meeting with you, there's no way. I'd rather tighten the pool up and not go after 500 of the top people in media. I'd rather target Seth, who's been on my show and Gary Vayner, and have a tight. and have a tighter group and invest more money into each one of the love bombs that I'm going to send them, not the crappiest UPS package. People all the time say don't judge a book by its cover, but there's 30,000 books, new titles that show up on Amazon every week. 30,000.

And so when I came out with the book, it was self-published. But I wanted to feel like the nicest book that even if Simon & Schuster or Ingram or whoever published it, you know, they didn't know John Rowland was. They didn't care. Now those guys are reaching out saying, hey, when are you publishing your next book? Well, part of it was the way we launched it, but part of it was I committed to a five-year launch. Every week, I do one to three things that are book-related. I speak.

I blog post. I guess post. I do a podcast. Something. And my buddies, like, bust my chops hard that have known me for 20, 30 years. You are like, ruthless. You're hoarding yourself out. Like, nonstop with this giftology thing.

Like, you're still talking about it. I'm like, we sold more books last week. on Amazon, five years in, June 16th, we launched it five years ago in 2016. We sold more books that week than we sold any other week in the last five years. Wow. That's for anyone who doesn't know the book business, that's unbelievable. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the amount of books that we've sold, because we own the rights,

we sell on Amazon, Audible, Kindle. Obviously, we sell a lot when we speak and have other people just reach out ordering bulk. But I mean, we're over 100,000 books for a self-published book is a big deal. And our speaking fees are approaching six figures internationally when I was begging to speak for three seven years ago. Vaynerchuk is like beating the same drum. Even Dave Ram, like a lot of these guys that, you know, he's been beating the same drum of don't go in debt for 30 years.

He's built, you know, a thousand person company. Like my buddies are like, China, you're basically getting paid to go teach people to be thoughtful and kind. You paid to go teach people to be nice? No, it's way more than that. I know it is. But at a root level, the idea of loving people is not a radical concept. The idea of being thoughtful is not a radical concept.

But most people don't have a strategy on how to do that differently and how to show up differently and how to scale it. I mean, the core of our agency, the reason companies hire us is it's not hard to do one gift well for your spouse or for your best client. And people are like, John, you're just good at this. I'm like, no, actually my love language, if you've read five love languages, Gary Chapman, who wrote the book and sold, I think, close to 30 million copies is a mentor of mine. My words of, I'm a words of affirmation guy.

Gifting isn't even in my top two love languages. I'm a farm kid who is introverted. I hated being on stage for a long time. But here's the cool thing is as an introvert farm kid, when I sent an amazing love bomb gift to somebody in business, guess what I got? Words of affirmation. I got doors open for me. I didn't have to be the life of the party. They would go be the life of the party for me.

And they would take me around. I remember early on, like my mentors and these different people I did things for, they grabbed me and go introduce me to their friend. I was never the person to go work the room. But because I showed up for people a certain way, those extroverts or those other people that became the actively little advocates were the ones who went and opened the doors for me and grabbed the person and said, you've got to meet this person. You got to do this thing. And so I was this like country bumpkin farm kid who was introverted. Now I play an extrovert on stage. But the idea of what we're doing, it seems like in some people it seems readily radical.

And other people, it's like, that's so simple, stupid. it's not, it's, it's only difficult if you try to scale it. If you try to do it in business, not for one person, but you're trying to do it for a dozen people. Or in your case, you know, like you got 500 media outlet people that you want to make an impact with or 250 partners or guests on your show or like most people don't realize how many different people are in their ecosystem. Suppliers and partners and media and influencers and past clients and future clients and investors and mentors and most people don't realize how many people it really takes to be

successful in business. Oftentimes, it's a lot of freaking people. And they don't have a relationship plan on how they're going to consistently show up for those people. And when they start to look at it, they start to get overwhelmed. And they either cut corners or they don't do anything. If you want, like a framework for your audience to go dive into and kind of, you know, look at things on their own, same thing that we charge tens of thousands of hours to do. They can go, you go to gifthology system.com. They can download our whole playbook of, you know, it's not the what. Most people are get hung up on. I want something cool as a gift. That's the seventh step in the process. The what is not the important thing. The who is more important. Who are you giving it to?

What's important to them? Do they have a second step, inner circle? Do they have an assistant, a team, a spouse, kids, pets? A lot of the gifts that we do include those people. The reason the knives still work to this day, most people have a significant other. They have a home. They break bread, you know, like the mug. Most people drink coffee or tea. So it's universal, but it also like there's a halo effect of getting into the hub of the kitchen. So the concepts that we're talking about, they scale in every industry if you're willing to put your time, energy, effort, and intentionality, you know, where your words are. Most people are like, oh, yeah, we're all about people. Then they don't do anything for those people. And they send out, we value you. Here's your,

jacket with our logo on it. Like, really? Like, that's how you show gratitude to your million dollar relationships. And when I call it out from the stage, people like, some of them, like, their jaws at the ground. They're like, oh, my God. gosh, we've been doing this wrong for 33 years, had no idea now. Like, what are we going to do about it? Like, are we going to redirect our dollars and invest this way? Are we going to just kind of stay safe and do the same thing as we've been doing? And most people, they talk a good game, but the amount of people that actually take this information and actually execute on it is so small. People are like, are you going to be worried that

giftology is just going to become commonplace? And I'm like, the amount of people that are actually thoughtful and intentional with this in the business world is so disgustingly small. even of people that have heard me speak because it just feels overwhelming. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that feel effortless and look polished. They're perfect for layering, mixing,

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I don't think it's even thoughtful. It's smart, right? Thoughtful is like you're giving, forget that. Somebody doesn't have to be thoughtful. They have to be intelligent. I mean, look at the freaking R-O-I. here. And I think you said something really important. If you don't have a relationship strategy, and 99.9 percent, myself included, I didn't have a strategy on how to create the relationships and turn them into raving fans and turn them into active participants in bringing me business. I've never thought that way. So I'm assuming most people listening right now, same way. So I'm going to link the Giftology System.com in the show notes. Now, John, tell us selfishly for me,

but also for everyone listening, for the people who are smart, who are thoughtful and are going to take action, like me, how do we work with you? Yeah, I mean, the core thing is determining, A, that this is going to be not a flash in the pan or, like, a check-the-box for the next six months and then move on to the next thing. The last thing you want to do is show up for people radically generously and for people to realize it was a tactic versus, like, if somebody won't commit to three years, they can't be a client. And the reason is you don't want to be like, Daddy Warbuck's really, like, generous and then go back to be an Ebenezer Scrooge. People recognize and read between the lines, like, oh, that's not who you really are. That's not how you really show up. So like the idea of like having

that long term mindset of three years. And then really it's just an understanding of do you have the relationships identified that are important to? Is it these 25? Is it these 50? Is it these 500? Whatever those numbers are. And then what amount of profit do you want to reinvest back into them? You know, even a small company, let's say they do a million dollars in revenue. Their net profit, was 200 grand. They could reinvest, in our opinion, they should be reinvesting 5 to 15% of net. Five is low, 15's high, 10 is the middle. So 10% of 200 grand is 20 grand. Are you really willing to put 20 grand invested into the relationships this year? And then next year, hopefully instead to 200 grand, you made 250. That means you're investing 25 grand. But the goal is to make it a math

equation and say, I'm going to invest in these people knowing that it's going to come back to me way more than what I'm investing. They're basically buying their own gifts. That's the funny thing is like, but because it's so rare for people to show up this way, if everybody was amazing and thoughtful at gift giving and doing this, it would just be marketing noise. But because it's not, it's the purple cow.

Most people are doing the Facebook ads on these other things. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's noisy over there. This is the blue ocean over here. And so if they want to hire us, they can email me, personal email is on the screen, John a Giftology group. Now, you won't talk to me, I have giftologists that are way better gift givers ironically enough than I am. I get to be the talking head. I get to come up with the crazy ideas and go speak on stage. But my team helps lay out

and walks people through that relationship plan and says, hey, you got 500, but what if we pair that down to 100 or 75? And then instead of doing things four times a year, what if we only did it twice a year, but we did them really amazing? Instead of asking for something, how about we we just plant some seeds and we dig our well before we're thirsty so that when the ask comes a year or two now, like you've already earned, it's like Vaynerchucks, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. That's give, give, give, not once, not twice, three, you know, jab, jab, jab, then you earn the right, not the expectation, you earn the right to be able to ask. Now, if you expect it, it wasn't a gift. It was a manipulation. So part of it is like understanding the mindset you have to go into

this with and the investment philosophy and you have to actually have the data of like, hey, these are the relationships I care about. Here's the ones that I think I need to invest in in the future because I want to run this race 10 years from now and I want to be there. And these are the people I want to run it with. And so a lot of the heavy lifting on the front end by our clients is determining who that pool of people is so that when they come to us, all we're doing is helping kind of segment things and readjust and tweak. And then our team, handwrites the notes, picks the gifts, drop ships, things.

Our team plays Santa Claus year round, sending the crazy mugs to people and handwriting the notes and all of those things. But without the right mindset and without the right data, none of that matters. And the range on the gifts that you recommend is $100,000 to $1,000? Yeah, I mean, our rule of thumb is whatever it costs you to take somebody out to a nice dinner with wine, round a golf or ballgame tickets. You know, we're not, the people are like, hey, what do you have for $47? Like, nothing. You should write, handwrite a note.

But then they also say, John, we want to send like, you know, $30,000 Louis Vuitton bag. And I'm like, is that really a gift or is that a bribe? Like, there is a tension. There's a sweet spot. I would say our average gift, you know, is in that 200 to 700 range. We go as high as five grand for certain things. You know, the mug is a thousand bucks. It's not a bribe, but it's not a trinket.

It's the same cost as if you took somebody out to an experiential thing that was world-class. Challenge with that is everybody does experiences any more world-class because they know that, like, you don't take somebody to the public golf course. you take them to the Pebble Beach. You don't take somebody to McDonald's. You take somebody to Morton's. Most people are already doing those things. They don't have an event at Motel 6.

They have an event at Ritz Carlton. But most people do their gifting at a Motel 6 level. There's a disconnect there. They don't realize it because nobody's ever challenged them on it. And so because there's such a delta there, like if you want to compete at events, why is your Ritz Carlton better than my four seasons? Well, okay, like there's different properties, different things. but when you're like at that motel six level and you start sending ritz carlton level gifts

now you're like you are the purple cow because the norm is so different and so that understanding of wow i used to send $20 gift cards and i thought that was generous or $50 bottles of wine and now i'm adding a zero that's scary for most people because they've never done it before they've hired an employer they've invested in a marketing campaign for six figures or even five figures But now to invest that in gifting, what if it doesn't work? Or what if I look silly? Or what, you know, like all these doubts and fears creep in. And so the people are like, yeah, just keep it saying, we'll just hire two more people.

We'll do our typical event sponsorship. And we'll call it a day because it feels risky and awkward and uncomfortable to start sending these love bombs. Like, we'll just play it safe for now. I can tell you as a recipient, no, you need to get in this game. John, explain because you keep saying the mug and people don't understand. And that's underselling this piece of art. Can you explain with the muggins?

It's one of my favorite things. The way I found out about it is the artist, read the book, listened to like 80 of our interviews and reached out to me coldly, ironically, and said, hey, I want to help you bless your wife. He played my playbook against me. He said, well, you answer these five questions. I said, I looked him up online. I'm like, he looks like he's 16.

He wasn't, but that's where he looked. And I said, sure, I'll play. So I answer the questions. A week later, he said out, hey, you know, emails me, gifts ready. Can I hand deliver it? I'm like, God, he wants FaceTime. He really is using the Playbook.

So I were like, like, okay, public place, he looks like he used like 16. Country Bumpkin kid carrying this Tupperware container. It looks like there's claw marks on the side. I'm like, is there are animals inside? Like this is weird. And he pulls out to these $1,000 mugs. Now, the reason they're $1,000 is it's literally like somebody's life story. It's like like a time life achievement award of like me on the farm with my dad and my

wife on the farm with their dad who passed away of cancer and like our kids and our faith and our family. It's like literally like I've given these mugs to mentors and clients. I've given probably 130 of them out personally and almost always tears because the person who gets it is like every day as I drink my coffee and tea, they're made to be used by the way. They're made to be functional. They're made to be if they ever break. The artists will actually remake it for free. That's part of the deal.

And but every day for the next 50 years, somebody remembers their why and their family and their purpose and they're like, it's everything that you are in a functional piece of art. And so when I got one and I gave one to my wife when I got home late, two hours late that night, she was like crying. She's like, what, who is this person? And I'm like, I don't know. They drove nine and a half hours for this five minute meeting. And she's like, this is the most thoughtful thing anybody's ever given us. I was so blown away. By the way, he made two of these $2,500 vases that were like our whole life story together, my wife and eyes. And then one that was handwritten 50 lines deep of every Bible verse, Old Testament,

new testament that talks about generosity or giving or gifting. So he gave me like seven grand. So when I showed her my wife, she was blown away, he ended up staying at our house that night. And I was like, I want to work with you. He's like, it's music to my ears. He's like, I'm not in sales or marketing. He's like, I feel like God's called me to be a gift maker. I just want to do these for people.

And so you go to artifact mug.com. You can see some of the other videos and some of the other things that he's done. But he is, when I speak, I'll surprise billionaires in the audience with these things. And people are like standing ovation, bawling. their, you know, that audience is bawling. It's like, it's become one of the most valuable, impactful things, whether somebody's doing it for their family and friends or a spouse or doing it in the business world for their clients or partners or employees. It's just one of those things that it's about as universal as it gets to drink coffee or tea. And oh, by the way,

the box has the video of the artist talking. And that's part of the secret sauce is the artist describes why the piece was made that it was, because I don't tell them what to do. The artist just does it. And when somebody sees the artist speak into their life, it's like, Scott was like, I don't cry, but he's like, I'm getting ulterior-eyed. And I've had other people say, I don't cry ever, but I've never been seen that way. And how often in business do we spend $1,000, a day later, we don't think about it, like on paper and stupid stuff. But to invest $1,000 and have somebody literally, like, think about you every day, that's one of your most valuable relationships for the next 50 years. It's like you can't put a price tag on it. To me, like at some point, like,

I could see it being $10,000 because it's, it literally is that meaningful and that thoughtful of a thing that it really transcends anything that I've, almost anything that we've ever given. It's so incredibly powerful. And that video, go to my social media, check out the video. I'm posting it all week long. I cried. I didn't even see the mug in real life. You just sent me the video and I was crying because I knew how this was going to impact him. And it's just what a beautiful feeling to know you're bringing good into the world. And like you said, that is the long game. That mug's not going to go away.

The fact that we reached out to Scott's wife and she answered the questions, all this that everyone came together to be thoughtful and caring to recognize. And like you said, to allow him to be seen. It was just such an incredible experience. John, everybody's going to want to get the book giftology. Everyone's going to want to reach out to you. How do people get a hold of the book and how do they get a hold of the book? and how do they get a hold of you?

Yeah, well, I mean, Amazon is probably the best way to just get a copy. Even our hardcover, as you probably saw, like, we put 300% more invested into our hardcover because I care how it feels. I care how it's lined. I care. Like, there's no dust jacket. Like, all the stuff that I hate about books, I've done the opposite. Even the bookmark that most people would spend five cents on for a paper one,

yeah, ours are a couple dollars made out of steel because it matters. It communicates. And people are like, I still use your book. mark in all my other books. And I'm like, there's, you know, attention to detail, like if you do something quality. So Amazon's the best way to just get the book. If you want to reach out to me directly, john, and gifthology group.com is my email. Giftology group is our main site. And then the, uh, the download of our playbook is gifthology system.com. So those are the best places. I will link everything in the show notes. John, thank you so much. I'm so grateful Scott

introduced us. I'm so excited to start sending my love bombs. And everywhere. get a hold of John, get Githology. This book is unbelievable and it can completely change your business and the R-O-Y. So make smarter decisions. John, thank you so much. Thank you.