The Home Service Expert Podcast - Mastering Reciprocity to Improve Relationships with Customers and Employees

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

John Ruhlin is the co-founder of the Ruhlin group, and is the world's leading authority for maximizing customer loyalty through radical generosity. An entrepreneur and international keynote speaker, he is also the author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention.   In this episode, we talked about customer service, gifting strategy, influencer marketing, relationship building…

Here's what I'll say is that in any other part of your business, you have a business plan, a finance plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, an operations plan, a SOP. If you ask people, what's your relationship plan? If your business is going to rise and fall on your employees, your clients, your suppliers, and you don't have a plan on how you're going to show up and be different with those relationships and emotionally connect to them, not just check a box and say, I sponsored this or I did Facebook ads. Then somebody else who has a plan for that relationship and is going to love on that relationship, it sounds woo-woo, but we respond emotionally to people that do nice things for us and show up in uncommon ways. So the core of giftology is just saying,

take a percentage and make it a math equation. If you made a million dollars last year net, I don't care what your revenue is. If you're a hundred million dollar company, but you only profited a million, take a percentage of that million dollars and reinvest it back into the relationships that allowed you to even make that million dollars. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week,

Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello and I got John Rulon here. Amazing guy. I got to meet him in the hallway at a hotel with our 100 Million Mastermind group. He's an expert in entrepreneurship, customer relationships, team building leadership, marketing strategy.

He is the co-founder of the Rulon Group from 2000 to present. Pretty big on LinkedIn and Twitter. He's the world's leading authority for maximizing customer loyalties through radical generosity. After applying principles of generosity, John started selling the largest deals in Cutco history out of 1.5 million other reps and distributors. He's also the author of Giftology, the art and science of using gifts to cut through the noise, increase referrals, and strengthen retention. He's also the founder of The Ruling Group. It's exciting to have you here, brother. It's long overdue. You've read the book like three or four times.

We might as well have a conversation. Yeah, it's an awesome book, man, and you did an awesome speech here. What was that, about a month ago in Hollywood? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Dropping two love bombs to Aubrey Marcus and to Fleshman. You said you found that gal on Etsy? No, I found her through Andy Frazella. You know, Andy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first forum, his right hand guy for a number of years was Von Kohler, the pastor of disaster,

his co-host, who's literally a man of God, just solid dude. And he reached out to me. He's like, hey, I got somebody you need to connect with. And all of our vendors we find through referral. And so I checked her out, went to her house. She's working out of her garage. And I saw some of the stuff that she was producing and doing stuff for celebrities like Oscar de la Hoya. And I'm like, I want to start sending these $40,000 art pieces to guys like Vaynerchuk and whatever. And she's like, you know, I don't think she believed me, but we've started to do some pretty crazy ones like those two that we dropped that weekend. But yeah, I found her through word of mouth, like, you know, service providers, right? What do you recommend the person that you like, that you trust the person that you use? That what it comes down to we're not man this is the coolest podcast ever because i've had a lot of

best-selling authors i actually had michael gerber in here and i just love the concept i love the story you want to uh just share a little bit about your history kind of a little bit about your book and just where you've been and where you're going? Yeah. Well, what I'll say is people hear the word kako or gifts and they're like, I don't care about knives. What does this have to do with, you know, leading a company or service provider? I don't care about any of those sorts of things. So the core of what we really speak on is relationships. I grew up on a farm milking goats. I wasn't around affluent people. I wasn't around business owners or executives. I was like bailing hay in the summers. And my original mentor, when I went to go pay for med school, I got straight A's through school so I could not do, you know, I didn't want to bail hay or have, we had a one acre

garden. I split wood, the heater house with wood growing up, one of six kids. It was a law firm owner. And the reason he was a rainmaker was he understood relationship building. He showed up in uncommon ways for people in the community. And because of that, everybody loved him, trusted him. And he was the most top of mind person in the community. So he got all the referrals, all the deal access, the real estate that became the Walmart because he was likable because people loved him. And so when I pitched him, I interned

with Cutco, which if you've never pitched your girlfriend's dad knives, that's the weirdest, most awkward conversationational world paul was like i was thinking he'd have mercy on me maybe because he was so generous and you buy at christmas and you have these hundred two hundred dollar pocket knives that kakua made handmade pocket knives because they're all of his clients were dudes and to be outdoors hunting fishing camping and he's like john i don't want to order pocket knives i'm like uh okay i understand paul he's like no i want to order 100 paring knives and i'm like paul't want to order pocket knives. I'm like, okay, I understand, Paul. He's like, no, I want to order a hundred paring knives. And I'm like, Paul, you want to give a bunch of grown men dudes like a kitchen tool? Why? And he's like, the reason I have more referrals, access,

loyalty is I found out a simple truth in business. I don't care if it's an employee, a client, a center of influence, a partner, a referral source. If you take care of the family and that relationship, everything else will take care of itself. So I learned early on, it wasn't about the stupid knives. It's not about the chalk keys. It's not about any of that. If you show up in uncommon ways for your clients and your employees, what do they do? They go out and sell on your behalf. They go out and create word of mouth that you could never create. Most people take that for granted and wait for it to happen. And then they send an Amazon gift card after they got a referral. That's not a relationship. That's a transactional tit for tat. Paul was proactive and just loved on people. And because of that, he got a hundred times more referrals because he didn't

wait for them to happen. So the core of giftology is there's a system, there's a science, whether it's with your wife or your kids or your parents or your clients, human beings respond when you take care of their inner circle, which is their family respond when you take care of their inner circle, which is their family. When you take care of and personalize things, not with a logo, but with their name. And so we became masters. The reason I got to speak on stage at a mastermind with seven, eight, nine, 10 figure guys is because I poured into the relationship with Joel. I poured into the relationship with Dan and Kat, the event planner. Most people dump on the event planner. Kat's one of my best friends. She's amazing. And because I took care of her and the

people there, they wanted to have me on stage to teach this principle. And I was like, I'm not going to just take advantage of speaking and getting clients. I want to teach and I want to show people. And so I split the cost on both of those love bombs because I understood the value of relationships. So all of that stems back to being this kid that didn't have any connections, didn't have the right blue blood to be able to inherit wealth. I had to go like bootstrap it from the ground up. And the fastest way you grow a company is through humans and through relationships. Man, you dazzled me on stage.

You said, listen, everybody gets birthday presents. Everybody gets Christmas presents. Everybody, you know, Valentine's Day, you're always getting red roses. You said, and also you mentioned the gatekeeper, the secretary, the person helping a lot, the right-hand person. So many tips. I love the story of what you did in the hotel i met you at a different hotel but anyways let's talk a little bit about that let's talk about what the idea of giftology really means he looks younger than tommy mellow anyways let's talk about this because i'm

dude i'm obsessed with it now i've not not started doing it yet, but we're going to talk and we're going to figure out a way to work together. Yeah, man. Well, here's what I'll say is that in any other part of your business, you have a business plan, a finance plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, an operations plan, a SOP. You ask people, what's your relationship plan? If your business is going to rise and fall on your employees, your clients, your suppliers, and you don't have a plan on how you're going to show up and be different with those relationships

and emotionally connect to them, not just check a box and say, I sponsored this or I did Facebook ads. Then somebody else who has a plan for that relationship and is going to love on that relationship, it sounds woo-woo, but we respond emotionally to people that do nice things for us and show up in uncommon ways. So the core of giftology is just saying, take a percentage and make it a math equation. If you made a million

dollars last year net, I don't care what your revenue is. If you're a hundred million dollar company, but you only profited a million, take a percentage of that million dollars and reinvest it back into the relationships that allowed you to even make that million dollars. In our case, it's five to 15% is the benchmark. So 10% of a million is a hundred grand. And you ask people, Hey, when's the last time you hired two employees? They're like, we hired them last week. And I'm like, what did that add to your fixed cost overhead? And they're like about 125 grand every year. And I said, when's the last time you invested 125 grand into the 20 relationships that allow you to have a company? And they're like, never. Or they'll say, I take them to the Superbowl every now and again. I'm like, when's the last time you physically gave

them something that said you matter. And they're not a jacket with a logo on or a vest or a hat or a gift card, but a true artifact, a love bomb. And they're like, we've never done that. I'm like, exactly. And neither has anybody else in your industry. You want to stand out? Here's the little hinge that can swing this humongous door. You want more referrals? You want people to take your phone call faster? You want your employees to run through walls for you?

Show up for them and their family in a way that nobody else has. Like for us, our employees, all of them, we said, what would they never do for themselves? And one of them was house cleaning. Clean their houses, baby. Cost us two, three grand an employee per year people like how do you afford that i'm like the same way you afford when you hire somebody and you pay them a salary range or an hourly range of 45 to 55 grand that's a ten thousand dollar delta that you don't think

anything of you'll spend an extra 10 grand to hire somebody because you need the person when's the last time you took all of your employees and invested an extra five grand in them like we send mattresses that are five grand to our employees which one what kind intellibed is those are those good yeah they're freaking amazing ben greenfield who's like a biohacker guy he's a friend client he's the guy who wins like the spartan race and you know he was on Rogan's podcast three times. He turned me onto the company. They're made in Utah. They're U S made no chemicals, organic. It's like better than any of the other mattresses out there that are Tempur-Pedic and those kinds of 20 year warranty. Oh yeah. Purple's, I think they're good Silicon Valley marketers, but I wouldn't say that they're necessarily who I would. Um, you'm wondering, you spend six, seven, eight hours.

It's a 30 year life. Practically. It's kind of a big decision. So I was just curious. Yeah. For you and your spouse. So now you give something that their spouse is talking about to all their family and friends. You want to have a waiting list to come work at your company, do things that are braggable and talk about at mommy daycare at the school, at the board meeting, all those kinds of places. They're not going to brag that you got a bonus. Everybody gets a bonus. You start sending $5,000 mattresses to all your employees. They will tell that story.

And people will be like, how do I work there? How do I get my house cleaner? Like I have employees that their parents are doctors. And when they're at parties, what do they talk about? My daughter works at a company where she gets a house cleaner. It's a story worth telling. We all are looking for stories. Most people, it's like, oh, I offer 401k and health insurance. Really? Wow. Everybody does. That's table state. You start offering Casper or IntelliVet mattresses and house cleaning and loving on people. Now there's a story worth telling and now you have a waiting list to come work for your company. You know, I wrote down a few books that I think are really going to resonate with how my 2022 is going to look. Giftology, Dream 100, Blue Fishing, and Dream Manager. I love Kelly and I love Sims. I know all those guys.

Oh, I should say that. Dream 100, I don't know It's a portion of Chet Holmes though It's really started And yeah, it's amazing and I bought the book for like 100 bucks too Awesome, I love this Great, Matthew Kelly is wonderful We got to get him on your show

As long as he's not, and he's been fighting health issues For the last 10 years But talk about a great human Yeah, he's world class and he's been fighting health issues for the last 10 years, but talk about a great human. Yeah. He's world-class. You know, I'll tell you this. I've got a client of mine that spends over a million dollars a year.

And it's just interesting because I know he's got a million people and it's so easy to close these deals. I just, you know, what's really tough for me sometimes is, have you ever read Rocket Fuel by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters? I know the book. I've not read that one. just you know what's really tough for me sometimes is uh have you ever read uh rocket fuel by gina wickman and mark winters i know the book i've not read that one i've read traction we use traction for a lot of our companies but yeah i'm familiar with the concept i'm so high as a visionary i need integrators around me all the time and integrators and the best example in the beginning he talks about walt disney was such a high visionary but he needed an integrator which was roy and there's a test in it and everything and i'll tell you what

as these integrators are coming into my life it's all coming so much clearer like you know the other day people are like what do you go after what do you think who's someone you'd like to kind of compete with in the future and i said elon musk because he's the only guy, he's the biggest. I guess people say baby steps, but I'm like, no, I see a path to get there. And it's not a difficult path at all. I just need to find the right integrator. So I want to use you.

I just want to figure out how the process looks. Tell everybody how your business functions. Yeah, I mean, part of the business is speaking and consulting and teaching people, writing books and podcasts, all that kind of stuff. Because most people don't think that what we talk about, they don't even know it exists or that it matters. So I'm a visionary. I'm the ambassador. But my business partner's background, he's an integrator. And so a lot of people have good intentions of like, yeah, I should send out five thank you notes a day. I

should be sending love bombs to my top 100 or 1, relationships, but you know, it's hard, right? It's not hard to give one gift, one thoughtful thing to your spouse, but it's hard to scale thoughtfulness. So the core of our business is the done for you service. If somebody sends their, us their list of clients, partners, employees, anybody that's a key relationship, mentors, advisors, and then we help them select based upon the value of the relationships, the profit, the type of person they are. We help select what those love bombs are going to be. We handwrite the notes, we pick the gifts, we drop ship it, and we charge a flat fee per year to manage that process. So if somebody can give us, whether it's two relationships or 2000 relationships to love on,

as long as they're not looking to send, hey like hey what do you have for 37 to send to these affluent people i'm like a thank you note a handwritten note on a piece of steel like our thank you does cost nine dollars like you think somebody gives me a 25 amazon gift card they're gonna be blown away no they get that for free for signing up for some piece of software or anything so as long as somebody has high value relationships and wants to invest in the long-term, they can send us their list of people. And we charge 20 grand per year, approximately plus the cost of the gifts to send out things year round for their most valuable relationships. So there's things that integrate

like HubSpot works with send outCards, works with Mailbox Power. Are you familiar with those companies? Yeah. You know, there's what's called a heartfelt card. I actually spoke at one of Cody Bateman with SendOutCards events, and it's not enough. But, you know, it's funny because in blue fishing, Sims talks about just one day he was just at this really cool restaurant in, like, Italy, and he got 100 napkins with the recipe of some martini, bluefishing, Sims talks about just one day he was just at this really cool restaurant in like

Italy and he got a hundred napkins with the recipe of some martini and he just said, Hey, need to come check out this restaurant sometime. I'd love to enjoy it with you next time you're in Italy, but is it always gotta be worth money? And I'm not saying this cheap. I'm curious what your science behind it in the. Yeah. so there's nothing wrong with mailbox power. There's nothing wrong with send-out cards. I think there's a difference between an artifact and a touch. Like, you know, buying somebody a drink, that's a touch. Sending somebody a napkin, that's a touch.

Are they going to hold on to that and use that every day for the next 10 years? No. The piece of art that was $40,000 that we gave to Dan, he's going to have that on display. And everybody that comes over to his house is going to talk about that. He's going to see it every day subconsciously. That's an artifact. That's an anchor. What we help people do is send out artifacts and anchors.

There's nothing wrong with sending out brownies, but nobody's going to be talking about that five years from now. So our focus is on how do you send something to somebody that's memorable, that makes them tell a story and anchors that relationship. So most of the time people are like, hey, for my 10,000 relationships, I might be doing send out cards or I might be doing mailbox power. I might be sending napkins or whatever. But for my thousand that matter or my hundred that produce 80% of my results or the, my employees a few times a year or my suppliers that I wouldn't have a business without, I'm going to go all in a few times a year, or my suppliers that I wouldn't have a business without, I'm going to go all in a few times a year. And I'm not going to send them

a fun touch or a fun tchotchke or a piece of swag. I want to send them something that melts their face off. I want to send them something we're talking about 10 years from now. That's what we help do. So it's a different sandbox. We're playing in a blue lotion. There's a lot of people, if you want to buy t-shirts and mugs and pens, that's a promotional product. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not going to make somebody cry when they get it like Dan did, or like saw Aubrey's face, his jaw was on the ground. So that's a different, we're talking about two very different things that have two very different levels of revenue and results tied to it. So I made this, I don't know if you can see it but right there me

and my sister the caricature whatever yeah i made her and me one and it says we laugh we cry we make time fly we are best friends my sister and i you know that was kind of something i thought was cool but it wasn't very expensive i i think i got a deal. Hopefully she's not watching. I think I got a deal on Fiverr or Upwork or something, but I thought it was cool because I did that with the CEO of Service Titan for writing into my book and he's got it highlighted in his office. And I was looking up at him and I said, you mean the world to me. And that's some small stuff. I've done a lot more than that. So here's the thing, taking the reins and doing some one-offs that are fun like that, playful. It's not the people are like, oh, it's the thought that counts. No, it's the thoughtful thought. And that's not always the expensive thought.

Like in some cases, I've made billionaires cry with these things called artifact mugs. They're a couple grand. And I've had mentors write back to me and say, John, I've had people give me $50,000 watches. This mug is more valuable because of the story, the core values. Like you made me cry when I got this thing. So similar to like you respecting somebody and looking up at them and saying, you mean the world to me, like we all want our lives to have mattered. So it's, it's not just the expense, it's the detail. It's the connection to their core values. It's all of the little things that make it either land or not land. Our real goal is how do you make somebody feel emotional, but still scale that thoughtfulness? And so we have clients where, you know, like we have one that's in the financial services space,

and we did the same gift to a few hundred people that are all seven figure earners. And they got their referrals went up 107%. Why? Because they followed the recipe. They didn't spend the most money, but we're all looking for ways that we can appreciate and deepen relationships. And most of the time people either do swag or they do the crazy one-off that they can only do one of. And we're kind of in the middle of the tension, not the swag and trinkets and stuff, but also not the crazy one-off thing that you can't scale. We're like, how do you scale thoughtfulness? Well, here's the recipe. You got to personalize, you got to include them in a circle. You need to do it at unexpected time.

Like we have a blueprint. It's what, I mean, they go to, you know, your tribe goes to giftologysystem.com. What we charge tens of thousands of dollars to walk people through, they can go download the entire playbook. Then you have to go buy the book, you know, at Amazon, they can just download the playbook and it walks through like, how do you personalize something? Well, it better have their name on it, better not have a logo on it. Like the recipe is not rocket science. It's just most people cut corners and they get busy and they're visionary and they delegate it to some random person on their team. Like, Hey, we had a good year. You should probably say thank you to people or, Hey, we should do referral gifts. Hey, youie, here's 10 grand or here's $50 a person,

go do something. But they've never thought strategically how that actually lands and what kind of revenue that's going to produce long-term. They're just very reactive because they're busy doing the other parts of the business that oftentimes are more pressing. I had a guy on the podcast, and this is years and years ago, so I forget his name, but he, one of the most successful restaurants five years in a row in Canada. And he said, when they come in,

we asked them if they had 20 bucks, what would they do with it? Anything in the world. It could be buy chocolate, go to a movie, and then if they had a hundred bucks. So when they finish training, they get the $20 gift. And then after one year on their anniversary, they get the $20 gift. And then after one year on their

anniversary, they get the a hundred dollars. It could be, you know, whatever a hundred bucks is, but it's interesting. So you're saying take your profit and use anywhere from five to 15% of that to go after relationships and feed the beast. Yeah. To keep the relationship. People are like, oh, I don't have a retention problem i'm like great that's fine but you want to grow that relationship and hopefully cross-pollinate and get them to do more business with you the secret sauce is like you know the brooks brothers example with cameron harold i invested you know seven grand in brooks brothers clothing for him because he was a ceo consultant i found out he loved brooks brothersitted his hotel room. But then I continued to invest in that relationship with

$10,000 Cutco Knife Set and wine tools, whatever else. I invested 25 grand. Why? Because I wanted him to go and become an advocate for my brand. I couldn't hire him for $2 million to sell for me, but he went and did it because he was inspired to. And because of that, the return on relationship for us, 25 grand turned into seven figures. That's 50X. Show me a Facebook ad campaign where you get a 50X. There isn't one. It's humans. It's funny because I'm talking at the end, Fleshman's group. Fleshman, sorry. You know, elevator. Yeah. And I'm really trying to work on going after influencer marketing. We're doing a pretty good job.

This podcast gets anywhere from 20 to 30,000 downloads a month, which is great. I feel like I've got something to say and help people with. Let's just say I think I failed more in the home service industry. The failure is high. And I can save people a lot of time in failure. I've done a lot of failing. And I continue to fall down all the time. Me too. Yeah. You know know what here's the deal people are like last time you tried that you know you end

up blah i'm like yeah well guess what it's gonna come a lot more often you're gonna see me pick the wrong softwares at times hire the wrong people but i got heart and i gotta tell you you're not gonna remember the shots michael jordan missed more game shots to win the game. He missed way more than he made, but no one remembers those. So what are your thoughts on influencer marketing? Because you mentioned something like, you know, you got Cameron, which I actually had him on the podcast and I got his books. But what is your thought process on influencer marketing? I'm curious and how that relates

to giftology. Yeah, well, I think, you know, at the end of the day, every customer can influence somebody. So some people have millions of followers on Instagram. Some people are an influencer in a particular way within the industry, maybe the grandfather of X, Y, or Z, or they write a book, or I think there's a lot of different, I think sometimes people put influencer marketing in a certain category of like, it's the Kardashians. And that's one type of influencer marketing. But I think that at the end of the day, like influencer marketing is, you know, called micro influencers or whatever, somebody that has 5,000 of the right people following them or 10,000, that's a mom or whatever. I would say for home services,

there's probably a way that you could go razzle dazzle people that aren't necessarily having a million followers, but they have the 1000 to 20,000 that loving on those relationships would do more than trying to spend a bunch of money to go after these bigger people because the other people there's a tighter bond and a tighter trust there and it'd be a lower hanging fruit. If I was in your shoes. Yeah, it's great if the Kardashians post, but you want to spend a half a million dollars, get one post for them. It might do a lot for your ego and me too, but I would much rather have a Cameron Herald who doesn't have 10 million or a hundred million followers advocating for me behind the scenes in the right boardrooms. I mean, for you, if you're trying to roll up and

buy companies or depend upon what your end goal is, there may be other people that are more valuable than somebody that has the most followers. That's who I would be building and investing in and building a long term relationship with. I'm just taking a lot of notes here. Good thing. When I'm writing stuff down, it's a good thing. I think a lot about influencer marketing, micro influencer marketing. I mean, some of the thoughts that I'm having for influencers, some of them are referral partners and affiliates as well.

I mean, why would you ever paint an old garage door that's falling apart? So painters, pest control, bottom rubber on the garage door, number one entryway of the bugs, latest one, moving companies. You're moving into a brand new house. The last people have the code to the keypad and the old clickers and the cars go in so i think there's so much i put a lot out on this podcast i'll put my whole game plan exactly i'll give you my playbook i wrote it all down you know i give it all out there and i'll give them exactly our budget next year they just finished it because i'm not part of that because my goals are way different than people's.

No, no, no. They call them Tommy goals and they've got the real life. So I've kind of figured this stuff out, but I'm very interested. I get 10,000 clients a month, 10,000 customers. Would you say take a percentage of that and just depending on how much they spend, give something to each of them and not ask for anything in return? It's nice when they leave us an online review or a testimonial, but I't know the best way what's the process do you think on that yeah well i don't know what's the high end and low end on what they're you know the 300 versus 20 000 but it's a one-time purchase thing nobody's like i can't wait to buy my next garage drawer unless they got multiple houses you know. So I would say that a handwritten note to any of them, a truly not one that looks printed, but an actual handwritten note to any

of them could be powerful. But I would say out of the 10,000, I would narrow that down and test out doing something with your top, you know, the 500 that are in the neighborhoods you want to be in, or the 500 or a thousand that are investing a thousand or 10,000 or whatever else. Cause they do have multiple homes. They probably live in a neighborhood where other people are always upgrading and taking care of things. You know, the 80, 20, I would narrow it down to your top percentage and go all in on something thoughtful versus sending like a key chain to everybody or a mouse pad or whatever else. Like I think when you're dealing with affluent people, they don't need more crap, but they all could use a thoughtful artifact.

So let's just say I could get, I can find out every HOA president in Phoenix and every 19 other States. I can find out the HOA president. I can find out the largest, like the city of Gilbert. I can find out the admin and send them. Yeah. I don't have relationships with them,

but those are the ones you want relationships with, right? Because if you can post cool stuff into a Facebook group with 70,000 people that is getting the city of Gilbert, what's going on? What are your thoughts on that versus, of course, keeping relationships is very important. Employees are super important, but what is your take on going after kind of cold relationships? I used to do a lot more cold marketing than I do now. Now, 80, 90% of my budget, if not more, is going towards warm market. And the reason is, is when I take somebody that's already paying me money and I pour gas in on that fire and inspire them to become a sales rep, they bought their own gift, but I'm now taking a relationship that was warm and making it hot. It's hard to take a relationship that's cold and make it even

warm. So I think most people are focused on new blood. If they would take care of the relationships of people in their sphere and turn them into sales reps, they would have to do a lot less cold marketing. If I was you doing cold marketing, I would start a separate podcast and I would start interviewing the HOA president, or I would start interviewing the person who's in charge of the city of Gilbert or whatever, and ask them to come on your show and pick their brain about things versus sending them a gift. As much as I'd love for you to send gifts all over the country to cold people, I think you'd do better off honoring them and getting their wisdom as a leader of a community and figure out a way to make it relevant for the other people. So by the time you've done 100 episodes,

now other people are wanting to be on your show that are in that same demographic. I think you'd land your Dream 100 a lot faster that way than sending stress balls and mouse pads and the stuff that Chet... The only disagreement I had with Chet Holmes on the Dream 100 is he would say he's a world-class business sending tchotchkes. That's not congruent. Yes, he was top of mind, but he was top of mind annoying. Well, it's kind of like, yeah, so I bought, and I still have them, about a couple hundred Rubik's Cubes. And I'm still puzzled why we haven't met yet.

And then are you measuring, you got this stuff on your head. Are you measuring the results of your current company? And it is kind of annoying, but it's thoughtful and it's kind of top of mind awareness. If somebody sent you a tape measure or somebody that had an amazing podcast that was interviewing service providers, reached out to you and said, Hey, I love what you're doing. I'd love to have you on my show. Which one do you think would be more effective? You know, it's interesting. I know guys that actually build it. All they do is they build podcasts and it's so important. I just think

retention is, is just, there's so many people that are chasing the next best thing where they're, they're losing three out of the back every time they get a few. And it's like, hit the nail on the head. You know, someone someone once told me it's like someone that's a marathon runner instead of giving them 200 bucks for christmas get them a really nice pair of shoes that they're going to use every day when they put those shoes on they go man that guy i really love that company i love that guy and it's just those reminders. And you spent probably $120 versus $200. So you got $80 of value net. And instead of $200 getting spent on bills, because cash just goes out the door.

And people take for granted the payment that they get cash-wise. Oh, they go spend it on bills. Yeah, you're right. The marathon example is, if you can do that at scale for your people, for your clients, three years from now, they're still being reminded that somebody actually gave a rip about them. And yeah, we all want to be top of mind. Like the reason people have Facebook ads or banners or billboards or magazine ads is you want views. You want impressions. If I have something in your home that you're using

every single day i get an impression per day for the next 10 years that's 3600 impressions the clients that own space in somebody's home in a thoughtful way win against the people that don't like a charcuterie board i mean if it's a really nice one i mean we send out some 300 ones that are made from bourbon barrels that are personalized with somebody's last name and family and whatever else but if it's a cheap tchotchke one no when you're dealing with affluent people they want one of the best not a hundred mediocre things if i send you an apple watch and you have a rolex on your wrist what's going to happen to the apple watch? It's getting re-gifted. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I send you the nicest Lululemon shirt with giftology, are you going to wear it? Probably not. You're going to re-gift it. You're going to wear your

own brand. So it's not just what you're sending. It's the quality of what you're sending. It's the timing of what you're sending. It's the way it's personalized. If you send somebody a cheap pair of running shoes and they're into running, what do they do? They give them to goodwill or they put them in a closet and forget about them. it's it's all of the little things that make it either land and be like dang this person gets it and gets me or this person checked the box and sent me something off of amazon because they thought i was into bourbon and they sent me a 30 bottle of bourbon meanwhile i only drink hundred dollar bottles of bourbon. So the intentions behind it are important. But if you say you're a world-class brand and then you give sucky things, you're confusing the message and you're actually spending money to subconsciously undermine yourself.

You know, it's interesting because I got a lot of bottles of people got me and I'm like, they must think I'm a raging alcoholic. So I was going to ask you, you know, PR is something we all earn media, right? We try to go after our media. I think that's a good thing to do. Like, for example, we ask every customer, one of the things I teach people is never, ever, ever say it would be great if you left me a review because the company's looking for it. Say, listen, I make it part of my performance pay and how many reviews you get. And I say, listen, obviously the company wants to get good reviews, but we got a contest going this month.

And I always talk about five out of five service. Did I give you five out of five service today? It would really mean a lot to me personally, if you wouldn't have had a tip five minutes and then process that I'm going to clean up after myself, make sure everything going to run your door. I'm going to put our stickers, but it's the personal asking,

what is your thought on just reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, next door, stuff like that about asking for it. And you're not supposed to give people prizes to leave you good reviews, but what are your thoughts? Yeah. Well, I think that the way you ask for referrals or the way you ask for reviews matters. I think it's cheesy when people have it at the bottom of their email or whatever else, it feels desperate. But I think if it's a one-to-one communication asked with emotional intelligence, then I think it's baller. I think it's great. But I think if you ask the wrong way, it can come across as desperate, needy, cheesy, all of the above. I think that if you do, people expect the garage door to work, right? They expect the home that somebody builds to

have the siding put on straight. There's certain things that they just take for granted. The reason the gifting works, you know, to inspire a review is because it's unexpected. They're not expecting this handwritten note and ball or gift to show up out of the blue. They expect their garage door to work or their windows to, you know, not crack. But it's hard to be a service provider and do those things, but they take that for granted because that's what they're expecting. So I'd say the more you can do things and show up as a service provider in an unexpected way, it's like, it's like when you go to a hotel, it's the risk that they know that you love chocolate chip cookies and you're paying $400 a night for the room,

but they have a warm cookie waiting for you on your pillow. It costs them a dollar for that cookie, but that was the unexpected thing that made the client or myself say, dang, that's what inspires oftentimes the review, not the, you expect the sheets to be clean and the room to be nice and all that. It's the little things that make somebody say, wow, this person actually gets me, understands me, or went the extra mile to make me feel a certain way you're right yeah so like you know interesting book is raving fans about what you could do above and beyond and people don't care as much a lot of people unless you're walmart but people don't care about necessarily

the price as much they care about how they're treated there's this thing i'm sure you've heard it but no one will remember your price in five years, but you'll remember the way they made you feel. A hundred percent. I mean, I don't know if you've had Brian Scudamore from 1-800-GOT-JUNK on your... I did. Yeah, so he probably told the story of the moving company that he started. Do you know what was like their biggest differentiator in the moving company? I don't know.

They would call the day of moving. The moving guys would be on their way and say, Hey, we know you're probably all packed up. You got your coffee maker put away. We're going to swing by Starbucks. How do you like your coffee? I do the same thing. That's funny. And maybe I heard it from him, but the deal is never ask, what can I get you? I'm going to be here anyway. And I'm like, it's funny because at yesterday's meeting i talked for three hours in front of my new class and i said i made a joke i was like do you want a um frappuccino triple pump double pump a whip that i can't even keep track what people order these

days from starbucks but it's nice because there's another great book and i'm obsessed with books and i actually just showed somebody you're're familiar with influence Robert Ciarini. Oh, I quote Robert in my book. He's a, yeah, we've had some clients send him gifts. Yeah. This stuff is fantastic. Well, you know, the law of reciprocity, but it's also the dazzle effect. They go, this is funny.

So a few weeks ago, I had a guy that's in Detroit, Metro Detroit. And he said, him, I'm swinging by the apple orchard and picking up some apple cider and donuts. Did you want anything? And she goes, well, we have some apple orchard, but we ran out of donuts. Could you give me a couple dozen? And we listened to the call because everything's recorded through the system. And I was just smiling ear to ear because it was super cool. Anything you could do above and beyond for that dazzle. One of the things that I got the eight step sales process that works every single time. If it's followed to the T and the eighth thing is sell it right. What does that mean?

I finished the job. I took your check. Now I'm going to go over everything with you. I'm going to run the door three times. I'm going to smile. I'm going to show you the stickers. I'm going to give you the warranty information. I'm going to clean everything. I blow out the garage. And all that fires remorse on the eighth step, which is one of the most important is to say, listen, we cherish your business. We really appreciate it. It's so amazing that we got to work with you today. Let me go through everything. Because a lot of guys take the check and that's the last thing. The last thing they remember was handing out the money, then goodbye. Yeah. That's a huge step. People remember the beginning and that's the last thing. The last thing they remember was handing out the money and then goodbye.

Yeah. That's a huge step. People remember the beginning and the end. They forget in the middle. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's all. It's like speaking. They remember the opening comments.

Yeah. And then they remember the exclamation point at the end, like all the other stuff. So your eighth step is spot on. That's where you create the story and the wow. Yeah. The dazzle. As you call it call the dazzle it's if you ever i got so many things to talk to you about have you ever seen of anything like

that goes out and crawls the social media kind of tells you this guy likes elton john he loves baseball kind of can crawl through linkedin and facebook and instant all those things i know there's some software that will scan what's public to tell you what on their disc profile are they more dominant are they to tell you how to write to them i don't know on the the gifting side because a lot of the stuff that we do tends to be more higher level and it's not just hobby based and people are like well this guy likes golf and i'm like that's cool but is he married and they're like i don. And I'm like, that's the important thing. Because oftentimes the decision maker or the executive or the whatever is getting treated a certain way.

It's like, I want to take care of the inner circle. And that's not always determined. But I do think that in a more retail setting, being able to have some of that intel could be super impactful and important to be able to create common bonds or if you are able to figure out a way to to take that info and use it either pre during or post could be really really powerful so i think it's a smart question well i think it's powerful too to show up to a house to know that you love dogs and know that you know here's the thing is uh i told my guys never to talk about politics or religion but i was like if i did i'd be a trump fan or the republican and a bernie fan if i was a you know i just go along with it even though i lean a little bit inside but but imagine if you if all your people showed up automatically and they had in their tool belt something for a cat

and something for a dog the bones yes i'm saying like if i was in your business there's certain things that 80 of the time would be true. Right. And that's either a dog or a cat person and likely a dog person. But if you could find that out or just be prepared and then you're respectful to the owner because they treat their cats more like kids in a lot of cases. Plus, if you give my dog a crappy bone that I don't want him having, I don't know. He's crazy. That's what I'm saying. that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying so like the fact that you mean not crazy but she doesn't

want to have bad bad food no you're obsessed because that's like a family member oh yeah so imagine if if you're thoughtful enough to carry it that means you're a dog person if you're more respectful enough to ask and then you actually have like an organic treat it was a cost you if you were in bulk for all of your guys it would cost you 25 cents a treat or 50 cents a treat i guarantee if they are a dog person you ask they take the treat they will talk more about that stupid treat for their their dog than they will about anything else that you do that day you know what it It's true.

And getting a really good caliber. I've always asked myself, what can I do more? One of the things I said when all these, the new group started 25 technicians, I said, Hey guys, I promise you one thing. I've hit my goal. I can do what I want when I want with who I want. But I'll tell you guys, I want you guys, I'm very selfish because I want you guys to have a 750 plus credit score. I want you to own your home and a couple rentals. I want you to invest right now, especially into appreciating things. And I said, I want that

to be our calling card here as we change lives. When you go work there, I want this thing that you get this diploma from A1 Garage or Service to mean something and say, you hear about the salespeople at Enterprise. Ooh, that's really good. If they worked at A1 one day, I want this thing that you get, this diploma from A1 Garage or Service to mean something and say, you hear about the salespeople at Enterprise. Ooh, that's really good. If they worked at A1 one day, I want that to mean something very, very significant. That's my plan. That's my goal. But I love this. This is a piece that I've been missing for a long time.

You know, I'm just curious. A lot of people struggle being generous sometimes because people are listening right now and there's several people on this, 25 people right now, and there's lots of hunters going to see it. And they're going to say that's a great idea, but you know, they're not going to do it. Yeah. Well, I think that a lot of people struggle to get their spouse or significant other one person like, ah, I'm not good at it. And what they don't realize is it's a lot of guys are more blockers and tacklers. They're very linear. They want to check the box. Women in general are more emotionally intelligent than guys are.

And so they delegate it. They don't think it's important. They think it's woo-woo. They think it's hard stuff. And they don't realize that like the end of the day, the relationships matter and that this is a way for them to differentiate themselves in the marketplace with their relationships, employees, clients, all that. But it feels weird.

It feels awkward. It feels uncomfortable because they're not used to doing it. And if somebody's not going to do it for them, they're just going to go knock on some more doors or go run down a few more doors or whatever else. Because I think that tends to be how a lot of leaders that are type A driven, this feels like, well, what if I spend the money and I look silly? What if I spend the money and I don't get what I want? What if I, so all the doubts creep in. And frankly, if everybody was really good at what we're talking about, it would just be marketing noise. The fact that it's not is why it's such a little thing that can swing this huge door is because most people, they suck at it. They do the gift cards. They do the obligatory stuff for the holidays.

They do the transactional things because almost every marketing book on the planet, every branding book in the planet tells you, you got to put your logo on it. This is when you should do things. This goes against the grain of everything and feels really weird, awkward, uncomfortable. Feels like it could be, you know, you made $10 million last year and you're going to invest 10%. That's a million dollars. What if it doesn't work? You've made revenue or this is profit, right? Profit. Okay. So let me ask you something.

The rule of thumb I tell people, good number to spend in marketing is 10%. Do you throw this? Let's see. If you're saying put 15% and you're at a profit of 15%, what is that? That's about 2.25%. So would you get some of that from your marketing or would you just add it out and say, if you were just a financial advisor, and I know this isn't your realm of, you know a lot, but I'm just saying,

what bucket do you put that under? You throw it under marketing. You throw that under what is it? Retention? Maybe. I think it's a little bit of everything. The goal would be to redirect dollars from biz dev marketing, sales, retention, HR, look at all of those buckets and say, can I take a point here and two points there? You can still do the other things, but it should be budget neutral to start. It should be like, oh, I'm just going to add this huge extra cost. But a lot of times people are investing dollars in, I mean, think about what, you know, to recruit people

or to get a new client. Most people are investing significant amounts of money in those buckets, redirect the dollars that you're already spending and see, can you get a better lift and a better leverage point by doing something that nobody else is doing? I had a guy come in and it just happens to be sitting here that got me a vinyl player and he got me, it's pretty cool, a record player and the Beatles. Michael Jackson. I love Michael Jackson. It's pretty interesting. So I'm curious, how much does your largest client spend on gifts a year? Seven figures.

I don't know if this is too personal, but around how many clients are you dealing with on this? A few hundred. I mean, we're not huge, but we have clients from solopreneurs to the Chicago Cubs. But our sweet spot is small to midsize companies. It's companies that are sub $100 million companies.

Because you're not like publicly traded companies, you're dealing with a decision maker that just cares about the next quarter and they don't want to get fired. When you're dealing with business owners that are their neck on the line, they care about human beings typically a little differently than the publicly traded ones. And you're the only $10 million company or a $20 million YPO or EO guy or gal that cares about relationships. And they're like, you know what? I know how I feel when I get treated this way. I want my employees, my clients, my mentors, my advisors. And when they see us on stage, they're like, yeah, I'm going to redirect some of my dollars I'm already investing in. I'm going to invest it this way instead of just hiring a few more people or instead of spending another hundred grand a month on Facebook ads, I'm going to reinvest it this way. What is the problem with automation? And is there a problem with automation? I think that it depends on what the automation is doing. I think if when you're trying to create a human to human connection,

automation can feel very cold and stale. For example, look, if I wrote a handwritten letter and I basically just had a pen to it, there's CNC machines that write it. But if I just sat down one day and wrote all my letters for the year and they hit on certain dates, is that

crazy no i don't think it's crazy i think i'm just curious i think there's i think there's some things that you do that i think it's the most valuable relationships oftentimes don't scale like the art piece i did for question i can't do a thousand of them automated, but do I have to do all of my things that way? No, that's an atomic level of bond. I think there's room for the crazy one-offs that are not scalable. You can't automate them. I think there's room for the automated. And I think there's room for a hybrid where the automation helps pull the information that allows you to do the personalized thing that a human makes a decision on so i think to say it's black or white it's this or that like like a lot of things it's there's a gray area of like tension of like in some cases it's okay to do it this way but in other cases it's

okay to go against the grain and do something that's not very scalable does that make sense no no yeah no i'm following you it heartfelt, you want to give some really good Gifts I think there's some that people are just like I don't know, I don't want to say this Because people give me Christmas cards But, you know, my sister when I go to her house She's got about a thousand Christmas cards

Up of everybody And it's their family, it's their family bragging about their family I don't know, look, I got a bunch of Christmas cards Of my nieces and nephews because it means a lot to me for some things. And I'm not saying don't send them to me for all you out there. No, but if somebody took the time to write you a note in the middle of March and said, hey, Tommy, this episode, like you changed my life because of this, this, and this versus an automated Christmas card, what would you rather get? Yeah, well, those, and I get them via text message, Facebook message, your LinkedIn all the time.

And it means a lot to me still, because we're fighting the good fight and hopefully kind of give somebody a better relationship with their kids and family, hopefully. Yeah. That's the goal. That's the goal. I mean, at the end of the day,

whether you're in garage doors, whether you're in pest control, whether you're in manufacturing, refrigeration, pro sports, it all has to do with human beings. And we all want our life from a legacy perspective, but mattered and impacted people. I don't care what your business is at the end of the day, it comes down to human beings. And I think sometimes when we're scaling business as a type A leader, we sometimes can forget. I think you tapping into the dream manager and realizing you want to help their dreams come true. Because if you help their dreams come true, guess what?

They run through walls and they help make the company's dreams come true. It's like, I don't care if you're in Idaho or Africa, that mindset works because it's a human connection. And all we're doing is the physical gift. Nobody cares about it. It's the delivery vehicle for an emotion that says you matter.

And when you do that consistently over and over again, you end up with an army of ambassadors, whether they're employees or clients or potential acquisitions that are like, I like this guy. I like this gal because they care about me as a person or they at least go out of their way to show me that I matter. What is your favorite story? I mean, that's a big one there with the Brooks Brothers, but what is your favorite story i mean other than that's a big one there with the brooks brothers but what's your favorite story of a client just an earth-shattering touching emotional story that you can share with us and then i got a couple last questions to close us out but you got

a few minutes yeah i would say that i mean the artifact mug for me personally was one of the most impactful things anybody's ever done for me because I used to make fun of the corporate coffee mug is the worst gift on the planet and then this artist emailed me blindly and said I read your book 20 times I've listened to 80 of your podcasts and long and short of it he made me and my wife use a $2,000 mug and hand delivered it drove nine and a half hours for a five-minute meeting made me cry made my wife cry get up staying at our house that night my wife doesn't let anybody stay at our house. We got three, not four daughters. And we since partnered with him and I've made, I just took that same mug and spoke at a YPO event out in Orange County. And you're talking about guys that are all billionaires. And we give one of

these mugs that honored this guy and his dad. I mean, bald like a baby. I mean, it was like, why? I mean, by a thousand of anything, you know, it's interesting because you said start a podcast for clients, but I started, I read this book right here.

It's a newer book. He's coming on my podcast. His name's Kelly. It's called everyone's an influencer. And, um, they haven't read it yet. I recommend it.

But anyway, I was reading it and I'm like, you know what? A lot of people want to know what's going on behind the scenes here. You know, this podcast generally is very, very upbeat. I'm talking to guys, bestselling authors with amazing, really a big fan of yours.

So I can't believe we get to hang out. It's been a pleasure. But what I love about the idea of a podcast of having my top trainer and some of my other trainers and just a new guy coming in and say, hey, what's your experience been? And, you know, hey, we had to let somebody go or a guy ended up starting his own business or whatever. But it's filled with a little bit more everyday drama. And also kind of what ends up happening is the employees' wives start listening to it. Future employees listen to it.

It just seems to be, for me, I was like, man, this could be a culture thing. People could hear our story. They could hear. It's not always good what goes on. I don't feel like I work a day in my life, but I started a podcast and it's called the Ask Tommy Podcast. So we answer some questions and then we ask questions about call center. so we'll ask like 10 questions about call center and then i'll get my call center manager maybe a csr join us and i love that because it could be in person too so it doesn't have to be on zoom all the time so it's taking your same approach of getting the home warranties and hoa presidents but i'm actually doing it

for my internal customers i think it's a beautiful thing i think it's. I think it's a beautiful thing. I think it's smart. I think it does build culture. It does provide interesting content. And it probably provides some insight for you as you're leading the company. Like, oh, dang, I didn't know that. I didn't realize it was going that way. I mean, as a leader, to have insight when you have dozens or hundreds

or thousands of people out there, it's hard to be able to have a pulse of what's going on. I mean, Vaynerchuk has it. He has, he calls it one 37. It's for the entire company. And they bring on interesting people and whatever else.

Like, I think what you're building as smart, I think a lot of other people are probably going to try to emulate it. But at the end of the day, you can't, you know, your heart is unique and how you show up. So it's,

uh, I made a new guy every day that says, hey, I started a garage tour business. I love it. The way I see it is maybe we could work together in the future. Exactly. There's so many opportunities right now.

It's like, look, I'm definitely a dreamer and I'm having fun doing it. And I got to say, your book is just killer, man. I got it on Audible. I got the copy. I didn't even search my shelves because I had to put another shelf over there because, and I'll tell you what, there are books that I don't read. I get through a couple pages and I'm just like, this book's not for me. So it's not like every single one of these, but your book's marked up. And the theory behind this is so cool. I want to learn the process just to know the process. I want to understand what's

behind it, you know, and I can't wait to do this stuff. And I don't know what I've waited for. Honestly, there's no particular reason except for, I can say I'm busy, but you know, the trainer's going to be here in 30 minutes. So I got a great book too, on the shelf, it's over here called Off Balance on Purpose by Dan Thurman. And it's literally, there's no such thing. People say, just want to work life balance. I'm like, yeah, okay, great. Good luck. Because you want a great relationship with your kid and your family.

You want to work out twice a day. You want to have the best work life, the best rewarding job. You also want to meditate for a couple hours a day. And then you want to praise the Lord 10 hours a day. You just can't have all five. No. Yeah. Have have you met dan before have you had him on the show no i haven't had him on the show yet he came and spoke in an event i was at five years ago you know him yeah he runs in some of the same circles man one of the things i really like about this 100 million mastermind or whatever is the network it's so powerful it's just so powerful

and i'll tell you this i was actually friends with their partners with josh snow josh alici since 2012 and i didn't know about it and then jim do actually was the one that got me involved in it really yeah so small world man i'm telling you it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller i'm super excited though because there's no limits there's no limits like i went in with brandon over there with the uh the crypto uh the movie movie so i think he's one of the smartest guys i've ever seen at crypto so So I went in pretty deep. I'm not going to lie. Did you, personal question, you don't have to tell me, I guess, but I did go in on Icon Mills pretty deep, as deep as they would let me.

What are your thoughts on that? I mean, anything that Joel and Dan are involved with gets my attention. I'm not a big investor in food. That's not my lane. I have a company right now that I'm pretty heavily invested in, and I'm not a big investor in food. Like that's not my, my lane. I have a company right now that I'm in pretty heavily invested in and I'm going to become president of the company on top of this and on top of giftology it's in the e-com world. And so we own 10% of the company and it's,

it has 10 figure exit potential. So I've doubled down on some other investments. So I did not do icon, but not because I don't think it's, I mean, the guy who's leading it, I was impressed with. And Joel's ruthless when it comes to getting valuations and getting special. Yeah. I figured this was an early one and they're not going to let an early one. These guys, what they're trying to build.

You know, we started a group called Garage for Freedom. And it's so cool because it's about 60 companies that showed up, I'd say 60, 70. And not one of them left us, so they're not going to join. But I got to tell you this, it's a buyer's group slash best practices. And I can tell you, it's crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy to see what's going to come out of this thing. Literally, there's a lot of companies that already approached just over 20 that want to partner with us in some shape, way or form.

And I feel like that's just the beginning. I feel like there's gonna be a thousand companies. In fact, I think this could be if we wanted to an IPO of some sort, but that's not where I want to go with it. But here's the thing. I'm having a show out here in April or May it's going to be. And a lot of people don't know about it yet, but it's another

it's called Vertical Track. It's the second show we're going to have for Garage Door Freedom. And I need some crazy badass speakers. Do you think I can talk you into it? Obviously, I know you have a fee for this stuff and your time is important, but do you think I can convince you to come to Phoenix for that for a day?

Possibly, depending upon the details, the date, and some of the other structure of it. I mean, I cap my speaking at 20 times a year because I have four little ones at home, and speaking isn't my primary revenue driver. We charge a lot because I need to go produce for my companies. But if it's not me, I'm open. I mean, I've helped Jesse Itzler book seven speaking gigs. I open doors for a lot of other speakers if I'm not a fit fee-wise or the date doesn't work or any number of things. Because some of the guys are into speaking 200 times a year. That's just not my... I'm a business owner who happens to speak, not a speaker. So it went really good. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I think it would be pretty cool, but I always ask three questions at the end of the podcast. Number one is if someone wants to reach

out to you, they want to just touch base personally with you. What's the best way to do that? My personal email is john at giftologygroup.com so they can shoot me a direct message i may not be the one that walks them through the plan or the strategy or whatever else because that's i'm more the visionary guy like you that talks you know going to the moon but that is my personal email they can also follow me on you know at john ruin on instagram or whatever else but that'd probably be the most direct route. So next thing is if there's three books that really stand out to you recently that really moved you in a good way, it doesn't need to be self-help. It could be fiction for all I know,

but is there any three books that you could recommend? Well, dude, I mean, the ones that you're talking about right now, the dream manager is definitely one of them. Like, I think it's fantastic. Never lose a customer, Joey Coleman. If you've not read that one, it's fantastic. And then on the health side, if anybody was looking to understand how to control their weight or how their body works,

the obesity code was a mind blower for me. Super, super powerful. Oh, gotta buy it. And then finally, listen, we talked about a lot of stuff today. I want to give you a few minutes to maybe leave us with a final thought, maybe go to action, just whatever it wants to do. Maybe we didn't talk about it. Maybe we did, but I'll give you the last few minutes to close us out. I would just say that sometimes when people hear about what we're talking about, it can be overwhelming. It's like, where do I even

start? I think that there's a cool buzz around the idea of gratitude. There's gratitude journals, Tim Ferriss bought 10,000 of the five-minute journals, which is fantastic. Gratitude, writing it down. If every day you wrote down three people you're grateful for, clients, partners, investors, mentors, past people, at the end of the year, you'd have a thousand people that you'd need to show gratitude to. And gratitude. I think people write it down. Maybe they send a note, maybe they don't, but gratitude to me is an action. It's not just a feeling. People leave a lot on the table by saying, well, I feel grateful. It's like, well, then go fricking do something with it. Send a video, write a note, send a gift,

go meet with the person, whatever, but don't let it just be a feeling. And even just start with a list of 10 people. It doesn't have to be thousands. But I would say that even for a lot of small to mid-sized companies, even large companies like Microsoft, you look back through their history, there was 100 relationships that probably made the difference in that company becoming what it was. It was a Warren Buffett mentor. It was a handful of people. And so don't make it like, oh, I can never do

that. I have 10,000 clients. It's like, well, then don't do 10,000, do 100, do 50, do 10, but do something. If you believe that relationships matter, then show up. Don't do it halfway and go all in. And I always challenge people, do this, commit to whether it's 5%, 10%, 15%, go all in on your relationships reinvesting-wise and do it for three years and come back and tell me it didn't work. I've been doing this for 21 years. I've never had anybody that's committed to this for three years that hasn't come back and said, John, that's changed my relationship. It's changed my business forever. Because when you show up in uncommon ways for people and love on your relationships, they flourish. If you don't, then they're mediocre and they flounder.

That's it. Dude, I'm blown away. Literally, I'm really just fortunate that I got to meet you. And I'm kind of a first mover usually. I jump in head first and I haven't done this yet. So I'm going to get ahold of you. We're going to set up 2022 the right way. You're absolutely phenomenal.

Thank you so much for doing this. I know you're a busy guy. I'm very excited to hear where you go with your businesses. I'll be seeing you soon, hopefully, but appreciate everything and hope you have a fantastic week. Tommy, thanks for having me, bro. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Bye. See you later. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast.

From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five

sentences. Tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's home service, millionaire dot com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank

with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.