Episode 79 - The Science of Radical Giftology with John Ruhlin
Everyone has a story about receiving a gift they had no interest in, but do any of us know if we’ve ever given a gift that someone else didn’t want? This is exactly the situation John Ruhlin wants to help you avoid. John is the author of Giftology, a book that teaches the science of “radical generosity.” He has helped countless companies boost their referrals, retention rates, and ROI, and our interview with him was a gift in and of itself!
John has helped people accelerate relationships with their teams and the people they serve, and he has gifted on behalf of everyone from Forbes Magazine to Fortune 500. His principles lead to appreciative responses and oftentimes a relational and ROI impact that is well beyond what any of us could have imagined.
Having been the recipients of John’s gift-giving in the past, our hosts were excited to talk to him, and we think you’ll enjoy all he had to share as well!
Useful Links:
How John Ruhlin Became Known as the Gifting Expert
It’s Likely That Your Favorite Nonprofits Want ‘Gifts,’ Not Just Checks. Here’s the Difference
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Henry [00:02:42] Welcome back to Faith Driven Entrepreneur. We've got John Ruhlin live in his studio, which is raising our game. We're grateful for that. John, welcome.
John [00:02:50] Thanks for having me, guys.
Henry [00:02:51] Super excited to have you on. If you've been a longtime listener in favor of not for you know that I get all geeked out with all things with giving. I came to faith at age 28. I had my born again again moment at age 38 when I met Daryl Heald, at generous giving. And he just completely said, my faith walk on fire by challenging me, by asking me this simple question, why do you give? And that sent me back to scripture in a way that I came to understand that I was creating the image of a God who loved me so much that he gave me that gift of life. Now an eternal. And I can think of no guest that embodies that message and their heart, their life in their passion and their mission. Then, John Ruhlin and John, you've done it so well for so long. I'd love for you to start off, though, and tell us who in the world is John Ruhlin before you tell us what you do now?
John [00:03:42] Yeah, well, history wise, I didn't grow up on either coast that he grew up in the cool New York City, Burrowes or anything.
[00:03:48] I grew up in Ohio milking goats every morning. One of six kids. We had a one acre garden with 15 acres of hay. We heat our house with wood. It was like, you know, the ultimate Davy Crockett kind of Daniel Boone kind of story.
[00:04:00] I hated blue-collar work and want to get out of Dodge. So I got straight A's all through school. My dad was working three jobs, including farming, just to kind of make ends meet. And I was like, I want to go not have to bale hay when everybody's going swimming.
[00:04:14] And so the only people I knew that made money were doctors or lawyers. Like I was kind of limited scope of the world. They know an entrepreneur was. So I went, that's gonna be a doctor. And so undergrad, I end up interning with cutco knives, the crazy knife company. And I know what cutco was. I didn't know anything about it. I just knew a buddy of mine who was going to seminary, who is not a salesperson was crushing it. And I was like, if Steve Wiggers, the antithesis of a salesperson, can sell these knives, then maybe the training's good. Maybe I can try it. So I said, I'll commit to doing everything I can to put a hundred percent into it for six weeks and my life changed. I was about 20 at the time and my fourth appointment I pitched my girlfriend's dad, which is a weird. You never pitched your girlfriend's dad anything, let alone knives. You haven't lived. That's one of the more awkward. You know, before church kind of conversations. But Paula's this radically generous person. This is how it wasn't tactical. He was an attorney, but he also owned oil wells, banks the about the real estate that magically became the Wal-Mart. And he was always giving things away. And so I thought maybe lot have mercy on me and by pocketknives or all of his clients. And I'm 20. I'm green is all can be a mike. He's got like financial advisor, insurance companies, whatever. Also, Mike, Paul, what do you think? Now, mind you, this is the second time in two weeks I'm pitching a nice one time. He bought a set for all of his daughters who aren't even married yet and himself. And then he came back to me, said, John, I to help you hit your goals. I love the product. What else can I buy? And so he looked back at me. Five sixty at the time. Salt, pepper. I said, John, I don't want to order. Pocket knives were paring knives. I'm like, Paul, you want to give a bunch of grown men, CEOs like million dollar to billionaire companies, like they're all a bunch of dudes. Why we wouldn't give them a kitchen tool. It's like my limited, very like chauvinistic mindset of twenty. That's his farm kid. And he said, John, in thirty five years in business. The reason I have more deal flow access referrals.
[00:06:06] The reason my business thrive is that I found out one simple truth, and that's if you invest and take care of the family and business, everything else seems to take care of itself.
[00:06:15] So that was my lightning bolt moment at 20. And I looked at Paul and I'm like, I want to be him when I'm 60, some 20. I got 40 years here, so I don't know what to do. So I'm mimicking Paul. And so I would invest as a 20 year old. I'm investing like $3 in cutco carving sets and I wait in my dorm room, package them up with a little handwritten note. I'd put the CEO's name on it, whatever else, and say, carve out five minutes for me. I promise to be worth your time. And so I mail it off like it's in a million. Our company I want to get a meeting with two weeks later, the assistant calls. I walk into the boardroom skipping class because I have class at the time and the CEOs like sixty five expecting somebody in their 50s, some seasoned sales executive, and then walks me at twenty one with like the one suit I have and the guy's like are you the John ruling. This sent me the knives on my guest series. Like I thought you'd be like fifty five. Like I'm confused. Are you here to sell me knives. And I nervously laugh and I'm like No sir, I'm here to help you. And your thousand sales reps do exactly what I did to you, to your top ten thousand relationships and the jaw hit the ground. He's like, you're really good. And so we talk back and forth for about an hour. And I walked out of that meeting with appeal for a thousand knife sets cutco red flag. They thought I'd stole credit card. They died. There's no way anybody orders your insurance company worth a thousand knife sets. And I'm like, you don't understand. It's not about the knives or using these knives to deepen relationships and to drive referrals and to create what we call active loyalty, all the other things. And then like we're a knife company, we're not a loyalty company. I'm like, well, actually, you can't be a loyalty can't be. So I walk through this message. They don't believe me. It takes me a year to convince them. But by the time I was a senior in college modeling these what I now call gift allergy marketing principles and really it's all biblically base. Not only what I saw Paul do out of cocoa is about a 70 year old company, kind of like the Rolex of cutlery. They're high and they're not cheap. They're handmade in New York, out of a million and a half people that have walked through their doors. We became their number one distributor in the history of the company. By the time I was a senior in college, not because I'm the best salesperson, because if you just saw my awkward like country boy at 20 years old with the Mickey Mouse, I literally you'd realize it wasn't about me. It was about modeling these what I now call radical generosity in business, the same way that most people treat their family or their church or their charity. And it was really modeled off of Paul and developing a process in the system so that companies Sagi into putting med school on hold permanently. And I was like I'd go at half a million dollars in debt to go to med school for the next 12 years. Or I could start an agency where we help, you know, from entrepreneurs that are doing a million dollars a business to $20 an hour companies. Nobody on the planet is teaching people how to use radical generosity to turn their relationships into salespeople for them.
Rusty [00:08:55] Yeah. So I was going to go to this whole idea of gift giving, which I think is fascinating. Like, you know, your clients figured it out, right? They said, hey, there's a real power in putting these gifts out. And now you've figured it out. Is there something emotionally or psychologically that goes on with the whole gift giving process?
John [00:09:14] Yeah, there's no question that the psychology has been studied. But, you know, people way smarter than me. They have PTSD, like Robert cardini wrote the book Influence and has talked about it for years, for decades that, you know, guys wired us when you do something nice for somebody, whether you're a believer or not. Like we oftentimes want to reciprocate back. And when you do something that's tangible, like we're all visual, like as human beings and you see that tangible item. I don't even call him gifts any more. I call him artifacts because most people gift is a gift card, a bottle of wine, a fruit basket, a jacket with your logo on it. That's not a gift. That's a promotional item. But if you give somebody a true gift, whether it's like in marriage, you give somebody a ring. Why?
[00:09:54] Because it's a tangible representation and it's a tangible top of mind. Reminder that when you travel or whatever else, like I'm committed, it's an outward thing, but it's also an inward reminder. In the Old Testament, you have kings giving other kings like a thousand head of cattle or frankincense or gold or myrrh. Because the representation of what you're giving, you give based upon the value of the relationship.
[00:10:17] And so psychologically, if you do a million dollars in business with somebody and they send you a bar of chocolate with their logo, you're basically communicating that you don't matter, which is not a great way to deepen relationships and get referral and have loyalty and have somebody run through walls for you. So people like John, I do the gifting thing. It doesn't work. I spent a million dollars on it with yeilds Chomsky's and and whatever else. So, Mike, you're not doing gift ology. You're doing the same marketing craft that everybody else does in the world. And you're actually devaluing your. Relationships, so psychologically you're sending out gift cards, everybody, and saying you weren't important enough for me to think about you and you a actual tangible gift. So go pick out your own gifts. Like, imagine if you did that with your wife or your husband. Like that just doesn't work. It doesn't deepen the relationship. And people forget whether you're a widget manufacturer, whether you're technology, whether you're Google, all business is based on relationship. It's one human to another human like. That's why when somebody sends a gift, they're like, John, we just wanted to send it type thing. And I'm like, do you want it to actually, like produce a 10x or a line? Like, Well, of course we do not like within. You need to have a handwritten note, go with it, because otherwise if it's typed out and signed from the team, what does that communicate? This was automated. Relationships are automated. And so if you want to build value with your thousand employees and your thousand clients, your 10000 referral partners or affiliates. I don't care who it is. People say, John, does this work? I only have a half mind our business. John, does this work? I have a $15 an hour manufacturing company. My question is, does it have human beings in it? No. Yeah. Then it works. You know, we're all humans. I don't care if you're in Africa. I don't care if you're in, you know, like Saudi Arabia. I don't care if you're in China. Like if you have human beings and relationships are important to you, then the tangible way that you show that they matter is one of the most valuable things that you could possibly do. And yet in business, especially type-A males, we think it doesn't matter because it seems warm and fuzzy and woo-woo and whatever. And so not only do we not think it matters, we delegated to somebody else with unrealistic expectations. We say, hey, it's Christmas. We made money this year. And we delegated to somebody say, hey, here's 10 grand. Go say thank you to all of our people. And what we're really saying, we're we're actually spending money to show people that they don't matter. And then we wonder why people aren't loyal to us. They're passively well, they're sticking around. But at the first opportunity, we all make decisions based upon the emotional connection. So the psychological triggers of giving. You know, it's like if you give a five cent ring to your wife, first is like, you know, pointing something into the heart and soul of like what she wanted for a ring. Those you're going to communicate very different things to your wife and they're going to communicate very different things to your team or to your employees, your clients as the psychological element is massively important. I can't under I can't overestimated.
Rusty [00:13:04] So I'm let the other guys, I'm sure are great questions about the company and everything that you've done. But I got to ask you, what's the coolest gift you've ever seen a company give?
John [00:13:14] So I'll answer with a couple different ways. One is people say, John, do you actually practice what you preach? On my garage gifting budget was $500 a month. Now it's five hundred grand for this year that I personally will send out to people one day.
Henry [00:13:25] The recipient of part of that. Yeah. So it makes you nice. And I think if you all the time and I don't give you credit for, I probably never said thank you appropriately. Maybe I went through the motions but didn't say creatively. But on the recipient of that and I've got. That was right. 10 years ago. It was all it was a long time ago. But this right is the gift that keeps on giving. And it's got my name on it. I mean, it's my own personalized paring knife. And then there are other nice behind it.
John [00:13:48] And they're really good people like The New York Times asked us last fall, Guy. John, what's the hot new sexy gift? What's the hot thing? And I said, the knives, the stupid knives. And they're like, what? No, no. Like, that was 19 years ago. Who do you sell now? And I'm like, twenty five professional sports teams. Almost all of them use the knives. We have manufacturers like the knives were for a number of reasons, not because the knife because of they they take care of the inner circle, the spouse, they're family oriented. They become a part of the fabric of the relationship. And, you know, most people eat, you know, a couple of times a day. So every time they use it multiple times a day. So people like, I want to give this cool plaque or I want to give this golf thing. And I'm like, OK, how many times you think they're going to use that? And like, pray ten. And I'm like, who do you think's going to win? Somebody who thinks of you ten times or somebody who thinks of you fifteen hundred times this year. And they're like pride, the person who's thinks of his fifteen hundred times. I'm like, exactly. So the gifts that we do tend to be family centric, kitchen centric denied seems silly and weird. Like what does it have to do with technology. No, like nothing has to do with the human being. If you get the human being, you get the business, you get the human being, you get the loyalty, you get the employee like they're human beings. They're not human doings. Like they they actually have things outside of the company. So one of the things I used to make fun of on interviews, people say, what's the worst gift you've ever been given? And I would make fun of the mug. The corporate coffee mug, the water bottle, whatever people give them out. And they think they're cute because that Hershey kisses inside of Mike. It's the lamest gift in the planet. You order from China and for three dollars and 14 cents. And then this artist, you know, read my book, listens like 80 interviews and finds out about me and my wife and makes these thousand dollar. Right. They're called artifact mugs. Makes one for me and my wife and hand-delivered them $1000 for a mug. And when he delivered them to me, I cried. My wife cried. She's like, this is the best gift I've given them to billionaires and seen billionaires cry.
[00:15:38] And people are like, how much is the material costs on my table? Eat like three dollars and 13 cents like any other mug they carved into this. Mogg is somebodies legacy, their why, their values, their faith, their family. I could just that somebody ordered one for Richard Branson and hand deliver it to Necker Island because they have that kind of relationship. And I've had people reach out and say, John, that mug is more valuable than a fifty thousand hour watch. And it's because every day I use it, I drink coffee or tea and I'm reminded of what matters. And I'm reminded that somebody loves me and I still get chills from it. Like we tend to partner with this artist. And I have people sending these things out over the planet and you can't send them out to a thousand people at a time because the info to get one made, you have the Anshul like eleven questions and whatever else. But I've seen the response I get that people, you know, have everything in the world weep because they're like you put into a tangible form, like it's like winning the Oscars and whatever else all wrapped up into this simple thing that most people do every day, which is drink water or coffee or tea. And so like we've sent seven hours in clothes to people that we knew looked like Brooks Brothers house. Ten thousand our knife sets. The people were five in. And I sense like those are all cool. But when you can tap into somebody who's legacy and who they are at a core level in their faith and their family and weave that into something, it's a usable trophy and as usable representation that their life mattered. That to me is one of the coolest things. So I partner with the artist. He can't make them fast enough. And we've since started doing these jars. There are like twenty five hundred bucks. And he made one for me and was every line from the Bible Old and the New Testament that talks about generosity, giving or gifting. And we have people order these pieces and then they'll put like 20 letters inside from everybody that they love and care about.
[00:17:24] And I can't mention the person's name, but one of the most prominent charities and one of the most prominent Christian families received one about twelve months ago. And they were just blown away, you know, because people will use the excuse, well, they have everything. There's nothing I can buy them. You know, they don't need anything. But at a core level, we all crave appreciation, acknowledgement. We all crave to be treated a certain way and feel like our life matters.
[00:17:49] And so what people forget is even the CEOs of the companies oftentimes are not being over appreciated by their family, their spouses, their employees. Sometimes they're in the ivory tower by themselves and they're lonely. And when something like that shows up that says that you matter and you pour the thought into it and don't say, oh, it's the thought that counts, which is a lame excuse to give a sucky gift, you actually put the thought in to give a thoughtful gift.
[00:18:11] All of a sudden people will say, John, like, how many salespeople do you have? No, Mike, I have a couple of thousand. How do you afford that? Mike, I spent five hundred grand to get a couple of thousand people in. Each one of them would probably cost me a couple million dollars a piece, but because I've loved on them, they can't help but want to reciprocate. And that's sending them jackets with my logo or some golf bag with whatever like their true artifacts. And when you could do it that way, relationships flourish.
William [00:18:35] Absolutely. They just share in that, John. And I'm a recipient as well. I had dinner with John and like 10 people. I don't even think we spoke. I don't even think we met to the point that I got this gift like a week later, this price several years ago. At this point, maybe 10. And I got this cutco knives. And now, since I talk to you, I know it's like intentionally designed. It's got a white handle. Most nights have a black hand. Also, it stands at your knife block and it was engraved in my wife's name. Somehow you got my wife's name and I don't remember talking to you and that's got my name on it. And no joke. I mean, I looked at it so many times over the preceding years and I thought about you so many that like looked you up. I'm like Danka. I really didn't remember meeting you. And I told so many people this story about this knife and said the impressions, just like your whole story worked for me. And then we've we've reengaged with each other over the last year. But but there was a seven, eight year gap, right. Told so many people about this random guy that gave me this knife and how much it meant to us and just how memorable it was. So all that leads me to I would imagine if anyone's listen to the first fifteen or twenty minutes, they're gonna go. Of course, this totally makes sense. I buy it. So I guess my main question is why are we so bad at it? Because the counter that to us everyone would also agree with you. I think that companies are all about people. Right. It's all about relationships, whether that's customers, whether that's employees. So I'm interested in your research out there and the people you've talked to. Why are we bad at it? Why are people not putting more time, energy and effort into radical generosity as a return on investment tool?
John [00:20:07] Yeah, well, I think that it comes down to the human condition of a couple of different things. One is guys in particular are making a lot of the decisions and businesses, unfortunately, because women are way better at this. If you think about going to a wedding or two, a kid's birthday or whatever else, oftentimes it's my wife. And I think most people I've talked to, the emotional intelligence, the details, the thoughtfulness, the handwritten note. You guys oftentimes are linear and relate to our lives. Give me the exact percentage of the R Y that this is gonna be. And it also feels awkward and uncomfortable. Most dudes don't feel comfortable to gift their spouse, let alone give a bunch of nice gifts in their business. And, you know, it's one thing to say, hey, we're going to. $3million on trade shows next year and marketing on Facebook. But if you said having to spend three million dollars on my most important relationships, we're going to send two million dollars in knives. Unless you're the owner of the company, the other person might lose their job because people don't look at them like, are you insane? What do you mean? We're not going to do normal marketing. We're going to invest in our relationships. What, you mean instead of doing points and gift cards to Amazon, we're going to send out a personalized gift to our two thousand employees. It feels weird. It feels awkward. We don't know what there are always going to be because relationships are not predictable. We don't know if we're gonna get 10 referrals right away or if it's gonna be like you. William, we're like seven years go by and you're still top of mind and then we reconnect. Like, I've had situations where I gifted somebody for seven years, like D.R. Horton, the largest voter in the country. I didn't get any deals from them for seven years. And then in one fell swoop, the doors opened up. We had another client who gifted the Cleveland Indians for six years. Nothing. They were a client, but that was it. And then in one fell swoop, they got 38 referrals, personal referrals, and one day. So when you're dealing with human beings and you're trying to put them into a box and say, what's my exact are alive? If I invest in these relationships, it's ambiguous. We don't know. And so it's easier to say. I can point to the one hundred or a thousand billboards. I can point to the advertisment, I can point to hiring another 20 sales reps to go knock on doors. But we can't point to is like the emotional connection of a relationship. If somebody returns your phone call in five minutes versus five days, what's that worth to you? I don't know. It could be worth five million dollars or could be worth nothing. Like, what's it worth to you to get five referrals? I don't know. What's it worth to you to have an employee that feels loved and engaged? I don't know. But we all know as business owners that relationships matter. But it's easier to outsource and delegate to things that feel known or common or feel like strategic. And what we don't realize is that what's interesting is that everybody was a great gift giver and everybody was radically generous. It wouldn't work nearly as well at work 1 1 100th as well. But because people suck at it so bad and they give out a bunch of promotional swag with their logo on it, they call it a gift and they give out bars of chocolate to people that are worth fifty thousand dollars to them. Think the bar so low that if you actually do this consistently with the right heart set in the right mindset and do it even mediocrity. Well, I've had people come back and say, John, I got a thousand extra turn off of gifts they sent out. Then I'm like, come on. Like, that seems like an exaggeration. Like, no, I go out like literally, we spent this. This is what we got back. I've had other people that say, John, I've taken some of these are thought leaders, international thought leaders. John, I started doing it. It worked. We've taken our entire marketing budget and all we're doing is we're loving on our relationships that we currently have our employees, our clients, our vendors. But I see people, the other business guys. It feels warm and fuzzy. It feels like generosity is something you're supposed to do in your church or your charity or your family. But what people don't realize is that there's real metrics and real raii that comes from it. But what it's going to be that ambiguity freaks them out. The warm, fuzzy nature freaks them out. The fact that they might get fired for ordering a million dollars and mugs or knives like that freaks them out. So I think that it's just become safer. Most people are sheep if they're honest with themselves. They look around and say, what's everybody giving Apple? Now, Mike, Apple is one of the worst things you can send out as a gift because everybody area has it and it expires every six months. So I literally put together like this top ten list of worst gifts to give. And we take all of our clients through and they freak out because they're like, holy crap, that's everything that we've done for the last 15 years. And so it's not rocket science, but sure. Question, Mike. I think fear is a big reason that most people don't do it or they don't understand.
Rusty [00:24:22] Hey, I want you to riff on two things. One is everybody takes the holiday season and says, now's the time to gift. All right. So how many of those do we all get at once? Right. So talk a little bit about the psychology of that and maybe a counter way of going at it. And then I think the other one is, you know, we tend to gift to the boss, right? We go right to the CEO. We go right to the C-suite. Is there some other way that we should be gifting? That makes a bigger impact inside of a comp.
John [00:24:51] So I hope people hear this before the holidays, because the holidays people are like time, like, hey, I want to send Christmas gifts to all my employees, all my clients. And I'm like, you could hire us to do the gifting, but I won't allow you to send a gift between Thanksgiving and Christmas. No, I mean, you're you're gifting company. And now when you make all your money and I'm like, that's when most people that just want to sell you a bunch of stuff will make money. But if you want to put a dollar in as an entrepreneur and get $10 back out, then you have to do things not at expected times and you can't do things out of obligation. So people can't hire us to do Christmas gifts, because if you go into most conference tables, they're ready to collapse from all the candy nuts, chocolate, golf paraphernalia, bourbon, you name it. It's salami, fruit baskets. I don't care if it's the best gift in the world, if it's one of fifty seven things that are sitting on the conference table. It feels gifting out of obligation. And it's like giving your spouse a gift on anniversaries, birthdays or Christmas, though it's just keep you up like. Bear even. You start buying flowers on random Tuesdays and whatever else like that's where you earn brownie points because people realize it wasn't on autopilot. Your wife realized it wasn't a pilot, it was because you were thinking of them. And people are like, how can you send knives? Everybody not have it feel automated, Mike, because I'll send ten thousand people a knife set on a random Tuesday in the middle of March. And because of the timing of the gift matters just as much as what you're sending to the point where I won't allow people to do referral gifts and they're like, what you mean? I want to say thank you after referral. And I'm like, are you in the transaction business or the relationship? They're like, oh, we're all about relationships. I don't care if somebody's selling toilet paper. Everybody says they're in a relationship building business. And I'm like, if somebody gives you a million dollar referral and you send a mature $50 boredoms gift card, you think you're doing something amazing. What did you just turn that referral into? Like, oh, crap. A transaction, a tit for tat. You do this. This is what you get. Whereas if you take all of your top 100, top 1000, top ten thousand relationships and you send out a gift just because now the person's perceived offense and I didn't do anything, I didn't deserve this. And my answer is, you're great. I just love the relationship. I appreciate the partnership. I was thinking of you. So the timing of the gift matters just as much, if not more than what you're sending. So I hate food items because you only get one impression. I hate food items because everybody has an allergy or is on paleo or whatever else. But I also hate food items because people sentiment Christmas when people are already eating and drinking themselves to death and like it's the worst thing to send a gift when they already have 50 things sitting there. To your other question of like the C-suite, out of my half million gifting budget, when somebody comes to me, it's like, John, we have a 2million our marketing budget. We want to redirect 200 grand towards this gift mojie marketing. Here's our top 200 clients. And oftentimes it's the person cutting the check. It's the v.p.'s sales, it's the CFO, it's the CEO. And I'm like, that's great. But what's their assistance name like? Well, I don't know. What's your wife's name? I don't know what's her husband's name? I don't know. Mike, if you want to put a dollar in and get twenty dollars back out, the executive, the person cutting the check gets to golf, the Pebble Beach. He gets to fly private. And when they go to an event, it's at the Four Seasons. Guess who gets treated like crap? Like when I travel, my wife is we have three kids and a fourth on the way like she's dealing with change of diapers, all these things. My assistant's dealing with this crazy juggling of my schedule and speaking and traveling and whatever else I'm like in a dollar invested in the inner circle, there's four buckets of that inner circle spouse, assistant kids and pets. A dollar invested there gets you one hundred dollars back out because they're oftentimes neglected and are not included. People like, why do you do the stupid knives? I'm Mike because most people are married and they have kids and they eat at home at least once a week. So it's a pretty universal thing to be able to send out to people and to have everybody feel a certain way when they see their name engraved on their spouses. Like I've had ladies come up to me and they're married to some powerful guy, v.p.'s sales. They have a million dollars and jewelry on and they're crying and they're like, John, in 30 years in business, your knife set was the first time that I've ever seen my name stalled. Right. And I was ever treated not like arm candy, but I was treated like a peer of the business. I can't thank you enough. She can afford her own $500. Stupid nice set.
[00:28:59] But the emotion of treating somebody not like a pawn or a gatekeeper where somebody had been manipulated, but to really honor that person, say, you know what, I know my wife works ten times harder when I'm away and I'm traveling and I'm speaking and I'm at conferences. I'm at events when you can honor the people that are around your employee and make them love the company just as much, if not more. Like one of the guys who's a mentor of mine. Ask me, is that John, what would be the m.p.'s score of your employees kids to your company?
[00:29:30] And I was like, oh crap.
[00:29:31] Like now we're getting deep here. Like, do you start thinking about the it's not the executive. It's not the employee is not the client. It's all the people around them.
[00:29:39] How can you honor and make them look like a king to the people they value the most when you can start to think about that level of strategy and that's where people like John, you know, $2million and gifts seems silly. I'm like it does unless you're willing to follow all the parts of the recipe and you can't cut corners. Like if you want to bake bread, you got to put Easton. If you don't put Easton, then you don't get bread. You might get manna, but you're not going to get bread. And so people will say, John, I've done the gifting thing. We have a promotional budget. We oh, we have a marketing budget. I don't know. This is a true relationship. This is a true honoring of the person and everybody around them. You can invest that way in instead of buying more steak dinners and more billboards and invest in people that way. That's where you get like the thousand X or Y is taking care of that inner circle. Eighty percent of my half my our budget is going after those sorts of people because they're disrespected, they're dishonored. And when you can love on their member, relationships just flourish.
Rusty [00:30:34] I love the circle of pets, too. I mean, where my French bulldog Theo t h e oh yeah. So excited.
John [00:30:45] Rusty's not tRuhlining for again at all. I love it. I mean, people treat their pets better than they treat themselves. Like I've seen, you know, crazy doors open. You know, somebody doesn't have kids or if they do have kids and have a special pet, I mean, good gosh, like you would talk about a recession proof industry and it's like 80 billion dollars or some silly amount. And people. It's amazing.
Rusty [00:31:07] It's totally true. Totally true. Thanks for sharing that.
William [00:31:10] Well, my biggest takeaways, I'm guessing you're not in cutco marketing where, you know, the stock line would be. You know, it's just a stupid knife. A big takeaway is, you know, it's just stupid knives. Don't overthink it.
John [00:31:24] People are like, oh, I can't do this if you already do the nice thing. And I'm like, what's funny is people expect gifts from me. People are like, what can I do? The gift will be as impactful. And I'm like anybody that's not in the gifting business to do what we do actually gets 100 times more impact than what we do. People kind of expect me to send amazing gifts like the surprises, the lights out the window. And I tell people like, you know, you could send cutco knives to the cows, come home. If you're willing to not put your logo on it, if you're willing to follow the real gift allergy system. But most people, like I just typed the letter and I'm like, no.
[00:31:54] If you're going to do that, go order somewhere else and you're not going to follow the system, then you're not going to get the. Why? Because it all matters. It's not about the elements.
William [00:32:02] And I think that's a great business principle for all the entrepreneurs. You know, I think entrepreneurs are always running fast. They're running on so many different things. And I think we forget the system. Right. Whether that's acquiring customers, whether that's hiring, that's just a great overarching point, is if you're not really to follow the recipe, don't start something and don't get mad when you don't get the expected result. I would love to tell it. We're coming towards the end of time a little bit. But I want to turn to one thing and and can I ask our last question? You mentioned earlier that, hey, this is actually pretty simple. It's basically based on biblical principles that are actually probably some of the more common principles that everyone knows. But I'd love for you to just give us a quick view. What theology of gift ology, you know, how do you see that through the lens of the Bible? And how does that manifest itself when you open the Bible every day? And how does gift knowledge jump off the page?
John [00:32:51] Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, the gift of grace, like that's the biggest gift any of us ever received. Right. I mean, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I got the ultimate gift giver and he's woven that into who we are as part of his creation. We have the same capabilities of loving on people and grace isn't deserved and gifting done well, gift Algy done well is not given a gift after somebody works with you for 50 years. It's not like just because you did a billion dollars in business, it's based upon the relationship.
[00:33:19] And so like at a core level, all of it being undeserving, it being like way over the top, it's woven into the DNA of the human being because is the ultimate gift giver.
[00:33:29] And he's watched and woven it out. You know, it's not like this is a 2019 thing. Like you look throughout the Old Testament, Proverbs, 1816, a gift ushers you before kings. He's given us the playbook of relationship building and loyalty and investing in people. And only it's his character to do that. And so what I think is unfortunate is that in 2019, we say it's all about relationship over a very transactional. We say it's all about being radically generous. So we do that. I think that there's just a lot of people that have felt either taken advantage of or weak or by generosity, something I chose to do in a charity or in my church. But in business, we've got to be hard core and cut this and do that.
[00:34:10] And we're all in business to make a profit. I'm very profitable. Neil cutco is very profitable. The partners we work with are very profitable profits. Not a bad word. But what I think we've forgotten is that we're all, you know, no matter whether it's traffic or ads online like these are all human beings. These are all part of God's creation. These are all people that are undeserving of what we've already been given. And when you can start to invest in relationships, not as a manipulation, but as a way to honor them and pour into them, it comes back to us oftentimes 100 fold. We know that we reap what we so we know that if we pour into relationships with no strings attached and have the right heart set and right mindset that those relationships are going to flourish now, is it going to always be a referral back? Is it always going to be like them going from being a million to our clients to 1.2 million? Our client know they might pay it forward or that might be a relationship that becomes relevant five or ten or fifteen or twenty years from now. And I think that it's become cool because of influencers to talk about playing the long game in business. But I see a lot of business owners, specifically Christian businesses that play with this, like they don't have an abundance mindset where they're like, hey, if I pour into people like we can all win, I can invest in people I can love on people and not necessarily have to get an hour away within a week of investing them.
[00:35:24] If we can go into it with the same mindset that we see in the gospel and not over spiritualized it, but just realize we're all human beings. We all love to be acknowledged. We all love to be loved on. And when we can start to do that over time, it's going to come back. But knowing that if you do try to measure it and try to manipulate people, you end up ruining it. And so that the heart set in the minds that people will hire us and say, John, I wanted to hire you to do this for six months, and I'm like, you can't hire us unless you're going to commit to this for the next three years. Yeah. This is not a tactical thing. This is a heart set, a mindset shift. And if you could actually do more damage by going out to be radically generous for six months and then going back to being Ebony's or Scrooge, like we don't have all believers as clients.
[00:36:06] But most the people that end up engaged in our agency are either strong core values driven and they realize that generosity is a part of who they are and that's who they want to live out to be. Or they're believers who feel like, you know why? I've been living this really well in my personal life, but if I'm honest with myself, I want a bunch of sucky stuff from China and fly my logo on it. And I've been doing this really bad and I want to do it at a higher level because I realize everything I do should be a representation of my core values and what I believe and if I say I'm world class and best in class, I value people in one area and I'm not congruent in another area of my business with that. Then I better off to cut that out and not do it at all then to do it at this like third tier level. And so that to me has been my challenge for myself to live up to. That's why we paid our employees houses clean. Every other week and do crazy things for our employees. Because I'm a big believer in your most important client is your internal employee. That's your first mission field. That's the first group of people that you need to love on. If you want them to give Ritz-Carlton service, they need to have stayed at the Ritz-Carlton before. And I see a lot of people that are incongruity and they're treating this group of people amazing. And they're treating this group of people like at a Motel 6 level. And then they wonder why people are bitter, aren't loyal, and it's because they're not being congruent. And it's like the old look at your checkbook and look at your calendar and I'll tell you what your priorities are. And in business, it's the same way, you know, show me your calendar. Show me what you're investing in, how you're treating people. And I'm nobody's perfect. I screw up. I'm not saying I'm the best dad in the world like that. Every time we get it right. But if we can put as much intentionality into that as we do operations in finance and all these hard core things of business, yeah, a lot of those other things start to take care of themselves because people would feel a certain way and they would respond a certain way.
William [00:37:50] That's an awesome place to wrap up. I really appreciate you walking through that and it makes sense. I'm a believer. Me at all. I've got one life. Hopefully, Theo, get something, you know, to bring Rusty along. Sounds like Henry's got a life before, so. Yeah, you deal with that with what you want. We're not a promotional podcast.
John [00:38:06] I like to eat my own dog food. Yeah. Pun intended.
Henry [00:38:09] Yeah. That kind of delay for all of our listeners right now to send in the names of there was.
John [00:38:15] Pads and everychild and you know, you heard John's got half a million dollars, he got plenty of stuff for everybody. They don't have that figured it out.
Henry [00:38:24] No work. William, you don't get it. We're gonna send it out. We learned something today. I wasn't listening. I wasn't listening. It's happened in my budget a little bit, too. There's enough to go around.
William [00:38:35] It's a good thing we tape these things so I can listen to it again. Oh, God. As we love to close our show. I can only imagine you are out of the road you're selling. You have a fourth child on the way. Really? That first pitch? Yeah. And throw it out. The first pitch. So, I mean, where does God have you right now? Where where is he opening his word to you? Maybe in a new way. This could be this morning on your drive on or in the season of life or maybe over the last month. It's got Eviatar particular scripture book in the Bible. Just let our listeners into your world a little bit more. And what journey God has you on?
John [00:39:08] Yeah, well, I wouldn't say that I'm realizing with the fourth little one on the way. I'm realizing how we've been married for ten years and I'm being shown how even on the gift algae guy like I can still be really selfish at home with my wife. I don't know why she has to be the one to carry the kid and the nurse ticket, and then you'll be at home when I'm traveling. But I thought convicted that I need to step up my game at home and serve my wife. And I always say, like the most important client that you have in person and business is your spouse. Like that relationship needs to be amazing.
[00:39:39] And even after 10 years, like, I'm realizing how selfish I can be and how I'm not going to be Integrys to serve her the way that she needs to be served, whether it's with me traveling or whatever else like, I felt really conflicted about that. And so I've cut my travel back pretty significant. People assume with the speaking and whatever else that I'm traveling more than ever and I've actually cut it by 50 percent. I'm looking to cut another 50 percent because things just happen differently at home. Without me there and without me being there to support whatever else. And so I'd like to say I'm the best gift allergist at home. And there are times when my wife would be like, she's amazing. But there's other times that that I dropped the ball because I'm so, you know, out there pursuing other things that sometimes, you know, like I don't have as much gas in the gas tank when I get home. And so I had to start saying no to things to be able to allow for that. And even going to throw out the first pitch. I'm taking my oldest with me because I'm trying to incorporate my family and get one on one time with my girls and do as much stuff as possible.
[00:40:34] It doesn't allow me to do as much business stuff, but I'm just realizing with their 8, 6 and three. And then the fourth one is doing December that I have a limited window here to pour into them. And so I've been convicted about that as well.
William [00:40:48] Hey, man. Thanks so much for sharing that. And just such another great overarching lesson. Dodge for nerves that your husband or wife or if you're not married, you're close friends and family, just how important they are to keeping us grounded on these journeys that we find ourselves on and how important they are. And it's so easy to forget. Thank you for sharing them. Thank you for sharing everything. That's just been super fun. We actually do not expect gifts to our audience.
John [00:41:14] A gift can be a gift. Allergists year before we wrap up.
Rusty [00:41:17] I don't have a problem with that.
John [00:41:19] All right. So for 19 years, we've been developing like a roadmap for all of our agency clients to go through. And most people with their gift giving, you know, they see both head phones are Apple and they're like, I wanna order five of those or 200. Those are 50 or whatever. They start with the what and the who and why and when like laying out a roadmap and having a plan is just as important as what you're sending. And most people have a plan. Devin, marketing plan. A operations family didn't really have a relationship building plan internally or externally. And we just came out with this four weeks ago. If somebody asked us to walk them through it, it cost sixteen hundred bucks. But if your audience wants to go download the plan, there's no I don't even know if there's a lead capture. I think it's just free. They got a gift allergy plan dot com. They can download it for free and they can basically take our entire model. And if they don't want to hire an agency to do it, they can do it on their own. Because at a core level, for me, if I can get a million leaders to be radically generous with all of their relationships and whether the higher ups or dude on their own. I just want them to do it. And I know that there's going to be people in Australia in other places. I don't have a footprint. I want them to still take our best ideas and go execute on it. And if they need help, they can reach back out to us or whatever else. But at a core level, to me, that's 19 years where the blood, sweat and tears put into a document that literally gives them the roadmap of how to duplicate gift ology in an executable way.
Henry [00:42:42] John is great. Thank you very much. I'm really grateful for our time together. As we've said, it's been super fun. And I think that, as you point out, it's back to Guy, the ultimate gift giver he created in his image. He was a giver. And so we are as well. And we tap into that. We become more alive because we're becoming who we are created big. So thank you for that and for your time.
John [00:43:04] Thought a lot of fun. Thank you guys for having been chairman with your tribe.