 It all comes down to relationships in humans, our spouse, our kids, our parents. I wrote Giftology as a business book, but a lot of people have reached back out and said, John, my marriage is better. When people are like, oh, that's a business book, or I don't own the company. I'm like, you own your life. And if you want good relationships, then you need to find ways to show up in our common ways, not just with gifting. It could be a video. There's a lot of ways you can show love to people. What's up, everybody? And welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. So I don't have to think of utility. When I get a shirt in the mail, I'm thinking, yay, I got a shirt. I'm thinking, what, how's it fit? What's the style? Oh, there's a giant brand written across the front of it. I'm not gonna, I'm not a billboard for you. I'm very particular about all the clothes that I wear. And I think most Americans are, and we're certainly brand aware. That's all everyone's been hearing about since social media has been prevalent in everyone's life. Brand awareness is you are, you are now branding yourself online. It's on everybody's mind. Yeah. No, I think that the end of the day, like I don't even wear my own brand. I don't wear a giftology. I think that's cheesy. Even my own company. I wear, I'm black, black t-shirt, loose lemon. I want the logo as small as possible. Like, and I think the more affluent you're targeting people, you know, up the food chain, like they're that way. Typically, unless it's a brand they love, they don't want, like, yeah, you're actually like, and subconsciously, everybody knows, like you're trying to disguise a gift, but really it's a billboard. It's a manipulation. So I want to say thank you, but really I'm trying to turn you into an advertisement. Does that feel good? No, it feels gross. It feels icky. When you, like book launches, horrible. Like the amount of people that do book launches and like, here's a wristband. Here's a sticker. Here's a, you know, like they send out 500 books that are like in some box with like a water bottle and a flashlight and I don't want any of that stuff. Now I feel guilty about throwing it away and I've just stopped responding. Like unless somebody takes the time to hand write a note and sends the book based upon the relationship, that's why, like when I published the mythology, I had 50 copies made. There was $300 a piece through like $300 for a book. I'm like, they were handmade one at a time inside a leather bag inside a linen box with a handwritten note on a piece of steel. It went to Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Michael Hyatt, people that were either client's mentors or people that I respected. I didn't ask for anything. I said, thank you for inspiring me to write this book. Here's what I got from your stuff and this is what I'm putting onto the world and it was personalized to them on the cover. It was monogram to them and their spouse on the leather them and the spouse asking for nothing. The amount of people that reached back out, unsolicited saying, this is the nicest book I've ever seen. I get thousands of books sent to me. I want to buy 20 copies from my team or 50 copies. I want to have you on my show. I want to whatever and people made fun of me at $300 book. They're like, we can get them for $3 and I'm like, you'll spend $300 on a bar tab. Nobody cares. I'll spend $300 on one book and we've sold now 120,000 copies of a self-published book, giftology. I never big publisher behind me, but I ate our own dog food and now we have a $3,000 version of the book. We have a $300 version of the book that has a video screen built in, but every single one that we send out, handwritten note personalized to the person. None of this generic BS on a tight, like Manila envelope, like that communicates mass. It communicates mediocre. It communicates, this was done to everybody. And so the more you can take this concept of giftology and really apply it to all other parts of your business, instead of doing something for 100 people at a dinner, take people out, 10 people out and make it a once in a lifetime experience. Instead of doing like your generic brochures, like hand makes some things that just melt somebody's face off. Like the more you can go all in on the details and flip the script where everybody goes cheap, I go expensive, where everybody goes expensive, I go cheap. I don't have a pitching match over here where it's just noise. I want to be in a blue ocean and gifting and how we show up for people. Like what everybody does just go completely opposite and go all in on those little things. And when you do that, people respond. They're like, wow, I feel special. So how has this impacted your personal relationships? And for those in our audience who aren't business owners, who aren't necessarily generating leads or clients or referrals for their business, but want to deepen those potential relationships with mentors and people who could impact their career, what advice do you have for them? I think it's the same. I mean, I think that if we, you know, even if you're working for a company as a sales rep and you don't own the business, at the end of the day, like you own the relationship, if you leave, if you build the relationships right and go to another company, if you build the relationship right, they want to come with you no matter, like they're bought into you, the human. And at the end of the day, if you don't do business with companies, they do business with humans, with an individual, with a sales rep, with a manager. And so I sent one of those crazy mugs to my neighbor. Do I have anything to ask of him other than being a neighbor? No, he's a friend. But I think that when you show off for other human beings, like we all like the quality of our life locally at our school, our church, our charity, our board that we're serving on, like, it all comes down to relationships in humans, our spouse, our kids, our parents. And so this, this really, I wrote giftology as a business book, but a lot of people have reached back out and say, John, my marriage is better. I had somebody reach out from Vietnam saying I read the book and now I get why my wife wasn't responding the way because I wasn't showing up for her in this type of way, the surprise and delight and going all in. And so when people are like, you know, that's a business book or I don't own the company. I'm like, you own your life. And if you want good relationships, then you need to find ways to show up in our common ways, not just with gifting. It could be a video. There's a lot of ways you can show love to people. Handwritten notes. The best is when you take all the love languages and combine them together. You spend quality time with somebody with a handwritten note, which is words of affirmation. You give them a world class artifact, which is a physical gift. You know, like you go do something together, like there's a way to blend all of them together personally or professionally. But I call BS and people are like, I don't have the budget for it. I'm like, re-invest a portion of your commissions back into your relationships, like you own the company because your commissions will grow and you'll be, you'll have companies coming after you based upon the value and trust that you have of your relationship. Don't give me the excuse you don't own the company or they won't pay for it. You pay for it yourself. I did that when I was working with Cutco. I used my own freaking dollars as a college kid to re-invest in relationships. That's why I grew so fast. So I think a lot of people have this limited, they say they're playing the long game because Vaynerchuk does. And their long game of day is not decades. And frankly, we're all going to be probably in business for the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years act like it. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Such an important viewpoint. Even if you are just an employee to think about your managers and those who could mentor you in open doors in that future career development that you have, it's so important to invest in every single one of those relationships. Not just think this is something that business owners have to do to get more clients or sales people have to do to close more deals. Every single relationship that you have personally and professionally has a profound impact on your life and that future that you hold so near and dear and you're excited about. So taking the time to be thoughtful. And I really love that involving all of the love languages in the gift. It's such a thoughtful way, especially if you're thinking about the holidays here with your spouse or your significant other or anniversaries or birthdays to involve all of those love languages into one shared experience that has a bit of each is such a better way to go about it than just planning the same old dinner you do every year, the same old florist you visit every year, and thinking you're being thoughtful, pretending that you care about this person. Amen. Yeah, the multiplication effective, if you can combine all of them together, it just creates this ripple effect of like holy crap. I've never felt the way I feel because you're hitting people from multiple angles with, you know, I call them love bombs now. It's like a gift feels cheesy and lame. You know, I love bomb communicates like you're doing something at this atomic level of like, wow, like there's ripple effects into the future. And so I hate the word gift anymore. It's like that feels tacky and cheesy. Love bomb is more appropriate in my mind. I mean, there's no greater feeling than your gift being showcased off to others. I can't remember the last time I got a mug in the mail and I rushed to tell Amy, Hey, you got to see this mug, right? We don't do that with many of these gifts that are just thoughtless that we're receiving. What gift have you received that stood out for you? We've heard a lot of examples of how you've helped clients, but I'd love to hear what the gift giver himself received that stood out. I think a lot of people are intimidated to give me a gift because they know that like I look at things critically. It's hard for me to shut my brain off. I mean, there's a couple that come to mind. One, the mug was the artifact mug was a big one. That made me cry. It made my wife cry. It was a big one. Paul, my original mentor, buying 100 gifts and then giving me his social capital. He'd say, go give this gift to this person, this business owner over here, whether he buys or not. Let him know I love this product and I love what you're doing. So he transferred his trust in social capital, which as a 20 year old was a big deal. Like I still to this day try to give him credit in the book. He won't take any of the credit because that's just who he is. But that was a big, I mean, that was a big shift for me. I've had somebody, you know, recently send me a top of the line. They know I love Sauna's and so they upgraded me to a brand new like sunlight and $5,000, $6,000 Sauna sent me a cold plunge tank. You know, they sent me a trip to Disney with my kids. You know, they'd heard me speak at a hospitality event there with Hilton. That was cool. And that each of those when they unveiled it to me, they sent me a gift for each of my girls that was customized to them with a handwritten note packaged just for them and my wife and me, like the humongous box of like all these other boxes on top of, oh, by the way, we're going to cover your tickets in your, in your hotel stay and whatever else. So I've had, I've had some crazy ones and I have some things in my head that I'm like, I hope somebody sends me that someday. I hope I had enough value to the life that they send me a vehicle or, you know, the paddock watch or the whatever. Those haven't showed up in the mail yet, but I've still had some pretty insane ones, relatively speaking, like dropping $10,000 on a gift for me that I'm like, you know, from my roots of being a farm kid, wanting the Air Jordan to now like this, like it's, I'm super grateful for what people are willing to do and show up for me. I love that. Well, we always ask every guest what their X factor is, what it is that makes you extraordinary. I have a feeling we know the answer, but what is your X factor, John? I think I help people, you know, be more radically generous and scale their thoughtfulness. And that's my super power. I think I can inspire it, but I also have been able to help people leaders think about how to show up in uncommon ways and radical generosity, even in 2021 never gets old. And I think that's my X factor. Awesome. And you, I know you dropped the URL, but we'll put it in the show notes. Where can our audience learn more about this gift giving recipe and giftology? Yeah, giftologysystem.com is the free resource. Give the givers edge is the 10 worst gifts to avoid giving. Either one of those places is a great place to start. And really, like, as much as we love having clients, like the goal for us is to give away our entire recipe so people can go do it on their own. They don't have to hire an agency to do it. Like there's no like, we keep this behind the curtain and like, there's no secret sauce. It's like, it's all out there for people to latch on to and start doing immediately. Wonderful. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the holidays. Thanks for having me, guys.