Gratefulness And Exponential Thinking: Success Secrets with Will Bunker
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
The idea that you have to uproot your life and live in Silicon Valley to make big money may have some truth in it. But this is not necessarily a requirement for Match.com Founder Will Bunker when he sold his company for $47.5 million. The success secrets he has held onto in order to invest in 170 start-ups are humility, gratefulness and exponential thinking. Don’t be just a clone of the other pitchers that came before you. Have a heart, choose kindness and think outside of the box.
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Will Bunker who founded Match.com and was able to sell that for millions. He’s now invested in over 170 companies. He shares with us what he looks for when he hears a pitch and the importance of getting a customer versus just relying on funding to grow your company. He has some real core values at his company,GrowthX, about humility, gratefulness and exponential thinking where they’re really looking for the big idea. Really the big takeaway for me was if you’re not good at something, then figure out how to do it. If you’re not getting the results you want from pitching, then work with someone like me who can help you with the pitch. He’s working on improving his networking skills, so I introduced him to Judy Robinett. There’s always something you can offer someone no matter how successful they are, if you take the time to figure out what they’re working on now and how you can help. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Gratefulness And Exponential Thinking: Success Secrets with Will Bunker
Today’s guest is Will Bunker. Will knows two of my other guests, Andrew Goldner from GrowthX as well as Manny Fernandez. Obviously, I am excited to have Will on the show because we’re connected from multiple different ways. He’s an investor in more than 170 startups. He made it his life’s mission to help other entrepreneurs succeed in developing successful companies and achieving their goals. His skill and experience in connecting people have allowed him to build a global network of investors and entrepreneurs, which he then considers his extended family. Before he co-founded GrowthX, he raised and led the Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, which is a seed-stage micro-VC. He was also a seller-founder of OneAndOnly.com, the largest internet dating site and one of the top 100 site of the 90s acquired by Ticketmaster for $47 million and rebranded as something we all know as Match.com. Will, welcome to the show.
Glad to be here.
Why don’t you start by telling us where you’re recording from because that’s interesting right off the get-go?
I’m at the Blockchain Conference, which is at Draper University being put on by DLJ and a couple of other folks. It’s an interesting group of people. There’s a lot of excited young people mixed in with conspiracy theory currency stuff, and so it’s just very interesting.
I know that your career began when you were working with N.B. Hunt who sent you on these adventures across Russia and Nicaragua, and you ended up carrying $250,000 worth of gold to Florida. Can we start there?
The plane left too early in the morning so I had to sleep with the gold under my bed because you couldn’t get it out to the bank that early. I would sleep with it under my bed, drive out to the airport, jump on a commercial plane, and drop it off to the Brink’s people in Miami every two weeks. Panic attack, it was tough.
[Tweet “Spend time learning skills you don’t have.”]
How long did you do that?
A year was all I could take. I would grab a book on Novell networking in the airport, come back to the jungle, study it, and when I passed all my tests, I quit and went to Dallas to get into the tech business.
If nothing else, it’s almost like building up your risk tolerance like taking a cold shower can do, right?
Starting an internet company seems a lot less risky than Nicaragua and Russia, that’s for sure.
I know everybody probably always ask you this and I would be remiss as a host if I didn’t, but would you mind sharing the story of how you came up with the concept for One And Only, and then how that became Match.com?
Dave Kennedy and I were really good friends in Dallas, Texas. We knew we wanted to do an internet business we believe strongly and that technology is the future. We kept researching ideas and then I ran across the fact that AOL generated half their revenue from chat because they were charging by the hour and everyone’s on the chat system. We went into the chat rooms and everyone was trying to get a date. We saw that half of the revenue of the largest company revolves around dating, whether they know it or not. We need to build that on the internet so that when everyone migrates off, we’ll be there. That was where the idea came from.
How long did it take to grow? Going back in my own memory bank, there was a stigma attached that only people who are really desperate would go on an online dating site. Now, that obviously is gone. Was that a big objection you got?
When I would tell people what I did in Dallas, they would physically back off or would cringe. It was seem pretty shady. As a matter of fact, there’s a really good movie about the guys who processed credit card payments for the pornography industry, and that was the only bank that would take us. I knew the guys in that movie. They were the only ones that would take credit cards from some crazy dating site. It was strange times.
Did you have to raise money before you were able to sell it to Ticketmaster?
I had no clue as to how to raise money in that time period. It was Dallas. It would have been very difficult even if I’d known how. We raised a total of $90,000 and that was all the money that went into the site. We grew it on cashflow for the next five years before we sold it.
After you have that kind of success, I recently read your article about what do I want to do next in my life, and you talked about do what makes you happy. I love that story. If you wouldn’t mind expanding on that about your own personal passion, you were happy with computers when you were a young lad, right?
My father was always buying us the latest technology, so we had a TI computer that I programmed. I really liked it as a kid. I was socially awkward. I just enjoyed it, I’d get lost in it. Then you get a little bit older and you realize, “I got to make a living.” I just couldn’t imagine getting paid to do something that much fun. I went into industrial engineering. I learned a lot and I’m very happy of the things I picked up in college, but I went to work at a factory during my junior year at the summer, and it’s just a miserable environment. You’re in there, it’s noisy, you’re inside, the machines are going, no one’s happy to be there. It’s worse than farming. I was just like, “I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to find something else to do with my life. Twenty years of this will not work for me.”
You know what I find interesting about your story, Will, is the risk. You could only do it for a year of taking that much gold from Nicaragua to Miami, and you said, “I can’t do that anymore, so internet doesn’t seem so bad. Now, compared to farming, being in a factory is even worse so I have to still find something else to do.” These dramatic comparisons are sometimes what propel us to take action into a new area of innovation.
Success Secrets: Pleasant doesn’t mean you agree with everything. It just means you’re not an asshole about stuff.
My father had the best way of motivating me. His thing to me was, “Son, go do anything you want. If it doesn’t work out, I’ve always got a tractor for you.”
That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? Come on back to that life.
It’s like, “I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t do that.”
Since you’ve invested in so many startups, and this is The Successful Pitch, we would love to hear what makes a good pitch in your opinion?
It’s a combination of having a unique idea that’s not a clone of 60 other things you’ve heard that week. Today, I heard one at the Blockchain Conference. It was a person who is using Blockchain technology to allow anyone to rent storage space on their computer. Just connect it to the internet all the time. It’s like a distributed AWS, Amazon Web Services. I’ve never heard that idea before, that’s really interesting. It may or may not work, but at least it’s a unique perspective, and when you think about the future, you’d go, “Why wouldn’t you be able to do that?” Some of it is just being on trend, but they’re not being a clone of the seven other things that are trying to do it.
God knows there’s a lot of clones of Match.com, for example, now. I can’t imagine you’d have much luck trying to get money.
It’s very hard to raise money on dating because everyone’s heard of a dating idea and then seen it fail.
One of the things you wrote about that I really resonate with is when you generate trust, that’s what generates money, and that’s what caused you to want to get involve with GrowthX. Can you talk about that please?
I started investing seriously four years ago with my personal money. Quickly, I reached a point to where every time I want to invest with a company, I have to have this super painful conversation with my wife where she would beat me up and tell me what a terrible idea that startup was and we shouldn’t invest in it. I just reached the point where I was like, “Let me just put a fund together and write one check, invest of it out of the fund.” Plus if you look at the math, you need to make a lot of investments at this stage to get to one that really has the payoff that you want.
GrowthX came out of the fact that I was bringing some of my startups into Sean Sheppard who was teaching sales and Biz Dev at a boot camp. He started getting the students to work on it and they took one of my companies from $30,000 a month to $1 million in a month in less than a year. I just went, “What if that happened more often?” We put together this group, and if you raise money for people it is because they trust you. The people that gave me money initially, even for One and Only, it was the guy I worked for. Why did he give me money? Because he saw what a hard worker I was and he trusted me. In order for it to work, you have to build an ecosystem of trust around you because that’s who people do business with, that’s who people give money to. If you’re a first-time founder and you don’t have enough traction for an outsider to invest in you, the only resource you have is to go to the people you’ve built trust with and ask them. You’d be surprised at the numbers that will back you.
Success Secrets: You have to build an ecosystem of trust around you because that’s who people do business with, that’s who people give money to.
GrowthX has so many different arms and legs. Let’s let everybody know what all the different potential things are. Let’s start with the boot camp part of it.
We train people to do the non-technical roles that grow a company. That could be sales in Biz Dev, digital marketing and design. If you built a product and you have initial customers, you’re going to grow or die based on your growth talent. That doesn’t mean just touchless digital marketing. It could be any of the three. That’s our way of trying to create a talent pool that ten years from now we’ve got hundreds of people that we could pick up the phone and say, “We’ve got this great company that’s taken off. Are you interested? Can you help us support it?”
You also are really big on helping seed-stage capital find its product market fit. How does that work?
Before we had the school, we had an internal team. We want to make sure does this process work? We would take that team in about one out of three investments, deploy them into the company to do it with the company, and then to train and hand off those functions in the company once we’ve got the basic pattern figured out. That’s our market acceleration program. We’ve done it with twelve companies now. I’ve got two people full-time on the team and they’ve now taken twelve companies to market in the space of a year and a half. The amount of experience that they bring up there is really incredible.
Can you tell us the story about one of them, Will?
Max was a student of Sean’s. That company that I was saying that they grew, I was looking at investing, and Max called 400 new customers and of that, 35% wanted the product and 0% were able to use the product. It wasn’t time to put money in, but think about it, the other Angels that I hang out with were like, “No, why didn’t you put money in?” They know I invest anything. They really got worried. I said, “We called 400 customers and here’s what we found out.” They went, “Oh shit, we only called two.” You can generate a lot of information by trying to sell a product. It’s better than looking at the deck, that’s for sure.
You talked that success comes from customer revenue, not venture capital subsidy. I think that’s a big a-ha for a lot of people because they watch companies keep raising round after round that are not profitable and still maybe even pre-revenue, especially in the artificial intelligence arena when you’re competing against, let’s say, IBM, Watson, or something.
If something takes that much money to develop before you can get your revenue, it is exceptionally hard for the founder to end up with anything at the end of the journey. The original founder of Match.com raised $10 million ahead of us. He was fired, and when they sold the company from underneath everyone, he made $40,000. That is a very common story. The more you peel back that onion, the more you realize that raising money is not the outcome.
Success Secrets: The more you peel back that onion, the more you realize that raising money is not the outcome.
The other thing that I really love about what you and Andrew Goldner and the other people there are doing is this whole concept that you don’t have to uproot your life and your family and move to Silicon Valley in order to build a great company.
You don’t. All of us made our money out of the valley. Mine was in Dallas. Sean’s was in Phoenix. Andrew was in New York initially. It’s crazy that you have to move to be near some guy to write you a check. It’s logical for them because they can, but I think we’re rapidly reaching a world where that’s just not going to be true. If you focus on coming up with an idea and approach where you sell aggressively early, it removes that burden from you.
For someone who’s listening who is a startup founder, let’s say it’s their first startup, they don’t live in Silicon Valley, and they would love to raise the money and possibly work with GrowthX, what’s the first step they take?
Reach out either via someone you know that knows us or via the website. Some people will contact me on Twitter and send me their deck. It’s just any way to make that initial contact. I’m very diligent about at least looking at the deck and asking myself, “Am I interested?” It’s more interesting if someone I trust introduces you, but it doesn’t mean that a cold intro won’t work. One of our best investments stalked me at a conference in Redwood City, just came up out of the blue and just started talking to me. There was just something about this guy. He’s awfully strange but he’s a really good founder. You just don’t know. There’s a little bit of serendipity in this business.
Some investors like to really specialize, “I only invest in Fintech. I only invest in Mobile. I need to be early.” Do you have a criteria that you could share so people would know if they even have a shot at what you’re looking at?
I can’t really help you because I don’t know enough about your vertical to tell you what to do. Then, if you have a price point that allows you for having sales people involved, so it’s not just touchless digital marketing, then that fits our wheel house a lot better. It helps if you listen. If you’ve already got all the answers then we don’t really have much to add, please go execute. You don’t need me. Just go do it. I’m looking more and more just for people that are pleasant to work with. Pleasant doesn’t mean you agree with everything. It just means you’re not an asshole about stuff.
That whole thing about being coachable. Let me ask you to just recap so that everybody can really grasp. If someone’s pre-revenue, you’re still willing to potentially invest with them?
No. They must have a customer. Then we’ve got something to say about that, which is how do you get a million more just like him?
You have to have proof of concept before they should even approach you is what you’re saying?
Yes. We’ve had one company that was very science-oriented. They used magnetic waves to detect your heart rate without touching you. We, as part of our due diligence, got them their first customer. If you’re mature enough and interesting enough, we can always work together to get that customer, but we won’t invest until you have one.
You’re willing to possibly help somebody, get that first customer and then make the investment. How much revenue do they need to have? Do they need to have 400 customers for you to potentially call that money?
No, if it’s an interesting idea with some customer traction, just some. The more, the better, but any is fine.
Do you have any sweet spots of things or areas or you’re just open to new ideas that are unique?
As long as you’re selling to human beings, we find that interesting.
Of all the companies you’ve invested in, unless it always obviously is the person has unique idea, they’re coachable, you like working with them, do you fund past the seed round or do you put them in touch with VCs you know or do you do both?
We will follow on some capital. We consider the sales. Deploying that team is a form of human capital, so that’s our follow on. One in three companies we do that with. Then we have a real strong LT network that the reason they gave us money was to find good things for them to put money into.
The other thing that I really like about what you’re doing at GrowthX is your core values. Would you mind speaking to some of them? There are eight of them. The one that really resonates with me, of course, is gratefulness, but we can talk about any of them.
[Tweet “Core values of Humility and Gratitude are Key”]
For me, it’s people first. If you really treat everyone as a legitimate human being, then you’re forming the basis for a real relationship, a real way to work together. It’s easy to say that, “People first,” but from the people we picked to be our partners, that’s the key thing. If someone’s nice to me because they need something from me but the minute I’m not around, they tool on a startup because they can, I don’t want to work with them. You don’t know in this life who or what will become meaningful and important later. How many times have I needed people’s help? A lot. I just really believe in leading with that. I may not be able to give you money, I may not have any answers for you, but I can at least be kind and listen and be empathetic.
The other one that really jumps out for me is this concept of exponential thinking where you take some exponential steps. Can you explain that? I’ve never seen that before as a core value and that really interests me.
It’s the thought that we live in a world of unlimited abundance. We want to be working on things that have that explosive potential. If we don’t think our sales team can 10X your traction, we shouldn’t do it. We’re looking for those giant leaps forward. I took that $90,000 investment from that one investor and I returned him $15 million. That’s the kind of results we wanted, not only from the people we invested, from ourselves. We need to be looking at those things that are going to make a difference. I’m not doing this just to earn an extra $5. I want the world to be a better place. You do that by introducing new technologies, new businesses, new ways for human beings to get what they want.
Let’s talk a little bit about your advisory board because I was reading some of the descriptions of just basic things on how to come up with compelling ways for your messaging, which I’m all about story-telling and pitching. I was impressed by that.
Are you talking about the advisory board for the fund or for our mentors for GrowthX Academy?
I think the one I was reading was about the GrowthX Academy, but either one.
The academy there is creating a community of people that are successful and ready to give back. I go give talks all the time. I’m not doing it because I get paid anything, as a matter of fact. I do it because I want, in some way, to give back to the next generation of founders and entrepreneurs. The mentor group, at their core, that’s why they’re doing it. They’ve all reached a level of success where it’s no longer just about getting that next promotion or making that extra dollar. It’s, “What can I do to help people just like I was helped?”
Success Secrets: It’s no longer just about getting that next promotion or making that extra dollar. It’s, “What can I do to help people just like I was helped?”
Any final piece of advice about pitching or anything?
The biggest thing is to look at every one of these things like pitching, raising money, as a skill. By definition, if it’s a skill, you can learn to get better at it, but you have to train to get better at it. If you’re going around and you’re not having success raising money, how much time did you put this week into getting better at raising money, fundamentally? One of the things I’m working on now is I want to be better at maintaining my network. I’m putting a lot of time and energy. I’m spending probably five to seven hours a week learning about that because it’s a weakness that if I got better at it, I would be able to raise money faster and I’d be able to help more of my startups because my network would be better. It is a skill. Anything that you’re not having success at, if you put attention on getting better at it, you can.
What a great line and what a great way to end because if you’re not getting results from pitching, then you should engage someone who can help you with your pitch. If you want to improve your network, you should figure out who’s good at it and get their advice or read books on it. Even at your level and all the experience you have, you’re still willing to learn and I just think that’s so inspiring to all of us.
Will, I can’t thank you enough for joining us. On Twitter you’re @WBunker. Is there anything else you would like us to promote you or what you’re doing?
No, it sounds good. I enjoyed it. Thanks.
Thank you.
Links Mentioned
- Match.com
- GrowthX
- Judy Robinett
- Andrew Goldner
- Manny Fernandez
- OneAndOnly.com
- Ticketmaster
- @WBunker
- GrowthX Academy
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FARGO-Exceeding Low Expectations with Greg Tehven
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Collaborating with people and exceeding low expectations is a bigger win any entrepreneur can ask for. Greg Tehven isn’t an exception to this notion.When all he saw in front of him was just metrics and checklists, he knew he had to make a shift and invest in time and experiences instead. Now a Co-Founder and Executive Officer of Emerging Prairie, Greg is dedicated to give value to the community and use his skills to serve others and make a difference.
My guest on The Successful Pitch is Greg Tehven, who has a fascinating story about growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, couldn’t wait to get out, travel the world and then decided to move back after all and make a difference in his own city. He said he’s all about hustle and not desperation. He has a great description of the difference and how that changed how he looked at the world. He said, “When you have limitations and you share them, you create compassion. If you start bragging about all your successes, you create competition.” His big focus is on creating moments and he wants to be time-rich so that he can spend his time with interesting and wacky new people and look at his life as an adventure as opposed to goal after goal to achieve. He has some great insights on how he discovered himself at a young age and now is living in the moment. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
FARGO-Exceeding Low Expectations with Greg Tehven
Our guest is Greg Tehven who is living and from Fargo, North Dakota. I had the pleasure of meeting Greg when I was on the North Dakota Today Show and he has so much insights as to what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur and make an impact in the world. He is known as a thought leader, a storyteller, and that really resonates with me. He literally is an advocate for people who are creative. He loves to put out a message on how you can build a community that you want to live in. Greg believes that if you think creatively and act boldly, you can overcome any obstacle. He has literally done that. He’s proud to be from Fargo, North Dakota. I love his passion for that. He has literally traveled around the world and now he’s back in Fargo and he’s now taking action to make Fargo be known as its own special place with a good message out there. That pride takes on a lot of forms where he takes on big projects not only within his community, but inspiring other people to do it as well. He is the Executive Director of Emerging Prairie where he’s done so many things such as starting the TEDxFargo, 1 Million Cups Fargo, Startup Weekend and a lot of other great things. He’s really well-connected and generous with those contacts. I love his sense of humor and relaxed style. Greg, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks, John. It’s an honor to be here.
I always like to ask my guests to take us back to their own story of origin. You were growing up in Fargo. You can take us back as far as you want, whether it’s high school or earlier or college or earlier. What made you decide that you were going to leave Fargo? Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
I don’t think I understood the word entrepreneur as a kid but I had a really, really healthy disrespect for the status quo at a very early age. I would challenge my coaches that there was a better way to do things. I would challenge my parents that there was a more efficient way to mow the lawn or shovel the snow. Believe it or not, John, as a young person, it’s not very appreciated. I don’t know if I was always appreciated for that perspective.
Will you call it precocious?
I would just describe to somebody that, “It was Greg’s world and everyone just lived in it.” I wasn’t always proud of that. I was this kid that lived on a farm and I would see things being done inefficiently. As a kid, when you live on the farm on a gravel road and you don’t get to go to town very often or if you forget something at home, you can’t just run home and get it. There was a resourcefulness that came from that. There was really, as a young person, awareness of waste: wasted time, wasted resources, wasted energy. I brought that through my entire journey.
One thing that’s interesting that I wanted to bring is in 1987, North Dakota was the only state in the union with a declining population. The politicians were talking about the brain drain. The best and brightest were leaving the state. The community conversation from when I was three years old until ten was that the best and brightest were leaving. They went to some researchers and they said, “What do we do in North Dakota?” They went to some Princeton PhDs and they came back with a proposal to return the prairies of North Dakota back to the buffalo and create buffalo commons. As a young person, the media was shaping my identity, that we weren’t smart. That if I was smart, then I had to leave. As a young person, I couldn’t wait to get out of Fargo.
I think a lot of us have that quest urge inside to go see the world and leave. The Midwest, coming from Chicago suburbs myself, those roots are usually pretty deep. You decided to go to Minneapolis and then you even dabbled in Stanford, I believe. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
I just knew that there was no school I was going to go to in North Dakota. I didn’t consider any of them. The University of Minnesota had a great business school at the time, and so I enrolled there. I had an incredible experience. I’ve got to live on a campus with 50,000 students, to experience an urban environment. I loved it. I started my first social enterprise when I was ten years into my freshman career with my college roommate and a couple of friends where over the course of the next seven years, we brought close to 30,000 students on Pay It Forward Tours where they would travel around the country and do service on their spring breaks; a fantastic learning experience of building a social enterprise, that transformative time of my life. I learned a lot about community and I learned that those things that my parents taught me when I was a kid about taking care of your neighbor, about serving others made a big impact, not just in Minneapolis but across the country. It really, really was helpful.
I also noticed you have a big philanthropic part of your personality. Can you talk to us about where that comes from?
Exceeding Low Expectations: Helping your neighbor makes a big impact. It’s small things and it’s big things. I gain a tremendous amount of joy from that.
I think that comes from growing up in a rural community in North Dakota. My parents role modeled for me taking care of your neighbors. When somebody’s house would burn down or somebody got cancer, all of a sudden my parents would be organizing folks around the coffee table on Sunday nights and they’d come over week after week, and I didn’t know what they were doing. Then I’d go to a big fundraiser that they were part of hosting or I would see them do that work. I think growing up in a rural community, that’s all we had, were our neighbors. That’s the spirit of generosity that for generations in my family has been instilled in me and that I believe resonates everywhere. Whether I’m doing work in India or in a small town in Pennsylvania, helping your neighbor makes a big impact. It’s small things and it’s big things. I gain a tremendous amount of joy from that.
How did you go from, “I can’t wait to get out of Fargo,” to being its biggest advocate and fan?
Part of that comes from when I burned out. I was 25 years old. Students Today Leaders Forever was hosting the Pay It Forward Tours. It was growing. I got a little self-absorbed. I looked in the mirror and realized I was more interested in the numbers, how much money we had raised or how many people were on our trips, versus the impact. I lost myself. I decided that I needed to take a break. I didn’t like who I was becoming. I didn’t have any hobbies. I didn’t have any friends outside of work. I decided to take a year and wander around the world. It was during those eleven months of walking across Spain on the Camino de Santiago or being in a village in West Africa with Peace Corps volunteers for six weeks that I saw the value of a small community. Because each place I went, I missed the small interactions. I missed knowing my barista. I missed knowing the person that I bumped into every Saturday morning at the market.
It was on that trip, I was in New Zealand on the last leg and I said, “I want to make a difference at home. I want to make a difference on my street.” I had been thinking I was going to be this big global world-changer and then I was like, “Maybe I’ll just try to add a little bit of value in my own backyard.” Unexpectedly, I started working in Fargo. It was the last place I ever, ever thought I would live again. The first project we did was TEDx. It was about sharing ideas. I had given a TEDx Talk in Minneapolis a few months before that and I was like, “I should look for ideas in my home community.” That’s when I fell in love with Fargo. I met a farmer that had brilliant ideas on nourishing the world, a doctor that thought about beauty differently, an artist that thought about their art as a tool to build a community, an entrepreneur that thought about curiosity as the success principle to change the world. These were all people that lived in my hometown.
It’s fascinating to me you took that year off. I did something similar after I graduated from college and traveled a year. I had a fascinating insight. I didn’t stay in any one place longer than six weeks and normally it was way less than that. I noticed, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but you miss people knowing you. Every time you go to a new country and start a new conversation with somebody on a train or whatever, “My name is John, I’m from Chicago. I just graduated. I’m taking a year off.” You have to start your story over and over and over and there’s a lack of intimacy because you’re starting from scratch, as opposed to people who’ve known you your whole life and you can say, “I’m feeling frustrated. I’m feeling sad. I’m feeling overwhelmed.” You can’t really start those conversations with strangers. It wasn’t until I left the country and traveled that I started to really appreciate the relationships I had at home.
I think that’s so true, John. I’m guessing you’re similar to me and similar to folks like Steve Jobs or Sargent Shriver that their global experiences shaped their local actions. For me, I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a year off, it was actually a year on. I discovered that I’m not a human doing, I’m a human being. Those were some discoveries that were really helpful for me. Some discoveries that weren’t helpful is I realized I wasn’t humble. Because back home, I would describe my work, “I’m part of this cool project.” When I was walking across Spain meeting strangers, they asked me what I did and I took all the credit for my co-founders. I was just disgusted by what was coming out of my mouth. It was a real shaping experience when I just had to show up as me. People are evaluating based on me, on who I am, not what I could do for them. I learned a lot about myself.
That lesson is so fantastic and important because I’ve interviewed a lot of investors and they’re looking for someone who’s confident and humble, confident but not arrogant. Also being a keynote speaker, one of the big lessons I’ve learned is that while the audience wants you to have confidence when you’re on stage, they’re still interested in you telling some vulnerabilities about yourself so that they can relate to you. I think that it takes a lot of self-esteem and work on yourself to be willing to not have to overcompensate and try to impress everybody all the time.
That really resonates with me, John. One of my teachers, if you will, on my year around the world was Steve Lacy, who was from a small town in Australia. This is a young guy, small town, had one of those fast track careers. He shared with me this idea that when we share our success, we create competition. When we share our limitations, we create compassion. It’s a fine line. For my work, I speak around the country, I work in big communities and small communities. It’s a fine line of helping people trust that we’re going to get some work done, but also let them know that we’re human. I’m lucky that I’m very human. In my keynotes, I’m often telling jokes of how pathetic I am.
Exceeding Low Expectations: When we share our success, we create competition. When we share our limitations, we create compassion.
Before I met my amazing wife, I was pretty pathetic at dating. I missed some cues from time to time. I was a guest of our US senator out at the State of the Union a couple of years ago. I thought the State of the Union was in Bismarck. Turns out it’s in Washington, DC. I thought that they brought a bunch of people to it. Turns out only one person can be a guest of each US senator. I forgot my suit on the way out there. I’m at the State of the Union wearing one of the staff members’ suits because I just miss some cues from time to time. I find that just being imperfect actually helps me. The fact that I can share that with folks, I just get to build better relationships and get to know people.
There are very few people your young age that get to do a TEDx talk in Minneapolis. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s taken that and then said, “I’m going to do one in my hometown,” especially in such so early in your career. How did TEDxFargo come about?
It was back in 2012. I was working for one of the great entrepreneurs of North Dakota’s history, Doug Burgum, who built Great Plains Software. He ended up selling it to Microsoft for $1 billion. He’s now our governor. I was working for Doug, working with him and trying to build out the energy, the creativity, the ideation in our community when he said, “Let’s do a TEDxFargo.” We threw an event. It cost us $5,000. We got four speakers. We did it at a beautiful art gallery in the heart of our city. We got 100 people there, and people loved it. It was February 2012. I got excited and I was like, “I’m probably going to go to grad school soon. Why don’t I just get another one in before I go to grad school?”
On summer solstice, we did another TEDx. I brought friends from across the Midwest to come speak. We did some adult fieldtrips that we called adventures beforehand, so folks were going to different businesses, doing some interactive work with chefs. We brought in Brian Murphy who wrote See Mix Drink, the world’s best cocktail book in 2011. People were learning how to mix cocktails before our event. It turns out that’s a really bad idea because then some people had to leave a few hours in and had to get a nap. We sold out three events in 2012. One of them we sold out in nine minutes. People were just excited. That was back in 2012. Since then, we’ve now done eight TEDxFargo events. We have one of the largest events in the country. We bring in speakers from all over the world. It’s made a really big impact in Fargo, North Dakota.
Let’s talk about the one that’s coming up in July of 2018. What’s the theme and what would make people want to come either hear this in person or certainly listen to those talks after they’ve aired?
[Tweet “Use your limitations as your strength. “]
Believe it or not, John, there are not a lot of people that are just stopping into Fargo on a regular basis for no particular reason. We use our limitation as our strength. How are we going to get people to come to Fargo on Thursday, July 26th? We look for world-class content. A couple of years ago, we had Richard Wiese, the producer and face of ABC’s Born to Explore. We had Steve Rohr, the publicist for The Oscars. We bring these folks back. What we’re trying to specialize in is the audience doesn’t just get to meet them on stage. We curate small events beforehand with the speakers. We have adventures. Our mainstay content is strong but we create experiences. We have 2,000 people that get to eat lunch together on the street in the heart of downtown Fargo. We hire musical performers, artists. We spend a lot of time thinking about moments, how do we create moments for our guests, for our sponsors. For our sponsors, we have a private backstage red room where the sponsors can interact with the speakers when they come off the stage. We have custom cocktails, fresh juices. We try to create these micro experiences.
For this upcoming event, the theme is ‘Forth’. It’s the activation of ideas. Some of the folks that we have coming, the President of Microsoft, Brad Smith, will be coming to give a talk on engaging technology in rural America. The University of Minnesota Women’s Volleyball coach, who has won a gold medal in both the Men’s Volleyball Olympics as the coach, and the Women’s Volleyball Olympics as the coach, is going to give a talk on his research that he’s doing with one of Malcolm Gladwell’s context. We look for world-class ideas but we’re trying to create an experience. We also do something which I believe is special in Fargo, where all of our past speakers get invited to dinner the night before. The current speakers and the past speakers get invited. In two years, we’re going to have our tenth event and we’re going to invite all 200 past TEDxFargo speakers for a big reunion weekend. Our past speakers are the governor, the artists and doctors and TV show folks. We’re going to bring them all together because we believe in creating community.
What’s fascinating to me, Greg, is that your lessons learned from the farm of not wasting time and wasting resources has propelled you to take that mindset into creating TEDxFargo by not wasting a moment and creating moments for not only your guests but for the speakers and using your limitations as your strength. I think that’s really a key to success in entrepreneurship and anything you do in your life. Because this is The Successful Pitch, let me ask you, how do you convince or pitch some of these big names to come to Fargo TEDx when they probably have other options of where they could go?
That’s my favorite part of it, John. What I need is I need to get them on the phone. I can’t sell them over email. I get them on the phone and I say, “Come to TEDxFargo. Here’s why you need to do it. No TEDx events can pay you, but what we can give you is world-class production. We give you a great video and great photography. Every single one of our speakers has fantastic images and videos from their talks.” They like that, but they can probably get that elsewhere. Then I say, “Come a day early. We’re going to have rehearsal, we’re going to have a speaker dinner and tell me who you want to meet. We want to activate your ideas in the community.” We had Todd Bol, the Founder of Little Free Library out of Wisconsin, come. Little Free Libraries have popped up all around the world. They’re just a little library on people’s yards or in the community where people can grab a book, take a book, leave a book, whatever they want to do. We had Todd come in a day early and we worked with our local community foundation in the city of Fargo and we had a community build. We built 30 Little Free Libraries the day before, he gives a talk, they go out the next week and all of a sudden, they pop up around the community.
We try to activate those ideas. We try to connect our speakers. Our community has become a laboratory to turn ideas into impact. It’s happened time and time again. We also have a concierge team where we book all their travel, we manage their schedules. We make the speakers feel like rock stars. Sometimes it’s famous people that people have heard of. Sometimes it’s high school students. We had two high school students speak and they both got standing ovations. It was so incredible. My wife and I had them over for dinner a couple of weeks later and I said, “Ladies, do we treat you like rock stars?” They both looked at me and they said, “No.” In my head, I’m pissed. I’m like, “What the heck? You’re in high school. How could you want us to treat you?” They shared with me and they go, “We felt better than rock stars. Our families felt like rock stars. Our community felt like rock stars.” We have these high school kids sneak all their friends in backstage. One of the women is from Somalia. She had all her friends there. The governor was taking photos with them, not the other way around. This young woman, Nastesho, she works at Target at the tail, she’s a cashier. She shared with me that the next day, she was back to work and people were stopping her and they wanted to talk to her about her talk. She just felt so good that she gave a powerful talk on radical inclusivity in communities and the community responded.
That’s making a big, big impact, clearly. Somewhere along the line, you decided to become the Executive Director of Emerging Prairie. Tell us about what that does to the community.
[Tweet “Fargo exceeding incredibly low expectations. “]
For you, John, who’s been to Fargo I believe one time and for others that maybe have been there zero times, growing up there, we go back to that idea of the brain drain. What’s going on in North Dakota? What’s going on in Fargo? When I do a lot of my talks around the country, I open up with the thought of Fargo exceeding incredibly low expectations. I’m with some buddies, all from North Dakota. One is an intellectual property attorney out of Harvard, one is a venture capitalist, one is an entrepreneur. We just said, “People locally are terrible at telling their own stories. We don’t want to be prideful. We don’t want to be boastful. We, as a group of friends, need to be better at telling the people in our community’s story.” We created Emerging Prairie with the idea that we should celebrate and connect our entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Now, here we are six years later. We’ve got a team of five, great folks. We’ve got a bunch of events in the drone industry, in emerging technology in agriculture and we’re building platforms to celebrate entrepreneurs. We’re connecting entrepreneurs to the ecosystem, so the corporations, the legal community, the finance community. Emerging Prairie is making a big impact. We had our third annual Drone Focus Conference and US Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, came out and gave a talk. That talk has made a big impact on policy and partnerships across the country. It happened in little old Fargo.
I want to talk about that because I watched that as part of your talk about the impact that drones had and why Fargo was uniquely the right place for drones to be tested because there was a problem you were solving and you have all this open space. Can you double click on that a little bit on that for us?
Exceeding Low Expectations: Sometimes our limitations are our strength.
Let’s go back to sometimes our limitations are our strength. North Dakota is a state of 700,000 people. If our state was a city, we would be not in the top 50 of biggest cities in the country. We got scarce population. When you have scarce population, you have opportunity. Drones can be tested. We have one of the five test sites in Grand Forks, North Dakota. These folks are world-class. You look at the intersection of a technology community, of a university system that cares and then you add on that low unemployment. North Dakota has really low unemployment. One of our drivers for innovation is lack of talent. We got folks building world-class technologies with drones to monitor construction sites, to test out bridges to see how they’re doing, to fly the drones along electric lines during blizzards so we’re not sending humans out but we’re sending the drones out to make sure that our power is on in rural North Dakota. There is an ecosystem in the unmanned aircraft system that is growing. It’s collaboration. It’s the university. It’s the economic development folks. It’s the private sector. It really is a spirit of possibility. A lot of that has been championed by our elected officials from both sides of the aisle that see this technology as making an impact to improve the human condition.
Greg, do you have a vision for your life of where you want to be a year from now or three years from now?
I used to be really goal-oriented, John. I used to have metrics, goals, checklists. When I was on that year around the world, I shifted my perspective as I just want to be time-rich, meaning I get to choose to spend time with interesting, weird and wonderful people. Then I can use my skills and abilities to make a difference. I’ve thought about life more as a videogame such as Zelda, which is an adventure of multiple things you can do, versus the old school Mario where you passed levels and moved up. I don’t really see where I’m going to be in three years but I hope I’m loving my community, I hope I’m adding value, I hope there are twists and turns, and I hope it’s an adventure. I’m not focused on big numbers anymore. I’m not focused on certain accomplishments. I just want to have an interesting, wild and wonderful life that hopefully leads to other people benefiting from it.
[Tweet “Be TIME rich “]
When you have that clear of an intention, you are literally free from what I call the self-esteem rollercoaster, which is only feeling good about yourself if your numbers are up, and you feel bad about yourself if your numbers are down. That’s where you and I really align, Greg, is that’s one of my biggest goals is to get people off that self-esteem rollercoaster who are always looking outside of themselves for validation. There’s a whole new way to live your life. The irony is when you let go of that fear of not being good enough based on your results, the results typically come in because people want to help you. I’ve seen it time and again in my own life and I see it happening with you and what you’re doing not just for yourself but for all of Fargo.
Let me piggyback that one, John, for a second because what you said just resonated with me. There are a couple of thoughts I want to share. If this is helpful for everybody, great; if not, disregard it as fast as possible. Our organization, we need to raise money. I was on a pitch for $200,000 because in the nonprofit space, we still have to raise money too. I’ve thought of our work as a laboratory versus an outcome. I think the beauty that science gives us is the spirit of exploration. There’s an Einstein quote that said, “If we knew what was going to happen, we wouldn’t be able to call it research.” In my world, in my team’s world, we try to focus on having a great setup to our experiment versus predicting the outcomes. We think of our work as a lab and it takes the pressure away from certain outcomes and deliverables. That’s helped us.
Exceeding Low Expectations: If we knew what was going to happen, we wouldn’t be able to call it research.
The second thing is there’s a huge difference between hustle and desperation. Hustle is busting your tail. It’s achieving results, making an impact. Desperation is fear. Desperation has anxiety in it. We try to hustle and try to remove that desperation behavior. The last thing that we’ve learned is that we need to collaborate. In everything we do, we have to have collaboration. The projects that our team takes on, we can’t do alone. We fundamentally cannot do it alone. It forces us to collaborate. It turns out, when you collaborate and you have clear mission and intention and you bring people along for the journey, great things happen. In our organization, we struggle to put our name on our events. We struggle to put our name into the “branding world.” It turns out, when we shine through others and we collaborate and we let other people be the hero, or our mantra is “Give the wins away,” we just get way more wins. It’s a lot more fun. That’s been a principle that has percolated into the organization of, “Pass the microphone. Give other people the opportunity to be the hero,” and it’s working.
Greg, how can people follow you on social media both for TEDxFargo as well as Emerging Prairie?
Nothing that we do is all really unique. Our handles on social media for Emerging Prairie are just @EmergingPrairie, for TEDxFargo, @TEDxFargo. Personally, my Twitter handle is @GregFromFargo. My email is [email protected]. We’d love for folks to follow along. John, you asked, “What’s the why behind this?” For me, it’s to show off my community, to show off my neighbors, my friends, my family that I believe are doing world-class work. You came to visit Fargo and we went to Young Blood Coffee shop. That’s been around for a year and a half. I’ll put their toast up against anyone. They make great toasts. It’s $6 for a loaf and $5.50 for a slice, but it’s damn good toast. The biggest honor anyone here would do is come visit, come check us out, let us know. We’d love to buy you coffee. We’d love to show folks around. Fargo is a special place right now and we’d love for people to come explore it.
I personally can attest to the warmth and the hospitality of everyone I met there, including you. Thank you so much for being a guest on The Successful Pitch and sharing your passion and insights on how to make a difference in the world.
Thank you.
Links Mentioned
- Greg Tehven
- Emerging Prairie
- TEDxFargo
- 1 Million Cups Fargo
- Startup Weekend
- Pay It Forward Tours
- Students Today Leaders Forever
- TEDxFargo
- Doug Burgum
- See Mix Drink
- Richard Wiese
- Steve Rohr
- Little Free Library
- Drone Focus Conference
- Emerging Prairie Facebook
- TEDxFargo Facebook
- Greg’s Facebook
- [email protected]
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Giftology: Make People Feel That They Matter with John Ruhlin
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Making people feel that you care and think about them through personalized gifts is the best way to make a connection. Not just because it is your obligation but because you feel it is the right thing to do to show your gratitude. Learn how to give great gives with Giftologoy author John Ruhlin. The gift-giving bar may have been set low by the advancements of technology, but this is the best time to go against the flow and make people feel one-in-a-million.
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is John Ruhlin who is the author of Giftology. Do you know what the ten worst gifts are to give? John does, and he has ideas on how to give great gifts that are thoughtful and consistent. One of the secrets is personalizing the gift and making it so memorable. He also has a secret about the best time to give a gift and the best time not to give a gift so they’re not lost in the clutter. He really is the master of storytelling, and he says give when it’s unexpected, and more importantly, make what you give something that people are going to talk about. It’s really worth the investment in coming up with a thoughtful gift. I can’t recommend his book and this episode enough. Enjoy it.
Listen To The Episode Here
Giftology: Make People Feel That They Matter with John Ruhlin
If I could show you how to cut through the noise, increase referrals and strengthen the retention of your clients, would you want to learn how to do that? I don’t know about you but I do, that’s why I’ve invited John Ruhlin who is the founder of the Ruhlin Group. He’s the author of the book called Giftology, which I have given out as gifts. His company is trusted by leaders of fast-growing companies to develop relationships, building strategies and VIP gifting programs that do all these important things about getting more referrals, getting the most important clients and employees, and even prospects to be personally engaged. He writes regularly for Entrepreneur, Forbes, Success. He’s literally spoken all over the world for big clients like Google and EO and countless others. John, welcome to the show.
John, thanks for having me.
I always love to ask my guests to tell their own story of origin, and you do that in Giftology, your great book. Would you give us an abbreviated version of how did you become such an expert in gifts and what you did with knives?
Giftology
That’s how most people would assume when they hear that we have the Cubs or Google as a client, they assume that I grew up either in Silicon Valley or New York or some place that’s hip and cool. The exact opposite would be true. I grew up on a farm in the middle of Ohio, one of six kids, doing the sexiest thing on the planet, milking goats every day. I learned very quickly what I did not want to do the rest of my life. I was splitting wood to heat our house. Literally our whole house or our whole farm house was heated with wood. I worked really hard, got great grades because I wanted to get out of dodge. I thought I’d go be a doctor because you’re poor and you’re trying to make a lot of money. You think, “I’m going to be a lawyer, a doctor.” I went to school to go make mom proud. She was in the health and wellness even back 30 to 40 years ago.
My life changed when I interned with a company that you referenced, the knives. I was desperate to make money and I knew enough to not graduate from school, I went to a private university with a bunch of debt. My goal was zero debt when I got out of school, which is very difficult to do because school’s expensive and how do you do that? I started interning with Cutco, the knife company, and they’ve worked with like 1.5 million college kids. They literally have some of the best sales training on the planet. I was just desperate to make money, and so I started the process. I was scared to death because I didn’t really know sales at all. My life changed because I was dating a girl at that time. Her dad was an attorney. Even though he’s an attorney, he seemed to be involved in every business deal in town. He never seemed rushed. He had more referrals than he could possibly handle. He was always giving things away, super generous, radically generous.
He’d find deals on silly stuff like noodles and he’d buy like a semi-loaded noodles and everybody at church the next Sunday, 200 people would end up with a year’s supply of noodles. I’m like, “Paul, that was $20,000, that’s crazy.” I worked up the courage to pitch him Cutco. They had pocket knives and I thought all of his clients are men, they’re CEOs of companies, maybe he’ll give away pocket knives to his clients at Christmas. I remember pitching the idea and I’m sweating because I’m nervous. He’s like, “What about the paring knives? Could we engrave those?” I’m like, “You’re going to give a kitchen item to a bunch of grown men that are running companies, like home builders and lumber yards? Paul, I’ll sell you as many paring knives as you want, but why?” He said, “In 35 years of doing business, the reason I have more deal flow that I could handle is I found that if you take care of the family, everything else in business seems to take care of itself.”
For me, it was like this lightning bolt moment. I had never heard of Robert Cialdini, Pre-Suasion and Influence and reciprocity or any of these things. I started to learn very quickly that it wasn’t really about the knife. All the knives are amazing and we still move millions of dollars of the knives. It was about the psychology of relationship building, how you invest in people, how you stand out, and how you engage with what we now call the inner circle. I started to apply these principles to the knife business and realized even brutally successful company leaders, big companies, billion-dollar companies, they suck when it comes to showing gratitude in a very thoughtful way and a consistent way. By the time I was a senior in college, I was Cutco’s largest international distributor. I have about 1.5 million people in their 70-year history by selling these knives because of these principles that I now write about seventeen years later. Like anybody else, seventeen-year overnight success, the book came out nine months ago and it’s opening doors with MIT and just insane places. A lot of what I write in the book are these timeless principles that I learned from this small country attorney back in Ohio.
[Tweet “Be thoughtful and consistent with your gifts”]
I love that story for so many reasons. It’s the ultimate rags to riches story, and there are so many life lessons in there. I’ve actually had Robert, the author of Pre-Suasion on the show. We can certainly connect what he’s talking about edifying people and planting seeds before you even ask them for anything and how that ties into gift-giving. The thing that you said now, John, that really resonates with me is you’re solving a big problem, which is even huge companies are really bad or AKA suck at giving gifts. Maybe they give gifts on a consistent basis or every holiday, but they’re not very thoughtful, or maybe in some blue moon they might have to come up with an idea that’s like, “It’s somebody’s anniversary, I’ll give them something,” or “They’re getting married and I’ll go to the registry and pick something.” It’s somewhat thoughtful to remember that, but it’s not consistent. It’s either one or the other but rarely both. Is that an accurate analysis of the problem?
Yeah. In the book we talked about the ten core things, what makes a good gift or not a great gift. The thing is, you don’t have to have all of them but if you do, it’s a home run. I think that the bar is so low right now because people just think it’s easier to send a text message versus a hand-written note, it’s easier just to order something on Amazon versus hand-selecting it or picking it and then making sure that it’s wrapped properly or that it’s personalized. There are a lot of people that are like, “I tried that gift thing, it doesn’t work.” I’m like, “You sent this piece of crap with your logo on it at Christmas.” They did everything wrong and they’re like, “Gifting doesn’t work. We cut it out of our budget.” I’m like, “Of course it didn’t work because you didn’t put any thought or strategy into it. You just randomly tossed your assistant a few dollars and said, “We made money this year, we probably should say thank you.'”
I see that from startups all the way up to $40 billion-companies. They put all the strategy in the marketing and operations and trade shows and all the same stuff that all of their competitors do, but when it comes to time to deepen relationships, and everybody says relationships are important, there’s an incongruence between what they say and what they do. They don’t realize internally when somebody gets something that’s crappy or is not personalized, it’s seared into their memory that that person doesn’t really care about me. They’re not really thoughtful, they’re not caring, that I don’t matter. People ask, “John, how did you get referred to the Cubs?” I’m like, “I planted a lot of good seeds for seven years straight and eventually timing and everything aligned together, and people went out of their way to stick their neck out and the deal came.” Most people aren’t willing to put in all the extra work to do it because they don’t think it matters. When you think something doesn’t matter, you don’t put in the effort and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I was born in Chicago and grew up in the suburbs so I’m a big Cubs fan. It’s just a requirement if you live there. What did you do for your clients at the Cubs when they won the World Series? I’m sure that was an interesting thoughtful experience.
You have to pick your times of how you wow somebody.
What’s interesting is when you are the Cubs, you have to pick your times of how you wow somebody. A lot of what we did really led up to landing them as a client. We reached out to them and obviously sent over a nice note, congratulating them. There is so much fanfare around the team that hadn’t won in 108 years. What I love about what we do is we gift when it’s unexpected. Everybody was wanting to just flap their back and congratulate and do cool things for them after winning the World Series and then it became noise. It’s like giving gifts at the holidays. We waited a little bit and we started to put together this cool package. We’ve done a project with them where we took the Wrigley Field locker room where they’re ripping out and they didn’t know what to do with it. We built these amazing Bluetooth speakers made from the wood, 400 of them. We ended up making extras on purpose. We knew they would run out, and so we ended up sending an extra set of the speakers and we ended up making custom headphones for all the decision-makers and all the different people and even their teams. They were able to have a piece of history that was tied to our project but in a way that they weren’t expecting. Surprisingly enough, now that they’ve won, they’re like, “What can you do with these old batter circles? Can you do something with those?” I can’t say what we’re going to do with the batter circles, but it’s going to be for their top relationships.
Most people give gifts when they’re expected and it’s obligatory. That’s what ruins the gift. We don’t give gifts after referrals. “What do you mean you don’t give a gift after referral?” If somebody sends us a $500,000 referral and we send them a Starbucks gift card, it feels a little hollow. It feels like, ”I just gave you a $500,000 referral and you’re going to send me a restaurant gift certificate?“ That doesn’t feel very thoughtful.” We hand-write a note, I give gifts just because out of the blue and then that’s when they matter. People are like, “John was just thinking of me,” not “John wants something,” not “I just sent them something so now it’s a tit-for-tat transaction.” Everybody wants to be acknowledged just as being a human being, not because they did something.
In one of your chapters in your book, you talked about one of your favorite sayings, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I personally also really like that quote. Can you bring that to life about how that relates to you and what you do with Giftology?
Yes. I think that it’s like going into an interview and your shoes aren’t shined. People notice the details, especially the higher up the food chain you go. I referenced the idea that for most people, it’s just easier to send a text message versus a hand-written note. Gifting is one of those things where the bar is really low and so it’s easier to send Harry and David Fruit of the Month Club and just put something on auto-pilot. I think that when you take the time to say even a gift matters, all of a sudden people are like, “If he put that much attention in detail into gifting, imagine what he does in his other parts of his business.” We see that halo effect over and over again. We spend $3 on our business cards and people are like, “That’s insane, why would you do that?” I’m like, “If we pay that much attention to a business card, imagine what we do when we outsource your gifts.” They’re like, “That’s true. I didn’t think about it that way.”
If you’re willing to take the minor details that most people think don’t matter and you go all in and go not 1% or 2% better but you go a 1000% better, all of a sudden people are like, “Wow.” It’s like going to a restaurant and have a nice steak dinner. You expect a good steak dinner and you expect great service and whatever else. All of a sudden the waiter knows your wife likes a certain kind of chocolate. A dessert comes out and it’s made with that chocolate. You just spent $300 on wine and dinner and steak and whatever else, and they spent $5 probably on that dessert. What do you go tell all of your friends? Do you talk about the steak was cooked perfectly and the ambiance and the mahogany wood? No, because those are all the normal stuff. You’re going to say, “They found out that my wife likes this kind of chocolate and they made a dessert that blew her mind.” You’d bragged about the $5 thing, not the $500 thing, because the $500 thing you’ve come to expect. Maybe they’re exceeding your expectations by 1% or 2%, but they took a detail and they went all in and they surprised you with it and made you look like $1 million to your significant other. All of a sudden, this $5 thing becomes the entire focus. That’s where I tell a hundred people about it.
I’ve seen people do that with mugs. I used to make fun of mugs on air. Every company on the planet gives out mugs. This gift maker, it’s what he calls himself, he makes things out of clay. He made this handmade mug for me that was a $250 mug that told my entire life story, and then he made one for my wife and he drove eight and a half hours to hand-deliver them to me. He’s a 23-year old kid. Guess who gets all of my business anytime I need to create this amazing gift experience for clients and financial advisors in startups? It didn’t matter the client. If I want to do something amazing, I call this guy up and he makes me a $250 mug. The way that he paid attention to detail and he took something mundane like a $3 mug and made it a $300 mug that became an artifact of my life, now I can’t stop talking about him. How you do anything is how you do everything. Most people are like, “It doesn’t matter,” and I’m like, “That’s exactly right, it doesn’t matter for you, but for the 1% that latched on to it, that becomes the game changer.”
[Tweet “Give When It Is Unexpected”]
Let’s talk about the detail that you did on your book cover. It’s got shiny topography on it. It looks like it’s got a black ribbon on it. It’s got the knife. I’m sure some thought and effort went into that because I’ve seen a lot of books in my day and I’ve never seen a cover like that.
It costs three times as much to print that book as it does any other normal hardback. We actually have started to convert a lot of our books over to when somebody personally orders books from me. They don’t know this but for our first 50, for guys like Michael Hyde and Darren Hardy and Seth Godin, guys that read our friends, mentors or people I wanted to be, I made 50 of these books that look just like that but they were handmade. The book was handmade and then it went into a handmade leather bag. Then that went into a linen box that was padded and it was all color-coordinated with red. It was a $200 package and with a $9-metal letterhead, and hand-wrote notes to 50 of the top relationships. That’s a $10,000 expense. People are like, “That’s insane.” I’m like, “Let’s put it this way, Michael Hyde has one of the biggest audiences on the planet. He invited us to be on his podcast as a direct result.” He’s like, “I get thousands of books sent to me per year, yours is the only one I kept this year. It’s the nicest book I’ve ever seen.” He actually read it, as well as his twenty employees. People are like, “$200, that’s insane.” I’m like, “You’ll spend $200 on freaking flashlights and pass them out like they’re candy and not thinking anything of it. I’d rather spend $200 on one thing. Basically I call it shooting with a rifle versus most people shoot with shotguns. I’m going to go blow somebody’s mind with one thing versus sending out a thousand things that are just part of the noise and just vanilla and are nothing.”
We now have a VIP version of the book. That’s not $200 a piece but they’re very expensive; a leather bag, a linen box. When people get it they’re like, “Holy crap.” They only have to read the book and they understand what we do and what we teach and what we talk about and that we actually walk our talk. There are a lot of people that are big talking heads but are you willing to put your money where your mouth is and walk it out? For us, we’re this small little firm out of the Midwest, but we’re talking to the Washington Nationals right now about doing a big project with them. One of the reason is it’s because they’ve seen that we’re willing to walk our talk and they’ve heard about it from other people. It’s not that we don’t ever screw up. There are times that we drop the ball, we’re not perfect. Our intention is to fully play full on and do things that will level it, that most people are like, “That sounds great, but I could never do that.” They talk themselves out of it before they even engage.
That has so many layers; walking your talk, being authentic. It also reminds me of how the Italians wear clothes. They’d rather have one really wonderful handmade suit and wear that every day of the week than five so-so made suits. We go visit there and you think these people are really rich. They’re wearing these multi-thousand dollar suits and they’re like, “No, that’s all they wear. That’s their one suit.”
That’s their one suit. That’s their one leather bag. That’s their one watch. I’d rather have one really nice thing. My wife is the same way. She grew up in a farm and they took care of things. She’s like, “John, I don’t need a bunch of crap.” We don’t need more stuff, but everybody has room in their house for an artifact. I think that’s where people are like, “How do you send gifts? Doesn’t everybody just want experiences?” I’m like, “Experiences are awesome, I love experiences as gifts but I like to combine it with artifacts. Every time they see the item, they’re reminded of the amazing experience that they had with you or on their own or with their family or whatever else. I’m a big believer in do one really nice thing versus a hundred mediocre things.
I’m a big believer in do one really nice thing versus a hundred mediocre things.
Speaking of your wife, you talked about her throughout the book. You dedicate the book to her, you talk about how your favorite movie was The Notebook and that you weren’t around so much. Can you tell everybody what you did for your wife since that’s one of your favorite movies together?
Telling the whole story will probably take 30 minutes and usually that’s my wrap-up story when I give keynotes. The summation of it is I was broke as a joke when I started dating my wife. I had invested in a bunch of companies and real estate and I had an employee that was stealing from me, IRS audit. It was my lowest point. It was 2007, 2008. The world melted down financially on top of that. I went from sending saunas to people and Brooks Brothers and crazy over-the-top gifting experiences to living on $1,000 a month take home. The first two years of buying the company, didn’t take a salary, not one dollar.
I wanted to out-do myself of anything I’ve done for a client. I basically recreated The Notebook’s story. I was going to be on the plane with her in disguise, had arranged with Continental at the time. At 30,000 feet, she had read this notebook that I put together of 70 pages of our story. At the end it starts talking about, “Will you love me when I get older and when I’d gained 150 pounds?” There’s this old fat dude sitting next to her. She starts to realize, I’m the old fat dude, this is her boyfriend, I get down on one knee and pulled out the ring and proposed. Our 200 closest friends were waiting to celebrate in Cleveland where she was flying to, which is where I was living at the time. Her family had driven up. That was what was supposed to happen.
Unfortunately, I ended up collapsing in the airport, having to get on life support breathing machine. The FBI showed up because there was guy in disguise in an airplane in an airport. Everything that could go wrong with the story; they took me to the hospital, I was on breathing machine. It was like Romeo and Juliet. Fortunately, I didn’t die. I woke up the next morning and six days later got out of the hospital and was able to propose with no disguise. We read the notebook together with no disguise on the airplane and fortunately she still said yes after basically putting her through hell. It’s one of those stories that was told and written about. It wasn’t the version I thought it was going to be. It took a little bit of a U-turn, but it taught me some very valuable lessons along the way. It gave me an insane story involving FBI and TSA and hospitals and breathing machines. It’s probably the craziest thing in 37 years of living that I’ve lived through.
You’ve come up with this great term. Instead of an entrepreneur, you talk about being a giverpreneur. Can you define what that is for people in a way that they could start incorporating that into their business?
Yes. I came up with the term after reading Give and Take, Adam Grant’s book. I think that everybody is wired one of three ways. We all can be all three but we tend to have the tendency towards one of the three: a giver, a taker or a matcher. I think most people are matchers. If you do something for them, they’d do something for you. There are a handful of people that are givers in business, whether you’re a sales rep, an entrepreneur, an owner, that you give without expectation of anything coming back. Then the taker is obviously somebody that takes and is just looking out for themselves. What’s interesting about his book is the best performing entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, everybody, are givers. They’re also the worst performers. I think that it depends on how you give and there is a strategic way to give.
As an entrepreneur, we’re all looking for ways to grow our business and invest $1 and get $5 back. To me, a giverpreneur is somebody that has that giver mindset from Give and Take that gives with no strings attached. I think that a lot of the companies that scale the fastest are those that have the best relationships and have poured into them over and over and over again. Oftentimes, your first idea as an entrepreneur doesn’t hit. It’s the second, third, fifth, tenth, whatever idea, but if you’ve given along the way and poured into people, you start to stack up relationships and doors and opportunities and resources that by the third, fourth, fifth, tenth time, the idea is right, the timing is right, you have the right people on the team. I like to surround myself with other givers, whether it’s entrepreneurially or just in general, and have contests to see who can outgive each other. It’s amazing the things that start to happen and the doors that start to open and the people you start to meet.
To me, it sounds cool, giverpreneur. Really it’s just having a giving mindset and being strategic about surrounding yourself with other givers to grow whatever the business is, whether it’s the business you started or it’s operating as an entrepreneur or somebody that’s inside another company but acts like an entrepreneur. I want to surround myself with givers because those are the best performing people on the planet. Adam’s got the research to back that.
You’re also an investor so you hear a lot of people pitching you to possibly fund their startup. What do you look for in an entrepreneur, giverpreneur when you hear a pitch? Any tips on what a good pitch is?
Having some alignment from a core value perspective is really important to us.
We have pretty strict rights here. There are a lot of people that invest in tech and these different things. We do a little bit of tech investment but in general we’re looking for companies, one, where we trust the founder and that goes without saying. There are certain industries and arenas that, just based on core values, we’re just not going to get into. That’s just not the direction that we want to take even if it’s a massive opportunity. It’s just not who we are from a faith perspective and whatever else. Having some alignment from a core value perspective is really important to us. For us it’s not always, “Is the company going to grow to be the biggest?” but “Is there an opportunity to serve a niche and do something really unique and different and serve people?” At the end of the day, even if things don’t go perfect, we like companies where there’s not a huge amount of capital needs.
There are a lot of opportunities. Look at Amazon or Zappos. We’re not looking for companies to reach $1 billion in revenue before they’re profitable. We want the old school businesses where it’s like, “If this idea gets to $5 million, it’s going to throw off a lot of cash and help a lot of people.” If they can do those things and we feel like the niche is unique enough and we really trust the founder, then we’re open to invest in it. If not, it may be a $20 billion opportunity, at the end of the day that’s not necessarily why we’re investing. We’re not looking for unicorns. I know that hedge funds and all these other companies, they’re looking for the one unicorn. We’re looking for guys that can go out. I’d love home runs but base hits are just fine too. We invest in things that we understand as well. Like the one tech company we did invest in, it’s a gifting platform. I can add value to it and I understand it. Even though we don’t normally do tech, it was an area where we were like, “This could be really cool,” so we invested.
Movie studios have that same philosophy. They can’t all be blockbusters, some of them have to be base hits, as you described, back to the baseball analogy a little bit there.
Some of the movies that are consistently profitable are the ones that go directly to DVD or to Netflix or whatever else. They’re not the sexiest thing, they’re not going to do $100 million revenue, but they cost like $1 million to make and they produce $5 million in revenue. I’ll take a 5 to 1 ratio. It may not win an Oscar but I’m okay with that.
John, let me ask you about this situation. A lot of companies are invited to come and pitch, whether a magazine coming to pitch or brand to advertise or they’re an architect firm coming in with other architect firms to pitch to get the business to build the skyscraper or airport or whatever it is. They’re not quite sure if they should give a gift when they come to present or as a follow-up gift. They don’t want to have anybody accuse them of trying to “buy the business.” What are your thoughts on the best time to give a gift when you’ve been invited to come in and pitch, or should you give a gift at all at that time?
I think it’s a case by case basis. If it’s an RFP with Walmart or somebody like that where they can’t even accept a pencil or going out for coffee, then a gift isn’t appropriate. If you know those are the kind of people that you could take them to a ballgame or you can take them out to dinner, or there are more social experiences that are acceptable, then I would look to amplify. Let me take somebody out, if we were to take him out for a steak dinner, we might have personalized steak knives waiting for them when they got to the dinner that they could take home with them. It’s a cool thing that they can take home to their spouse and use. It was part of the experience, it elevated the experience, but nobody’s feeling like they’re being bought because there’s a $200 set of steak knives that they used at the dinner table. It was part of the experience. It was cool. It showed an attention to detail and personalization and class.
We do a lot of those things for clients when they’re in pitching stages or as a follow-up like we appreciate the time. We used the knives in that way like, “Thanks for carving up the time for us to be there and be a part of the things.” I think a lot of times, it’s sometimes those little things that show an attention to detail are huge. Sometimes, you’re pitching from afar. I know one of the guys that’s a client of ours, it’s an engineering firm, I was the only one that actually dropped everything, flew out and met with them to see what their real needs were, and that’s why I got the business. I wasn’t the cheapest but I was the only one that flew across the country to meet with them and really understand their needs. That’s why I won the RFP and the pitch.
If you don’t feel comfortable, like I can’t take them out for coffee, then don’t send a gift.
I think every industry and situation is different. If you don’t feel comfortable, like I can’t take them out for coffee, then don’t send a gift. The last thing you want to do is consistently spend money and have a negative consequence. What I will say is that most people play fearful when it comes to gifting. I would rather lose one of the ten pitches because they’ve misinterpreted the gift and stand out head and shoulders above on the other nine out of ten because I did. I think most people, all they remember is the one out of ten that got sent back to them or somebody was pissed off or upset or misinterpret it. I’m like, “Focus on the other eight or nine that loved it.” I love that people play scared because it means they won’t do what I’m teaching them to do. Five out of a hundred companies that we work with, they stand out head and shoulders above because even if their competitors know our playbook, they won’t do it because they play scared.
What’s interesting is my big takeaway, there are several, but the two that really stand out is the personalization combined with going the extra mile. There’s the young boy you described who drove so far, you getting on a plane, the personalization with the names on the steak knives, not just steak knives, that’s really key. My final question for you is, you talked about if you really get to know somebody, you can even really connect with them if you come up with a clever gift for their children. Have you ever done anything for someone who may not have children, but talks about their pets all the time?
I actually just sent one to Gary Vaynerchuk‘s former assistant who now runs Vayner Capital. We hosted Gary for the day. In Saint Louis, he toured our leather factory. He was like, “This is really cool stuff.” He’s like, “Phil, that’s this company.” I looked up and saw that he had a dog named Chloe, the dog loved peppers. I sent him a knife that was handcrafted exclusively for Chloe. It said something about Chloe’s pepper slicer or something like that. Sure enough, he responded. He was like, “That’s awesome,” because it was for his dog. We’ve done that with customized collars and leashes and beds and other things that are nice, classy, useful, high-end things for somebody’s pets absolutely. In many cases, people treat their pets better than they do their kids, it’s crazy. What lengths people go to. One of the few recession-proof industries is the pet industry. People eat Skippy peanut butter and be serving their dogs filet mignon. It’s amazing to me the level that people go to for their pets. Absolutely, that sets definitely a relevant angle to take.
Any last thoughts you have you want to leave us with on how we can be a giverpreneur?
[Tweet “Be A Giver-preneur”]
I would just say that a lot of times, people don’t think they can afford us or they get afraid on outsourcing and gifting to us. The reality is there are a lot of small companies that work with us. It’s like I’m going to take my three girls bowling. You just try to keep them out of the gutter and they have the bumpers that keep your balls over. We did create a PDF that has the ten worst gifts to avoid giving, just to give people a way to say, “At least it’s not one of these ten.” It eliminates. Most people are like, “Those are the ten I normally send, so I need to avoid those.” We confirm why they’re not great gifts. If you go to GiftologyBook.com/pitch, they can go download it for free and it summarizes some of what’s in the book. Obviously the book goes into detail on strategies, percentages, follow-up, case studies, and all that stuff. Sometimes people just want a little cheat sheet for them or their marketing team of like, “Keep these ten off of the list,” and it’s usually pretty helpful. I would say that that’s what I would wrap up with as far as a, “Go do this.” If you like the book, go download the book, and if you like the book and whatever else, you can reach out to us and I’m happy to help. That’s a good first step.
Thanks, John, so much. You’ve been a great guest and a giver.
Links Mentioned
- John Ruhlin
- Giftology
- Ruhlin Group
- Cutco
- Pre-Suasion
- Influence
- Michael Hyde
- Darren Hardy
- Seth Godin
- Give and Take
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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