Mastering Reciprocity to Improve Relationships with Customers and Employees

Speaker 1 Here's what I'll say is that in any other part of your business, you have a business plan, a finance plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, an operations plan, a SOP.

Speaker 1 If you ask people, what's your relationship plan?

Speaker 1 If your business is going to rise and fall on your employees, your clients, your suppliers, and you don't have a plan on how you're going to show up and be different with those relationships and emotionally connect to them, not just check a box and say, I sponsored this or I did Facebook ads.

Speaker 1 Then somebody else who has a plan for that relationship and is going to love on that relationship, It sounds woo-woo, but we respond emotionally to people that do nice things for us and show up in uncommon ways.

Speaker 1 So the core of giftology is just saying: take a percentage and make it a math equation.

Speaker 1 If you made a million dollars last year, net, I don't care what your revenue is, if you're a hundred million dollar company, but you only profited a million,

Speaker 1 take a percentage of that million dollars and reinvest it back into the relationships that allowed you to even make that million dollars.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Speaker 2 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mellow.

Speaker 3 Welcome back to the Home Service Expert.

Speaker 3 My name is Tommy Mellow, and I got John Rulin here.

Speaker 3 Amazing guy. I got to meet him in the hallway at a hotel with their 100 million mastermind group.

Speaker 3 He's an expert in entrepreneurship, customer relationships, team building leadership, marketing strategy. He is the co-founder of the ruling group from 2000 to present.

Speaker 3 Pretty big on LinkedIn and Twitter. He's the world's leading authority for maximizing customer loyalties through radical generosity.

Speaker 3 After applying principles of generosity, John started selling the largest deals in Cutco history out of 1.5 million other reps and distributors.

Speaker 3 He's also the author of Giftology: the art and science of using gifts to cut through the noise, increase referrals, and strengthen retention. He's also the founder of the Ruling Group.

Speaker 3 It's exciting to have you here, brother.

Speaker 1 That is long overdue. You've read the book like three or four times.
We might as well have a conversation.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's an awesome book, man. And you did an awesome speech here.
What was that about a month ago in

Speaker 3 Hollywood?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah, dropping two love bombs to Aubrey Marcus and to flushman that you said you found that gal on etsy

Speaker 1 no i found her through uh andy frisella you know andy uh yeah yeah

Speaker 1 so first forum his right-hand guy for a number of years was von kohler the pastor of disaster his co-host who's literally you know man and god just solid dude and he reached out to me he's like hey i got somebody you need to connect with

Speaker 1 And all of our vendors be fine through referral. And so I checked her out, went to her house.
She's working out of her garage.

Speaker 1 And I saw some of the stuff that she was producing and doing stuff for like celebrities like Oscar de la Jolla.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I want to start sending these $40,000 art pieces to guys like Boehner Chuck and whatever.

Speaker 1 And she's like, you know, I don't think she believed me, but we've started to do some pretty crazy ones like those two that we dropped that weekend.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I found her through word of mouth, like, you know, service providers, right? What do you recommend? The person that you like, that you trust, the person that you use.

Speaker 1 It's what it comes down to, word of mouth.

Speaker 3 Man, this is the coolest podcast ever because i've had a lot of best selling officers i actually have michael gerber in here

Speaker 3 and i just love the concept i love the the story do you want to uh just share a little bit about your history kind of a little bit about your book and just where you've been and where you're going yeah well what i'll say is people hear the word cuckoo or gifts and they're like i don't care about knives what does this have to do with you know leading a company or service provider i don't care about any of those sorts of things.

Speaker 1 So the core of what we really speak on is relationships. I grew up on a farm milking goats.
I wasn't around affluent people. I wasn't around business owners or executives.

Speaker 1 I was like bailing hay in the summers. And my original mentor, when I went to go pay for med school, I got straight A's through school.

Speaker 1 So I could not do, you know, I didn't want to bale hay or have, we had a one acre garden. I split wood, the heater house with wood growing up, one of six kids, was a law firm owner.

Speaker 1 And the reason he was a rainmaker was he understood relationship building. He showed up in uncommon ways for people in the community.
And because of that, everybody loved him, trusted him.

Speaker 1 And he was the most top of mind person in the community. So he got all the referrals, all the deal access, the real estate that became the Walmart because he was likable, because people loved him.

Speaker 1 And so when I pitched him, I interned with Cutco, which if you've never pitched your girlfriend's dad knives, that's the weirdest, most awkward conversation in the world.

Speaker 1 Paul was like, I was thinking he'd have mercy on me maybe because he was so generous. And then you buy at Christmas.

Speaker 1 And you had these $100, $200 pocket knives that Kutco made, handmade pocket knives, because all of his clients were dudes and to be outdoors, hunting, fishing, camping.

Speaker 1 And he's like, John, I don't want to order pocket knives. And I'm like, okay, I understand, Paul.
He's like, no, I want to order 100 pairing knives.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, Paul, you want to give a bunch of grown men dudes like a kitchen tool? Why? And he's like, the reason I have more referrals, access, loyalty is I found out a simple truth in business.

Speaker 1 I don't care if it's an employee, a client, a center of influence, a partner, a referral source. If you take care of the family, and that relationship, everything else will take care of itself.

Speaker 1 So I learned early on, it wasn't about the stupid knives. It's not about the tchotchkis.
It's not about any any of that.

Speaker 1 If you show up in uncommon ways for your clients and your employees, what do they do? They go out and sell on your behalf. They go out and create word of mouth that you could never create.

Speaker 1 Most people take that for granted and wait for it to happen. And then they send an Amazon gift card after they got a referral.
That's not a relationship. That's a transactional tit for tat.

Speaker 1 Paul was proactive and just loved on people. And because of that, he got 100 times more referrals because he didn't wait for them to happen.

Speaker 1 So the core of giftology is there's a system, there's a science, whether it's with your wife or your kids or your parents or your clients human beings respond when you take care of their inner circle which is their family when you take care of and personalize things not with a logo but with their name and so we became masters the reason i got to speak on stage at a mastermind with seven eight nine 10 figure guys is because i poured into the relationship of joel i poured into the relationship of dan and and kat the event planner Most people dump on the event planner.

Speaker 1 Kat's one of my best friends. She's amazing.
And because I took care of her and the people there,

Speaker 1 they wanted to have me on stage to teach this principle. And I was like, I'm not going to just take advantage of speaking and getting clients.
I want to teach and I want to show people.

Speaker 1 And so I split the cost on both of those love bombs because I understood the value of relationships.

Speaker 1 So all of that stems back to being this kid that didn't have any connections, didn't have the right blue blood to be able to inherit wealth. I had to go like bootstrap it from the ground up.

Speaker 1 And the fastest way you grow a company is through humans. It's through relationships.

Speaker 3 Man, you dazzled me on stage. You said, listen, everybody gets birthday presents.
Everybody gets Christmas presents. Everybody, you know, Valentine's Day, you're always getting red roses.

Speaker 3 You said, and also you mentioned the gatekeeper, the secretary, the person helping a lot, the right-hand person.

Speaker 3 So many tips. I love the story of what you did in the hotel.
I met you at a different hotel. But anyways, let's talk a little bit about that.
Let's talk about what the idea of giftology really means.

Speaker 3 He looks younger than Tommy Mello.

Speaker 3 Anyways, let's talk about this because I'm, dude, I'm obsessed with it now. I've not started like doing it yet, but we're going to talk and we're going to figure out a way to work together.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man. Well, here's what I'll say is that In any other part of your business, you have a business plan, a finance plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, an operations plan, a SOP.

Speaker 1 If you ask people, what's your relationship plan?

Speaker 1 If your business is going to rise and fall on your employees, your clients, your suppliers, and you don't have a plan on how you're going to show up and be different with those relationships and emotionally connect to them, not just check a box and say, I sponsored this or I did Facebook ads, then somebody else who has a plan for that relationship and is going to love on that relationship, it sounds woo-woo, but we respond emotionally to people that do nice things for us and show up in uncommon ways.

Speaker 1 So the core of giftology is just saying, take a percentage and make it a math equation.

Speaker 1 If you made a million dollars last year, net, I don't care what your revenue is, if you're a hundred million dollar company, but you only profited a million, take a percentage of that million dollars and reinvest it back into the relationships that allowed you to even make that million dollars.

Speaker 1 In our case, it's 5 to 15% is the benchmark. So 10% of a million is 100 grand.
And you ask people, hey, when's the last time?

Speaker 1 you hired two employees they're like we hired them last week i'm like what did that add to your fixed cost overhead and they're like about about 125 grand every year.

Speaker 1 And I said, when's the last time you invested 125 grand into the 20 relationships that allow you to have a company? And they're like, never.

Speaker 1 Or they'll say, I take them to the Super Bowl every now and again. And I'm like, when did it last time you physically gave them something that said, you matter?

Speaker 1 And they're not a jacket with a logo on or a vest or a hat or a gift card, but a true artifact, a love bomb. And they're like, we've never done that.
I'm like, exactly.

Speaker 1 And neither has anybody else in your industry. You want to stand out.
Here's the little hinge that could swing this humongous door. You want more referrals?

Speaker 1 You want people to take your phone call faster? You want your employees to run through walls for you? Show up for them and their family in a way that nobody else has.

Speaker 1 Like for us, our employees, all of them, we said, what would they never do for themselves? And one of them was houseplaying.

Speaker 1 Clean their houses, baby. Costs us two, three grand an employee per year.
People are like, how do you afford that?

Speaker 1 I'm like, the same way you afford when you hire somebody and you pay them a salary range. or an hourly range of 45 to 55 grand.
That's a $10,000 delta that you don't think anything of.

Speaker 1 You'll spend spend an extra 10 grand to hire somebody because you need the person. When's the last time you took all of your employees and invested an extra five grand in them?

Speaker 1 Like, we send mattresses that are five grand to our employees.

Speaker 3 Which one?

Speaker 3 What kind?

Speaker 1 Intellibed.

Speaker 3 Are those good?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're freaking amazing. Ben Greenfield, who's like a biohacker guy, he's a friend client.
He's the guy who wins like the Spartan race. And you know, I was on Rogan's podcast three times.

Speaker 1 He turned me on to the company. They're made in Utah.
They're US-made no chemicals, organic.

Speaker 1 It's like better than any of the other mattresses out there that are temper pedic and those kind 20 year 20 year warranty oh yeah purple's i think they're good silicon valley marketers but i wouldn't say that they're necessarily who i would um well i'm wondering it's like

Speaker 3 you spend six seven eight hours it's a third of your life practically it's kind of a big decision so i was just curious Yeah, for you and your spouse.

Speaker 1 So now you give something that their spouse is talking about to all their family and friends. You want to have a waiting list to come work at your company.

Speaker 1 Do things that are braggable and talk about at mommy daycare, at the school, at the board meeting, all those kind of places. They're not going to brag that you got a bonus.
Everybody gets a bonus.

Speaker 1 You start sending $5,000 mattresses to all your employees. They will tell that story and people will be like, How do I work there? How do I get my house cleaner?

Speaker 1 Like, I have employees that their parents are doctors. And when they're at parties, what do they talk about? My daughter works at a company where she gets a house cleaner.
It's a story worth telling.

Speaker 1 We all are looking for stories. Most people, it's like, oh, I offer 401k and health insurance.
Really? Wow, everybody does. That's table state.

Speaker 1 You start offering Casper or Intel Bed mattresses and house cleaning and loving on people. Now there's a story worth telling, and now you have a waiting list to come work for your company.

Speaker 3 You know, I wrote down a few books that I think are really going to resonate with how my 2022 is going to look: Giftology, Dream 100, Blue Fishing, and Dream Manager.

Speaker 1 I love

Speaker 1 Kelly, and I love Sims. I know all those guys.

Speaker 3 I wish to say that.

Speaker 1 Dream 100, I don't know.

Speaker 3 It's Chet Holmes. It's been a Chet Holmes, though.
It's just started. And yeah, it's an amazing.
And I bought the book for like 100 bucks, too. So

Speaker 3 awesome.

Speaker 1 I love those four. Great.
Matthew Kelly's wonderful. We got to get him on your show.
As long as he's not, and he's been fighting health issues for the last 10 years. But talk about a great human.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's world cost. You know, I'll tell you this.

Speaker 3 I've got a client of mine that spends over a million dollars a year.

Speaker 3 And it's just interesting because I know he's got a million people and it's so easy to close these deals. I just, you know, what's really tough for me sometimes is,

Speaker 3 have you ever read Rocket Fuel by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters?

Speaker 1 I know the book. I've not read that one.
I've read Traction. We use Traction for a lot of our companies, but yeah, I'm familiar with the concept.

Speaker 3 I'm so high as a visionary. I need integrators around me all the time.

Speaker 3 And integrators, and the best example in the beginning, he talks about Walt Disney was such a high visionary, but he needed an integrator, which was Roy.

Speaker 3 And there's a test in it and everything. And I'll tell you what, as these integrators are coming into my life, it's all coming so much clearer.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, the other day, people were like, what do you go after? What do you think? Who's someone you'd like to kind of compete with in the future? And I said, Elon Musk.

Speaker 3 Because he's the only guy. He's the biggest.
I guess people say baby steps, but I'm like, no, I see a path to get there. And it's not a difficult path at all.
I just need to find the right integrator.

Speaker 3 So I want to use you. I just want to figure out how the process looks.
Tell everybody how your business functions.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, we, the

Speaker 1 part of the business is speaking and consulting and teaching people, write books and podcasts, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 Because most people don't think that what we talk about, they don't even know it exists or that it matters. So I'm a visionary.
I'm the ambassador.

Speaker 1 But my business partner's background, he's an integrator. And so like a lot of people have good intentions of of like, yeah, I'd love to, I should send out five thank you notes a day.

Speaker 1 I should be sending love bombs to my top hundred or thousand relationships. But, you know, it's hard, right?

Speaker 1 It's not hard to give one gift, one thoughtful thing to your spouse, but it's hard to scale thoughtfulness. So the core of our business is the done-for-you service.

Speaker 1 So somebody sends their, us their list of clients, partners, employees, anybody that's a key relationship, mentors, advisors.

Speaker 1 And then we help them select based upon the value of the relationships, the profit, you know, the type of person they are. We help select what those love bombs are going to be.

Speaker 1 We handwrite the notes, we pick the gifts, we drop ship it, and we charge a flat fee per year to manage that process.

Speaker 1 So, if somebody can give us whether it's two relationships or 2,000 relationships to love on, as long as they're not looking to send, hey, people are like, Hey, what do you have for $37 to send to these affluent people?

Speaker 1 I'm like, a thank you note, a handwritten note on a piece of steel. Like, our thank you just costs $9.

Speaker 1 I'm like, you think somebody gives somebody a $25 Amazon gift card, they're going to be blown away? No, they get that for free for signing up for some piece of software or anything.

Speaker 1 So as long as somebody has high-value relationships and wants to invest in the long term, they can send us their list of people.

Speaker 1 And we charge 20 grand per year, approximately plus the cost of the gifts to send out things year-round for their most valuable relationships.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 there's things that integrate like HubSpot works with send out cards with mailbox power.

Speaker 3 You familiar with those companies?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, there's what's called a heartfelt card. I actually spoke at one of

Speaker 3 Cody Bateman with Send Out Cards events. And

Speaker 3 it's not enough.

Speaker 3 But, you know, it's funny because in Blue Fishing, Sims talks about just one day he was just at this really cool restaurant in like Italy and he got 100 napkins with a recipe of some martini.

Speaker 3 And he just said, hey, need to come check out this restaurant sometime. I'd love to enjoy it with you next time you're in Italy.
But

Speaker 3 is it always got to be worth money? And I'm not saying this because I'm cheap. I'm curious what's your science behind it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's nothing wrong with mailbox power. There's nothing wrong with send out cards.
I think there's a difference between an artifact and a touch.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, buying somebody a drink, that's a touch. Sending somebody a napkin, that's a touch.
Are they going to hold on to that and use that every day for the next 10 years? No.

Speaker 1 The piece of art that was 40 grand that we gave to Dan, he's going to have that on display. And everybody that comes over to his house is going to talk about that.

Speaker 1 He's going to see it every day subconsciously. That's an artifact.
That's an anchor. What we help people do is send out artifacts and anchors.

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong with sending out brownies, but nobody's going to be talking about that five years from now.

Speaker 1 So, our focus is on how do you send something to somebody that's memorable that makes them tell a story and anchors that relationship.

Speaker 1 So, most of the time, people are like, hey, for my 10,000 relationships, I might be doing send out cards, or I might be doing mailbox power, or I might be sending napkins or whatever.

Speaker 1 But for my thousand that matter, or my hundred that produce 80% of my results or the my employees a few times a year or my suppliers that I wouldn't have a business without, I'm going to go all in a few times a year and I'm not going to send them a fun touch or a fun tchotchki or a piece of swag.

Speaker 1 I want to send them something that melts their face off. I want to send them something they're talking about 10 years from now.
That's what we help do.

Speaker 1 And so it's a different sandbox. We're playing in a blue ocean.
There's a lot of people, if you want to buy t-shirts and mugs and pens, that's a promotional product.

Speaker 1 There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not going to make somebody cry when they get it like Dan did or like saw Aubrey's face. His jaw was on the ground.

Speaker 1 So that's a different, we're talking about two very different things that have two very different levels of revenue and results tied to it.

Speaker 3 So I made this, I don't know if you can see it, but right there, me and my sister, the caricature or whatever. Yeah.
I made her and me one. And it says, we laugh, we cry.
We make time fly.

Speaker 3 We are best friends, my sister and I.

Speaker 1 You know, that was kind of something i thought was cool but it wasn't very expensive i i think i got a deal hopefully she's not watching i think i got a deal on fiverr or just or up work or something but i thought it was cool because i did that with the ceo a service tight for writing into my book and he's got it highlighted in his office and i was looking up at him and i said you mean the world to me and that's some small stuff i've i've done a lot more than that so here's the thing taking the reins and doing some one-offs that are fun like that playful it's not the people are like oh it's the thought that counts no it's the thoughtful thought and that's not always the expensive thought like in some cases i've made billionaires cry with these things called artifact mugs they're a couple grand and i've had mentors write back at me and say john i've had people give me fifty thousand dollar watches this mug is more valuable because of the story the core values like you made me cry when i got this thing So similar to like you respecting somebody and looking up at them and saying, you mean the world to me, like we all want our lives to have mattered.

Speaker 1 So it's, it's not just the expense, it's the detail, it's the connection connection to their core values, it's all of the little things that make it either land or not land.

Speaker 1 Our world goal is how do you make somebody feel emotional, but still scale that thoughtfulness?

Speaker 1 And so we have clients where, you know, we have one that's in the financial services space, and we did the same gift to a few hundred people that are all seven-figure earners.

Speaker 1 And they got their referrals went up 107%.

Speaker 1 Why? Because they followed the recipe. They didn't spend the most money, but we're all looking for ways that we can appreciate and deepen relationships.

Speaker 1 And most of the time, people either do swag or they do the crazy one-off that they can only do one of.

Speaker 1 And we're kind of in the middle of the tension, not the swag and trinkets and stuff,

Speaker 1 but also not the crazy one-off thing that you can't scale. We're like, how do you scale thoughtfulness?

Speaker 1 Well, here's the recipe: you got to personalize, you got to include the inner circle, you need to do it at unexpected time. Like, we have a blueprint.

Speaker 1 It's what, I mean, they go to, you know, your tribe goes to giftologysystem.com. What we charge tens of thousands of dollars to walk people through, they can go download the entire playbook.

Speaker 1 They don't have to go buy the book, you know, at Amazon. They can just download the playbook and it walks through.
Like, how do you personalize something? What better have their name on it?

Speaker 1 Better not have a logo on it. Like, the recipe is not rocket science.

Speaker 1 It's just most people cut corners and they get busy and they're visionary and they delegate it to some random person on their team. Like, hey, we had a good year.

Speaker 1 You should probably say thank you to people. Or hey, we should do referral gifts.
Hey, you know, Susie, here's 10 grand or here's $50 a person. Go do something.

Speaker 1 But they've never thought strategically how that actually lands and what kind of revenue that's going to produce long term.

Speaker 1 They're just very reactive because they're busy doing the other parts of the business that oftentimes are more pressing.

Speaker 3 I had a guy on the podcast, and this is years and years ago. So I forget his name, but he, one of the most successful restaurants, five years in a row in Canada.

Speaker 3 And he said, when they come in, we ask them if they had 20 bucks, what would they do with it? Anything in the world. It could be buy chocolate, go to a movie.

Speaker 3 And then if they had 100 hundred bucks so when they finish training they get the 20 gift and then after one year on their anniversary they get the hundred dollar it could be you know whatever a hundred bucks is but it's interesting so you're saying take your profit and use anywhere from five to fifteen percent of that to go after relationships and feed the beasts yeah to keep to keep the relationship People are like, oh, I don't have a retention problem.

Speaker 1 I'm like, great, that's fine. But you want to grow that relationship and hopefully cross-pollinate and get them to do more business with you.

Speaker 1 The secret sauce is like, you know, the Brooks Brothers example with Cameron Harold, I invested, you know, seven grand in Brooks Brothers clothing for him because he was a CEO consultant.

Speaker 1 I found out he loved Brooks Brothers, so I outfit his hotel room. But then I continued to invest in that relationship with $10,000 Cutco knife set and wine tools and whatever else.
I invested $25,000.

Speaker 1 Why? Because I wanted him to go and become an advocate for my brand.

Speaker 1 I couldn't hire him for $2 million to sell for me, but he went and did it because he was inspired to and because of that the return on relationship for us 25 grand turned into seven figures that's 50x show me a facebook ad campaign where you get a 50x there isn't one it's humans it's funny because i'm talking to the end fleischman's group fleischman sorry you know elevator yeah and i'm really trying to work on going after

Speaker 3 influencer marketing We're doing a pretty good job. This podcast gets anywhere from 20 to 30,000 downloads a month, which is great.
I feel like I've got something to say and help people with.

Speaker 3 Let's just say I think I failed more in the home service industry. The failure is high and I can save people a lot of time and failure.

Speaker 3 I've done a lot of failing and I continue to fall down all the time.

Speaker 1 Me too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know what? Here's the deal. People are like, last time you tried that, you know, yeah,

Speaker 3 I'm like, yeah, well, guess what? It's going to come a lot more often. You're going to see me pick the wrong softwares at times, hire the wrong people, but I got hard.

Speaker 3 And I got to tell you, you're not going to remember the shots. Michael Jordan missed more game shots to win the game.
He missed way more than he made, but no one remembers those.

Speaker 3 So what are your thoughts on influencer marketing? Because you mentioned something like,

Speaker 3 you know, you got Cameron, which I actually had him on the podcast and I got his books. But

Speaker 3 what is your thought process on influencer marketing? I'm curious and how that relates to the pathology.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think, you know, at the end of the day, every customer can influence somebody so some people have millions of followers on instagram some people are an influencer in a particular way within the industry maybe the grandfather of x y or z or they write a book or i think there's a lot of different i think sometimes people put influencer marketing in a certain category of like it's the kardashians and that's one type of influencer marketing but i think that at the end of the day like influencer marketing is you know, call micro influencers or whatever, somebody that has 5,000 of the right people following them or 10,000, that's a mom or whatever.

Speaker 1 I would say for home services, there's probably a way that you could go razzle-dazzle people that aren't necessarily having a million followers, but they have the 1,000 to 20,000 that loving on those relationships would do more than trying to spend a bunch of money to go after these bigger people because the other people, there's a tighter bond and a tighter trust there and it'd be a lower hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 If I was in your shoes, Yeah, it's great if the Kardashians post, but you want to spend a half a million dollars to get one post for them.

Speaker 1 It might do a lot for your ego and me too, but I would much rather have a Cameron Herald who doesn't have 10 million or 100 million followers advocating for me behind the scenes in the right boardrooms.

Speaker 1 I mean, for you, if you're trying to roll up and buy companies or depending upon what your end goal is, there may be other people that are more valuable than somebody that has the most followers.

Speaker 1 That's who I would be building and investing in and building a long-term relationship with.

Speaker 3 I just, I'm taking a lot of notes here.

Speaker 3 Good thing. When I'm writing stuff down, it's a good thing.
I think a lot about influencer marketing, micro-influencer marketing.

Speaker 3 I mean, some of the thoughts that I'm having for influencers, some of them are referral partners and affiliates as well. I mean, why would you ever paint an old garage door that's falling apart?

Speaker 3 So painters, pest control, bottom rubber on the garage door, number one entryway of the bugs, latest one, moving companies. You're moving into a brand new house.

Speaker 3 Last people have the code to the keypad and the old clickers and the cars go in. So I think there's so much.

Speaker 3 I I put a lot out on this podcast. I'll put my whole game plan exactly.
I'll give you my playbook. I wrote it all down, you know, I give it all out there.

Speaker 3 And I'll give them exactly our budget next year. They just finished it because I'm not part of that because my goals are way different than people's.

Speaker 3 No, no, no. They call them Tommy goals and they've got the real life.
And so I've kind of figured this stuff out, but I'm very interested. I get 10,000 clients a month, 10,000 customers.

Speaker 3 Would you say take a percentage of that and just depending on how much they spend, give something to each of them and maybe and not ask for anything in return?

Speaker 3 It's nice when they leave us an online review or a testimonial, but I don't know the best way. What's the process do you think on that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I don't know. What's the high end and low end of what they're investing?

Speaker 3 You know, it's a $300 versus $20,000, but it's a one-time purchase thing. Nobody's like, I can't wait to buy my next garage drawer unless they got multiple houses, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I would say that a handwritten note to any of them, a truly, not one that looks printed, but an actual handwritten note to any of them could be powerful but i would say out of the 10 000 i would narrow that down and test out doing something with your top you know the 500 that are in the neighborhoods you want to be in or the 500 or a thousand that are investing a thousand or ten thousand or whatever else because they do have multiple homes they probably live in a neighborhood where other people are always upgrading and taking care of things you know the ab20 rule i would narrow it down to your top percentage and go all in on something thoughtful versus sending like a ketchone to everybody or a you know mouse pad or whatever else like i think when you're dealing with affluent people they don't need more crap but they all could use a thoughtful artifact so let's just say i could get i could find out every hoa president in phoenix and every 19 other states i could find out the hoa president i could find out the largest like the city of gilbert i could find out the admin and send them Yeah, I don't have relationships with them, but those are the ones you want relationships with, right?

Speaker 3 Because if you can post cool stuff into a Facebook group with 70,000 people that is getting, you know, the city of Gilbert, what's going on?

Speaker 3 What are your thoughts on that versus, of course, keeping relationships is very important. Employees are super important, but what is your take on going after kind of cold relationships?

Speaker 1 I used to do a lot more cold marketing than I do now. Now, 80, 90% of my budget, if not more, is going towards warm market.

Speaker 1 And the reason is, is when I take somebody that's already paying me money and I pour gasoline on that fire and inspire them to become a sales rep, they bought their own gift, but I'm now taking a relationship that was warm and making it hot.

Speaker 1 It's hard to take a relationship that's cold and make it even warm. So I think most people are focused on new blood.

Speaker 1 If they would take care of the relationships and people in their sphere and turn them into sales reps, they would have to do a lot less cold marketing.

Speaker 1 If I was you doing cold marketing, I would start a separate podcast and I would start interviewing the HOA president or I would start interviewing the person who's in charge of the city of Gilbert or whatever and ask them to come on your show and pick their brain about things versus sending them a gift.

Speaker 1 As much as I'd love for you to send gifts all over the country to cold people, I think you'd do better off honoring them and getting their wisdom as a leader of a community and figure out a way to make it relevant for the other people.

Speaker 1 So by the time you've done 100 episodes, now other people are wanting to be on your show that are in that same demographic.

Speaker 1 I think you'd land your Dream 100 a lot faster that way than sending stress balls and mouse pads and the stuff that Chet, chat.

Speaker 1 The only disagreement I had with Chet Holmes on the Dream 100 is he would say he's a world-class business sending tchotchkis. That's not congruent.

Speaker 1 Yes, he was top of mind, but he was top of mind annoying.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I bought, and I still have them, I bought a couple hundred Rubik's cubes, and I'm still puzzled why we haven't met yet. And then, are you measuring? You got this stuff on your mind.

Speaker 3 Are you measuring the results of your current company, you know? And it is kind of annoying.

Speaker 1 but it's it's thoughtful and it's kind of top of mind awareness if somebody sent you a tape measure or if somebody that had an amazing podcast that was interviewing service providers reached out to you and said hey i love what you're doing i'd love to have you on my show which one do you think would be more effective

Speaker 3 you know it's interesting i know guys that actually build all they do is they build podcasts and It's so important.

Speaker 3 I just think retention is just, there's so many people that are chasing the next best thing where they're they're losing three out of the back every time they get a few.

Speaker 3 And it's like hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 3 You know, someone once told me it's like someone that's a marathon runner, instead of giving them 200 bucks for Christmas, get them a really nice pair of shoes that they're going to use every day.

Speaker 3 And when they put those shoes on,

Speaker 3 they go, man, that guy, I really love that company. I love that guy.
And it's just those reminders.

Speaker 1 And you spent probably $120 versus $200. So you got $80 of value net.
And instead of $200 getting spent on bills because cash just gets goes out the door.

Speaker 1 And people take for granted the payment that they get cash-wise.

Speaker 3 Oh, they don't, they go spend it on bills.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 The marathon example is if you can do that at scale for your people, for your clients, three years from now, they're still being reminded that somebody actually gave a rip about them.

Speaker 1 And we all want to be top of mind. Like the reason people have Facebook ads or banners or billboards or magazine ads is you want views, you want impressions.

Speaker 1 If I have something in your home that you're using every single day, I get an impression per day for the next 10 years. That's 3,600 impressions.

Speaker 1 The clients that own space in somebody's home in a thoughtful way win against the people that don't.

Speaker 3 Like a charcuterie board?

Speaker 1 I mean, if it's a really nice one, I mean, we send out some $300 ones that are made from bourbon barrels that are personalized with somebody's last name and family and whatever else.

Speaker 1 But if it's a cheap tchotchki one, no. And you're dealing with affluent people.
They want one of the best, not 100 mediocre things.

Speaker 1 If I send you an Apple watch and you have a Rolex on your wrist, what's going to happen to the Apple watch?

Speaker 1 It's getting regifted.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 If I send you the nicest Lululemon shirt with giftology on it, are you going to wear it? Probably not. You're going to regift it.
You're going to wear your own brand.

Speaker 1 So it's not just what you're sending. It's the quality of what you're sending.
It's the timing of what you're sending. It's the way it's personalized.

Speaker 1 If you send somebody somebody a cheap pair of running shoes and they're into running, what do they do? They give them the goodwill or they put them in a closet and forget about them.

Speaker 1 So it's all of the little things that make it either land and be like, dang, this person gets it and gets me, or this person checked the box and sent me something off of Amazon because they thought I was into bourbon and they sent me a $30 bottle of bourbon.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, I only drink $100 bottles of bourbon.

Speaker 1 So the intentions behind it are important, but if you say you're a world-class brand and then you give sucky things, you're confusing the message and you're actually spending money to subconsciously undermine yourself.

Speaker 3 You know, it's interesting because I got a lot of bottles that people got me and I'm like, they must think I'm a raging alcoholic.

Speaker 3 So I was going to ask you, you know, PR is something we all earn media, right? We try to go after earned media. I think that's a good thing to do.

Speaker 3 Like, for example, we ask every customer, one of the things I teach people is never, ever, ever say, it would be great if you left me a review because the company's looking for it.

Speaker 3 Say, listen, I make it part of my performance pay and how many reviews you get. And I say, listen, obviously the company wants to get good reviews, but we got a contest going this month.

Speaker 3 And I always talk about five out of five service. Did I give you five out of five service today? It would really mean a lot to me personally if you wouldn't have had a tip five minutes.

Speaker 3 And then process that, I'm going to clean up after myself, make sure everything going to run your door up, going to put our stickers. But it's the personal asking.

Speaker 3 What is your thought on just reviews on Yelp, Google, Facebook, Nextdoor, stuff like that about asking for it?

Speaker 3 And you're not supposed to give people prizes to leave you good reviews, but what are your thoughts? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I think that the way you ask for referrals or the way you ask for reviews matters. I think it's cheesy when people have it at the bottom of their email or whatever else.
It feels desperate.

Speaker 1 But I think if it's a one-to-one communication asked with emotional intelligence, then I think it's baller. I think it's great.

Speaker 1 But I think if you ask the wrong way, it can come across as desperate, needy, cheesy, all of the above. I think that if you do, like people expect the garage door to work, right?

Speaker 1 They expect the home that somebody builds to have the siding put on straight. There's certain things that they just take for granted.

Speaker 1 The reason the gifting works, you know, to inspire a review is because it's unexpected. They're not expecting this handwritten note and baller gift to show up out of the blue.

Speaker 1 They expect their garage door to work or their windows to, you know, not crack.

Speaker 1 But it's hard to be a service provider and do those things, but they take that for granted because that's what they're expecting.

Speaker 1 So I'd say the more you can do things and show up as a service provider in an unexpected way, it's like, it's like when you go to a hotel and it's the Ritz, but they know that you love chocolate chip cookies and you're paying $400 a night for a room, but they have a warm cookie waiting for you on your pillow.

Speaker 1 It costs them a dollar for that cookie, but that was the unexpected thing that made the client or myself say, dang.

Speaker 1 That's what inspires oftentimes the review, not the... You expect the sheets to be clean and the room to be nice and all that.

Speaker 1 It's the little things that make somebody say, wow, this person actually gets me understands me or went the extra mile to make me feel a certain way you're right yeah so like you know

Speaker 3 interesting book is raving fans about what you can do above and beyond and people don't care as much a lot of people unless you're walmart but people don't care about necessarily the price as much they care about how they're treated there's this whole thing i'm sure you've heard it but No one will remember your price in five years, but you'll remember the way they made you feel.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know if you've had Brian Scudemore from 1-800, got junk on your.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so he probably told the story of the moving company that he started. Do you know what was like their biggest differentiator in the moving company?

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 1 They would call the day of moving, the moving guys would be on their way and say, Hey, we know you're probably all packed up. You got your coffee maker put away.
We're going to swing by Starbucks.

Speaker 1 How do you like your coffee? I do the same thing. That's funny.
And maybe I heard it from him.

Speaker 3 But the deal is, never ask, what can I get you? Yeah. I'm going to be here anyway.
And I'm like, it's funny because

Speaker 3 at yesterday's meeting, I talked for three hours in front of my new class and I said, I made a joke. I was like, do you want a Prappuccino triple pump, double pump, a whip?

Speaker 3 I can't even keep track of what people order these days from Starbucks. But it's nice because there's another great book, and I'm obsessed with books.
And I actually just showed somebody.

Speaker 3 You're familiar with Influence, Robert Shadini.

Speaker 1 Oh, I quote Robert in my book. He's.
Yeah. We've had some clients send him gifts.
Yeah, his stuff is fantastic.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, the law of reciprocity, but it's also the dazzle effect. They go,

Speaker 3 this is funny. So a few weeks ago, I had a guy in Detroit, Metro Detroit, and he said, hey, I'm swinging by the apple orchard, you know, and picking up some apple cider and donuts.

Speaker 3 Did you want anything? And she goes, well, we have some apple orchard, but we ran out of donuts. Could you give me a couple dozen?

Speaker 3 And I just, we listened to the call because everything's recorded through the system. And I was just, I was smiling ear to ear because it was super cool.

Speaker 3 Anything you could do above and beyond for that dazzle. One of the things that I got the eight-step sales process that works every single time.
If it's followed to the T.

Speaker 3 And the eighth thing is sell it right. What does that mean? I finished the job.
I took your check. Now I'm going to go over everything with you.
I'm going to run the door three times.

Speaker 3 I'm going to smile. I'm going to show you the stickers.
I'm going to give you the warranty information. I'm going to clean everything.
I blow out the garage.

Speaker 3 And all that fires remorse on the eighth step which is one of the most important is to say listen we cherish your business we really appreciate it it's so amazing that we got to work with you today let me go through everything because a lot of guys take the check and that's the last thing the last thing they remember was handing off the money they could buy yeah that's huge people remember the beginning and the end they forget in the middle oh yeah

Speaker 1 it's like trying to speak they remember the opening comments you know and then they remember the exclamation point at the end like all the other stuff and so your eighth step is spot on.

Speaker 1 That's where you create the story and the

Speaker 1 wow. Yeah, the dazzle, as you call it, dazzle.

Speaker 3 If you ever, I got so many things to talk to you about.

Speaker 3 Have you ever seen of anything like that goes out and crawls the social media and kind of tells you this guy likes Elton Johnny, loves baseball, kind of can crawl through LinkedIn and Facebook and Insta and all those things?

Speaker 1 I know there's some software that will scan what's public to tell you what's on their disc profile. Are they more dominant? Are they to tell you how to write to them?

Speaker 1 I don't know on the gifting side because a lot of the stuff that we do tends to be more higher level and it's not just hobby-based. And people are like, Well, this guy likes golf.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, That's cool, but is he married? And they're like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, That's the important thing because oftentimes the decision maker or the executive or the whatever is getting treated certain ways.

Speaker 1 Like, I want to take care of the inner circle, and that's not always determined.

Speaker 1 But I do think that in a more retail setting, being able to have some of that intel could be super impactful and important to be able to create common bonds.

Speaker 1 Or, if you are able to figure out a way to take that info and use it, either pre-during or post, could be really, really powerful. So, I think it's a smart question.

Speaker 3 Well, I think it's powerful too to show up to a house and know that you love dogs and know that, you know, here's the thing: is uh, I told my guys never to talk about politics or religion, but I was like, if I did, I'd be a Trump fan with a Republican and a Bernie fan if I was a Democrat.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 I just go along with it, even though I lean a little bit to the side.

Speaker 1 But imagine if all your people showed up automatically and they had in their tool belt something for a cat and something for a dog.

Speaker 3 The bones.

Speaker 1 Yes, I'm saying. Like, if I was in your business, there's certain things that 80% of the time would be true, right? And that's they're either a dog or a cat person and likely a dog person.

Speaker 1 But if you could find that out or just be prepared, And then you're respectful to the owner because they treat their pets more like kids in a lot of cases.

Speaker 3 Plus, if you give my dog a crappy bone that I don't want him to have, and I don't know, Brie's crazy.

Speaker 3 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. So, like, the fact that you have to do that.

Speaker 3 I mean, not crazy, but she doesn't want him to have bad food.

Speaker 1 No, you're obsessed because that's like a family member.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, imagine if you're thoughtful enough to carry it, that means you're a dog person. If you're more respectful enough to ask and then you actually have like an organic treat,

Speaker 1 what does it cost you? If you were in bulk for all of the guys, it would cost you 25 cents a treat or 50 cents a treat.

Speaker 1 I guarantee if they are a dog person, you ask, they take the treat, they will talk more about that stupid treat for their dog than they will about anything else that you do that day.

Speaker 3 You know what? It's true. And getting a really good caliber, I've always asked myself, what can I do more?

Speaker 3 One of the things I said when all these, the new group started, 25 technicians, I said, hey, guys,

Speaker 3 I promise you one thing. I've hit my goal.
I can do do what I want when I want with who I want. But I'll tell you guys, I want you guys.

Speaker 3 I'm very selfish because I want you guys to have a 750 plus credit score. I want you to own your home and a couple of rentals.
I want you to invest right now, especially into appreciating things.

Speaker 3 And I said, I want that to be our calling card here as we change lives.

Speaker 3 When you go work there, I want this thing that you get, this diploma from A1 Garage or Service to mean something and say, you hear about the salespeople at Enterprise. Ooh, that's really good.

Speaker 3 If they worked at A1, one day I want that to mean something very, very significant. That's my plan.
That's my goal. But I love this.
This is a piece that I've been missing for a long time.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm just curious, why do people struggle at being generous sometimes?

Speaker 3 Because people are listening right now, and there's several people on this, 25 people right now, and there's lots of hundreds going to see it. And they're going to say that's a great idea, but

Speaker 3 they're not going to do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I think that a lot of people struggle to gift their spouse or significant other one person. Like, I'm not good at it.

Speaker 1 And what they don't realize is it's a lot of guys are more blockers and tacklers, they're very linear, they want to check the box.

Speaker 1 Women in general are more emotionally intelligent than guys are, and so they delegate it, they don't think it's important, they think it's woo-woo, they think it's heart stuff, and they don't realize that, like, at the end of the day, the relationships matter, and that this is a way for them to differentiate themselves in the marketplace with their relationships, employees, clients, all that.

Speaker 1 But it feels weird, it feels awkward, it feels uncomfortable because they're not used to doing it.

Speaker 1 And if somebody's not going to do it for them, they're just going to go knock on some more doors or go run down a few more doors or whatever else.

Speaker 1 Because I think that tends to be how a lot of leaders that are type A driven, this feels like, well, what if I spend the money and I look silly? What if I spend the money and I don't get what I want?

Speaker 1 What if I, so all the doubts crepe in. And frankly, if everybody was really good at what we're talking about, it would just be marketing noise.

Speaker 1 The fact that it's not is why it's such a little thing that can have swing this huge door is because most people, they suck at it.

Speaker 1 They do the gift cards, they do the obligatory stuff at the holidays, they do the transactional things because almost every marketing book on the planet, every branding book on the planet tells you you got to put your logo on it.

Speaker 1 This is when you should do things. This goes against the grain of everything and feels really weird, awkward, uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Feels like it could be, you know, if you made $10 million last year and you're going to invest 10%, that's a million dollars. What if it doesn't work?

Speaker 3 You made revenue or this is profit, right?

Speaker 1 Profit.

Speaker 3 Okay. So

Speaker 3 let me ask you something.

Speaker 3 Rule of thumb I tell people, a good number to spend in marketing is 10%.

Speaker 3 Do you throw this?

Speaker 3 Let's see. If you're saying put 15%

Speaker 3 and you're at a profit of 15%,

Speaker 3 what is that? That's about

Speaker 3 2.25%.

Speaker 3 So would you get some of that from your marketing or would you just add it on and say, if you were just a financial advisor, and I know this isn't your realm of that, you know, a lot, but I'm just saying, what bucket do you put that under?

Speaker 3 You throw it under marketing, you throw that under, what is it? Retention, maybe?

Speaker 1 I think it's a little bit of everything.

Speaker 1 The goal would be to redirect dollars from biz, dev, marketing, sales, retention, HR, look at all of those buckets and say, can I take a point here and two points there?

Speaker 1 You can still do the other things. but it should be budget neutral to start.
It should be like, oh, I'm just going to add this huge extra cost. But a lot of times people are investing dollars in.

Speaker 1 I mean, think about what, you know, to recruit people or to get a new client. Most people are investing significant amounts of money in those buckets.

Speaker 1 Redirect the dollars that you're already spending and see, can you get a better lift and a better leverage point by doing something that nobody else is doing?

Speaker 3 I had a guy come in, and it just happens to be sitting here. They got me a vinyl player and he got me, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 A record player and the Beatles Michael Jackson I love Michael Jackson it's pretty interesting so I'm curious

Speaker 3 how much does your largest client spend on gifts a year

Speaker 3 seven figures I don't know if this is too personal but around how many clients you are you dealing with on this A few hundred.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're not huge, but we have clients from Solopreneurs to the Chicago Cubs. But our sweet spot is small to mid-sized companies.
It's companies that are sub $100 million million companies.

Speaker 1 Because you're not like publicly traded companies, you're dealing with a decision maker that just cares about the next quarter and they don't want to get fired.

Speaker 1 When you're dealing with business owners that are, it's their neck on the line, they care about human beings typically a little differently than the publicly traded ones.

Speaker 1 And you're dealing with a $10 million company or a $20 million, a YPO or EO guy or gal that cares about relationships. And they're like, you know what? I know how I feel when I get treated this way.

Speaker 1 I want my employees, my clients, my mentors, my advisors. And when they see us on stage, they're like, Yeah, I'm going to redirect some of my dollars.
I'm already investing them.

Speaker 1 I'm going to invest it this way instead of just hiring a few more people or instead of spending another hundred grand a month on Facebook ads. I'm going to reinvest it this way.

Speaker 3 What is the problem with automation? And is there a problem with automation?

Speaker 1 I think that it depends on what the automation is doing. I think if when you're trying to create a human-to-human connection, automation can feel very cold and stale.
i mean the automation

Speaker 3 for example look if i wrote a handwritten letter and i basically just had a pen to it there's cnc machines that write it but if i just sat down one day and wrote all my letters for the year and they hit on certain dates is that yeah crazy no i don't think it's crazy i think i'm just curious

Speaker 1 i think there's the i think i think there's some things that you do that i think it's the most valuable relationships oftentimes don't scale.

Speaker 1 Like the art piece I I did for Fleshman, I can't do a thousand of them automated. But do I have to do all of my things that way? No, that's an atomic level love bomb.

Speaker 1 I think there's room for the crazy one-offs that are not scalable. You can't automate them.

Speaker 1 I think there's room for the automated and I think there's room for a hybrid where the automation helps pull the information that allows you to do the personalized thing that a human makes a decision on.

Speaker 1 I think to say it's black or white, it's this or that, like a lot of things, there's a gray area of like tension of like, in some cases, it's okay to do it this way, but in other cases, it's okay to go against the grain and do something that's not very scalable.

Speaker 1 Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 No, I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I'm following you. It's heartfelt.
You want to give some really good gifts. I think there's some that people are just like, like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't want to say this because people give me Christmas cards, but. You know, my sister, when I go to her house, she's got about a thousand Christmas cards up of everybody.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And it's their family. It's their family bragging about their family.
I don't know. Look, I got a bunch of Christmas cards of my niece and nephews because it means a lot to me for some things.

Speaker 3 And I'm not saying don't send them to me for all you out there. But

Speaker 1 no, but if somebody took the time to write you a note in the middle of March and said, hey, Tommy, this episode, like you changed my life because of this, this, and this, versus an automated Christmas card, what would you rather get?

Speaker 3 Yeah, well, those, and I get them via text message, Facebook message, your LinkedIn all the time.

Speaker 1 And it means a lot to me still because we're fighting the good fight and hopefully kind of give somebody a better relationship with their kids and family hopefully yeah you know that's the goal that's the goal i mean at the end of the day whether you're in garage doors whether you're in pest control whether you're in manufacturing refrigeration pro sports it all has to do with human beings and we all want our life from a legacy perspective but mattered and impacted people i don't care what your business is at the end of the day it comes down to human beings.

Speaker 1 And I think sometimes when we're scaling business as a type A leader we sometimes can forget i think you tapping into the dream manager and realizing you want to help their dreams come true because if you help their dreams come true guess what they run through walls and they help make the company's dreams come true it's like i don't care if you're in idaho or africa that mindset works because it's a human connection and all we're doing is the physical gift nobody cares about it's the delivery vehicle for an emotion that says you matter And when you do that consistently over and over again, you end up with an army of ambassadors, whether they're they're employees or clients or potential acquisitions that are like i like this guy i like this gal because they care about me as a person or they at least go out of their way to show me that i matter

Speaker 1 what is your favorite story i mean i know that that's a big one there with the brooks brothers but what's your favorite story of a client just an earth-shattering touching emotional story that you could share with us and then i got a couple last questions to close us out but if you got a few minutes yeah i would say that i mean the artifact mug for me personally was one of the most impactful things anybody's ever done for me because i used to make fun of the corporate coffee mug as the worst gift on the planet and then this artist emailed me blindly and said i read your book 20 times i've listened to 80 of your podcasts and long and short of it is he made me and my wife eat a two thousand dollar mug and hand delivered it drove nine and a half hours for a five minute meeting made me cry made my wife cry get up staying at our house that night My wife doesn't let anybody stay at our house.

Speaker 1 We got three, not four daughters.

Speaker 1 And we since partnered with him and i've made i just took that same mug and spoke at a ypo event out in orange county you know you're talking about guys that are all billionaires and we give one of these mugs that honored this guy and his dad he balled like a baby i mean it was like why

Speaker 3 a thousand of anything you know it's interesting because you said start a podcast for clients but i started i read this book right here. It's a newer book.
He's coming on my podcast. His name's Kelly.

Speaker 3 It's called Everyone's an Influencer. and um if you haven't read it yet i recommend it but anyway i was reading it and i'm like

Speaker 3 you know what a lot of people want to know what's going on behind the scenes here that you know this podcast generally is very very upbeat i'm talking to guys best-selling authors with amazing really a big fan of yours so i can't believe we get to hang out it's been a pleasure but what i love about the idea of a podcast of having my top trainer and some of my other trainers and just a new guy coming in and say, hey, what's your experience been and you know hey we had to let somebody go or a guy ended up starting his own business or whatever but it's filled with a little bit more everyday drama and also kind of what ends up happening is the employees wives start listening to it future employees listen to it it just seems to be for me i was like man this could be a culture thing people could hear our story they could hear it's not always good what goes on i don't feel like i work a day in my life but i'm starting a podcast and it's called the ask tommy podcast so we answer some questions and then we ask questions about like call center.

Speaker 3 So we'll ask like 10 questions about call center and then I'll get my call center manager, maybe a CSR join us. And I love that because it could be in person too.

Speaker 3 So it doesn't have to be on Zoom all the time. So it's taking your same approach of getting the home warranties and HOA presidents, but I'm actually doing it for my internal customers.

Speaker 1 I think it's a beautiful thing. I think it's smart.
I think it's. It does build culture.

Speaker 1 It does like provide interesting content and it probably provides some insight for you as you're leading the company like oh dang i didn't know that i didn't know that realized that way i mean as a leader like to have insight when you have dozens or hundreds or thousands of people out there like it's hard to be able to have a pulse of of what's going on i mean vaynerchuk has it he has he calls it 137 it's for the entire company and they bring on interesting people and whatever else like i think what you're building man is smart i think a lot of other people are probably going to try to emulate it but at the end of the day you can't you know your heart is unique in how you show up.

Speaker 1 So it's, uh, they can't get that.

Speaker 3 I meet a new guy every day that says, hey, I started a grouse for business. I love it.
The way I see it is maybe we could work together in the future. And exactly.

Speaker 3 You know, collaborate, man.

Speaker 3 There's so many opportunities right now. It's, it's like, look, I'm definitely a dreamer and I'm having fun doing it.
And I got to say, your book is just killer, man. I got it on Audible.

Speaker 3 I got the copy. I didn't even search my shelves because I had to put another shelf over there because, and I'll tell you what, there are books that I don't read.

Speaker 3 I get through a couple pages and I'm just like, this book's not for me. So it's not like every single one of these, but your book's marked up.
And the theory behind this is so cool.

Speaker 3 I want to learn the process just to know the process. I want to understand what's behind it, you know, and I can't wait to do this stuff.
And I don't know what I've waited for, honestly.

Speaker 3 There's no particular reason except for. I can say I'm busy, but you know, the trainer is going to be here in 30 minutes.
So I got a great book too on the shelf.

Speaker 3 It's over here called Off Balance on Purpose by Dan Thurman. And it's literally, there's no such thing.
People say just want to work-life balance. I'm like, yeah,

Speaker 3 okay, great. Good luck.
Because you want a great relationship with your kid and your family. You want to work out twice a day.
You want to have the best work life, the best rewarding job.

Speaker 3 You also want to meditate for a couple hours a day. And then you want to praise the Lord 10 hours a day.

Speaker 3 You just can't have all five.

Speaker 1 No, yeah. Have you met Dan before? Have you had him on the show?

Speaker 3 no i haven't had him on the show yet he came and spoke in an event i was at five years ago you know him yeah he runs in some of the same circles man one of the things i really like about this 100 million mastermind or whatever is the network it's so powerful it's just so powerful and i'll tell you this i was actually friends with or partners with josh snow josh alichi since 2012

Speaker 3 And I didn't know about it. And then Jim Dew actually was the one that got me involved in it.
Really?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So small world, man. I'm telling you, it's getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
I'm super excited, though, because there's no limits. There's no limits.

Speaker 3 Like I went in with Brandon over there with the

Speaker 3 crypto.

Speaker 1 Oh, the Moby.

Speaker 3 Moby. Moby.

Speaker 3 So I think he's one of the smartest guys I've ever seen at crypto. So I went in pretty deep.
I'm not going to lie. Did you,

Speaker 3 personal question? You don't have to tell me, I guess, but I did go in on Icon Mills pretty deep, as deep as they would let me. What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1 I mean, anything that Joel and Dan are involved with gets my attention. I'm not a big investor in food.
Like, that's not my lane.

Speaker 1 I have a company right now that I'm pretty heavily invested in, and I'm going to become president of the company on top of this, on top of giftology. It's in the e-comm world.

Speaker 1 And so we own 10% of the company and it has 10-figure exit potential. So I've doubled down on some other investments.

Speaker 1 So I did not do Icon, but not because I don't think it's, I mean, the guy who's leading it, I was impressed with. And

Speaker 1 Joel is ruthless when it comes to getting valuations and getting special.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I figured this was an early one and they're not going to let an early one.
These guys, the what they're trying to build. You know, we started a group called Garage for Freedom.

Speaker 3 And it's so cool because it's about 60 companies that showed up, I'd i'd say 60 70

Speaker 3 and not one of them left and so they're not going to join but i got to tell you this it's a buyers group slash best practices and i can tell you

Speaker 3 it's crazy crazy crazy crazy to see what's going to come out of this thing literally there's a lot of companies that already approached just over 20 that want to partner with us in some shape way or form And I feel like that that's just the beginning.

Speaker 3 I feel like there could be a thousand companies. In fact, I think this could be, if we wanted to, an IPO of some sort, but that's not where I want to go with it.

Speaker 3 But here's the thing: I'm having a show out here in April or May, it's going to be. And a lot of people don't know about it yet, but it's another, it's called Vertical Track.

Speaker 3 It's the second show we're going to have for Garage Door Freedom. And I need some crazy badass speakers.
Do you think I could talk you into it?

Speaker 3 Obviously, I know you have a fee for this stuff and your time's important, but you think I can convince you to come to Phoenix for that for a day?

Speaker 1 Possibly, depending upon the details, the date, and some of the other structure of it.

Speaker 1 I mean, I cap my speaking at 20 times a year because I have four little ones at home and speaking isn't my primary revenue driver. We charge a lot because I need to go produce for my companies.

Speaker 1 But if it's not me, I'm open. I mean, I've helped Jesse Itzler book seven speaking gigs.

Speaker 1 I open doors for a lot of other speakers if I'm not a fit fee-wise or the date doesn't work or any number of things because some of the guys are into speaking 200 times a year.

Speaker 1 That's just not my, I'm a business owner who happens to speak, not a speaker.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it would really good. Yeah, we'll see.
I think it would be pretty cool, but I always ask three questions at the end of the podcast. Number one is

Speaker 3 if someone wants to reach out to you, they want to just touch base personally with you. What's the best way to do that?

Speaker 1 My personal email is johnnydythologygroup.com so they can shoot me a direct message.

Speaker 1 I may not be the one that walks them through the plan or the strategy or whatever whatever else because that's I'm more the visionary guy like you that talks, you know, going to the moon, but that is my personal email.

Speaker 1 They can also follow me on, you know, at John Ruhlin on Instagram or whatever else, but that'd probably be the most direct route.

Speaker 3 So next thing is if there's three books that really stand out to you recently that really moved you in a good way, it doesn't need to be self-help.

Speaker 3 Could be fiction for all I know, but is there any three books that you could recommend?

Speaker 1 Well, dude, I mean, the ones that you're talking about right now, the dream manager is definitely one of them like i think it's fantastic never lose a customer joey coleman if you've not read that one it's fantastic and then on the health side if anybody's looking to understand how to control their weight or how their body works the obesity code was a mind blower for me super super powerful

Speaker 3 oh gotta buy it And then finally, listen, we talked about a lot of stuff today.

Speaker 3 I want to give you a few minutes to maybe leave us with a final thought, maybe go to action, just whatever it wants to do.

Speaker 3 Maybe we didn't talk about it. Maybe we did, but I'll give you the last few minutes to close this out.

Speaker 1 I would just say that sometimes when people hear about what we're talking about, it can be overwhelming. It's like, where do I even start?

Speaker 1 I think that there's a cool buzz around the idea of gratitude. There's gratitude journals, Tim Parris bought 10,000, the five-minute journals, which is fantastic.
Gratitude, writing it down, right?

Speaker 1 If every day you wrote down three people you're grateful for, clients, partners, investors, mentors, past people, at the end of the year, you'd have the thousand people that you'd need to show gratitude to and gratitude i think people write it down maybe they send a note maybe they don't but gratitude to me is an action it's not just a feeling people leave a lot on the table by saying well i feel grateful it's like well then go freaking do something with it send a video write a note send a gift go meet with the person whatever but don't let it just be a feeling and even just start with a list of 10 people doesn't have to be thousands but i would say that even for a lot of small to mid-sized companies even large companies like microsoft you look back through their history there was a hundred relationships that probably made the difference in that company becoming what it was it was a warren buffet mentor it was a handful of people and so don't make it like oh i can never do that i have 10 000 clients it's like well then don't do 10 000 do 100 do 50 do 10 but do something

Speaker 1 Like if you believe that relationships matter, then show up. Don't do it halfway and go all in.

Speaker 1 And I always challenge people, do this, commit to, you know, whether it's 5%, 10%, 15%, go all in on your relationships, reinvesting-wise, and do it for three years and come back and tell me it didn't work.

Speaker 1 I've been doing this for 21 years.

Speaker 1 I've never had anybody that's committed to this for three years that hasn't come back and said, John, this changed my relationships, it's changed my business forever.

Speaker 1 Because when you show up in uncommon ways for people and love on your relationships, they flourish. If you don't, then they're mediocre and they flounder.
That's it,

Speaker 1 dude.

Speaker 3 I'm blown away.

Speaker 3 literally i'm really just fortunate that i got to meet you and i'm kind of the first mover usually i jump in head first and i haven't done this yet so i'm going to get a hold of you we're going to set up 2022 the right way you're absolutely phenomenal thank you so much for doing this i know you're a busy guy i'm very excited to hear where you go with your businesses i'll be seeing you soon hopefully but uh appreciate everything and i hope you have a fantastic week Tommy, thanks for having me, bro.

Speaker 3 Thanks, man. Appreciate you.
Bye. See you later.

Speaker 4 Hey, guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart. It means a lot to me.
And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast.

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Speaker 4 It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review make it four or five sentences tell us how we're doing and i just wanted to mention real quick we started a membership it's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club you get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company and uh we're just we're telling everybody our secrets basically and people say why do you give your secrets away all the time and i'm like you know the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them so we also create a lot of accountability within this program.

Speaker 4 So, check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club.
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Speaker 3 I really appreciate it.