Beyond The Sale: Deepening Bonds With Giftology #MakingBank #S8E56 36:43

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Welcome to Making Bank. I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the mindset and the success strategies of the top 1% so you can amplify your life and your business today. Excited for today's guest. He's an Ohio native originally, practically almost right down the road from me. We grew up together, but we never knew each other.

But I want to welcome John Rulon to Making Bank. He is ranked number one in sales in the 70-year history for one of the largest direct sales companies in the world. His ranking and has broken records that still stand among the 1 million plus distributors that have walked through their doors. His firm now specializes in teaching fast-growing service firms how to stand out,

be more memorable, and become even more referable through giftology. The art and science of using gifts to cut through the noise, drive referrals, and strengthen retention. They also help firms develop and execute logistics of high-end gift-giving programs to open the doors with impossible reach to C-level prospects

and drive referrals from current clients. His clients span across all sizes and industries, and they include everybody from UBS, Raymond James, Wells Fargo, the Chicago Bears, San Antonio Spurs, MGM Shell Chevron, the Orlando Magic, Memphis Grizzlies,

D.R. Horton, Miami Dolphins, Caesars Entertainment, Darren Hardy, Tom Searcy, Shep Hyken, Jason Gagnard, Jeffrey Gitmer, and John Maxwell.

I mean, it's an amazing group of people and businesses. He lives just outside of St. Louis now, so he skipped out on Ohio with his wife, Lindsay, and three daughters. His second book, Giftology, was released June 20th, 2016. And at the end here, we'll definitely give you a direct place to go find John, learn more about him. So John, I want to welcome you to Making Bank.

Josh, man, thanks for having me. It's always fun to join Ohio dudes in crime here. I know. It's so cool, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. Real quick, before we get started, I just want to show you guys, here's John's giftology book.

Nice, smooth leather, shiny steel. It's a very nice Vanna White impersonation. I appreciate the shout out on the front end. No problem, man. So, I mean, I remember hearing your story. We're at Archangel Summit, actually, or Mastermind. And it really connected and it was really cool. I think just...

With how you positioned yourself and how you used gift giving to get yourself in front of some of these top companies in the world. And so I thought, man, just with all the different entrepreneurs I know that watch the show and just some of the inroads that they're trying to make. I thought with your story and what you're doing just could create such a huge impact. So I'm really excited to have you be able to talk about that today.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think I'm sure a few people that are watching are probably ready to hit the snooze button. Really, gifting is going to be this game changer in their business. I've spoken to some of the biggest companies. I just spoke at Fortune Magazine Growth Summit. And I think that people, when they heard the introduction, like Giftology and Vern Harnish, who runs Gazelle, is one of the founders of EO. I could tell people were like, why the heck is this? Why was this? Does this dude get...

Knives, what does that have to do with business? And I think people don't understand this. Every business is about relationships. Everybody says relationships are really important. But most people, most leaders, if they're honest with themselves, they suck at actually the execution of gratitude and appreciation. So it's fun to kind of make the rounds around the world and kind of be the guy nobody knows who's going to be coming on stage. And then after they hear the stories and they hear our client list, they're like,

You grew up milking goats on a farm. How the heck did you... I thought you grew up near Harvard or MIT or LA or Chicago, someplace that's sexy and cool with the country club relationships. But I tell people all the time, if what I do can help me, a farm boy from Ohio, it can really help anybody. Definitely. And I guess give us a little bit of your background and kind of...

What got you on this path? I guess, I mean, how you guys started as an entrepreneur and then we'll kind of move into how you got to this whole gift giving process. Well, it wasn't part of the master plan. I grew up poor on a farm, milking goats, splitting wood. Our whole house was heated with wood. We had a one acre garden. So it wasn't like I basically knew what I didn't want to do the rest of my life. That was kind of the motivation of I do not want to be hoeing a garden when I'm 45. And so...

I got good grades. I was an overachiever. And I thought when you're poor and you get good grades, I thought I was going to go be a doctor or a lawyer. I didn't really know what an entrepreneur was. But I went into school. Fortunately, when I was, I interned with Cutco, the knife company, which is, you know, they've worked with a million and a half college kids, amazing sales training program. And I thought maybe I could make some money. I had a buddy who was the antithesis of a salesperson was selling these thousand dollar knife sets. I'm like, if freaking Steve Wiggers can do it, I can at least try.

So I like wore the glasses to look smarter in the interview. I wore the one tie I had, got hired. But the turning point for me was I was dating a girl at the time and her dad was an attorney. He was on the board of the school and he seemed to be involved in every deal in town and he never seemed to be stressed. Like he would take three hour lunches and I'm like,

How did he get like the piece of land that became the Walmart? How did he like become owners in the bank and the oil wells and all this other stuff? And when you're poor, like I noticed, you know, you notice like when people are generous. So he was always giving things away, like not not once a year, like 24, 7, 365, like he'd find a deal on noodles.

He would buy a semi load of noodles because they were a good deal. And everybody at church the next Sunday, like 200 people would walk out with like 10 cases of noodles. And I'm like, Paul, that was like 20 G's in noodles. Like, are you crazy? And he's like, I know. But did you see their smiles on their faces? I'm like, yeah. Like you gave them a year supply of noodles. Who's not going to smile?

So I like one of the big turning points was I pitched him the idea. I thought he has all these clients he's always giving things away to. And they're like CEOs of insurance companies and lumber yards. And they're burly guys in Ohio, you know, down in Amish country, you know where it's at. So I thought maybe he would give away pocket knives. You know, they're all into the outdoors and hunting, fishing. And so I'm like, Paul, what do you think? I'm nervous. I'm like sweating. I'm pitching my girlfriend's dad on giving away, you know, knives. And

And he got this little twinkle in his eye. He never made you feel uncomfortable. He was just always sweet, you know, just really calm. But he was when he spoke, you listen, because, you know, it was like it was wise. And he said, John, what about paring knives? Could I engrave those? And I'm like, I'm going to get paring knives away to these grown men like you're in business. Like, why would you give a kitchen item? And he's like, here's why. He's like, I found that in business in the last 30, 40 years.

If you take care of the whole family, we now call it the inner circle, but if you take care of the whole family, everything else in business seems to kind of take care of itself. And so for me, it was like that lightning bolt moment. I realized it wasn't about the knife. It was about, Paul understood the psychology, like, you know, Robert Cialdini, influence, you know, reciprocity. He understood that when you pour into people's inner circle, the assistant, the employees around them, the spouse, oftentimes a wife in certain industries, kids, like those become your sales advocates. And you want to stay top of mind, like,

Most deals don't happen or don't happen based upon somebody being like, you know what you need to talk to so-and-so They like referrals happen like spontaneously on the golf course or at dinner You have to be top of mind you have to be liked to be relevant and Paul was always relevant because he was constantly in front of people with these cool things so I started to teach this concept and

Like I'm a 20 year old college kid. So I'd invest like a two, I'd invest like $200 in a carving set. I'd engrave the CEO's name, his wife's name, his family name, his logo, not mine, theirs. And I put a little handwritten note inside that said carve out five minutes for me. I promise I'll be with your time. I send it off.

And a week later I get a phone call. It's a CEO wants to sit down with me. And I walk into the boardroom. I'm 20. He's expecting somebody like in their fifties to walk in. He's like, I'm really confused. Are you here to sell me knives? Like, this is weird. Like what's up? And I'm like, no, I'm here to help your thousand sales reps do exactly what I did to you, to your top 1000 relationships. And he's like, that's brilliant. I,

He's like, so you don't have to spend money on like golf outings and trinkets and, you know, in advertising. He's like, I can just go directly at the client. I'm like, yeah, that's the point is like, let's go. Let's go shoot with a rifle versus like this mass crap that everybody does. And so I'd walk out with a thousand set order of knives. And by the time I was a senior in college, I was their largest international distributor because I was using gifting as a competitive advantage.

to stay top of mind, open doors, to drive referrals, to build relationships, all the things that everybody says they want to do. But most people are like, well, you know, they have million dollar budgets and it's on a trade show, which is a pissing match with all of their competitors in the same building. They take people out to a steak dinner and spend hundreds of dollars on or more thousands of dollars on wine when their competitor is going to do the exact same thing the following night. So nobody stands out because everybody's following the same playbook.

And so that's how like an eight person firm out of, you know, we're still based in Ohio. I live in St. Louis because my wife's family farms 4,000 acres and they're not moving anytime soon. And I got three girls that want to be near grandma and my wife wants to be near family. But we can, I get asked to speak at Google, not because,

you know, we're the biggest company in the planet, but because we gift like a King, we get treated like a King. And there's a right way to do it the wrong way to do it. You can do it very sleazy and manipulative, or you can do it the right way. And so that's really what giftology, our book is, is like what we've been doing for the last 17 years to land the Cubs and,

I mean, I can dive into all kinds of stuff, but that's the essence. That's the core. That's where we got started. It was farm boy in Ohio needs to pay for college, and I put med school on hold and said, this whole entrepreneur thing seems kind of interesting. I don't have to go in debt a half a million dollars, and I can just start a business. I'm going to go this direction. No, that's awesome. I know one of the key points you mentioned too was –

When you were carving the knives, you said, I didn't put my information on there. I put theirs. I know we talked a little bit about this when we were first chatting a month or so back. And I think that's really key because I think one of the components I think you talked about in your speech was most people put their logo on it, their branding, not who they're potentially trying to bring on as a client. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Whether it's the client, the prospect, the employee, like most of the time when you add a brand to something, unless you're Under Armour or Nike or Rolex, like your logo, your logo takes value away from the gift. It doesn't add value. Like nobody's like, oh my gosh, you know, ABC accounting firms logos on it. That makes it more valuable. No, they're like...

I don't even want to take this home to my wife or my husband. Like they ends up at goodwill or in the trash. And so there's companies that literally spend, you know, if you add in like all the corporate gifts and swag and crap, they spend billions of dollars to have a negative impact on their most important relationships or prospects.

And what I mean by that is like they get it and in their head, they're thinking there's no freaking way I'm going to wear that jacket, that polo shirt, that whatever, you know, wine glass, name the item portfolio. Number one, most of them are crap. They like give middle of the road quality to people. You know, it's like it's like giving a fossil to a fossil watch to somebody wearing a Rolex like you spent one hundred dollars on the watch. But.

I'm not taking my Rolex off to put a fossil on. I'm sorry. I don't care if it has my name on it. I don't care if it has my logo on it. Like, that's just cheesy. So there's certain things that people just don't understand when it comes to, like, they do things in their business life they'd never do in a business world.

or they do things in their business they never do personally. Like, they would never go to a wedding and engrave compliments of, you know, Josh Felber on the Tiffany's visor given to the couple. Like, that'd be tacky. But in business, we call it marketing and advertising, which is total crap. It's basically...

pissing away thousands, millions, billions of dollars. And nobody's ever called it out because when's the last time you got a handwritten note saying, dear Josh, I got your gift. It had your logo on it. It made me actually think less of you as a person and I'm less likely to do business. Like that's a mean note, but we've talked to people, CEOs that have actually had that thought like,

I do a million dollars in business with this person and they sent me a bar of chocolate with their logo on it. They think that's appreciation. That's gratitude. That makes me feel VIP or special. Frick no. It makes them feel the opposite. So our book really is just, it's none of its rocket science. I mean, some of the, a lot of the concepts are biblical. They're from like 3000 years ago, but nobody is willing to put a spotlight on it because most people don't think gifts matter because we got a bunch of type A men that suck at, that suck at gifting anyway, most of the time.

In their personal life, their wife or their significant other takes care of the gifting. And then in business, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They think it doesn't matter. They don't put any time or energy or strategy into it. They delegate it to an assistant with an unrealistic budget. And then a bunch of crap goes out and they're like, yeah, see, I told you it didn't work.

And I'm like, it doesn't make any sense. And so we're really just calling a spade a spade in an area where nobody's ever really said, wow, here's an area where if we did it different, it could actually make a difference. Definitely. And I think as I mean, just even all the different companies that have owned over the years. I mean, I remember any time we would send out gifts or different things that always had because you're taught, oh, hey, you know, your logo goes on it. It's promoting you, your brand, not supporting the person you're giving the gift to.

Yeah. And the ironic part is if you make the gift all about them, they make the everything else all about you. So you get me when you give a gift and make it all about them. What do they want to do? They want to reciprocate. They want to talk about it. They want to use it. They want to tell their friends when you make the gift all about yourself.

It's like everybody can read between the lines. It's like this person is trying to disguise a gift and turn me into a billboard. And especially anybody of affluence is going to be like, I'm not wearing their freaking brand. Now, I may send them a token text or an email saying thank you just to be polite because we're in 2017. Everybody wants to be politically correct and be nice. But the bottom line is nothing.

like nine out of 10 of those people. Now you may get the one person who's like, they'll take anything free. And they're like, Oh, everybody loves my gift. And I'm like, ah, the one out of 10 that gave you the, the high five, the other nine are back in the, you know, in the back alley, like making fun of you. Like,

But they're never going to say that to your face because that's mean. And so we're not trying to be mean. We're just trying to be honest because in business, like every dollar that you spend, you want to return on your investment. Like you don't give gifts just like as a warm, fuzzy, nice to like, oh, I want to like, you know, I'm Santa Claus once a year. Like, no, like, like,

relationships matter than how you show gratitude. Like the tangible artifact matters. And it's not like you can have a sucky business and get great gifts and all of a sudden magically your business is going to go through the roof. Like, but for companies that have their crap together, this is that one little lever that nobody's doing that all of a sudden, like people are like, holy crap. Like I thought I was good at referrals. I thought I was good at opening doors. And then they tweak this one little lever, this like one little dial. And then they're like,

oh my gosh, like I wish I'd have been doing this 20 years ago because nobody does it. If everybody was a great gift giver, then it wouldn't work. It would just be part of the, you know, the pissing match noise. There's no more mystique, no more, oh wow, this is amazing. And you know, this person's so thoughtful. It's just like, okay, cool. Put it on the shelf with everything else. Yeah. But that's not the case. It's awesome. So,

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In order to connect with somebody. I mean, I've done some fun ones. I would say the one that's kind of our signature story that some people have heard. Cameron Harreld, one of the top business coaches in the world. The short version of the story is he was coming to Cleveland. I found out that he wanted to go shopping at Brooks Brothers. It was his favorite store. I found out what his shirt size was. And I went to Brooks Brothers, bought everything in the new fall collection. Shirts, jackets, pants, sweaters, belts, shoes, everything.

everything. I was totally freaked out because my business partner thought it was like insane. It was $7,000 worth of clothes. We then went to the Ritz and merchandised his whole hotel room to look like a Brooks Brothers store. And so when he got in and checked in, he went up to his room. I invited him to the typical dinner and a ball game. LeBron James, very good seats.

and he didn't give two rips like about that because he's like I'm gonna go like most business people dinner ball game golf everybody does that but when he went to his room and saw that like he came down his eyes were like the size of silver dollars he's like whatever you want to talk about for as long as you want to talk about it I'm all ears now he's become he's mentioned us in books and speeches he's opened up doors of the president of Starbucks he's done more than 10 million dollars in advertising could do and most people are like oh seven thousand dollars like I would go broke doing seven thousand dollars he ended up

insisting that he paid for the clothes either he was going to round up by 50 or just tell us what the amount of clothes that he picked was so the entire experience cost me nothing and it's reaped me like seven figures so that's a crazy one we just recently sent somebody a sauna that that melted their like i guess kind of pun intended that melted their face off they're like i can't believe asana's on its way to me like that that that that blew away so so yeah i mean it's uh it

Those are the over the top ones. Those aren't necessarily the everyday gifts. And I tell people that like you need to budget 80% of your budget for things you can do consistently. And that's really what our company does is we execute those programs for companies because they can't do it on their own. They could, but they have good intentions that never get done. But with 80%, but you need to budget 20% for when you find out something for a client or a prospect or an employee, you have the money set aside. It's like opportunity rises $7,000. It's already worked into the budget or $700 or whatever the number is.

We have money set aside, so when the opportunity arises, we're like, let's do it. Awesome. So tell me what – because it sounds like these gifts are pretty personable or pretty close. What kind of research do you guys do or what kind of research should somebody watching do to say, okay, hey, I want to connect with XYZ?

To make sure that, I guess, it's not just like another iPad or a Kindle that shows up. Yeah, I mean, we actually put a list together of the top 10 things not to give. And so your listeners and watchers can go download. If you go to giftologybook.com slash bank, they can go online and download the top 10 worst gifts. And Apple is actually ironically one of them because...

You can go test drive a car, Chevy Cavalier and get an iPad. It's lost its cachet. That's not a good gift at that point. So the top 10 worst gifts you can download. And that gives you at least some guidelines of what not to do. What's interesting is we still do the knives and things like that because I can take that same gift and say a chef knife, $150. I can personalize it to the person, their spouse, their family, their logo, package it well.

And since most people either are cooking at their house, entertaining, have kids, have company over, I pick things that they've never received in business typically that are unique, kind of off the wall, but still useful, are best in class. The knives that we use are Cutco. They're handmade in New York. But I can send that same gift to a thousand people on the same day. And everybody that gets it, though, is like,

Got a handwritten note. It's personalized to me. It's useful. It meets all of our criteria, but I can take this. So I look at things that I can – and I used to make fun of mugs. People were like, really? You give mugs? I'm like, I used to make fun of them. But then somebody took a mug and did a $250 mug that basically was hand-carved and told my whole life story. And the guy drove from Atlanta to hand-deliver that to me.

from one for me, one for my wife. And when I got those mugs, I was like, I mean, he's, he's an artist. Like they were unbelievable. I was like in tears. I took it to my wife. She didn't even know the guy. She's like, well, he's got to stay at our house, a $250 because most people spend $5 on a mug. He spends $250 on a mug. And so a lot of times you can take a common item. As long as you do it world-class and do it and follow our program, kind of like our proven process.

You can take a what doesn't seem like a very sexy gift, but if you do all the details right, timing, make it a surprise, all these other things, it allows you to gift the same thing over and over again to people. But because of all the details, it feels good.

Because it is like you did some thought and you did all the details right now. It feels like an artifact, a gift, a representation of the relationship. Now we do like the $7,000 Brooks Brothers. That was a special personalized gift. We had to do some research, but that's not executable when you have hundreds or thousands of people necessarily. And so there's a balance. It's like, how can you do like the mass personalization? And so there is extra energy and effort in there. And that's what our team does. But we know the go-to gifts.

that work and we know how to do them. And that's really what giftology is, the playbook of questions to ask yourself as you're trying to put together this plan. Otherwise, you have to hire somebody on your team full time that all they do is go buy gifts for people. We call them a generosity manager. And some people will do that, but that's not the norm.

And people can do it a lot more cost effective with somebody like us if they want to or if they want to do it on their own by just planning things out and being strategic with it. And so there's a there's a blend between the personalization and kind of the mass customization that allow you to because everybody's looking for scale. Like if you only have to buy one gift a year, you don't outsource that like for your wife or your kids or your mom. Like.

You go do that yourself. You know, you know, like you're listening year round for that thing. But in business, you might only have bits and pieces of information to go on, but you can still give an amazing gift if you follow our program.

For example, my wife owns a big skincare company, so everything's handmade and we ship everything right from here and all that. So we're working on this year going into retail, so going after the retailers and everything else. And fortunately, I've owned another company, so I kind of know the whole process and just all the grind that it takes to get in front of somebody at Whole Foods. The buyers and all that stuff. Right, all the buyers and everything.

So moving in that direction, what do you think like a good gift would be to, you know, to send somebody in that position for that? Yeah. I mean, I think that, I mean, I can, I mean, the knives work because everybody eats. I think the mug works because everybody either drinks tea or coffee. I like things in the kitchen because it's kind of like, it's the reason that you still go out to dinner with people because breaking bread, it's like the last supper in the Bible. Like it's, it's, it's very like by our nature, like

we're communal people. Like we like community. We like breaking bread. And so I love things that are focused around the kitchen. There's a set of glasses that we work with that are made from reclaimed wine bottles. So they're really green. They're repurposed. There's an entrepreneur that we work with out of Arizona that does them. And they're amazing. They're not super expensive, but they're useful. And there's things that people when they get them, like, I didn't even know this existed. So I think that sometimes people are like, well, we're in the food business, so we have to give a food related item. Well, like,

Treat the other person like a human being. And I want a gift that's not used once a year. I want a gift that's used every single day. So I'll take something unsexy like a portfolio, for instance. Most people spend $20 on a portfolio. When I send a portfolio, it's a $200 portfolio. And it's personalized, handmade leather, made in the US. So when somebody gets it and I say, hey, I'd love for you to see our portfolio of products,

It ties in thematically, but now they have something that they're using every day with their name on it, nothing about me, but subconsciously every single day, whether they've called me back or not, they're thinking about me, my generosity, the reciprocity, and the likelihood of them returning your phone call, taking your phone call, or taking a meeting goes through the roof because you gave them something that was really thoughtful and practical, but

still universal. And so I would, you know, I'd pick out your top 20, top 50, top 100 and find something like that that doesn't necessarily have to do with it. So people will send like portfolios with their company logo colors. And it's like, does somebody really want a pink and paisley, blah, blah, blah portfolio? Like maybe not. So make, give something that they would be like,

Not just like, oh, that's cool. I'm never going to use that. Make it say, oh, wow, that's really thoughtful. And then maybe two weeks go by, a month go by. And sometimes we'll send people a drip campaign where every, like Jeffrey Gittermer, the number one sales author in the world. I wanted him as a client and advocate. I sent him 18 gifts in a row over the course of 18 months before he finally invited me over to his house.

He's like, you're the most pleasantly persistent. And then there's some other explicitives that he used. You know, Gittermer, he's over the top. He's from Jersey. But it landed because of the pleasant persistence of those touch points in it. And by the time he got to 18-1, his wife was talking about it. He was like...

I don't know if this is going to go anywhere, but I'll get like, let's hang out for an afternoon and, you know, if there's, you know, see what happens, which is all you can ask for. Like warm introduction, a crack door. You know, it's not like if you have a sucky product, the gift's going to get you in the door and get you the deal. But getting noticed and getting the opportunity to even get FaceTime with a buyer is really difficult.

And some gifts, you know, you may send out 20 and you may get five back. Oh, I can't take this. People are like, oh, I'm not going to do that again. I'm like, what about the 15 that kept it? You got 75% of people like now you got something in their hands that they think about you every single day. Like, what the heck is that worth to you? I mean, that's like.

I don't care about market share. I care about mind share of the people that I actually care about. So it could be 50 people, 100 people, 500 people. Those are the things that I can't necessarily say specifically for your wife, but those are the kind of things that I would walk through and think about. And I also am big on reverse engineering and saying, if I send this to, let's say I'm going to pick a $200 item and I'm going to send it to 100 people. That's a $20,000 investment.

How many deals do I need to land at a minimum level to make that $20,000 investment either break even or 5x, 10x? What's the number? Then you can reverse engineer and say, I'm thinking about this with metrics, not with hope and dreams. Right?

Like, what do the numbers need to really be? And what can I invest in each person? And sometimes people will say, you know what? I can't do 100 really well. So let's back it down to do 50 really well versus doing 100 or 1,000 mediocre. But most people don't do that. They just take their entire list or they say, oh, we can never do that. Or they do something mediocre for a small list. And they don't even give themselves a chance.

to succeed with it because people get some like, I hear people send like shoes, like, and they're sending like Walmart variety shoes saying they want to get their foot in the door. I'm like, that might've worked like 30 years ago, but like somebody gets like a,

a Velcroed miter shoe. They're like, and you're saying you're world-class and you're sending them a $20 Walmart special. Like in their head, they're thinking this is not congruent. This guy's a cheese ball. So thinking through things to make sure that they're congruent and they're actually based on real numbers and metrics, massively important when you're going into a campaign like this. Like this isn't like Obama's hope, you know, like campaign. Like this is, like these are based on real numbers. Like I'm, you know, I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, I'm a capitalist. And, you know,

I want a return on my investment. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but more often than not, I win because we've done the numbers. Cool. No, that's awesome. I remember, I think I was just reading an article a week or two ago. It was about the person that sent the boxes of donuts to

And then their resume was wrapped inside and they sent them to all the potential employers that they wanted to go work for. And I think they landed like 90% of the interviews that people haven't been able to get into. It made me think of you. I was like, yeah, even if you like overnighted them, like in gold plated them, I mean a hundred bucks, right? Like I could never spend a hundred dollars. And I'm like, you know, you're interviewing for a hundred thousand dollar position or 50,000, like,

do the math. Like, I mean, that's, that's a no brainer. Yeah. I was like, huh, that's pretty cool. I mean, just a whole nother avenue of like something you don't think about. And, but it opened the door up because people were like, man, this is ingenious. And I think like you mentioned in your talk before, it's FedEx there. So it gets kind of passed right to that executive or that HR person or whoever's the one that kind of controls their destiny to come into the interview. So it creates buzz.

They're like, hey, Jim, come over and check this out. Like, yeah, a stack of resumes that are a thousand deep. And all of a sudden there's the only resume that anybody's talking about. Right. And I think it got picked up. I think it was like an article got written on it. It got picked up by some news. So way more than just getting in the door. Yeah.

he got some publicity or she got some publicity from it. 15 minutes of fame. Like there's probably other people that are like now tracking that person down, wanting them to work for him. Like, I mean, it's crazy over a, I mean, a relatively small investment, but it blows me away how cheap and, you know, the old saying, you know, penny wise and pound foolish. It's amazing. People will be like, oh, I got to go buy a new suit.

Like, okay, you're going to spend $500,000 on your suit. I get it. But it doesn't really matter what your suit looks like if you're not getting FaceTime with anybody. So take that $500,000 and invest it there. And then...

I'm not saying go in looking like a bum, but it's amazing where people put their priorities. And most people are sheep. They're followers. They're like, what does everybody else do? Oh, I got to have my shoes shined. Okay, great. I get it. But that's not going to make you stand out. So anyway, I'm...

I'm on my little soapbox here. You can get me worked up, John. Well, cool. We got a couple of minutes left. Where can, I guess, where can people find out about you? Yeah, I mean, they can go to Giftology book to learn about the book. You can go to Amazon and buy it on, you know, Audible and Kindle and all that kind of stuff. Obviously, they can get the free download if they want to learn just the 10 things not to give, 10 categories.

Very basic, kind of straight into the point, giftologybook.com slash bank. They can also go to Ruling Group. So my last name, R-U-H-L-I-N group.com. That's where like the project we did for the Cubs, a couple of the projects there and the Jaguars. That's more like if you want to learn about the execution of the gifting programs and hiring us. If you're interested, you know, more like the thought leadership and blog and more speaking, johnruling.com is on that side.

And of course, you know, at Rulon for Twitter and Facebook, you know, all the normal places. You type in John Rulon, you'll find you'll find me. Well, yeah, I definitely want to dive in more detail. So either have you back sometime or we'll shoot like a live interview in person would be fun. And just dive into some more cool things that you're doing and everything. So and I know you have an awesome a whole nother awesome story about that.

I think it was proposing to your wife. So I want to get... Oh, yeah, almost dying. Yeah. FBI airport in almost death. Right. So we'll save that for interview number two that keep everybody kind of hanging in suspense for sure. So but maybe one last thought or idea you want to leave our audience with? I think, I mean, I've kind of alluded to this, but I think that...

where everybody goes expensive, I cut out altogether. So, you know, if it's fancy brochures, if it's trade shows, if it's whatever, like if my steak dinner is not going to be any better than your steak dinner, my golf isn't going to be any better than your golf. So when people go expensive, I cut it out and I redirect that money into places where everybody's going cheap or not at all. And so like our business cards, we spend three dollars on and Google thinks that, you know, like even Google's like you're going to go broke. Like we could never afford three dollar business cards. I'm like,

You ever spent three dollars on a cup of coffee? And like, yeah, we do that every day. And I'm like, well, that's like it's all it's all framework. And so I think a lot of what we do with gifting is the reason it works is because everybody's gone so cheap. But I think you can do that with your brochures or like our business cards are three dollars. Our letterhead is nine dollars. I look for areas in my industry or in business in general where the standard is over here to be really high and this to be really low. And I flip flop them.

which I think is really what any entrepreneur does. They look for an opening and they go do the exact opposite of what everybody else does. Like my books, when I sent out my books originally, which it got named by Forbes as top 10 business book of 2016. I think one of the reasons is, is we made like 50 versions of the book that were handmade with a linen box and a leather bag. They're like $200 a piece. People are like, you spent $200 on books? And I'm like,

Let me think. This is 17 years of my life I've put into this. These are the most important relationships, mentors, friends, guys like Seth Godin. And there's 30,000 books published every week.

worldwide on Amazon or whatever else. So everybody focuses on spending like $2 on their book and getting it as cheap as possible. And I multiply that times 100 and spend $200. And guess what? The people that received the book were like, this is the nicest book I've ever seen. Now, most people would say, well, I'm going to spend $20,000 on Facebook ads. I'm going to spend $2,000 over here and all these other numbers. And now you're playing in this red ocean.

I want to play in a blue ocean. So in every area, as much as I can, I started and I bootstrapped the company. I don't have any outside investors other than I sold half the business to a business partner about eight years ago. We've funded this ourself. So

So when I spend a dollar, I want to get a return on it. I don't care what anybody else is doing. I want to do it in a way that nobody else is. So that would be like the kind of wrap up. It's not really about gifting. Gifting just happens to be an area where most people suck at. So it's a lever that is really, you know, can really stand out. But do that in every other part of your business where everybody does it this way.

Go as far as you can the other direction, because right now there's a lot of noise and being top of mind and being memorable is a currency. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about it like I'm a I'm an attention broker. And frankly, with gifting, that's where the exact same freaking thing we we broker people's attention, whether it's with your clients or your prospects.

We just do it a little bit differently than he does it. He does it with crazy TV shows and thought leadership and more F-bombs than I've said, you know, in my entire life in one hour. But it's the same concept. It's just using it a little bit differently.

Cool. No, that's awesome. And I know we kind of had that same mindset on the business cards. I have the black metal and you're like, yeah, so it was like that was that was our and then the Ohio connection. It was like, boom, right on. Cut from the same cloth. That's right, man. So, hey, guys, get out. You know, make sure you check out John's information. If you want to have them implement a gifting program for you, connect with them on that as well as.

grab his book and you can do it on your own. You don't have to hire him. But if it takes your time and attention away with where you're best skilled at, that's what they're there for. So again, John, I just want to thank you for coming on the show today. It was an honor to have you, have your information out there. And anyway, we can help you. I'm glad to be here for that. No, man. Thanks so much. This has been a lot of fun. I am Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.

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