This episode celebrates the game changing relationship-building strategy John Ruhlin and his Giftology Team pioneered. Representing Giftology in this episode is Sara Hardwick. Sara is the Community Relationship Strategist at Giftology. She also leads the RICH Relationship Society, and educational membership designed to revolutionize referral-based business practices. Sara’s experience building relationship-driven communities began in college, where she built the internet’s largest gifting community as a student at UNC.
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The Giftology Group’s Sara Hardwick On Building World Class Relationships
Welcome to the show. Our quote is from John Ruhlin. “It’s not the thought that counts. It’s the thoughtful thought that counts.” The guest that we’re going to talk to is quite connected to John. Sarah Hardwick works at the company. John founded and led Giftology. For those of you who follow writing or reading, you’ve probably heard me talk about John and his sudden passing last year and what he meant to so many people, including myself and groups that have worked with him.
There’s been an incredible outpouring of support, including an event last week that raised almost $200,000 for John’s family. When John passed away, he had started on a new book, which his team finished, called Beyond Giftology. It’s a great distillation of his philosophy. I wanted to celebrate this book. We invited a member of John’s team to discuss it with us, and you’ll hear from Sarah. Sarah and I had a great conversation about John’s legacy, also the relationship strategy and how it can be a game changer for your organization, and how gifting and relationships get you much further than typical marketing.
With that said, here is a little bit more about our guest, Sarah Hardwick, who is the community relationship strategist of Giftology. She also leads the Rich Relationship Society, which she’ll tell us about, and has experience, which I want to hear about, building relationship-driven communities, which began in college when she built the internet’s largest gifting community as a student at UNC. As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sarah.
Sarah Hardwick, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
Sara Hardwick And Giftology
Tell us about this college gifting community and how you found your way to Giftology Group.
It’s one of my favorite stories. When I was in college at UNC, as you introduced me, I went to a career seminar early on in my college career, I think my freshman year. One of the funny little exercises in the beginning was just Google something you feel like you’re passionate about, you’re good at, and put the word company behind it. Not knowing what I wanted to do. In my career, I could have put math, English, and my best friend Chloe was sitting next to me, and she goes, “You’re such a good gift giver. Why don’t you just Google gift-giving companies?” I did. Shout out to Giftology’s SEO and all their art.
By the way, I asked you about this story. I did not know the answer to this. That’s great. That’s hysterical. SEO matters.
Giftology popped right up. I didn’t even know that gifting companies existed, but that intrigued me. From there, I bought LinkedIn Premium for 435 a month. I stalked John on LinkedIn until his little green light came on. I sent him a fun little message that he answered, which I know is hard to do because I used to be in the background of some of his LinkedIn activity, too. It’s hard to get him to answer some things. He answered, and the rest is history. I saw a gap in the fact that there are a lot of small business owners, service-based business professionals, who wanted to do this gifting thing on their own. They didn’t need to hire us to do it. That’s when I started our first community, which was called Gift and Grow Society.
You did that while you were still a student?
Yep, did that all through college. Upon graduation, I started my full-time role here at Giftology.
How long have you been there?
I have been here now for about four years. Just graduated from college about a year and a half ago to two years ago at this point.
That includes it. We talked about John, who founded Giftology Group, and we’re going to dive into Beyond Giftology, which is now out wherever books are sold. I think even the way that John first responded to your email, but talk about what you saw about his leadership and philosophy, and some of the lessons that you learned and had a chance to, I guess, learn earlier in your career, which is great. Some of it is bad role models, and then we spend the rest of our career trying to do the opposite. I think you lucked out in that respect.
I did. I definitely did. I got lucky. Feel very blessed. I shared this on LinkedIn when John passed away, that I felt like I had an opportunity of a lifetime to work that closely with John and be led by him this early on in my career. Unfortunately, with his passing, I did feel like it was an opportunity of a lifetime to have that time with him. His leadership and his philosophy and the way he not only went about business and running his company, but also family, and the relationships that he held close to his heart. There are just so many lessons that I can take away. Mainly, I would say that it’s possible to truly love what you do and work for a bigger purpose. I feel so blessed. I know not everybody can give gifts for a living.
It is possible to truly love what you do and work for a bigger purpose.
It’s like Santa Claus.
He absolutely had had that. I just feel so blessed that I think I do understand the power in having a bigger purpose for your work, being able to love on people, and carry that radical generosity forward that he did so well.
John, interestingly, he’s so passionate about this and the concept of gifting and loving people that I don’t think a lot of people even realize what his company did. You explain what Giftology Group does and the radical generosity philosophy behind it.
We have gotten that feedback so much in the past couple of months, which just first of all shows John’s heart.
It shows he was not trying to sell stuff.
No, he truly was just all about building relationships and giving. Sometimes, I forgot to mention that this is what his company is.
“We can help you do this.”
Honestly, the way that I like to describe it is that we’re a better way to do marketing. The whole world has turned to digital, and we have found a way to still keep relationships at the forefront of people’s marketing strategy. Of course, it’s in the name Giftology. The main way we do that is through gift-giving. We help businesses gift give, create these large relationship strategies for their key clients, key employees, and key referral partners. That’s something that can be completely outsourced for them via our team.
Give us an example, I know, like focused on pretty unique experiences and working with some sports teams, but give us a non-traditional example of what that might look like.
At a high level, we always get asked this question. “How do you do that?” What it looks like is companies, leaders, and small business owners handing over that key list of relationships to us, their addresses, and then we’re building out the rest of that strategy for them. Typically, that looks like sending two or maybe three gifts a year on their behalf. What that does is you show up and you look good giving that gift. We’re like the ghost gifters in the background. Everything comes with the recipient’s name personalized on it, a handwritten note from you, and we play this role in the background to ultimately invest in your relationships on your behalf.
Making Gifting More Relationship-Oriented
There are a couple of principles, like John isms, that stick with me, that I find myself staying a lot. One is, I think he was a big believer in tying these, finding out a lot about the person, making it about them. “What would I like?” He said to me, “If your logo is on it, it’s marketing. If their name is on it, it’s a gift.” I think about that constantly because I have these templates I have to respond to people, and I turned it into a funny one, but people are like, basically, “Can I get your address? I want to send you some swag or thank you.”
I’m like, “I do not want a Styrofoam hat with your company’s name on it. I do not need another mug with your company’s name on it. I don’t want to be rude, but it’s like a net negative in my house.” To send this, John is always at the back of my head. When I think about it, it’s like, if you want to give someone a cool Patagonia jacket that they’d want to wear. I don’t know, maybe put your company’s name on the inside when they go to put it on. They remember you, but like they are not going to want to wear the company Patagonia with your company dot com blazoned across the front.
John’s always in my head about that. He’s always in my head about the rhythm and not making the gifts tied to the transactions. One of the things that we use is to help around referrals. He’d say, “Look, send this person not at the holiday.” The amount of $200 chocolate boxes I’ve eaten where I have no idea. Half of these gifting companies are so bad about including the note of who it’s from.
I’ll call up because I feel bad. I’m like, “This is a nice box of chocolates, and I don’t know who sent it.” Not staying away from these times when everyone sends stuff, and staying away from a transaction. If I thank you for an introduction the next day and send you something, it feels transactional. If I thank you months later for continuing to think of us, it feels more relationship-oriented. Those are my two that I remember a lot, particularly your name on it and its marketing.
I think too people just try to systematize this gifting thing themselves, and where they land is, “I’m going to send it right after a transaction.” That’s a trigger point, or “I’m going to send it at the holiday because that’s the time that everyone else is doing it, I can get my team behind it, or get a budget behind it.” What we’re trying to is if you take the time and the investment to build out a plan, to actually still show up in this way, to still give, to still invest in these relationships and do it well, do it differently than what most people are doing, there’s still a way to operationalize it. It just comes in those off times.
It’s a true giver’s game thing. I’m sure you guys have seen all these models, and you could write a note. People send you a device and, “Let’s do a sales call and get you get the plug.” Last week, someone offered me a Dyson vacuum cleaner if I would take this. They send a $50 thing. I’m like, “It’s all connected to a sales call or a hook.” It’d be so interesting just to like send me the thing and then say, “Look, if you ever want to chat, I’m here to chat.” I think the approach is so transactional that you’re like, “I know it’s a gift, but it’s not a gift.”
I’ll say two things to that. Number one, “I’m getting married soon, and so the Dyson vacuum could be really useful for me if you want to give them my name.”
“Maybe we can do a swap.”
No, I’m just kidding.
I love the Dyson vacuum. I have a weakness for them. I may do the call even though I have no interest in the product.
There you go. That’s not the world that giftology and we want to live in, is like the bribing idea of gifting. We do not love to work with clients who are using it as a mechanism like cold calling. It’s basically glorified cold calling, a little bit that you’re trying to bribe your way into getting some time with a leader. You brought up referral partners earlier, the best way to get those introductions that you are desiring is through referral partners.
The best way to get desirable introductions is through referral partners.
Those are the people that you likely have a relationship with already. Let’s focus on them. Let’s focus on investing in the people that are in your network that you already have a relationship with. Those people, because you’ve built trust with them, because you’ve gifted them, because you’ve showed them all of this love and appreciation. Those are the people who will open the door. That’s our approach to that bribe-y, cold-calling sales.
Differences Between ROI And ROR
I know John believed in really loving the EAs, too. The people connected to the people. Again, it wasn’t in a transactional way. It was really like there were no strings attached. Let’s talk about the difference between the two three-letter words, ROI and ROR.
Everyone knows the acronym of ROI, Return On Investment, which already has a little bit of a transactional undertone to it. What we tried to flip the script on is that this investment that you are making it is an investment. It is money. You are buying gifts or you’re spending time with this person, but you may not get what you are giving out of it right away. That’s not how relationships work. The return on the relationship side of things is thinking about it a lot more long-term.
Also, realizing that because it is relational, there’s the ability for it to compound. It’s not a I put this in and get this out. You can put X in, give one gift, and it can turn into the biggest deal of your business. That’s the biggest difference for us, and trying to flip people’s mentality from ROI focused so much on put a dollar into Facebook ads. I got this many leads out.
It’s like a conference we’ve done. We’ve done curated dinners with our clients and prospects, and you walk out of that and you’re like, “That was such good connections and energy.” Like, “I don’t know how it’s going to come back to us and I’m not measuring.” It’s going to come back to us. I’m not trying to measure ROI next week. You cannot measure any conference.
I think there are things in life that are it’s like brand marketing. It’s a longer cycle. I also think people get irrational sometimes in terms of cost. Maybe they get with referrals, they get a little too lazy. I don’t know what the word is, but they get lazy, but if I said to someone, “Look, they have a referral program.” Most people say, “You send us a referral, we’ll sign a deal, and we’ll pay you 10%.”
They have like no problem doing that. Let’s say it’s a $50,000 deal, that’s $5,000, and they’d be happy every day of the week. Someone they don’t have an agreement with sends them a $50,000 dealer, and then they start scoffing over a $300 gift, where it’s like 1% of the deal value. Do you guys have a formula that you think of around that, because I think in any case, it’s still cheaper than paying referral fees.
We do. Inside, we have built this system out for people who want to do it themselves, particularly small business owners who rely on referrals, and these service-based business professionals. That system usually looks like we understand that maybe people don’t have the ability to just love on every referral partner if it doesn’t end up closing.
That’s why people understand the transactional referral reward programs, because a lot of the time it’s like, “A closed referral happens. I have that money and I can give it back to this person.” That same idea can be applied to gifting, and where we land is, “Take that money that you wouldn’t have had without that referral and reinvest it back into the relationship.” Usually, 10 to 15 percent of that net profit, we say. If it has to be five based on your business model, that’s okay.
Of the profit, not of the revenue.
Correct. Of the profit. That also allows you to think a little bit of like a long-term strategy about the relationship. To your point, if someone’s referring to business every single week, we’re not saying like follow up with a gift every single week.
That is, you’re thanking them. You’re not like, “Here’s my way that I’ve learned it, and this is decoupled from it. You send me a $50,000 deal, I send you a bottle of Opus One the next week.” They’re like, “Bob’s a cheap bastard.” Can I say that on here? Like, “$100. That was a $50,000 deal.” I wait a month, and this is, I know you guys don’t do wine or whatever, but I wait a month or two, and I just send a note, and I’m like, “Look, thank you guys for always thinking of us.” We really appreciate it. Here’s a bottle of like Opus One. It just lands differently. It’s not like, “This was your payment for this transaction,” which feels cheap to say, “Thank you.” Like you’re validating that I’m sending some stuff.
We recommend to not even mention the referral in that gift. Of course, you should thank somebody for the referral at that time. Maybe if you want to elevate that experience a little bit, you can just write a handwritten note to them. When it comes to gifting, exactly like you said, timing-wise, pull that away from the transaction.
If you want to elevate the way you offer gifts, you can just write a handwritten note to them.
Otherwise, you look cheap.
Really, with some of these big deals, you look pretty cheap. In the framing of it, it’s like, “I heard you were going out to dinner this week or whatever. Whatever it is you’re celebrating this, you don’t need the reason of a referral to send a gift. I think that’s the biggest takeaway there.
Look, I know you guys do more physical and personal stuff. The best one I like, again, you cannot do this at a time when it’s not a gift, but it’s to say to someone, “My so and so has got a client in your area and they want to take them out to a nice dinner. Where should they go?” Get their information and then send that to them again. People remember, “You sent them to a dinner with their spouse.” Not what you feel, but it’s about them and it’s about their experience. I still want to know why people think I want a Styrofoam hat with their company name on it. Even the Yeti mugs, clever five years ago, now like they’re falling out of my cabinet. The Styrofoam hat is the one that I’m like, “You’re just asking me to throw this out.”
Wouldn’t you rather, to your example that you just said, wouldn’t you rather just spend time with your family and friends and have them support that? I have the most fun story. One, someone that I work with, they heard in a conversation that my fiance was taking me out to dinner to a tapas restaurant. They called all of the tapas restaurants in the area, our reservation, and when we got the bill, it was completely paid for. Those are the moments that are going to be remembered by you in that relationship, not the Styrofoam hat.
Is that a HIPAA violation? I’m just wondering, at the restaurants, if not, in case it was a stalker?
I won’t tell on the restaurant. My favorite tapas restaurant.
Look, I know John would cringe at this, but even I found what’s interesting is I think if you’re low value, like a Starbucks card, people value in a different way. It was a cup of coffee or two cups of coffee. It’s not $10. It is more about like, “This morning they covered my coffee.” First of all, sent you $10. You’d be like, “You cheap.”
The framing of the gift matters so much, and yes, John would cringe at the gift card thing, but that’s why he always insisted on all gifts coming with a handwritten note. If a gift just shows up and there’s not the correct framing or purpose around it, then it doesn’t land as well. John all the time sent knives. If people just got like a box of knives, maybe that wouldn’t make a lot of sense to them. When you frame it to say, “I know you love to break bread with your family and your neighborhood, and I wanted to support that.” That makes the gift that much more elevated and that much more appreciated.
That’s one of the things he did. They research people’s preferences and figure out what they like and make it special. It’s about them. It’s not about you. If it’s about you in every way, anyway, it’s marketing. I guess that’s the difference.
You brought up earlier, like John-isms, I mean, the thoughtful thought that counts. It’s not the thought that counts. Anybody with a brain can buy a gift card, and that’s the thought. It’s a thoughtful thought. It’s being able to be like, “I heard this in conversation about somebody, and now I’m going to show up and show them through the gift that I heard you. I listened. I appreciate you.”
An Interesting Story About John Ruhlin
I know it’s probably been told before on this show, but the Cam Herold story is one of my favorite ones. The Cam’s been on the show too. I just think it just shows you it didn’t even cost John money the way he did it, but do you know it enough to tell it?
I do. I’m not going to do it justice like John would, but it is one of my favorite stories, too. I just had a similar thing happen to me. Somebody pulled that on me down in Austin, Texas.
You can tell us what they did to you, your choice. This is a choose-your-own-adventure.
I’ll start with the Cameron one. John threw a very quick conversation with Cameron Herold, who has now been a longtime friend of his.
Who was the guy that John wanted to connect with and get to know at the time? That was the context.
He ended up flying into Cleveland, had an event. John was setting up this dinner and a ball game, the whole shebang for Cameron. His flight was getting in late. All these things just weren’t working out in John’s favor for this business leader that he so badly wanted to get time with. John pulled an audible and remembered in conversation that Cameron likes to come to the States and shop at Brooks Brothers.
He probably wasn’t going to have time to do that on this trip. John went to the nearest Brooks Brothers, bought out the whole entire fall collection in Cameron’s size, which maybe that’s a HIPAA violation too, that they gave out Cameron’s size to everything, and laid out his hotel room full merchandising of the whole entire fall collection so that when Cameron got to his hotel room, that was there. John was waiting downstairs in the lobby, and Cameron said, “However much time you need, John, you got it.” That was the start of an amazing friendship.
Cam bought whatever he bought, and then they just returned the other pieces. It wasn’t like John even gave it to him, but just that he set this up for him, and he went down, he’s like, “Whatever you want, whatever you need, I’ll give you as long as you want.”
Which I didn’t know. I didn’t know that Cameron ended up buying that. That’s a part of the story that maybe sometimes John leaves out for effect.
He didn’t gift all the clothes to him. The deal was like, “Look, if you want something, you’ll buy it and then we’ll return the rest of it.” It was a convenience play on his time. What was your version?
What happened to me, one of our members inside of Rich Relationship Society, our community, knew that our whole team was going to be in Austin, Texas, celebrating the book launch of Beyond
Giftology. She was coming in from Canada, which I was just so excited to see her, but she called the hotel that we were all staying at, where the event was, and was able to get them to put a gift and a handwritten note in my room. The hotel thought I was important because there was a gift and a handwritten note in my room. I got the big old suite in the hotel. My room got upgraded, the whole thing. I thought she did that for me. She should have probably said that yes, she did, but that was just a mistake.
Operationalizing The Relationship Building Process
We talked about operationalizing this. I’m sure as people read to this or think about this as a strategy, one of the questions is like, how do I operationalize a relationship building strategy without like losing the relationship piece of it or feeling like too cold or automation or look like there’s a great company, Sendosa, that does a lot of the stuff. Again, they’re used to send out a lot of like branded corporate gifts, where you’re like, I don’t know. It undermines itself a little bit.
Some of the principles that we hold near and dear to our operationalization of all this are that the handwritten note is handwritten. A lot of times, when you start to try to systematize and automate some of this stuff, it’s the note that is like the printed font that looks handwritten. That makes it feel a little bit colder to your point. All the gifts are personalized to the recipient. While a lot of the time, yes, we are bulk sending or doing a campaign on a company’s behalf, every single gift is showing up like it is individualized to that recipient.
Someone has an eye on each one.
It feels like it was made just for them because, in a way, it was. You brought up like relationship plan, a relationship strategy. I would say the biggest gap is usually that a lot of businesses just don’t sit down to even talk about this at the beginning of the year. When they’re talking about everything else and how they’re going to attack their marketing and how they’re going to better deal with sales, and all these things. We should have a relationship plan for the key relationships in our business. We should allocate a budget to it. We should have time and different metrics, and whatever is associated with it. A lot of the time, businesses maybe don’t have the internal people to handle that, and that’s where we come in as a complete outsourced of that.
This may show up as a different name in organizations, but if I talk to businesses in the last year or two, and you say, “Which channel’s working best for you?” The number one answer tends to be our partnership channel. Not our Google or like our partnership, the people we talk to who send us referrals. Referrals are sometimes you get referrals from your partners, and then it’s like, “Are you hiring more partner people? Are you looking at those partnerships? Are you thinking about how to reward them?” Usually, the answers are no. I assume a lot of times this would be in a grain with a partnership channel.
To your point, if one marketing channel is working, typically people put more time and energy, and dollars behind it. When the partnership channel starts to work, the people are working.
If it’s the Google Coinbox, they put more coins in it.
When it’s like, “We have a lot of referral partners out there speaking highly of us and referring us business.” It’s like, “Awesome.” We just don’t do anything about it. Being able to have a plan, have a budget, and be able to show up for those people. The key is really like, make sure it gets done. A lot of people, the reason why they end up gifting at Christmas or showing up and having some end-of-the-year party is because they don’t think about it until October, and they’re like, “We haven’t appreciated our partners, our referral partners this whole year.”
Another Johnism, like if you’re listening to this call, one thing, do not send anything at Christmas. I can tell you I’ve been on the receiving end back when I had a physical address, the company, the stuff is coming in like crazy. It’s $100 boxes, someone opens it, you don’t even know who you get no credit if you do it at these crazy times.
It almost works against you because it starts to overwhelm the recipient as well. I’m the same way sometimes, like birthday, Christmas, all those things, that’s a trigger point for a lot of businesses. You don’t even want to. You don’t have that individualized experience with that relationship, which is the whole point. It’s just on a conference table with a bunch of other cookies that everyone else said.
You also assume you’re the only one that’s doing it. I go to leave for a holiday, and suddenly I’ve got 400 fruit baskets and stuff. I’m like giving it away to people, and it becomes a stress point. Everyone just assumes what they’re doing is unique, and it’s usually not.
Thinking about the recipient, it becomes a stress point. We don’t want to create that experience. The whole point of gifting is you’re creating this like magical moment for you and this relationship. If you’re just creating stress in this person’s household, that’s not the point of this.
Referral Loyalty And Clarity Conversations
Another concept in Beyond Giftology, referral loyalty. How does a referral partner become part of your referral family tree? What are the signs that I should double because this should be like a pipeline? Like, “Where do I double down and where do I not double down?”
I think the obvious one is like, if they start referring you without being asked that you’re not nagging and following up, and it isn’t like that direct contact referral, they’re just out there in the world thinking about you and speaking highly of you. Those are the people who absolutely should go to the top of your list.
They’re net promoters by that definition.
If they are allowing you into their trusted network, that just shows how much loyalty and trust have been built in that referral partnership. That’s a great time. You brought up partners, like if they’re speaking about you, like you guys are on the same team collaborating, creating win-win scenarios. This isn’t just a transactional of, I’m referring you to business because I’m getting 10% out of it, those are the people in your referral family tree that you want to hold close.
Similarly, the concept of a referral snowball.
The relationship snowball, referral snowball. No, you’re good. This is just the idea where you can start where you are with the relationships that you have and snowball up. All of those relationships, those introductions, those referrals start to compound with one another, and you start to be introduced and open doors to other relationships because you’re just growing your network in that way. Rather than that typical network picture that’s on every Google image, that’s the person in the middle, and it’s all of the lines. This is really about take care of the people that are in your circle. They will introduce you to people in their circle, and you’ll get to that bigger snowball.
The reason that influencer marketing is so popular these days is that a lot of the stuff is more about trust and recommendation, and people trust other people more than they trust the company. This is almost like a B2B form of influencer marketing in some way.
I already showed my hand a little bit that I am of generation Z. I spend a lot of time on my phone and influencers and all the things, but when it comes down to it, still even my generation, like if I need to go get a haircut or if I need a plumber or I’m still asking my friends, my neighbors, we haven’t got a gotten away from that route of business. A lot of people and businesses in the face of a lot of digital marketing forgot that that’s still how consumers act.
Particularly with search falling apart and more AI, I think you have more people wanting to find other people’s opinions. You have companies building content and reviews and stuff off-site because they assume that people are going to trust. They’re probably manipulating that. They just trust other people more than they trust me to say, “I’m good.” Another concept from the book, clarity conversations. What is it, and how does it make relationships more referable?
Especially in a referral partnership, sometimes the disconnect is really that we don’t take the time to slow down and explain to each other what we do, who we serve, all of these really important elements that allows a referral partner to go out there and refer you business, to speak on your behalf.
Disconnect happens when we do not take the time to slow down and explain to each other what we do and who we serve.
This is a conversation in a part of our system when you are building referral partnerships to sit down, be intentional with the questions and the answers that you are asking and giving. That ultimately will hopefully propel that referral partnership into being a little bit more serious. It’s like the clarity conversation before you have, like, when you’re getting engaged to that partner. It’s like, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to work together.” Let’s get clear on everything that’s expected here and how we’re going to work together, and then we can take that next step.
I’ve actually even had relationships, too. They’re like, “How do we work together?” I was like, “Look, we don’t do transaction fees.” If our clients say, “Trust us,” and they ask us for something, and “We think you’re a good fit, we’re going to refer you.” In the past, we’ve had people try to almost force the transactional thing on us, and we’re like, “That’s not how we do it. If you want to be a partner, and by the way, we had a partner.”
This was a big clarity point, like, “We will give them three choices because we do not want to be blamed. We think that our job is to put you at the table. Your job is to convince them of your best option. We do not get paid or whatever for this.” Sometimes the salesperson doesn’t call back. Otherwise, we get blamed.
You don’t want to put your trust on the line with that person.
“I’m not getting paid. I’m referring to you having a bad experience, and you say you told me to go with them. To our partners, we’re going to refer two, we’re going to refer three. I’m going to put you at the table, but don’t call me and complain when you lose. This is just not how we conduct business.”
No, absolutely. That would be the perfect thing to tell a partner in a clarity conversation.
I’ve had one of those. I just didn’t know what it was called.
There you go.
Celebrating John Ruhlin’s Legacy And Memory
I think it was helpful. John’s legacy is deeply felt throughout this book. We talked about the learnings. I guess a more specific story, but what’s a Johnism, or just this story that you’re always going to remember in your day-to-day work?
You brought up already the one that everybody knows, like it’s not the thought that counts, it’s the thought that just like always lives. It’s on my whiteboard over here and everything.
Maybe something you saw him do.
Speaking from personal experience, when just the way he treats his staff, his employees, his team, I think, is just a light into how he treats the rest of his relationships, and truly that he means like he believed that treating relationships in this way truly does unlock loyalty and it’s powerful. When I was still in college and working for him, he found out that I had exams coming up, and I got this beautiful set of headphones sent to my apartment, all this stuff. All my roommates were like, “Who do you work for?”
You’re like, “That’s creepy.”
Like, “Who is this guy?” I think it just did set him apart as a leader and showed that he lived that philosophy, not just externally, because I do think there are a lot of business leaders who can get on board for this philosophy and generosity and giving and gifting and all the things when there is a client.
When there’s something to gain.
Lead flow coming in and all these things, but when it is just appreciating your people, that just spoke volumes to me, spoke volumes to my friends, my family. That’s the ripple effect of treating your relationships well. Now you have people around me, around whoever is receiving a gift or being appreciated in that way, who are always going to like root for John, love John, even though they didn’t know him.
I just want to double click on this because when I wrote the Friday Forward about it, and I think what made me very self-reflective was watching when John passed away. His staff was so dedicated to him that they started writing his book, planned the funeral for the family, and reorganized the business around how it could survive. Everyone could have been like, “Look, this is super risky. I’m going to go get another job.”
Biggest Lessons And Takeaways From Giftology
When you talk about legacy, I’m like, “I hope people would do that for me. I hope I’ve invested enough in other people, the way that they would be willing to do this.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen employees rally in a way around this for stuff that was not paid, and probably more high-risk. Frankly, the company loses its figurehead person, and you’d be like, “Look, this is a time to get out.” It’s risky. Sarah, last question. We can orient this to gifting or maybe like because we did some things that probably did not go well, but what’s a mistake you or the Giftology team has made in gifting, and what did you learn from it?
That’s a good one. I think John had some pretty funny stories. We are not here to say that every single gift is going to end well, maybe not knowing that sometimes someone is in the middle of a divorce or something, and sent me because one of our things is always love on the family, make sure to include your family name and those types of things.
I would say our team, you just spoke to our team. Our team rallies around one another and fixes things if that ever goes wrong. Some funny things we brought up with Cameron Herold earlier. We would like to ship some money in the mail or whatever to him. Sometimes we’ve got to do things around on the side. When things go wrong, typically also, if you aren’t doing this from a cold gifting perspective and you truly have a relationship with somebody, then you can make fun of it sometimes.
If you have a genuine relationship with somebody, you can make fun of the way you give them gifts.
That’s fair.
It’s not making the mistake, it’s how you fix the mistake.
Exactly.
Sarah, thank you for sharing your story with us. We’re going to include links to Giftology Group and John’s new book, Beyond Giftology, on the detailed episode page at RobertGlazer.com.
Thank you so much for having me.
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That was my conversation with Sarah Hardwick from Giftology. I think it gives a good look into, think, what any, not even a business owner, but anyone running a team or who has key relationships, could accomplish by putting a little more thought and intention into gifting. As John used to remind us, there’s just not a shortcut to building relationships. I tend to think the things that have a competitive advantage in life are the ones you cannot just outbid or outpay someone else.
While there is no shortcut, I’ve seen the payoff is great, and I think a lot of other companies have invested in relationships that did that. I hope you all enjoyed some of the stories, the Cam Herold story. I’d love to, if this episode inspired someone to do something really interesting. I’d love to hear about how it works. Please do check out the book Beyond Giftology, which is in the show notes. Thank you again for reading. If you enjoyed our episode, I would appreciate it if you could leave us a rating or a review. Until next time, keep elevating.
Important Links
- Sarah Hardwick on LinkedIn
- Giftology
- Beyond Giftology
- Cameron Herold on LinkedIn
- Cam Herold story – Past episode
- Friday Forward
