John Ruhlin: 16:12
Yeah. Well, I think I was fortunate I had a mentor early on in my career. I was 20 years old. I was dating a girl at the time, not the girl that I ended up marrying. But I’m really thankful that we were dating because her dad was an attorney. But I noticed when you’re poor, you notice one generosity, two you like. I wasn’t connected and every deal seemed to flow his way like he was an attorney, but he also owned real estate. And then all of a sudden, that real estate would become the huge development in the area. And then he somehow was lost on the bank board, and he owned part of the bank and oil wells. And so I remember like thinking, well, Paul’s always giving away things like find a deal on noodles and everybody would end up with like a year supply of noodles. Well, I’ll pitch him the idea of pocket knives to all his clients. And so one, he bought a set for each of his daughters to like. He ended up going. Coming back to me and challenging me and saying, John, could we engrave the paring knives? I’m like, that’s weird. Why would you give paring knives to grown men that own companies?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:07
Right.
John Ruhlin: 17:08
And he explained to me, like the inner circle, I got to take care of the whole family. Everything else takes care of itself. So early on in my career, I saw the power of generosity. But I also saw the power of talking to business owners. So even though I was selling in homes, I would say I wouldn’t say, who do you know that likes knives? Because in their head they’re thinking nobody. I would say, who do you know that owns a company? That’s how I ask for referrals. Why would get a list? I average.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:32
That’s really smart.
John Ruhlin: 17:33
Yeah, I average ten leads per appointment of people that own businesses.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:38
Because you asked the right question.
John Ruhlin: 17:39
Because I asked the right question. And so when I’m talking to people that appreciate quality, most business owners like nice things. And two, if I could sell them on me and on the product now, I could go back to them and sell them knives for their business. Yeah, for their employees, for their clients, as a as a business tool. Not as a gift, as a business tool. But my sales doubled because I was seeing people that could afford nice things. You know, business owners, entrepreneurs tend to be affluent or at least have access to, you know, or an appreciation for nicer things. So it was like a double it was a double win.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:13
Yeah, yeah.
John Ruhlin: 18:14
And even if I didn’t sell him anything, I sold them on me. And now I have a network of a thousand business owners that let me into their home.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:23
Even if they don’t buy you bond. If they let you in, your their kids are running around you and. Yeah, exactly.
John Ruhlin: 18:28
I mean, I can call them ten years later and be like, yeah, we remember sitting down. Yeah. Like, I mean, it was like it was like a built-in network of people. If I decided to go get a real job. Now I have people that like and trust me that know that I can sell. Yeah. So it’s like an insurance policy of like, if I if this all goes to hell in a handbasket, at least I got a bunch of people that own businesses that like me and trust me and know I can help.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:51
So, John, you went premed, right? So what did you do after college then? Were you just doing so well that you’re like, forget this doctor thing or.
John Ruhlin: 18:59
Yeah, I did. I kind of was thinking that as I was going to school. I started to have to hire people and was speaking, and it’s like, I’m going to be a doctor one, because I want to impress, you know, my mom and I like health, really. In many ways I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was like, it was kind of a money thing. And I’m like, I, I’m getting to talk to people. I’m getting to make good money. I get to control my own schedule. Why would I go be a doctor?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:24
Right. Go talk to a doctor. Right? Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 19:27
Go talk to a doctor. Like, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:28
Ten years later, then you’d be practicing.
John Ruhlin: 19:32
Doing what I want to be doing. I’m like. And, you know, a quarter million dollars in debt. And I was like, I’m just going to see if this gifting thing has some legs. Yeah. And so I ended up I, you know, I decided I’ll give it another year out of, out of school. And I never looked back. I was, you know, like I was ten, 15 years ago.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:50
Yeah. Now I’m so curious, you know, when I did the introduction. So I’m going to jump around for a second because I’m so curious. Obviously I’m in Chicago, so I’m, I’m curious of how you got the Chicago Cubs as a client.
John Ruhlin: 20:04
Yeah. Well, it was like seven years in the making.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:07
Seven years?
John Ruhlin: 20:08
Yeah, it took seven years. Some of my. It seems to be like a lucky number seven, like some of my best relationships. The largest homebuilder.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:13
Were you a baseball fan growing up or anything?
John Ruhlin: 20:16
I played baseball. You know, little league up until, like, they started throwing curveballs and, like, freshman year of high school. And I’m like, I can’t hit that to save my life. I moved on to basketball and stayed with basketball. That was. But I have an appreciation for sports. I mean, you grew up a boy in Ohio. Like, you have an appreciation for sports. And so one of the reasons I got the Cubs was because I had 20 other pro sports franchises I had worked with, so I was kind of in the industry. Yeah. Two I was speaking.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:45
But it still took you seven years though.
John Ruhlin: 20:47
Seven years. So I met at a NASCAR event. NASCAR. I had a couple of NASCAR clients. I met this guy at this. It was called Burgers and Beer. And this guy named Bobby Dee, who is a bigwig and connected with Callaway Golf. Like, he hosted this thing at Daytona every year. And so I met a guy who was at that at the time, Time Warner, and we hit it off and we chatted for a little bit. We exchanged information. Well, he then went to the Cubs and he was from Chicago, so he stayed in touch and I pitched him the idea of different things. And then I’d see him at conferences where I was speaking at all these pro sports teams were at. And eventually, like, I was showing them knives and different things, and he came back to me eventually and said, hey, we’re redoing Wrigley Field iconic structure. We want to do something that’s unlike anything that’s been done before. And we have this wood from the locker room. And so we want to make a gift that incorporates the wood from the locker room. So we have 400 400 relationships. You know their sponsors their suite owners, their people that can afford anything that they want. So we can’t like give them something trinkety.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:51
Right.
John Ruhlin: 21:51
And so he said come up with an idea like and I so I said, well, we have this speaker company we work with. What have we made a speaker like a Bluetooth speaker out of the wood? And he said, you know, they were like, yeah, that’s perfect. Headphones or speakers. And so this actually is one of the headphone companies. And so I went back to the speaker company and they’re like, yeah we can’t do that. I’m like, oh, I’ve already talked to the Cubs. And they want to do this project. So we end up going to a secondary supplier. And so we bought the speakers, ripped them apart, ripped the wood out because they were made out of wood as well. And reform this Wrigley Field wood. Wow. Rooted it out and created these iconic Bluetooth speakers that they are like literally like they’re like, John, we don’t know how we’re going to outdo ourselves next year. Like we have other pieces of Wrigley Field.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:39
Rip down the brick, Ivy. Yeah, the.
John Ruhlin: 22:42
Yeah. Like, I’m not sure what we’re.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:44
So they’re going to send a gift every year.
John Ruhlin: 22:46
Yeah, normally they do. Yeah. Yeah. So this year we’re trying to figure out what that next, you know, piece of Wrigley history that we’re going to weave into a gift. And so I think there’s more and more companies that and teams that have if they have a historical structure or something that’s historical about their building or their product, you know, weaving that into the gift, I think is going to become more and more a part of what we do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:08
So at that point, you had 20 pro sports teams. What was the first big one that you remember kind of pumping your fist with?
John Ruhlin: 23:16
Well, the first one that we landed ever was Roush Fenway, the NASCAR driving the team. And they also owned Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston teams. And they also were involved with Miami. And so I actually the guy who introduced me to my wife was at the Seed Corn Company. He left and went to NASCAR. Scott’s the big lawn care company, and and we had this great relationship. And he’s like, John, NASCAR is like perfect for you. All these fortune 1000 companies, they’re all entertaining people and they all suck at gifting. They’re all giving this like over-branded swag. So he teed us up to Roush Fenway because they were sponsoring the team. And so we ended up doing gifts for and we ended up doing the knives for like one of their CMO summits, like where all the CMOs of like Coke and Pepsi come. And it was a big one. It was massive. And then the at one of the dinners, I met this, the chief financial officer and followed up with him, sent a gift to his assistant, and then magically, they left the NASCAR side and went to became the CFO of the Miami Dolphins. And so our first NFL team ended up coming from, you know, the assistant became such an advocate. She took it around to every division head of the Dolphins and showed off the gifts that we did for her.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:30
So what type of things did you mean? Because you say very casually, yeah, I sent a gift to her assistant, but it was more than just a gift to the system. What kind of things did you do?
John Ruhlin: 24:38
Well, I’m a big believer in whatever you send to the executive, you should send to the inner circle at the same level. Or even more, because they’re usually treated like pawns. They’re not respected. Yeah. And so anytime I’d send a knife or a leather good or whatever to the.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:53
You don’t just send a gift. That’s why I say like when I receive a note from you, it’s on like a metal, a metal slate that’s written. And I like, just have it there to remind me I’m slacking off. If I don’t, if I don’t, yeah, I still have that note. I think you sent it a couple of years ago. Yeah. But you just don’t send any small just anything. So.
John Ruhlin: 25:14
No, I mean, it’s personalized with their name. It’s world class, you know, whether it’s a knife or a speaker, it’s best in class, it’s personalized. It’s the way it’s packaged. Well, it you know. Yeah, it has a handwritten note for me.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:27
So what did you end up sending that?
John Ruhlin: 25:29
That lady I sent a couple. Yeah. It was I sent a couple knives and said, hey, I hear you’re, you know, you’re so and so’s right-hand person. He speaks really well of you. I at some point in time, I’d love to carve out some time to chat about you, to chat with you and see if we might be able to help you with some of your challenging situations related to gifting. And, you know, she responded right away. She’s like, oh my gosh, this is beautiful. I took it home to my husband. He thinks it’s amazing. How did you find out his name? Like she flipped.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:00
How did you find out his name?
John Ruhlin: 26:03
I saw, I asked, I actually asked the executive. I said, hey, I want to do something really nice for your assistant. She and oftentimes I’ll ask the assistant, hey, I want to do something really nice for so-and-so. Don’t tell them like, you know. But other times I’ll find out on Facebook or LinkedIn or articles, depending upon how prominent the person is. I mean, in 2016, people are pretty open with their information.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:26
Yeah, yeah.
John Ruhlin: 26:26
So it’s usually pretty easy to find if you want to do the homework.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:29
Yeah for sure. So you know John with that, the I’m curious what the most outrageous and craziest gift you’ve ever given.
John Ruhlin: 26:39
Recently we gave somebody that’s that. You know, I felt like one. I really enjoyed being on their show, too. The person who made the referral, I wanted to make sure that they looked really good because they kind of stuck their neck out for me. And three, the conversation came up about what my morning routine was, which included a sauna. And he kept bringing the sauna up in the conversation. So I sent him a sauna. And that was John Lee Dumas, entrepreneur on fire sauna. I sent him a sauna, which the funny part is, and most people would get disappointed with this. He I sent him this custom wooden postcard that let him know asana was on its way. Going to arrive in two weeks. And he called me immediately and said, John, this is amazing. Is this for real? And I said, of course it’s for real. Like we talked about it like on the show multiple times. And he said, John, I live in a two-bedroom condo where I do my show. I’m on the water in San Diego. I don’t have room for a sauna. That’s amazing. I said, well, whenever you move to another place, you have a rain check. I’ll just delay the sauna. We’ll just hold on to it. And he said, man, you’re crazy. Okay. That’s amazing. Then he calls me. An hour later, he’s like, John, I have this idea. What do you think? He’s like my dad. I’m from Maine. It’s cold as heck in Maine. My dad would love a sauna. I’m sure he would love a sauna. Can I surprise him with the sauna? And I’m like, sure. We’ll put the sauna wherever you want. The sauna at. He’s like, I’ll use it when I go back home. And sure enough, like we redirected his dad. Every time they talk, all they talk about is the sauna. John now gets to use it, but he’s like a rock star to his dad, right? You know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:13
That makes perfect sense. Like, why in San Diego you want it in Maine, right? Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 28:16
In Maine. So. So, yeah, the saunas in Maine. And he’s fired up and now he, you know, he can’t forget about me because his dad’s talking about me every time.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:24
They.
John Ruhlin: 28:25
Have a conversation.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:27
I love that. That’s awesome. What about most exciting client that your client landed because of a gift? Because you’re helping these big companies get clients? Yeah. What? What were you most excited about that? You know, second degree of separation you helped with?
John Ruhlin: 28:46
Yeah. I don’t know if I don’t share the story as often, but the one of our clients was targeting target, the big the executives there, and they were entrepreneurs. They were former fortune 500 executives they wanted to go after. They only had a limited pool of people that would change their business. So they wanted to go after target. And they said, John, we’ll give you anything. We’ll give you a stock in the company, like we need these meetings and this one in particular. So we did research and found out that he lives in Minnesota, went to undergrad and got his MBA from the University of Minnesota. So I’m like, that’s the angle. And so we you.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:19
Just spot these things.
John Ruhlin: 29:21
Yeah. I mean, you just yeah, you just kind of know, like alma mater is a big thing for a lot of people. So we took this like 50 inch plasma piece of wood we carved in the fight song mascot the gopher and the fight song lyrics, and then tied in why they wanted to meet with the fight song lyrics into this note and send it off to the president of the electronics division, multi-billion dollar division, his office and within 24 hours the assistant called back and said, I don’t know who you guys are. I had to get a dolly to get this thing in and out of the office. Like, that was insane. Whatever you want to talk about, I got 30 minutes for you next Tuesday. Now, the challenge is they end up getting the meeting, and. But they were like eight years ahead of the schedule of. They were on the cutting bleeding edge.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:01
And so the target wasn’t ready for it is what you’re saying.
John Ruhlin: 30:05
The industry wasn’t ready. It was the If you’ve seen in the last five years where like Best Buy has the automatic buyback program, where if you buy a TV and then want to trade it up within a year, they’ll give you a set amount up front. They were talking about this like 12 years ago. And so the industry, like buying back iPhones and all that kind of stuff was like, now it’s a huge industry. At the time they had built the software and they were just they were too ahead of the curve to make it happen. But it got the meeting that they needed to have happen, which was exciting for us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:37
Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 30:39
The stock turned out to be worth nothing. It was still fun nonetheless.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:44
That is fun. You get to do some fun, creative things, you know. And you mentioned John, your friend who went to NASCAR, who introduced you and your wife, and you mentioned that he’s like, you got to come down here because all these companies do everything wrong. Big swag. And I know you have like 16 mistakes that people make when they’re giving gifts And I still think about like, you know, from listening to you and watching what you have to say, I still think about some of those rules that you have. So could you mention a few of those big mistakes that that people make that may they may not even know they’re making them?
John Ruhlin: 31:20
Yeah, I think one of the biggest ones is we do things in business that we’d never do in our personal lives, and one of the most immediate ones that comes to mind is you never go to a wedding and like, you get, you’re going to get like I have on the registry, a Tiffany’s vase or whatever it is that’s on the registry. You’d never engrave, like compliments of Jeremy Weiss.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:41
If you were still getting married, I would definitely send this to you, said. Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 31:46
That would be I would laugh, I would laugh and laugh. I’d be like, what the heck am I supposed to do? But people do that in business all the time. They make the gift all about themselves. Yeah. Which is a promotional item. It’s swag. It’s maybe it’s marketing, but if you actually want the other person to feel Appreciated, to feel loved, to actually use the item, you have to put their name on it, their logo on it, not your own. So it has to be all about the recipient, not about the brand. Yeah, I see a lot of people that are like, yeah, we’re best in class car company, we’re world-class consulting company. And then they that for some reason, the gift, they think it’s okay to be mediocre, like, hey, we’re world-class over here. But our relationships, yeah, we’ll just import it from China and do it as mediocre as possible. It’s like it doesn’t. It’s like that’s not congruent. Like. So it’s either worth doing first class if you’re first class or write a really nice handwritten note on a piece of steel or a piece of nice paper and call it a day, I see a lot of incongruency. Yeah, I see a lot of people gift at the wrong time. Or they gift things that, you know, like we send out a quarter million dollars a year worth of gifts to our clients and prospects every year. Other companies, you know, do more, but they do all their gifting in the same four weeks time. Which everybody says they want to be out of, out of the box and different and unique. Then don’t give a gift with the other 50 competitors that you’re trying to compete with. It’s the it’s the dumbest thing. Yeah. They give consumables like and they think that they’re doing themselves a favor. Meanwhile, the other person either A doesn’t eat meat or they’re on a diet or, you know, people measure cost per impression. Like if somebody eats it and it’s gone in five minutes, your cost per impression might have only been $50, but it was $50 for one impression.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:37
Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 33:37
You give you give something that lasts for 50 years. Your cost per impression goes way, way down. Might be more expensive on the front end, but people don’t really think about gifting as strategically as they do every other part of their business. They think it’s a it’s a nice to. It’s not it doesn’t need to be strategic. And they don’t they don’t realize that people make decisions based upon how they feel in business. And gifting is one of those last arts that most people do horrible. So if you just do it like above average, you stand out so far and head above that your competitors, it’s unbelievable.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:10
Yeah. And John, we have to leave some stuff for people to get gift ology. So I don’t even want you telling this story, but it’s a fantastic story, that of what happened when John met Cameron Harold. And then what happened after their first meeting to their second meeting. So I don’t even want you telling the story. You know, you’re gonna have to read it in Giftology. It’s worth the for sure. Worth the read on that.
John Ruhlin: 34:38
It’s the opening chapter of the book. It’s that story. It’s. Yeah, it’s one of my favorites.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:41
Yeah, it’s a great one. And so gift ology. Right. So I’m curious of what stories didn’t make the book that are powerful because you have so many amazing stories and you can’t include all of them. What didn’t make it?
John Ruhlin: 34:55
Well, what’s interesting is a lot of the things that we do gifting wise, we kind of follow a similar playbook, whether we’re going after a manufacturer, whether we’re going after a food company. I could I mean, like the one like David Estes, who’s a bigwig at a company I don’t think made that made the cut. But, you know, he was somebody that I wanted to impress. And I sent a gift and I targeted it towards the wife, like, I target towards the inner circle. And I remember being at an event where she came up and she’s all, like, blinged out with diamonds and gold, and she’s a just a beautiful woman. And she. You would have thought I gave her a brand new car. Like. Like she almost made me feel uncomfortable. And I’m used to like, I love the feedback, the positive feedback of the praise. And I sent her two knives. But because I put her name on them, and every gift that came into that household always was like branded or it was all about golf. David’s a big golfer. It was finally a gift that included her, and I’ve had that happen no less than a thousand times where people were like, how did you know to do X, Y, and Z for my wife or my assistant or my husband? And I’m like, I knew because you’re a human being.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:11
Like.
John Ruhlin: 36:12
I know because humans eat and entertain and like food. I know because I know people like their name on things, not my logo. Yeah. And so.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:21
Like, I’m a genius.
John Ruhlin: 36:22
Yeah. Like, it’s not that. Yeah. Like people are like, man, you read my mind or you like, knew you knew that we needed knives or you knew that we needed like, like a leather bag. And I’m like, I didn’t know. I just know because, like, I know human nature. Yeah. And I think a lot of what gifting like a good gifter. If you want to scale, there’s instances where like the sauna, it was very relevant in the conversation based upon the conversation we had. Yeah, but there’s 100 others where I use the same gift over and over again, but I personalize it to them and the notes all about them. And it’s all it’s their logo. And it’s maybe a I’ll put a date on that was important to them. Yeah. But it’s the same. Like what I learned from Paul early on was you can take the same delivery vehicle and use it a thousand different ways. And to each person it feels like, you know, the only conversation, it’s new. And so I found that we don’t add a ton of new gifts on a regular basis because we kind of know what works and we want to like there’s certain commonalities that that there’s very few things that meet our 16 kind of criteria of what makes a great gift, which is a challenge because we have some clients that are literally like, after 15 years, they’ve used our bag of tricks, right? And they have the same relationships. And so it’s really challenging us to say, Holy crap, we got to like, you know, like we need more of those Cubs custom speaker experiences because we in some cases, we’ve ran out of ideas that really meet our criteria.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:56
So what do you do in that case? Like a company comes to you? You’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s their seventh year that they want to send something to their executive suite owners. What is your brainstorming process look like?
John Ruhlin: 38:08
Well, I mean, we you know, we asked ourselves the question, things like what? What would they really want? And in some cases, you know, maybe they wouldn’t want a gift. Maybe they we’ve kind of exhausted the gift things. And we need to rotate in and experience for their kids. You know, I think that we focus on the tangible gift, but it’s not the only type of gifting that you can do. It just tends to be the weakest part of what most people do. Most people are like they get like buying Cubs tickets. They get like taking people out to a nice dinner. And so sometimes we’ll say like, hey, why don’t you rent out, you know, Wrigley Field and invite your clients with their kids and have an experience at Wrigley Field, where they get to run the bases with their kids and create a memory. Now we may be able to provide a gift that now is a trigger. I call it the tangible trigger that reminds them of that experience. But even though we don’t handle experiential gifting, we know kind of what works. And so we’ll help them guide them on. If you do want to do a dinner and make it, you know, a unique experience, maybe we have personally monogrammed steak knives at the, you know, sitting beside every plate. So they take home a $500 set of steak knives with them that reminds them of that steak dinner and makes it different than the other 99 dinners that they’re going to go on. Or like, we’re friends and a client of ours is the first US master Somm sommeliers. There’s only 200 of them in the world. The first one in the US is a client. Why don’t you bring him in to create a food and wine experience they couldn’t buy anywhere else? Yeah. So it’s the best food and wine experience they’ve ever had. So we go we go through the process and say, you know what, maybe let’s shelf the, tangible gift idea and let’s just dial up your other experiences?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:50
Yeah. So Caesar’s Palace was one of your clients, too? Is there an interesting story behind that?
John Ruhlin: 39:58
Well, we landed them through a friend of a friend. We ended up, you know, somebody that was out in Vegas that knew somebody. We sent some, you know, some cool gifts to the VP of sales. And they came back to us and said, John, we need some help. We have 20, 20 or 30 sales reps. They can afford what they want. We want to do something cool. And we ended up targeting something for their spouses called their emperors, kind of like the Presidents Club.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:23
But I figured this would be a good story because they probably give away so much other stuff that I was curious of what you brainstormed with them about?
John Ruhlin: 40:32
Yeah, I mean, in that case, it wasn’t as sexy as you might think it ended up being. Their budget was spent more on the trip that they were going on to, but the timing of the gift going to the sales reps home and saying thank you to the spouse was a thing that we’ve done often, which is. Just the timing of the gift can completely, radically change. Like we’ve done a number of conferences like Mastermind Talks, where the spouse gets a gift while the executives away at this retreat or whatever else, and just the idea of honoring and thanking the spouse when they’re at home holding down the fort, like, and somebody took that playbook and used it on me when I was away at Mastermind Talks, a gift showed up. And it wasn’t mastermind talks related, but they knew I was away and they and they sent my wife. She’s not into flowers, but they sent her the nicest bouquet. It was probably a $200 bouquet of flowers honoring me and thanking her for being, like holding down the fort. And then they sent gifts for each of my three kids. Wow. That were personalized. She talked to my assistant and then my assistant got a gift. The assistant helped orchestrate. My assistant, helped orchestrate all this, gave him the inside information. And then five days later, a. Gift showed up for her and her kids. So oftentimes the timing of the. Gift, when you’re away and your wife is ready to kill you because. The kids are going crazy.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:01
Like. Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 42:02
Like when you can be the hero in. That way it’s. So we’ve done that a number of times and that that timing of the gifts. Yeah. Makes a huge difference.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:11
John. So any times where a gift backfired I mean.
John Ruhlin: 42:14
Oh.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:15
Tell because we’re talking about a lot of success stories. I’m curious if there’s any backfired stories.
John Ruhlin: 42:21
So I would say on average 1% of our gifts come back.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:24
Okay.
John Ruhlin: 42:25
So if I send out 100 gifts, I’m going to get one back. If you’re targeting people cold, up to 20% of the gifts can come back.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:33
What do you mean by comeback? Like, actually, someone sent it back.
John Ruhlin: 42:36
Yeah. People say.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:37
They just send it.
John Ruhlin: 42:38
Back. I don’t want this gift. Or they’ll email and say, why are you sending me this? Well, they know that in our DNA. Robert Cialdini talks about like reciprocity. They know that reciprocity works. And so the person might be going through a divorce. In one case, it was a university going through a fraud investigation at the sea level, like at the presidential level. And so anything showing up all of a sudden, like they were like they weren’t accepting anything. In one case, it was an investment fund. And they were it was blowing up. It was like it was being like a Ponzi scheme type accusation. And so one of the board members got a gift that was unsolicited. And because of that, you could tell like they were like, we understand this might be acceptable, but not for us. And it was, you know, the backstory. You don’t know what’s going on in somebody’s life, right? And so what I love is that because up to 20% can come back, it freaks people out so much that they never gift because they think about, like the Walmarts of the world that can’t even accept a pencil or a cup of coffee. And so they treat everybody the same. And so they don’t gifts. Now, meanwhile, the other 99% of the people that are out there could accept a gift, as long as it was tactful and, you know, you’re not trying to bribe or buy somebody’s business, which we can go into the parameters of what we feel like is a acceptable gift based upon certain things. But up to 20% can come back. So we’ve gotten we just did a target to like 40 or 50 people worth like 100 million or more for a client. And it freaked them out. I told them ahead of time, up to 20% could come back.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:10
You warned them.
John Ruhlin: 44:11
Yeah, but the business development director, who’s one of the four partners, literally couldn’t sleep because people that were he, it was a smaller community and some of the people sent the gifts back. But the ironic part is like the sea-level person at Nike who got the gift. They gave us wrong information, and we engraved the ex-wives name on a set of knives. And, and so we they got an email saying, really nice gift. But my wife, my current wife doesn’t really like, you know. Susie’s name on the knives.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:45
So were they saying it, like, in a joking way? They weren’t. Yeah, okay.
John Ruhlin: 44:49
No, but. But the person who was in charge of following up, like, in his mind, he just, like, was like, this is the worst case scenario. Like, I’m so embarrassed and I’m like, well, let’s take $1,000 set. We’ll turn it. Let’s send them a $3,000 set with his new wife’s name on it. And the fact that he responded with an email meant he liked the gift.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:10
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 45:12
Like it’s an open door. Like, how often do you get into the C level of Nike? And so the other person who’s the CFO of this company was like laughing and thinking, it’s the funniest.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:24
It is actually more memorable that way.
John Ruhlin: 45:27
Way more memorable. It happened twice on the same campaign. Another person was like, I’ll probably sit down with you for coffee if you just starting. Like, if you start sending gifts with my new wife’s name on it because she likes the gifts.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:39
That’s like a new part of the playbook. Like first send knives with ex-wife’s name. Yeah. Yeah. And then get an angry call and then say.
John Ruhlin: 45:48
Yeah. So, like the leatherback, like, we’ve done it with the leather bag. And we sent in that case, it was our fault. It was to a CEO. They sent the bag back and it was we and it was our fault. We misspelled the wife’s name. But what was interesting is a few other things went wrong during that campaign. It was custom leather bags, like tote bags for the wives saying, you know, we have a new bag of tools that we can bring to help you save money, blah, blah, blah. And a number of the people, some of them billionaires hand wrote thank you notes saying, this is the most thoughtful gift we’ve ever received. Wow. So even when it like I tell people, we’re not like murdering puppies here, like we’re sending we’re sending gifts.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:31
Like, who says you’re murdering puppies?
John Ruhlin: 46:33
No. But like, there are times where people are, like, freaking out because they got an email back of somebody saying, we don’t want your gift. It’s like we still got an email back. Like if you ran into that person at a wine party and they found out you were the person that sent three gifts that were like $500 each with their wife’s name on it. Like, if that’s the worst thing you do in your life is send a nice gift that gets rejected. Right. You’ve lived a pretty stellar life. And so you have. But you have to remind people because not everybody’s used to rejection. And especially in the gifting department, most people are clueless and they freak. They just they already feel uncomfortable to send gifts to begin with. And so any form of rejection, it’s interesting. They take it personally. And so I have to coach them through.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:16
Like I wouldn’t even expect you. Yeah. To do that. That’s interesting.
John Ruhlin: 47:21
It’s a the higher level you do gifting, the more you have to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:24
People are worried.
John Ruhlin: 47:25
They’re worried. They’re freaked out. And but I like it because it means nobody else will go play in that ocean. Yeah. It’s ours to, you know, to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:37
Have stand out. Yeah. So, you know, John, you spent five years of blood, sweat and tears on this book, right?
John Ruhlin: 47:45
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:46
So what was the hardest part about writing and completing it for you?
John Ruhlin: 47:51
I think there was some self-doubt of like, you know, when you’re a farm boy and you’re like, you grow up around like rich people and you’re poor, you’re like, is this book really good enough to like for executives of big companies to read and to and to really apply? Are people just being nice when I speak and share some of these ideas? And I think that I’m a, I’m a I’m actually a decent writer. But to sit down in front of a computer and write, like I think that, you know, we hired book in a box to, to help with the process. And you were you were actually part of the inspiration to, to hire them because we had a great conversation, you know, for Mixergy. And you’re asking these great questions and I’m telling the stories and you’re like, dude, this is the book. Like, yeah, just like, just do, like tell these stories, share these principles. And I’m like, okay. Like I can talk them out. And so I, we, you know, we interviewed we transcribed them and my I’m, I found that I was even better at speaking them than I was at writing them. Yeah. And so then it was just a matter of like going through and editing and polishing and, and I think that part of the process of, like when you write a nice check to somebody and you kind of set that deadline and my business partner is now like, if we write this.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 49:07
You better finish this thing.
John Ruhlin: 49:08
Yeah, you better frickin finish this. And then my wife is like, you’ve been talking about this for five years. Like, yeah, get it done already. Like, yeah, this is who you are. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 49:17
I think I even said, I’m like, I’ll stay up late with you, John. Let’s just get this thing done. Because it sounded like that. You have so many good stories and good principles there.
John Ruhlin: 49:26
Dude, that was honestly like, I can’t thank you enough for. And I’m not just saying that just because we’re on the podcast, like, I literally like, I can’t, I can’t take up a week of his evenings like he’s already like he’s got multiple projects going on. Like, I, I’m sure we could get it done, but I but you were the you were that nudge to be like, okay, Jeremy could do this, but I can just hire somebody and not take advantage of his kindness.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 49:52
Yeah. That’s great. I’m glad you did it. What else should people know about Giftology that we haven’t talked about?
John Ruhlin: 49:59
Well, first off, nothing’s held back. I mean, I’m sure we’ll create a course that dives into providing more framework. But at the end of the day, like every I felt like I poured in the best stories that I had into the book. Yeah. It’s not like I, I took 16 of the principles and put eight into the first one and held back eight for like the next book or like it’s my playbook. It’s what? And it’s not just what we’ve done for clients. It’s what I’ve practiced in my own life for the last 15 years to land a 25 pro sports teams. And I think that sometimes when people hear the Cubs and hear some of the fortune 500 companies, they assume that unless they have a half $1 million budget like the small entrepreneurs can never afford us. Yeah. Or they can never afford to if they wanted to do it on their own. Like this isn’t for them. Yeah. And I have some clients that will invest five, ten, 15, 20, 50, you know, whatever thousand into to gifting strategies. It’s some of my best clients are guys doing 4 to 20 million in revenue because they’re going up against the Goliaths of the world, and they can’t spend $1 million on a trade show. So they have to get creative with their dollars. And really, as much as I like working with, you know, the, the, the fortune 500 companies like a D.R. Horton, I actually enjoy working with the guy who owns the company as much as anybody. That is its own money on the line, because they actually appreciate it the most, and they’re also willing to risk and do things a little bit crazier than the corporate person who has to, like, run it by compliance and, you know, all these other things. So I like working with the EO YPO guys as much as I like working with the fortune 500.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 51:43
So, John, you mentioned the craziest thing you did was the sauna. What was the craziest thing you convinced one of the clients to do?
John Ruhlin: 51:54
Well, one of the just based upon the size and scale of what we did the seed corn company that picked 1600 prospects. You know, most of the time we’re picking like a top 50, a top 100, a top 200. You know, occasionally we’ll break 1000 when they when they when we were able to convince them to more than double the target list and go after 1600 people and to do three gifts in succession, going out, going after their.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 52:24
You’re like a direct-response marketing guru.
John Ruhlin: 52:28
In some ways, yeah. I mean, I never thought of myself as that person because it was it was gifting and it was never cheesy, like, hey, here’s a stress ball. Hey, here’s a koozie. Hey, here’s a like, you know, like, like, I love Chet Holmes and I love ultimate sales machine. The only thing I disagree with him on his strategies and people that incorporated is he was all about doing gifts, you know, once a month or once a quarter. But they were cheap gifts. And I always felt like if you’re going to take the time to send something to somebody, make it represent you and your brand well, don’t make it a trinket. Right. And so when I was able to convince somebody to send out 1600 gifts three times in a row over the course of a month.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 53:09
Wow. In the course of a month.
John Ruhlin: 53:11
In the course of a month.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 53:13
Wow.
John Ruhlin: 53:13
To go after their 1600 largest prospects. I was like, this is crazy. Like, that was. And that was early on in my.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 53:21
And they’re and they’re not cheap gifts. You know they’re.
John Ruhlin: 53:25
No they’re like each gift was anywhere from. I mean, the cheapest gift was like ten, $20, but some of the other ones were like 40, 50, $60. So not like sending saunas, but when you’re sending 1600 of something three times in a row and they’re not even clients yet. It’s just to get a conversation started and warm up a conversation. Yeah. That’s a and that was ten years ago. I was like, this works like it’s like. And then when I saw the response like people instead of like talking to them on the phone for 20s, they were sitting down with them for two hours. I was like, oh my gosh, like, this could be really, this could be really crazy. So I would say that was and they were going after farmers, you know, guys farming ten, 20, 30,000 acres of I’m like, if this can work with farmers and seed corn businesses, then I’m pretty sure, like, you know, Silicon Valley or, you know, pro sports teams could, you know, this is this is relevant.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 54:21
Yeah. So John, since it’s inspired Insider always ask what’s been the lowest point in the business and then how you push through.
John Ruhlin: 54:29
Yeah, I would say, well there’s probably two low points. One was the girl’s father who mentored me and taught me a lot of these radical generosity principles. When we broke up and she went back with her ex, I had the ring ready. I thought I thought I was going to be spending, you know, the rest of my life with her back in Ohio, you know, with, you know, I, I her dad was kind of like a father figure to me. And so, so that was like that was one of those points where I went from like on the top of the world to like, sleeping 12, 14 hours a day, not getting out of bed. I blew through all my money. My assistant at the time actually had to pay for some of my bills because I was like, money was that tight. I almost didn’t graduate from college. I went from like a 4.0 to like not passing classes. So that was that was pretty tough.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 55:17
How did you get out of that funk? Because you seem like someone who that it takes a lot for you to get into something like that.
John Ruhlin: 55:25
Yeah, it was deep. I probably similar to a lot of people like I, I had a mentor guy at the Cutco office who was like, hey, there’s this new guy who came in the office. Seems to have a lot of relationships down in the area that you’re in, but he has no no business knowledge. Why don’t you guys team up? Why don’t you mentor him? And so we did. And we like he had the relationship. I had the knowledge. And we teamed up and we split all the deals. And we me taking the focus off of myself and working with him, working with him and pouring into him. Yeah. All of a sudden, like, I, I kind of like, was able to get momentum and kind of rise up, rise out of that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 56:04
That’s amazing. Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 56:05
Best summers ever. And so that was one. And then another one was I had sold half the business thinking it was to grow the business and ended up. But I had invested in real estate and it was about 2007. I invest in commercial invested in other companies, and everything started to hit the fan. When I sold half the business, we found out that my assistant was stealing from me, which was a big blow. But then she was also my accountant, so she was doing my taxes wrong. So I went through an IRS audit and then the meltdown happened. And so all this real estate started to like it all.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 56:35
Just hit it, hit it once.
John Ruhlin: 56:37
And lost my my brother, his nephew or his nephew, his son. My nephew drowns.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 56:46
Oh my God.
John Ruhlin: 56:47
It was like in the course of six months, everything that could go wrong went wrong to the point where I was like, and I started dating my now wife. And so, like, I was barely keeping my lips above water. I was living on $1,000 a month take home. My business partner, who was brought on to grow the business, didn’t take a salary for 18 months. Wow. You know, were able to avoid filing for bankruptcy, but it was a tough 18 to 24 months. But without him, if I hadn’t sold the business and I didn’t sell 49% of the business. I sold 50% of the business because I felt like if I’m literally going to sell half the business, I want it to be somebody that like, it’s almost like a marriage, like you’re in it. Yeah, there’s nobody can trump each other, but without him, the business wouldn’t have survived. He was the he was the one who said, John, go focus on relationships. I’ll. I’ll handle the back end. Don’t worry about it. Like I don’t want to take a salary. I’m. I don’t need the money. I’m good. I believe in you. I believe in what we’re going to do. So? So yeah, that was back in 2007, 2000.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 57:52
And your wife, you know, tell me about her role at the time and how she helped kind of, you know, that’s like one of the toughest points of your life.
John Ruhlin: 58:02
Sounds like she was she was a rock. I mean, I would be lying if I didn’t say, like, we didn’t go through some rocky periods like an entrepreneur when he’s ready, almost ready to drown. Like. And I’m just, like, flailing to try to keep above water. Like she got the worst side of being a of being an entrepreneur. She heard she heard about the Cameron Herold Brooks Brothers story, but she was getting like ramen noodles and like us buying, you know, going out to dinner, you know, and splitting dinner. Like, she didn’t get, like, the wining and dining and Ritz, you know, the Ritz treatment she got, like, so the fact that she even just stayed with me and believed that, like, I was worth dealing with, all this crap and all this mess and baggage is really, in retrospect, kind of like, unbelievable. Like, I think most women would be like, you know, thanks, but no thanks. Call me when you got your crap together. And she was willing to, like, roll up her sleeves and, like, for the first year of marriage, she made more money than I did.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 59:04
Which is okay.
John Ruhlin: 59:05
Which is a humbling, you know, like, yeah, in retrospect it is. But at the time, like, my ego, like, it bruised my ego. Yeah. And it was difficult for me to, but it was motivating because I wanted to have a family and I wanted her if she wanted to, to be able to stay home with the kids, if she didn’t want to, that’s fine. But yeah, she was a rock man. She was, you know, she was a farm girl. She grew up on a couple thousand acres, hog farm. Like she wasn’t afraid to, like, roll up her sleeves and deal with some crap. Deal with some crap. Literally.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 59:39
So literally. So, Jen, on the flip side, what’s been one of the proudest moments for you?
John Ruhlin: 59:50
I would say, well, one for. Well, this book is one of my is definitely like a proud moment. I would say getting the opportunity and being asked to speak at Google was a was a was a huge like.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:00:07
You know, how did that happen?
John Ruhlin: 1:00:10
I got to be a part of a faith-based organization that kind of like Christian business leaders, young Christian business leaders called marketplace one. Some guys out of Phoenix started it. And I got to go through a class. They have a kind of a class system. And I go back every year to teach the alumni.
And one of the guys that heard me speak on the topic of radical generosity in business was a Google was a Googler, and he went back and emailed like hundreds of people and said, this guy just helped me give the most amazing gift to my wife. I think we could use his help. And they said, yeah, we have this event. We think that you should come and speak at it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:00:48
And where was the event? Was it in California?
John Ruhlin: 1:00:51
Yeah, it was at it was in Mountain View. So it was at their. It was at their campus. And unfortunately they wouldn’t let me record it. I would have loved to.
Really. Yeah. They wouldn’t let me. I figured, you know, the company owns YouTube you think would record everything. Not so much, not so much.
They but was honored to be there and, you know, be able to check out the campus.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:01:12
And so what was your experience like there? Speaking.
John Ruhlin: 1:01:15
It was it was great. I, I mean, I wasn’t like I was there all day. I wasn’t like, I was like Bill Clinton showing up and giving a keynote to the entire company. It was a breakout at a at an event. Yeah.
But people were really warm and inviting. They were interested and I even shared some of the perks and benefits that I give to my company employees, which some of them were like, wow, we don’t even get that here at Google. Like that’s pretty. Which was also like, you know, I was like pretty proud that like, hell yeah. Yeah.
We were we were doing some things right.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:01:50
So what’s one of those things that you mentioned that they were blown away, even though they get free food, massages and anything else that they want?
John Ruhlin: 1:01:58
Yeah, pretty much anything on the planet. Yeah. So one of the things we did early on, we have a lot of moms that work for us, working moms and their kids and, and young kids, a lot of them. And so we started years ago paying to have their house cleaned every other month, every other week. And it cost us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:02:17
Like that’s amazing. Yeah.
John Ruhlin: 1:02:19
$1,800 a week. But what’s funny is it has like tens of thousands of dollars in value because the husbands are like their lives are easier. The wives, the women are less stressed. Yeah. Their life goes smoother.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:02:32
It’s a great idea. Wow.
John Ruhlin: 1:02:33
Yeah, it’s such a simple concept, but people are like, how do you afford to do that? And I’m like, how do you afford not to? It’s like it’s a benefit that most people would they would love to have. They’d never spend the money on themselves to do it though. Yeah.
And so.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:02:48
That’s amazing. John, thanks for sharing that. I have in my notes the bubble Banks company. Tell me about that.
John Ruhlin: 1:02:56
So it’s not as much top of mind because it’s you know, as a business owner, you think about revenue sources, but giving is a core value. Like we said a long time ago, my business partner, I don’t need to start a charity, but we want to be a spotlight and a funnel. We literally said funnel for a cause that mattered before bubble banks was ever in the picture. And so, you know, like when I see something, I just look at things from a different angle. I saw this at a wood shop, this kid’s piggy bank, that was like kind of like two dimensional.
And you were able to feed money into it, into its belly. And I’m like, wouldn’t it be cool if we did one like that in the shape of a cow for like, chick fil A? Because McDonald’s has the little metal boxes. And we ended up testing it in the shape of a cow, and we hope to do a dollar a day. It ended up doing $5 a day.
And so we started to we found out they were patented. We ended up partnering with a patent owner, John Chestnut, and we started to make not only the metal ones that you see in McDonald’s, but we partnered with the guy who used to be at McDonald’s that collects the money. You know, like most people don’t realize, that Metal Box at McDonald’s does $30 million a year in change.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:04:02
Wow, seriously? That’s amazing.
John Ruhlin: 1:04:04
And if you tried to collect like $3,000 worth of change and put it in the back of your car. It would break your axle because it weighs like thousands of pounds. So collecting the money is really difficult in an efficient way. So we started to build devices and refer out this collection company. And so we’ve helped like Children’s Miracle Network, one of the largest children’s hospital organizations.
We put them into like all the airports across the country. We build the devices. If you go to like an HMS which runs like Starbucks and those kind of places, we build those devices. And literally like if you add up, you know, our partners like the guy from McDonald’s who’s collects $30 million a year, like we’ve, you know, tens of millions.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:04:46
You basically help them process that. We process efficiently.
John Ruhlin: 1:04:50
More efficiently, and we help them create creative devices to put money into them, to give to charity. And we maybe break even. It’s not a, it’s not like retirement money. But It for us. It’s like, that’s money that would end up in like a coffee can at somebody’s house.
Like, if you can get people. Yeah. And if you make it fun enough, kids will like, we’ve seen kids feed $50 worth of money of their mom’s purse. That has changed in the bottom of the purse into these.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:05:20
Like, what is it like? What does it look like? What kind of what’s the most elaborate bank?
John Ruhlin: 1:05:26
Like a dinosaur. Like a big four foot tall blue dinosaur that says, feed me my money. You know, my money goes to Children’s Hospital or whatever. And so they, you know, the kids love watching the money go into the mouth of the. It feels it feels like they’re feeding the dinosaur, feeding the dog, feeding the cow or the giraffe.
And so these. Yeah, we have, you know, thousands of units all over the country. And always looking anybody that has a retail location where cash might be present or a doctor’s office where there’s a captive audience of with kids. I mean, we can we can raise incremental money. That’s pretty insane.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:06:04
That’s amazing.
John Ruhlin: 1:06:05
For a charity.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:06:05
Yeah. John, thank you so much. I have one last question for you. But first, tell people where can they go and get Giftology. Where can they check you out?
John Ruhlin: 1:06:15
Yeah. So if they go to they can go to Giftology book.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:06:19
Giftology book.
John Ruhlin: 1:06:19
Comm Book.com. They can go to ruling group comm to check out some case studies. And, you know, some of the strategies that we employ. Yeah. They can follow me on Twitter, you know, at Ruhlin, Facebook, I mean, all kind of the normal places.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:06:35
And ruling group is ruhlingroup.com. And I will be getting in an audible when you come out with the audio version, even though I’ve already read it. I always like listening to it as well. Last question John. Who are some of the companies and entrepreneurs you want as a client in case someone listening knows them?
Who’s on your list right now.
John Ruhlin: 1:07:02
Yeah. So I’ve had conversations with Gary Vaynerchuk, but I have not landed him as a client because.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:07:07
You’re one of his videos. I am. I mean, you’re everywhere. I’m like watching a Gary Vee video and then I’m like, wait, I think that’s John right there, right?
John Ruhlin: 1:07:17
Yeah. Yeah. He came to Saint Louis and was meeting with Andy Frisella and I, you know, bought some books and we were supposed to meet up and ended up buying, you know, buying a bunch of food for him, waiting in his room. And he’s like, why don’t you just come hang out with me for the night? And of course, like, I was a fly on the wall.
Like he’s there to add value to Andy Frisell’s company. The supplement company. And so we didn’t really get a chance to chat. He’s like, hey, meet with me when in New York. But, you know, he’s somebody that gives, gives, gives, gives, gives adds value.
And I think that he could leverage the gifting side a couple of the gifts that we’ve given him, like the Lego you’ve seen, like the Lego. That’s one of our clients.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:07:55
Yeah. Chris Green has a testimonial video about you and how he sent this, like, exact replica Lego right of the Gary Vee set.
John Ruhlin: 1:08:05
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:08:05
So?
John Ruhlin: 1:08:06
So he would be somebody that that we know as acquaintances. But I’d love to have I’d love to be a partner of theirs for them and their clients. Yeah. Tim Ferriss I think, you know, would really appreciate what we, what we do and what we teach around habits. And, and I think gratitude.
I mean, he was a big supporter of the Five Minute Journal, which is great. Yeah. But most people know how to take action on their gratitude. And then I would say I’ve corresponded with Seth Godin. I haven’t, and he always responds, but I have.
And he’s a big fan of Cutco one of our clients sent him knives and he’s like, these are almost too sharp to use. And he uses them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:08:46
He shaves his head with them or you know.
John Ruhlin: 1:08:49
Exactly. And I would say Michael Hyatt is another person I respect and follow from afar. I know Stu McLaren does some stuff for him, but I haven’t asked for any favors there to get. But I really respect his platform and who he is. You know, from a faith perspective, I think we would really resonate and connect with.
So those are some people that I’m that are that are on my radar, hopefully. Giftology you end up in their hands.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:09:14
So if anyone has a any ideas on that contact John or actually forget John, just contact them directly and see what you can do for John because he’s always giving to other people. So John, I really appreciate it. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much.
John Ruhlin: 1:09:31
Jeremy. Thanks man for having me. This has been awesome. I can’t believe the time went by that fast.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:09:35
I know. I know.
