In this episode, Dean chats with friend and business partner, Paul Tran, about giving people the potential to be your raving fans and make them want to help you.
This is a powerful lesson they learned from a person they met who was genuinely generous to them. Dean and Paul did not fully understand why people would be fiercely generous without a catch until a valuable secret was revealed to them.
Listen and discover the effects of giving without wanting anything in return.
Overview & Episode Content
- No Matter What Happens in Your Life, Always End it with “Good.”
- One-Way Giving: Expect Nothing in Return
- The Secret Sauce is to Keep Giving
- Kindness and Sincerely Giving Cannot be Faked so Easily
- Giving More Value than What You Receive
No Matter What Happens in Your Life, Always End it with “Good”
This is a very special episode. I was not at my acreage running around with the Luna Meister when I recorded this. Instead, I was with a very good friend, Paul Tran. In this episode, we were at a Toyota dealership as a result of a beautiful flat tire that we got, right before our speaking engagement.
Of course, not even a flat tire was going to stop us from speaking on stage or from recording a new podcast episode, for that matter.
Paul was sharing his thoughts every time he got a flat tire, “Whenever I got a flat tire, I remember how we are both fans of Jocko WIllink and his concept of ‘good’. Like, no matter what happens in your life, always end it with ‘good’,”
It is an aggressively optimistic way of looking at life. If you are late for work, for example, then good! You get to spend more time with your family. Even if it was only for a few extra minutes!
And like what happened to me and Paul — we got a flat tire, then good! We got to appreciate people helping us out. Whatever happens, just end your sentence with ‘good’. Instead of focusing too much on the bad things that happen, this reframes your positive attitude towards life.
One-Way Giving: Expect Nothing in Return
The speaking engagement that we were headed to was WeWork at The Boardwalk, Irvine, California. The cool thing about this speaking engagement was how a guy got us into the WeWork space. I am talking about Daniel Apple who works for a company called TriNet.
By the way, the guys from TriNet are awesome. If you have a company that does anything related to Human Resources, TriNet can do all the HR work for you. TriNet also did payroll and HR strategy for Netflix.
They are the best at helping you maneuver around all the HR pitfalls for a starting company. Remember, you are not in the business to focus on payroll and HR — unless you are specifically in the HR space. You are in the business of serving people and giving your unique specialty.
So, go to LinkedIn and check out Daniel Apple and William Chiem. They are both awesome. And the reason why we are bringing them up is that they are both responsible for getting us in this WeWork speaking engagement for six months now.
All that time, we would get to talk about our Virtual Systems Architect at WeWork — plugging Daniel and William in each of our talks. The interesting thing was, we were always waiting for the catch but Daniel and William never asked for anything in return. Even though they were the ones who kept giving and got us into this amazing spot at WeWork, they never asked for anything in return!
The Secret is to Keep Giving
During our speaking engagements, I always bugged Paul, “We should have Daniel or William talk at the beginning and look into how we can give back to those two.”
It even came to a point where I started giving them referrals to them even though they never once asked for referrals. As a matter of fact, they have still kept on giving. However, Daniel finally shared their secret with me after referring someone to him who might actually sign up with TriNet.
The secret was pretty simple after all! Daniel and William were practicing an attitude of generosity. The idea was to be constantly giving to people you come in contact with. You must add so much value that the people who receive your kindness and generosity are compelled to be your biggest cheerleaders or ambassadors. Constantly give and give people the chance to become your raving fans who want to help you succeed!
It was super effective! All this time, Paul and I were always figuring out how to give back and take good care of them because they never asked for anything in return! They did not have to ask, as a matter of fact.
Their continued generosity to us has been so enormous and abundantly overflowing that we just want to help them out all the time. We were not even working for TriNet, yet we just want to help them out and give them as much business as possible because of that philosophy.
Kindness and Sincerely Giving Cannot be Faked so Easily
They shared their secret concept out of the blue. It just happened to come up during our recent conversation. To be honest, their concept of constantly giving is something that took me by surprise. Probably because I grew up pretty poor that I tend to hold on to things. Also, I tend to be more focused on myself than other people, although Paul has taught me to be more giving.
Even when William and Daniel were being generous to me, I would always think about what they are getting out of it. I even asked William a couple of times like, “What are you getting out of this? We want to help too.”
And William would tell us, “Oh, it’s a long game. Don’t worry about it.”
I thought they were crazy! But now, I am starting to see exactly the reaping of what those two have already sown. And it started only with them being generous and kind people with positive attitudes.
If you are in it for some ulterior motive, people can smell it out and it will debilitate any efforts that you make. Caring, kindness, and generosity is something that is not easily faked. It takes true sincerity to be giving and helping with no expectations in return.
True, we are in business, obviously, to make money, feed our families, and grow the business. However, it does not need to come at the cost of giving before receiving. It is always better to give than to receive.
Besides, you have to give that value anyway no matter what. That’s simply how business is. That special thing that you sell through your business, should generally be more valuable than the money your customers are paying. They need to get a return on their investment.
Giving More Value than What You Receive
As business people, we need to manage and measure our numbers. But the trick here is with a culture like generosity. These things are really hard to measure.
Now, I find it funny that those are usually the most important—things that are difficult to measure. So, I say it is okay to focus on things that are a little bit harder to measure because those are the ones that usually every other business person is not measuring. As a result, that is your competitive edge!
Also, the cool thing about giving during this era is that you can totally systematize it! There are many ways like Active Campaign, Thankster, and Zen Direct to name a few. There are tools today that allow you to automate the giving to your customers based on how much they buy or who holds a specific number of data points.
My challenge to you right now if you have a business — or just in general even with your family. How much are you giving before receiving anything? Are you giving love notes to your wife or children every day? Have you been giving free things to your clients or reaching out to them and just saying how much you appreciate them?
Conclusion
I taught Paul about the Emotional-Spiritual-Business-Financial Bank Account. The more that you deposit, the easier it is to withdraw.
If you put more money into your bank account and it earns interest, then you can always withdraw without any issues. There would be no scarcity mindset.
It is the same thing with relationships and other things aside from money. If you are adding so much value, then you are depositing and giving so much help. You are sending them thank-yous, referrals, figuring out a way to help your clients win without any expected return.
Now, guess what is next? Those are interest-earning deposits and the distribution back to you is just automatic. You do not feel like you are losing out. Think of it as just living off the interest.
Resources and Links
If you like this episode, visit FreedomInFiveMinutes.com for more and if you’re looking to hire your next Virtual Systems Architect, check out ProSulum.com for more details.
This has been Dean Soto of Freedom In Five Minutes, featuring Paul Tran! And I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.