John Ruhlin on Growing by Giving

Show Timeline:  

2:13 An introduction to The Ruhlin Group and its inception
4:44 One of the biggest mistakes professionals make in gift giving
7:51 Why John also avoids the “ABC” approach to gift giving, as well as gifts for referrals
11:08 John’s recommendations for budgeting for your gifts and navigating the regulations
15:51 Ideas for personalizing your gifts and ensuring they resonate with your clients
22:13 How small gifts can make a big impression, and the importance of a hand-written note
27:06 The critical components of a gifting plan
30:55 Why John doesn’t spend anything on gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas
34:33 A resource to help you get started on improving your gift giving

Links:

Website:              thegiversedge.com
LinkedIn:             https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-ruhlin-0b04b01/
Twitter:                https://twitter.com/ruhlin

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

Steve Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. Financial advice is a relationship business, and central to building relationships is gratitude and gifts. Do you have a gifting strategy, or do you give the same gifts to everyone at the end of the year like everyone else? How can you plan what, when, and how to give to have real impact on the relationships you have with clients, prospects, and centers of influence?

Our guest on this episode, Jon Ruhlin, founder of Ruhlin Group. John spends more than $400,000 a year on gifts to his own clients, and besides being in the very small category of gifting consultants, he may be the only one who deliberately never gives anything after Thanksgiving. John is one of the foremost experts at giving gifts, and his clients include major league sports teams, household consumer brands, as well as large financial institutions. He advocates a specific proven process for making gift giving an effective expression of gratitude that has the side benefit of creating real quantifiable results. John is also the author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut through The noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Client Retention.

On this episode we talk with John about the biggest mistake business owners make in giving gifts. We talk about the principles of gift giving, and what, how, and when to give, and why you should have a calendar of when you give gifts to specific clients. We even address the SEC limitations on giving. But a gift doesn’t have to be expensive to make a real impact. And listen through to the end, where we talk with John to get a link where you can download a list of the 10 biggest mistakes to avoid in giving gifts.

The advice John gives in this episode can have a dramatic impact on your relationships with clients, prospects, and centers of influence, and of course how actively how they all refer. It’s an amazing conversation that will probably change your perspective on something you’re already doing and making a big investment in, and make it vastly more effective. Please enjoy our conversation with John Ruhlin.

So John Ruhlin welcome to the Becoming Referable Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

John Ruhlin:     
Hey thanks for having me.

Steve Wershing:      
So you have a wonderful new book out, and we want to ask you all about the book and the principles in it. But let’s set this up for folks, let’s give them some background. So tell us a little bit about the Ruhlin Group and what you guys do.

John Ruhlin:       
Yeah, so the Ruhlin Group’s been around for about 18 years, it started when I was in college, desperate to pay for med school. I went and interned with Cutco Knives, the cutlery company that’s had about a million and a half college kids and other people work with it. I really was fortunate, because I was dating a girl at the time, her dad was an attorney and he was a rain maker, he was a referral machine. And one of the reasons is he was the most generous person, probably top 10 that I’ve ever met in my life. And so he would find deals on noodles and buy like literally a semi load of noodles for everybody at church the next Sunday. And I’m like, “Paul that was 20 grand, why would you do that? Are you insane?” And he’s like, “I love the smiles. I love to love on people.”

And so I pitched him the idea of giving away Cutco pocket knives to all of his clients who are men. They’re like CEOs of financial advisor firms, and insurance companies, lumber yards. And he changed my life forever when he said, “John can I order 100 of the paring knives engraved.” I’m like, “You want to give a bunch of grown men a kitchen tool? That’s weird.” And he said, “John in 40 years in business the reason I have referrals coming out of my ears, and I have people that are actively loyal that are referring me and going out of their way to advocate for me is I found that if you take care of the family, everything else in business seems to take care of itself.”

So that was the lightening bolt moment when I decided med school was going to get put on hold, and I built a whole company around using gifts, and gratitude … And not swag, and trinkets, and crappy stuff, but real thoughtful gifts, like the knives. Even to this day 18 years later our number one selling gift, people are like, “Are you still doing the stupid knife thing?” And I’m like, “We sell millions of dollars in knives.”

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