The Go-Giver
It’s another Lemonade Stand Book Club post! This one is from “A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea” called The Go-Giver. What a powerful book!
This book challenges traditional views that we might have about the way business is done and what actually leads to real success.
The secret…..
GIVING!
But what does that mean? Just give everything away and you’ll somehow be a millionaire? Not exactly.. I’ll break this down a little bit and share some of the wisdom contained in this book. As always though, you’ll definitely get the most out of this if you read it for yourself. You can pick one up here, or, of course, reach out to our team, and we would love to send you a copy for free! We love to spread knowledge around, and we would be delighted if you were to read this book from our recommendation.
The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success
Ok. The Go-Giver is a fictional story that follows a guy named Joe as he learns what authors Bob Burg and John David Mann call “The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success.”
Main premise here – follow these laws, and you will find yourself in a state of stratospheric success!
The laws are as follows: The Law of Value, The Law of Compensation, The Law of Influence, The Law of Authenticity, and The Law of Receptivity.
The rest of this article will break down these five laws, and I will do my best to explain them and how they can help you achieve the success that you are hoping for. One initial rule for these laws, though, you can’t start living them purely for the sake of wanting to be successful. That’s not exactly how they work. You have to want to live them because you want to live them and want to be a better person. Success comes as a natural consequence of living your life in accordance with these laws, but if it is your only reason for living them.. You might not have the success that you want, and you might not be living them out as well as you could be. It’s a little confusing, I know, but that’s just how giving works. You have to want to give for the sake of giving – good things will come of it. Ulterior motives fueling your giving? You might not find what you’re looking for.
Hopefully that makes some kind of sense!
Let’s dive into the first law!
The Law of Value
“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”
So what does that look like?
Two examples.
One – When serving a client or customer, find ways to provide more value to them than what they actually pay for. This doesn’t mean that you should be taking a loss on any service or product that you sell. Not at all! It just means to look at each interaction you have with a client from all possible angles and make sure that they are receiving all of the value that you can possibly give them. That can mean sending them a gift that they didn’t ask for, but it doesn’t always have to cost money. This can also mean that they paid you for a product, and they expect that product to be delivered, but they didn’t pay you for your kindness or for you to genuinely care about them as a person. Find a way to simply brighten the day of your customer! That’s providing extra value. That’s value that they didn’t pay for. That’s giving them more value than what the payment they gave you was worth.
Why do that? Because you want to. That has to be the first and truest intention behind this. However, if you go above and beyond for a client, you better believe that they will either be a long-term or returning client, or they will, at the very least, be sending you more and more referrals.
Two – Provide more value than the payment you are given in your job. If you are paid a salary of $50,000/year, make sure that the value you are providing is worth at least $75,000 if not $100,000! Go out of your way to make sure that all of your company’s clients and your fellow team members are all taken care of and happy. You have no idea the kind of success that you will see later on if you perform way over value in your current role.
The Law of Compensation
“Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”
This law is very self explanatory, but the idea here is that the more people you serve, the more people you give to (and the more value that you provide beyond payment given… see above law..), the higher your income will be.
The example provided in the book is awesome, so I’ll share a little bit about that one. This one is about a school teacher. She gave tons of value to a group of about 30 people per year. This was wonderful and extremely fulfilling; however, her income was not quite where she was hoping that it would be. She decided that she could reach a larger audience and serve more people. She built out an education software that would have the potential to reach millions! By doing that, it extended the amount of people she was serving, and this had a direct impact on her income. Makes sense, right??
The more people that you have an impact on, the more income you are going to have. One thing that’s awesome about this book is that it never once says that aiming for a higher income or wanting more for yourself is inherently wrong. It is perfectly fine (even encouraged) to make a lot of money! There are just these five laws to live by if you truly want to make money.
The Law of Influence
“Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”
I think that influence can be defined in two ways. There is the influence that basically means power. How much influence do you have over people? How easy is it for you to influence other’s decisions? Etc. etc. The other definition is more like – how many people can you influence through your decisions? How many lives can you touch, impact, or “influence?” The end result might be the same. Live your life with the second definition in mind and you will have people wanting to follow you to the end’s of the earth, but I like thinking about influence the second way.
So, let’s change that law just a little bit. “Your [ability to touch and impact people’s lives] is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”
If you truly want to change the world for the better and help people be in a better situation than they were before knowing you, you need to be ready to put their interests above your own.
This law resonates so much with me and with the Lemonade Stand team because it is the idea behind our motto “Build Then Bless.” You can learn more about Build Then Bless in this article here. We want everyone, everywhere to have a massive impact on the lives of everyone else around them.
This law requires you to live outside of your own world, to think outside of oneself. It requires the most sacrifice, but it will change your life for the better more than any of the other laws.
The Law of Authenticity
“The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
This law is two-pronged.
One – be authentic! Like I said at the beginning, these laws won’t lead to success unless you are authentically trying to live them because you actually want to better yourself and the people in your life. You have to be authentic in what you are doing. Sending gifts to clients? Don’t send a box of candy canes to all of your clients at Christmas. That lacks thought, creativity, personalization, and authenticity. People know when you’re being authentic, and that’s why this is so important!
You HAVE to be authentic.
Two – “The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.” Don’t ever lose sight of your own value. You have knowledge, skills, abilities, and traits that other people need and see value in. Use those! Lemonade Stand is a marketing agency. So let me present an example. If we have a client who we want to send a gift to, do you think it would be more valuable to send them tickets to a Jazz game or to give them an extra marketing service that could lead to thousands of dollars of increased revenue for their company? Both certainly have value! But, in some cases, it might be even more valuable to just give a little bit extra of yourself rather than sending a cool gift. Don’t get me wrong, cool gifts certainly have value and can go a long way in preserving a relationship, but you, as a person, as a company, you have a lot of value as well.
The Law of Receptivity
“The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.”
Last one!
This is perhaps my favorite of the five laws, and it was the one that most made me change my thinking. In fact, it created an entire paradigm shift in my life and has truly had a massive impact on the way that I act.
You have to be open to other people giving to you. If you want to give to others, you also need to accept giving.
What???
We, as people, are always so quick to turn things down when others want to give something to us. Someone might come to you and say “I know you’re having a rough time right now, can I make your family dinner?” What is your instant response? “Oh no! Don’t go to all that trouble. We can take care of dinner tonight. No worries at all!” If that’s not your response, then good on ya! I know that it has been mine for a long, long time.
Then the roles reverse. I’ll go to someone who I know is passing through a rough patch and say the same thing “Hey! We know you guys are having a hard time, is it ok if we bring you dinner?” They, being like me, say what I would say, “Thanks for the offer, but we’re doing just fine! I’ve got dinner covered. Thank you though!” Then I go to my wife and I’m like, “Why won’t those people just let us help them? We know that they could use some help! Why don’t they just take it?”
Well, how could I expect someone to accept my giving when I wouldn’t accept theirs just the week before? That doesn’t make any sense!
For any giving to take place, there has to be a giver, and there HAS to be a recipient. Every single time that you say no or dismiss someone trying to serve you, you have destroyed what could have been a great giving experience for everyone involved. On the contrary – every time that you accept something from someone else, you are allowing them the opportunity to be a giver.
What an incredible and powerful lesson that is. In order for you to be the giver that you want to be, people have to accept your giving. If you want people to accept your giving, then you absolutely need to be receptive to other people wanting to give to you.
That completely changed the way that I view situations where people want to give to me. Rather than dismissing them or shrugging off the fact that they are trying to serve and give to me, I have a completely different perspective and have really tried to allow other people to give to me just as much as I am giving to other people.
Pretty cool right??
Ok, well that sums up the five laws of stratospheric success discussed in The Go-Giver.
I invite you to start living these five laws and to also read this wonderful little book for yourself!