Tell us what you think!
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, this is your host Brandon Laws. With me is guest Tyler Meuwissen, he’s been with us before, and we’re here to talk book club today.
Tyler: Yes, yes!
Brandon: So, Tyler, before we jump in, I just wanted to mention to listeners that, because I’m a terrible host sometimes and I don’t often do a good job of promoting some of the other stuff that we’re doing. We actually have another podcast called the “It’s About People” podcast. It’s on a completely different feed, so if you’re listening on iTunes, which most of our listeners are, you can actually go search “Xenium” or “It’s About People” to find our other podcast. And what’s kind of cool about that one is that while this one is like an interview, like I’m going to do with Tyler, we’re going to actually have a discussion, but in the other one we do like a round table discussion. It’s kind of similar to The View where they just have a topic in the news or something, and it’s all related to HR and leadership of course. But we do a round table and we just discuss. So go check that out, and we have a lot of good content on our blog, too, so go check that out.
But, Tyler, we’re going to move on. What we have today is we’re going to do a book club discussion. Recently we read a book called The Go-Giver: A little story about a powerful business idea. This was written by Bob Burg and John David Mann. So it’s a dual effort. What’s cool about it is that it’s written in a fable. We’ve done a lot of these, haven’t we?
Tyler: It is, and yes we have. The Leader With No Title.
Brandon: Yeah, and we did The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I feel like we’ve done a couple others, but there’s something about these fables that just help me a lot, help me resonate with these big business ideas that I think are, a lot of the times, abstract or so science-y. With a lot of these business books, they use bullet points and theories and whatnot, but when you can’t really draw it to case studies or stories, it doesn’t sink in as well for me. How about you?
Tyler: Oh definitely. It loses its kind of value, just because I think the hardest part when you’re reading a business book is how to incorporate that into your life? Or, what’s an example of this in practice? How do I use this concept? With The Go-Giver, we get a nice story and it’s kind of all revolving around these five laws, which I think in their own
right can be taken for a good value piece. But when you add them all together you can kind of incorporate that into your life. It would be easier than just reading off some conceptual book.Brandon: Oh I totally agree with that. And, you know, the best part of all is, for one, it’s written as a fable. I think that’s the best part. But the fact that it’s 130 pages or something, I think the paperback is 133 pages or something like that, but it’s really readable. It’s digestable in one sitting. I think I read over one day on a weekend, just in a couple different chunks.
Tyler: Yeah, same here.
Brandon: It’s a great book. I really liked it, and I think I’ll continue to read these fables just because they all have really cool business ideas and when you’re able to tie it to real world type stuff, it sinks in a little easier. So why don’t you, for the listener, why don’t you give a kind of opening to how the book started. Because I think the way the story starts, it actually kind of started slow and then it sped up through explaining what these five laws are. And we’ll get to that, but maybe just talk about the opening part.
Tyler: Yeah! So, we have an individual who’s kind of, you know, working in sales and he’s kind of trying to make his quotas and he’s having a difficult time meeting his quarterly quotas. And so he’s looking for any type of leverage that he can get to get him over that hump. And so he seeks out a—
Brandon: What I would call a “whale” of a potential client, or maybe not necessarily a client, but a connector to some bigger business deals. So he was really seeking to get this guy for his own selfish reasons.
Tyler: Yes, to use him to get that sales quota, not knowing what kind of value he had to offer him. And that’s when it comes across as he kind of meets for lunches every day of the week and he gets a new insight, a new law of how to be successful. And I think that’s where the story takes it, you learn these laws through their lunches and their meetings with other individuals. And he comes to find out that maybe, you know, this person he was seeking out wasn’t the leverage he needed, maybe the leverage he needed was within him.
Brandon: Yeah, so, to your point, each chapter talked about a law and introduced a new person who could explain that law through their storytelling. To your point, it also took place over a course of a week over lunch meetings. So this guy was trying to meet his sales quota and he’s running out of time when he goes and meets all these people and he learns all these life-business lessons. I thought it was pretty interesting, being the realist that I am, I don’t know that a person who was originally going into it with selfish reasons would just totally be bought into the whole thing?
Tyler: Yeah.
Brandon: But I think the ideas were good. Why don’t you talk about the five laws? We’ll talk about maybe each of those individually.
Tyler: Sure, yeah. So we have the law of value, the law of compensation, the law of influence, the law of authenticity, and the law of receptivity.
Brandon: Yeah, so that first one, the law of value, they start off with a story about Ernesto, I believe his name was, the hot dog salesman. They talk about the story where he has this little hot dog stand and then all of a sudden he turns it into a multimillion dollar venture, and I think it was through, I think that their point was, it wasn’t that the hot dog stand was amazing, it was, but I think he created such good customer service and created value for the people that did visit that other opportunities started coming up. Maybe he expanded his hot dog stand operation or something, just because the customers that did visit him had such a great experience that that was the way he expanded it.
And I think that the guy, the main investor guy in the story, he, I think, backed it or something like that.
Tyler: The connector. I love how, and I think it’s a true testament to how it’s all about the experience you create. Even with such a ubiquitous thing as hot dogs, or even just food vendors.
Brandon: Absolutely!
Tyler: If you create an experience and atmosphere that’s enjoyable and fun, it creates buzz and more people go to it, and it becomes bigger and bigger and grows. So some little hot dog stand can turn into a multimillion dollar restaurant enterprise.
Brandon: And I think the words that they used were, “making the buying hot dog experience into an unforgettable event.”
Tyler: Yeah.
Brandon: Because hot dogs, and many other things in this world, are very forgettable. They’re commoditized or whatever. But through your customer service or even through your products, whether it’s a premium version of a commoditized product, I think you can create an unforgettable event. And that was just the point they were trying to make was just that the law of value would basically say that your true worth is determined by how much you give in value than you take in payment. Meaning that these hot dogs are probably $1 or $2 apiece, but, yet, maybe he’s creating so much more value than what they’re paying. So I thought that was pretty interesting.
The story that came up next was the law of compensation, and you alluded to it a second ago. Why don’t you talk about that a little bit, I thought that was kind of interesting.
Tyler: Yeah, so in this, the law of compensation is, your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. So in order to be compensated well, you want to be able to reach the max. people you can. You want to reach as many people as you can to influence them and kind of show them what your value is, what you have to offer. And so I think you can’t always focus on a small select circle. You have to broaden your horizons in order to be compensated proportionately. So I think the law of compensation is that you want, your income is determined just by how many people you can touch and reach and share with your experience, rather than keeping that together. And I think it also mentions that a lot of the best, more successful people, they kind of view their knowledge as open for everybody. They let everybody have access to it. They don’t pigeon-hole it, you know?
Brandon: Yeah!
Tyler: They don’t keep it for themselves, they let people know. So I think that kind of goes into the law of compensation. So you want to reach as many people as you can, share your knowledge with as many people as you can, and share your experience with other people as much as you can.
Brandon: And my mind naturally goes to even on the product side. Like if you delivered a product, you sold it to one person, your compensation’s obviously going to be determined on your profit margin for that one unit. Then if you’re able to provide value to exponentially many more people, then your compensation’s not really limited, it’s limited by the number of people you reach.
Tyler: It’s almost unlimited.
Brandon: Yeah, in theory. I think the story that they had in the book was, I believe she was a teacher or a former teacher and I think while she was teaching her class of 40 kids or something, she had come up with a way to deliver educational tools or learning, a unique way to learn. And so she took that outside of the classroom and built a business and a
product around that way of teaching. So the story was that she was able to reach a lot more people by productizing what the learning was.Tyler: Her reach as a teacher wasn’t great enough, and she wanted to reach as many students as possible. She could only reach the students that she had in her class, or even her school, but she wanted to reach as many students as possible, because she wanted to share this learning experience, this knowledge that she had, this software she developed with as many people as she could, as many students, as many kids as she can. And it wasn’t always about the compensation for her, too, it’s about doing good and the compensation came along.
Brandon: I think so too. You know, I always—and I doubt this is a huge moneymaker for them, but—I always think of like the open source kind of stuff, like Linux?
Tyler: …like Linux?
Brandon: Yeah, like that. Wikipedia’s another great one where people who just wanted to fundamentally change the way people are accessing information or just a different way to do an old way of doing business or accessing a certain way. You totally flip a business model and you reach more people and provide value in. My point about Wikipedia is that it’s not really a moneymaker.
Tyler: Yeah, they rely on donations.
Brandon: Exactly, and so you provide value and people are willing to donate. That alone is a good example. But there are so many other examples of the compensation thing, but if you can create the value first, reach a lot more people, the compensation will, I think, follow eventually.
Tyler: Yeah, it’ll flow back to you.
Brandon: And that was the point in this book. Talk about the law of influence a little bit.
Tyler: So the law of influence, you know, your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. So, this is being as selfless as possible. Whoever you’re trying to reach, you want to put their needs ahead of your own.
Brandon: That’s hard to do!
Tyler: It is! This is one of the laws, too, that’s transferable from the business role to personal life. Professional and personal. When you’re in a relationship, you want to put the needs of your significant other or your friends, family, ahead of your own sometimes. Or you get the most out of it if you do that. So I think that this law, it kind of transcends. A lot of these laws transcend just professional into more personal nature as well.
Brandon: There’s a quote that I read in the book, I think it goes something like, “The more successful people are, the more willing they are to share their secrets with other people.” And I think this really ties into that law of influence, just because people who are already successful, they’re thinking How could I help people get what they want? So they’re putting their interests first. And then eventually it all comes back, basically, you’re building trust, you’re building a network of people who you’ve helped along in some way down the road, so I think that they would be appreciative of that.
Tyler: I think of, like, you know, Elon Musk in the tech sector. He’s trying to reach sustainability with his electric cars and he’s hearing the needs and the wants of the public. Then he starts building his business around what they want, he creates a new Tesla, the car that’s coming out, he’s doing SpaceX, he’s doing a lot of intriguing, interesting things by listening to what people want. I like that. I think that’s kind of a real world example.
Brandon: And people like that would have a lot of influence, because they’re listening to what people want, building products around them or services maybe, and ultimately everybody’s better off.
Tyler: And it comes back to them, he’s then successful.
Brandon: And he gets a lot of recognition.
Tyler: He gets a lot of recognition, yeah.
Brandon: And that’s just one example, there’s so many examples out there. And I think the point in this book is that we all could do that. In the work that you’re doing, whether you’re at an office or in a manufacturing environment, whatever, there are ways to influence the people around you, and you’re going to be better off for it eventually.
Tyler: It’s like sharing ideas in an office or more efficient ways of doing a certain project. If you share that with some of your coworkers, you’re influencing, you’re creating influence. Which you don’t have to do at a grand scope like Elon Musk does, or if you don’t have the means to do it that way.
Brandon: No, not at all.
Tyler: But you can influence the people around you, both professionally and personally during small things.
Brandon: One of the greatest things I think we’ve done in a while here at Xenium is the mentorship program. And I think that’s a way for people who have already gone through what other people want to go through, they’re able to pair up with somebody and then influence and mentor and just provide them with tools so they’re like, Hey, I’ve already done all this! Here are some of the struggles I’ve gone through, here’s what I recommend, here’s how you should be thinking. Those are things that if I had known about all that stuff back when I was in high school or whatever, I would have been getting involved in mentorship programs, but I think that law of influence is so vital to growth and development of people.
Tyler: Yeah, I agree. I completely agree. And I love that analogy to the mentor program, because I’ve always been a big proponent of the Xenium mentor program and I think it creates a lot of helpful insight and to share experiences that you’ve come across with the senior members. I think that’s always a great program.
Brandon: What about the law of authenticity? That was the fourth one that came up. Tell us about that one.
Tyler: It’s kind of self-explanatory, it’s basically that your most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. So be true to yourself, be who you are, and in just being yourself and interacting, you don’t try to be anyone you’re not, you create experiences, you create influence, you may be able to solve issues by just going about your daily routine, doing your normal things.
Brandon: I think that authenticity, it’s being true to yourself internally but also on the outside as well. I mean, I think Brene Brown always talks about vulnerability and
authenticity. It’s like, show up, be shown, show yourself to other people—your true self. It’s hard to do for a lot of people, and I think that’s the point in this book, it’s your gift.
And I can’t remember the person but they definitely had a person that was the law of authenticity, that whole point, but—Tyler: Was it the speaker, the woman speaker at the conference?
Brandon: Oh that’s right! The real estate agent, yeah. And I think that was the point, I do remember this now, she was going through all of the sales tactics that she had learned—
Tyler: A to Z.
Brandon: There’s a sales tactic for everything! But when she truly started being successful in real estate was when she was authentic with her clients and being real, being a person.
Tyler: Being relatable. I mean, a lot of the times people think, like you said, vulnerability is trying to be someone they’re not because they feel like that is the perception that they need to get across. But really it’s about being yourself. People like that realism.
Brandon: They do!
Tyler: People crave that realism.
Brandon: The one thing that I think that the law of authenticity or just being authentic in general could backfire on somebody is if they’re truly just a terrible person.
Tyler: [Laughing] But they’re probably not reading this book!
Brandon: I highly doubt that, and they’re probably not in the line of work that would benefit from that.
Tyler: And they’re obviously probably not using the other laws, like the law of influence or the law of value.
Brandon: And the other thing I would pull from the law of authenticity is just, no hidden agendas. Leave it all on the table so that people can get what they want a lot faster. A win-win-win, whatever, Steve Covey’s ideas of making sure both sides win. And I think this is true, 50-50 is a losing proposition, as this book says.
Tyler: I like that.
Brandon: The only winning proposition is 100%. So if you make the winning about other people and you’re authentic and you both get what you want, then I think you can sort of focus, you can move forward.
Tyler: I think the law of authenticity and the law of influence go kind of hand in hand. So I like how they had those two laws back to back because I think that placing interests and needs of someone else ahead of your own and then also being true to others of who you are, I think those go together.
Brandon: Yeah. So this last law, the law of receptivity, this is the one I struggle with the most, honestly.
Tyler: Yeah, I was thinking a little bit about this one.
Brandon: So, explain this.
Tyler: So basically it states that the key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.
Brandon: Which is hard! For a lot of people, I think, they love to give, but receiving is cringe-worthy. I know that for me, personally, when I receive compliments or props or whatever it is, I always immediately want to deflect it and turn it on the other person to say Oh you did a good job too! Or It was all you! That sort of thing. I don’t know what it is, it’s like an awkward feeling for me, but the point of this is, if you’re open to receiving, then I think the world goes around.
There’s a couple of cool points in this, I’m actually going to just take a point from the book. “Every gift can only happen when somebody’s receiving.” So that was the point they made in the book, and they gave an example which I thought was not necessarily mind blowing but I thought it was a good way to draw some conclusions on this point. So the example they gave in the book was, people breathe oxygen. They exhale carbon dioxide. So they’re receiving oxygen from somewhere, but they’re giving carbon dioxide out. And plants are doing the exact opposite. They take the carbon dioxide and then turn it into oxygen, and we need that. So it’s this cycle.
Tyler: I like the analogy, it’s a really good analogy.
Brandon: It’s a good point! If I receive, here’s an example right now—Powerball, right? It’s going to be 1.3 billion dollars soon, which is the highest it’s ever been. The only way I
Credit: Lisa Brewster, Flickr
can receive that money, which is not likely, the probability’s awful, is by people giving a dollar or two at a time! But the point is like, Oh I want to make a donation, I’m giving. But somebody needs that on the receiving end. It’s circular.
Tyler: It’s a very circular thing. You mentioned being kind of closed off and you’re always trying to deflect receiving feedback, good feedback, even if it’s, You did a good job! You say, Oh no, you did a good job! It’s like, well, how did that make the other person feel? They’re trying to give you a compliment, they’re trying to place value into what you’ve done, and you kind of just don’t want to take it and receive it with its full kind of meaning. I think it defeats a little bit of what they were trying to give, their compliment. If you take it wholeheartedly and you accept their compliment, You know what, thank you. I did do a good job.
Brandon: Taking it back to the business world, a lot of people are doing such good work. They’re being so productive and they’re helping others, they’re creating value, they’re making a huge reach. They’ve basically gone through all of these laws that we talked about here. But they have a hard time receiving in terms of compensation or benefits for the work that they’re doing. I would argue that they love giving, but they need to learn how to receive, because they could do a lot of good stuff. Money’s a tool, so if they’re receiving in terms of compensation, then they’re able to take that and possibly reinvest it in the work that they’re doing, or continue to give to others. So again, it’s a cycle. If they figure out a good way to keep giving by way of receiving, I think we’re all better off.
Tyler: I think it’s just good, too, to receive feedback—good positive feedback. I think it’s in your best interest to understand that people are valuing what you’re doing and that you’re doing good work. It boosts your morale, it boosts how you feel about yourself. And it recycles: you feel good about yourself, you’re more productive, you do more things, and it circles back. You get praise for it, and it just gets better, it goes better. But I think a lot of people close themselves off, like Oh no no, it’s no big deal! Well you know what, it was a big deal! People commented on it!
Brandon: And you should be rewarded for it!
Tyler: Exactly.
Brandon: You’re giving, now you need to receive.
Tyler: You’re done, just take it. Take the compliment!
Brandon: You know, I have no problem receiving gifts and things like that sometimes, but a lot of times it’s awkward! It’s really hard.
Tyler: Well especially because you don’t want that feeling of getting so much.
Brandon: Exactly, you never want it to be off-balanced to where I’m just receiving nonstop and I’m never giving, and I think that’s not the point here, it’s most of the time these people who are successful and they are reading this book, they’ve probably been giving their whole lives or just maybe not receiving the right way. I think the whole point is that it all comes full circle.
Tyler: Yeah. It needs to come full circle.
Brandon: Create value, reach a lot of people, be authentic, expand your circle of influence, and receive.
Tyler: Receive feedback and then do it again.
Brandon: And keep going. It’s the cycle. So we’ve gone through all the laws, what did you overall think of this book?
Tyler: You know, I really liked it. As you mentioned earlier in the podcast, it’s short, but it’s to the point. It’s concise, and you’re getting maybe only 110 pages long, but there’s a lot of good content here and a lot of things you can learn from this—especially, each law on its own is great. I’d love to have this book at your desk, or at home, and just pick it up—
Brandon: There’s so many good nuggets!
Tyler: So many good nuggets! Just pick it up one day and kind of read through it, read over the laws, read over the experiences in the book, and incorporate that. I think it’s a great book.
Brandon: I want to sum up what I sort of learned from this book in one phrase that I think is verbatim from the book. They said, I think it’s toward the end, that the point is “it’s not what you do or what you accomplish, but who you are.” That is, in summary, what this book is about. It’s about who you are as a person, not what you’ve done. And I think all of these things are about the kind of person and the quality of person that you are. You’re giving to others, you’re able to receive, you’re creating value, all these things.
Tyler: And that was the lesson at the end of the book, you mentioned he realizes, the protagonist realizes that the leverage he was seeking was within him and not from someone else. It’s really true, and I think it also plays off of the wording of “the go getter,” always trying to get something, but the “go-giver” is the one who will share the most value and get the most value out of giving than receiving.
Brandon: Great point! And you know what I love about this book, and what I love about a lot of the book club books that we read, is that it’s great for discussion. There were some times where I think some of us loved certain laws and others didn’t like a certain law, but it created some really great discussion about real world stories.
Tyler: Yeah! And that’s what I like about the story business books, where there’s a narrative. You can talk about the concepts, you can talk about the business principles that you’re learning, but you can also talk about how they are incorporated into the story and where the story was going. And can you associate with the protagonist or can you sympathize with his plight or his struggles and whatnot. I think that is, I enjoy that aspect. I really just overall enjoyed the book.
Brandon: So, put on your Goodreads reading hat. Out of five stars, what do you give it?
Tyler: You know what I wish about Goodreads?
Brandon: You wish there was a .5?
Tyler: I wish there was a .5!
Brandon: Okay, let’s do a scale of 10.
Tyler: Out of 10, I would give it 8. I liked it. And I very rarely go over 7’s. I’d give it a solid 8.
Brandon: On my Goodreads, and by the way, my public Goodreads if you want to follow me—there’s a lot of business books that I’m reading so you could connect with me if you want—on my Goodreads I gave it a 5 for the reason that it’s one of those books that stuck with me. Like, I read it, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a week or so, and even to this day I keep thinking about it, and it’s been a couple of months. But I just love books that have nuggets of information that just stick with you. It’s like it’s always been
there, but for some reason it’s mind blowing when you read it. There’s a few books that I’ve read like that over the years that have done that, but yeah, this one’s going to stick with me, so I gave it five stars. It’s not the most profound book ever.Tyler: Nor is it trying to be.
Brandon: Nor is it trying to be! It’s just a simple story with some really cool business ideas.
Tyler: And the title—
Brandon: Yeah, let’s talk about this title! What I didn’t understand was, the title of the book is The Go Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea. So I’m reading this title and I’m like, where was the one business idea? Because there’s five laws, and I don’t really understand—
Tyler: Powerful business ideas. It should be pluralized, that’s how it should read.
Brandon: Yeah, we’re probably nitpicking the title, but what I guess my point about the title would be, is that more people should be reading this. Maybe the reach hasn’t been—well, I’m looking on Goodreads and they have like 5,000 ratings, so that’s pretty good.
Tyler: I mean, everyone should have this, like I said, at their desk or in their office.
Brandon: They should! It should be up for discussion in workplaces.
Tyler: And another thing to, I kind of like how they had discussion questions at the end. I don’t know if you had that book, because I listened to the audible book too where the authors actually read it, and they actually give you book club questions.
Brandon: I didn’t remember that! Well, because I read it on my Kindle and I think, once you get to like the very last page, it’ll say, “do you want to rate this book?” So I must have not kept going.
Tyler: They want, they encourage discussion about it, which I thought was just—how many business books have that where they’re like, here are the discussion questions for your book club, discuss it!
Brandon: That’s amazing! Ok, if other authors are listening to this podcast, please give us discussion questions at the end of the books! Because we’re always wanting to talk about it. And it’s funny because when I read these books, because I lead the book club, I’m always trying to create discussion questions, and a lot of the times it’s hard, because I don’t remember everything. And the thing is, for one person trying to create discussion questions, my interpretation of the book is completely different than what you had or other people had. And that’s what I love about people coming together is they each glean something different than I got, and it’s hard for me to facilitate a discussion in my own way, because I’m sure I missed 90% of it.
Tyler: Yeah, that’s what I loved about the book club too is that you get a lot of other people’s insight to it and you all talk about it and you all work in the same area. So it kind of flows. But going back to Goodreads, if I was going to give it a 4.5 if they had a .5. I guess it could be a 5.
Brandon: Nice, good stuff. Well, Tyler, I appreciate you jumping on again, and for listeners who’ve listened to our other podcasts where we’re talking about books, Tyler’s going to be on regularly, we’re going to be talking books all the time. The next book that we’re reading is Better Than Before. Who’s the author of that one?
Tyler: Let’s see…Gretchen Rubin.
Brandon: What would be great is if we have a podcast out at some point after we read and discuss the book, but pick up the book along with us and read, we’d love to hear what you think. And hey, submit questions to me! Help do my work for me! That’d be good, and it’s fuel some more discussion with the listeners. Anyways, Tyler, really appreciate it.
Tyler: Thank you.
Brandon: If you liked the podcast episode, please go to iTunes, give us a review, tell us how we are doing and if you have other discussions or some topic ideas for us we’d love to hear that because we’d love to talk about it with you guys.
Tyler: Definitely!
Brandon: Anyways, Tyler, listeners, thank you very much for being here!