Giving Or Taking?
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Zig Ziglar
In March of 2020 the world was coming crashing down around us, and my new marketing agency was struggling to grow. Not for lack of opportunity, but due to my desperation mindset that was driving every conversation.
Every prospect who reached out to me was steered quickly into the I-Want-To-Make-Money-Off-You conversation. And they ran away as quickly as they came. Seriously, it was like I was fishing for eels with butter on my hands. Not a lot of results to show for my calls.
I was stuck in the rut of immediate gratification, bringing this flick-a-switch mentality to life and business. I bet you can relate. If we need something nowadays, we just pull out our phone and order it. Pizza in less than 30 minutes. Next day Amazon delivery. Dopamine shots on social media.
But what happened to planting before we harvest? Farmers have been following this principle and reaping the benefit of it for thousands of years. Work the ground. Plant the seeds. Water. Weed. Prune. Fertilize. When the time is right, the harvest is ready to be brought in.
How does this apply to business or to everyday life, far removed from the dirt and crud of a farmer’s fields?
It's simple. We gotta plant before we can harvest.
Back to frustrated Lewis.
Right around this time, I was recommended to read a book called “The Go-Giver”. In it, Bob Burg and his co-author John D. Mann talk about the “5 Laws of Stratospheric success”.
The first and second laws crashed into my paradigm, causing a major shift for me. The law of value says that “your worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.” or put another way, “money is an echo of value. Value comes first. Money is the natural and direct result of the value provided.”
The second law, the law of Compensation, says that “your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”
The book made a compelling argument, so I thought I would give it a try. I started giving away audits, value, and time to help people, with no immediate call to a sale.
Incredible stuff started to happen. When I started to give away value, hopping on calls with people, and planting value, THEN I finally started to see results. It came in unexpected forms. Unsolicited reviews from people who would never be a client, but found what I told them very useful for their business. Referrals started coming in from those people as well. The snowball started to build.
I came into every interaction truly wanting to help. And the harvest came, little by little. Some of the people who weren’t in a position to take advantage of our services right away reached out over a year later to ask for our help. They knew, liked, and trusted me, because I wasn’t just pushing for the sale. I genuinely wanted to help them.
Are you always on the hunt for the next sale, screaming into your pillow at night because
NO ONE WANTS TO BUY from you? Try giving away some of the value and knowledge you have. It’s going to blow your mind what can happen.
Caveat: You must truly want to help people and to truly want to add value. I’ve had moments of slipping back into desperation mode. I resort back to SALES, and miss helping people, and then the harvest dries up. But every time I come back to adding value FIRST, this crazy force of the universe rises up to help me reach my goals.
Get out there. Add value to the world. Massive value, in massive quantities. You won’t regret it.
Learn. Implement. Grow.
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Lewis Vandervalk is a husband, dad, and business owner who is working to live each day as a vote towards the man he was born to be. He owns Blue Crocus Solutions (www.bluecrocus.ca) a marketing company focused on helping contractors with getting a return from their digital presence. If you need to chat with someone about the power of clarity, email him at
Lewis@BlueCrocus.ca.