PDF Summary:The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg and John D. Mann
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1-Page PDF Summary of The Go-Giver
In our society, we admire success-oriented people, or go-getters. But in The Go-Giver, authors Bob Burg and John David Mann turn that idea on its head. They argue that you should make giving rather than getting your first priority in business and in life—and success will follow. In the form of a business parable in which a mentor puts a frustrated go-getter on the path to success and fulfillment, the authors explain why and how you can change from being a go-getter to a go-giver by practicing the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success.
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Nicole told Joe that while the Law of Value determines your potential income, the Law of Compensation determines how much you actually earn. It states that your income depends on how many people you serve and how well you serve them—your impact. This means you determine your level of compensation—to increase your success, just serve more people. There’s no limit to what you can earn or achieve: Everyone can succeed because anyone can give.
3) The Law of Influence: Your influence (social capital) is determined by the extent to which you put others’ interests first.
Joe and Pindar next visited Sam Rosen, a financier and owner of the Liberty Life Insurance and Financial Services Company, the most successful financial services company in the world.
Sam told Joe that besides giving, a key to success is expanding your influence by building a network of people who know, like, and trust you—an “army of personal ambassadors,” who might not necessarily buy from you but who always have you in mind. With such an army, you’ll have a stream of referrals.
The way to create a network of personal ambassadors is to stop “keeping score”—that is, doing favors with the expectation that others will return the favors and keeping track of who “owes” you. The third law of success means rejecting quid pro quo and win-win scenarios where you each get something and instead putting the other person’s win first—focusing totally on her interests.
This approach generates success because if you put others’ interests first, your interests will always be taken care of because you build a reservoir of goodwill that ultimately benefits you.
4) The Law of Authenticity: The most important thing you can offer is yourself.
Joe’s next visit was to an annual sales conference to hear a speech by Debra Davenport, the city’s top Realtor. But as she explained in her speech, her career was a failure until she applied the Law of Authenticity.
Debra was a hard worker but couldn’t manage to sell any houses. She heard a speech by Pindar on the importance of giving added value, but couldn’t think of any value she could offer. Discouraged, she planned to quit after one final home-showing appointment. Since it was her last sales effort, she abandoned all her techniques and just chatted with the female client about her interests and experiences. And the woman bought the house.
Debra realized she had added value by being a friend, by caring, and by making the client feel good about herself. She’d been authentic. Her career soon took off from there. Debra’s message to her conference audience was, the most important thing you can offer is yourself.
5) The Law of Receptivity: For effective giving, be open to receiving.
In Joe’s last lesson, Pindar explained the relationship between giving and receiving. Everyone learns the adage, “It’s better to give than to receive,” which is interpreted to mean that if you’re a good person, you give without thinking of receiving anything. However, Pindar asserted that the adage is wrong: it’s not better to give than to receive. It’s actually crazy to try to give and not receive because receiving naturally follows giving. They go together like inhaling and exhaling—you can’t do only one of them and one isn’t better than the other.
You have to choose to receive—or giving won’t create the success or results you want. You have to close the loop. Joe immediately grasped the concept. He observed that if you don’t receive, you’re refusing the gifts of others and you “shut down the flow.” Babies and children are receptive—in fact, they’re hungry to receive. But people tend to lose that quality later in life.
Joe concluded: the secret to success is giving and the secret to giving is being open to receiving. That, Pindar said, was the Law of Receptivity.
The Rest of the Story
Joe’s life changed when he began applying the laws of giving:
- He gave a client more value than he received in payment by referring the customer to a competitor: the Law of Value. When Joe lost an account because his company didn’t have the international connections the client was looking for, Joe passed on the name of a competitor, Ed Barnes, who had the qualifications.
- He put his wife’s interests first: the Law of Influence. When she needed to vent after a tough day at work, Joe gave her all the time she needed rather than shortening the discussion so he could get work done that he’d brought home.
- He expanded the number of people he served at work—the Law of Compensation—by literally serving Rachel’s coffee to everyone on his office floor after she gave him the coffee as a gift.
- He was honest and authentic with a colleague: The Law of Authenticity. Previously, he’d let office gossip get in the way of a working relationship with his colleague Gus. Once Joe cleared the air, they had a productive relationship.
- Finally, he experienced the Law of Receptivity when the referral he had made to a competitor started a ripple effect, bringing new clients for Joe. It expanded his network of “personal ambassadors” and ultimately led to a successful new business venture that made him wealthy.
Joe, the one-time go-getter, had become a go-giver.
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PDF Summary Introduction | Chapters 1-2
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The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success
- The Law of Value: How much more you give others in value than you receive in payment defines your worth.
- The Law of Compensation: Your income depends on how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
- The Law of Influence: Your influence (social capital) is determined by the extent to which you put others’ interests first.
- The Law of Authenticity: The most important thing you can offer is yourself.
- The Law of Receptivity: For effective giving, be open to receiving.
The Characters
Joe: a go-getter at Clason-Hill Trust Corporation who was struggling to meet his quarterly goals.
Gus: Joe’s senior colleague at Clason-Hill, who served as a sounding board. He also turned out to be the mysterious character in the story known as “the Connector,” who brought the other characters together in profitable deals.
Carl Kellerman: a corporate broker who was looking for the right firm to handle a big account. Joe desperately wanted the account but didn't get it.
Neil Hansen: a competitor of Joe’s who got the Kellerman client account.
Jim Galloway: a lawyer representing a...
PDF Summary Chapters 3-4: The Law of Value
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You should give, not as a strategy, but as a way of life. When you do, profits or other benefits follow because people want to do business with you.
The meeting broke up; the next day’s visit would be with “the CEO,” who would explain the Law of Compensation.
Applying the Law of Value
Before the next lesson, however, Joe was tasked with applying what he’d learned that day about giving more than he would get in payment.
Back at the office, his first priority was coming up with a way to meet his third-quarter quota; his phone rang and his problems got worse. It was Jim Galloway, a lawyer representing a multinational company whose contract with Joe’s company was up for renewal. Jim had bad news—his client wanted to switch to a firm with stronger international connections and Joe was losing the account.
Suddenly remembering the Law of Value, Joe passed on the name of a competitor, Ed Barnes, who had the qualifications Jim’s client was looking for. After hanging up, he couldn’t believe he had just referred a client to a competitor. However, his colleague Gus, who’d overheard the call, nodded approvingly.
PDF Summary Chapters 5-7: The Law of Compensation
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When she realized how much this belief was limiting her ability to share her educational software, she changed it and no longer hesitated to promote her product. As Nicole explained to Joe, whether you’re broke or rich is your decision. Therefore you can change it.
As a result of Nicole’s decision to be successful at giving opportunities to more children through her software, her company was now worth $200 million.
Rachel’s Lesson on Serving
In addition to Nicole’s lesson on expanding the number of people you serve, Joe got another lesson from Pindar’s personal chef Rachel—about keeping your focus on serving, even when it’s difficult.
Rachel told him she’d started working at age fifteen to support her family by cleaning houses, doing yardwork, waiting tables, cooking, and answering phones. She later managed to put herself through college doing similar work. Although the jobs were not always enjoyable, she treated each one as though she loved it.
She knew that whether she liked a job or not, each one gave her the opportunity to do three things: survive, save, and serve. These are the universal reasons for working. Work helps you survive by providing money for...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Chapters 8-9: The Law of Influence
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After they left Sam, Joe commented to Pindar that the three people he’d met—Ernesto, Nicole, and Sam—all had a common quality: personal magnetism. Pindar explained it was giving that made them attractive: givers attract. And Joe thought, the Law of Influence (putting other people’s interests first) works because it magnetizes you.
Applying The Law of Influence
When Joe arrived at home, he found that his wife Susan had had a difficult day. Both had high-stress jobs and needed to vent, but they didn’t let it get out of hand because they usually brought home additional work to be done before bedtime. They had a rule that neither would complain for longer than a half-hour.
Susan began to vent about her day and a half-hour quickly passed. Realizing she’d gone over the time limit, she stopped and apologized, saying, “A deal’s a deal.” It reminded Joe of what he’d heard earlier in the day: Fifty-fifty is a losing proposition.
Without thinking further, he said his work could wait and he wanted to hear about her day. Susan went on for a long time and he wasn’t sure it had helped. But when he woke up the next morning after she’d left for work, he found a heartfelt note from her...
PDF Summary Chapter 10-11: The Law of Authenticity
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When you sell a product or service, you’re selling yourself. You need to be authentic.
Having now learned four laws of success, Joe had one more meeting the next day. Rather than revealing who they’d be meeting with, Pindar told Joe only that the meeting would feature the “Friday guest.”
Applying the Law of Authenticity
After Debra Davenport’s speech, Joe’s next task was to apply the Law of Authenticity—that is, to find a way to offer his most important asset: himself. He did it unconsciously by having an honest conversation with his colleague Gus.
As Joe and Gus were wrapping up work for the day, Joe confessed that he’d misjudged Gus in thinking that Gus wasn’t doing anything of value. Joe mentioned the office rumors that Gus was either a washout or was so wealthy that he didn’t have to work very hard.
But Gus always seemed to be around with a word of encouragement when Joe was struggling to apply one of the success laws—and it had finally occurred to Joe that Gus was familiar with all of Pindar’s laws and lessons.
Gus admitted to being “the Connector.” He’d met Pindar 35 years ago and introduced him to Sam Rosen. He bought both men hot dogs at Ernesto’s stand...
PDF Summary Chapter 12-13: The Law of Receptivity
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Applying the Law of Receptivity
Back at the office, the third-quarter prospects were looking grim. The corporate broker, Carl Kellerman, called to confirm that the big contract Joe was trying to get had gone to his competitor Neil Hansen.
Joe thought for a moment about the Law of Receptivity, but he didn’t seem to be receiving anything. Gus told him to be patient and noted that he was a different person than he’d been a week ago.
After everyone else had gone home, as Joe began cleaning up the kitchen area, a feeling of calm—receptivity—came over him. At 6:15 p.m., the phone rang. It was Neil Hansen, who had gotten Joe’s number (a referral) from Ed Barnes. Barnes was the competitor whose name Joe had given to another client, Jim Galloway.
Although Hansen had won the big account Joe had been pursuing, he needed help with another account and Barnes had suggested Joe might be able to provide it. Hansen’s client was buying several hotel chains, rebranding them, and introducing the new enterprise with a luxury cruise. However, the client had lost a critical concession for premium coffee. They needed to have a new supplier onboard in three weeks. Joe said he just might know...
PDF Summary Q&A: What Does It Mean To Be a Go-Giver?
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Does being a go-giver mean you should give away your products/services for free?
No—there’s nothing wrong with making a profit. A business has to be sustainable. Ernesto charged for his hot dogs. Again, go-giving is a matter of priority–putting giving before making money.
Does the Law of Compensation imply that being a good person doesn’t matter?
Being a good person is important, but it’s not what determines your income. Your impact determines your income.
Does putting another’s interests first mean sacrificing your own?
Placing others’ interests above your own doesn’t mean negating your interests. It means trusting that when you focus on others’ needs, your needs will also be taken care of. As you develop a reputation for putting others’ needs first, you’ll find that’s what happens.
When you follow the “laws” of giving, doesn’t it take longer to get results?
A giving approach often brings results in less time. Readers of this book report that shifting their focus to others gets dramatic, often immediate results.
Isn’t it naive to think you can give without thinking about results?
You can’t suppress self-interest—it’s part of being human, but you can...
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