Give And Ye Shall Receive.
Book Review — The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
You know of the term go-getter. Someone who is always hustling, enterprising and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his or her goals.
Enter, the Go-Giver.
What is the Go-Giver About?
The Go-Giver follows a young go-getter Joe, who is frustrated at not making his sales quotas. Joe is introduced to a series of characters and his mentor Pindar, who acts as his main teacher in this story. As a young working professional, I identified with some of Joe’s frustrations and skepticism’s during the story.
Throughout the story, Pindar introduces Joe to different characters who teach him a different Law.
Perhaps you are familiar with parables. For example, The Bible uses the parable of the five loaves and two fishes to illustrate the principles of giving, compassion and faith.
Likewise, the Go-Giver is a short business parable to illustrate five business (and life) principles:
The 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success
The Law of Value
Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
The Law of Compensation
Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them
The Law of Influence
Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first
The Law of Authenticity
The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself
The Law of Receptivity
The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving
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These principles look deceptively simple, but when I first read them, I was skeptical
“Do these principles really work?”
“This sounds like inspirational self-help words successful people say. What if you’re not considered successful yet, do these still apply?”
It’s easy to think about giving as a transaction. The most basic of transactions are typically monetary (exchanging currency for something of value). Or we’ve also heard of the ‘you scratch my back and I scratch yours’ mentality.
However, The Go-Giver illustrates how giving according to these five laws can deepen both your business and personal lives. Part of these laws echo Stephan Covey’s Think Win-Win Habit in his best selling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
From The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty darn good!
But, What If You Feel Like Crap?
The Go-Giver is one of those stories that allows you room for introspection to ponder about life. While reading it, I felt there were some hurdles to applying these laws.
If the world worked as Pindar says in the story; giving and sharing freely is what creates success. If you focus on seeing the best in people, you will see the best in people.
However, it’s easy to practice these laws when you’re feeling warm, open-hearted and amazing about life. But what if you’re feeling crappy and don’t think the best in people? We are all human and we all go through phases like these.
Challenge Your Thinking
How do you recalibrate your mindset to the Go-Giver mentality when you’ve been blindsided by people or after tragedy hits you? I think that is one of the challenges to adopting this mindset.
All in all, the Go-Giver is a short, easily readable story whose principles can apply to improve your career, relationships and life. While the story comes off as too ‘feel-good’ and preachy at times, there are definite applications to your personal life.
The Go-Giver is not the type of book that you read once and set down to gather dust. This is the kind of book you read once, challenge your own thinking and read it again to slowly apply the laws to slowly remould your life.
Has anyone had any success in applying the Go-Giver laws?
Additional Resources:
Animated Overview of The Go-Giver (YouTube)
Tyler Meuwissen of Xenium HR joins Brandon Laws for a discussion of the book (Spoilers)
Originally published at www.bookwormsneverforget.com on November 14, 2017.
