The Law Of Influence

I don’t remember how I came across Bob Burg’s The Go-Giver (it has to be 14+ years since I’ve read it) but the message resonated with me and gave me a lot of confidence to continue down the path I was going as I tried to grow my financial planning practice.

When I read The Go-Giver I was still working at a large 403(b) company and trying to grow the number of clients I worked with so I could hopefully start my own firm one day. My approach was to give more value to the clients assigned to me than any advisor had in the past. I believed all I needed to do was focus on doing what was best for my clients (which wasn’t necessarily what the company wanted me to do) and take good care of them and good things would happen.

And they did.

I think I would have maintained that mindset because I believe it is core to who I am, but The Go-Giver’s 5 principles cemented how I wanted to earn the right to work with clients.

If you’ve never read the book, Burg describes 5 Principles of Stratospheric Success.

The Law of Value
The Law of Compensation
The Law of Influence
The Law of Authenticity
The Law of Receptivity

Over time I may hit on each of the laws, but the one that came to my mind today was the Law of Influence. This law is probably not what you expect it to be today…the definition and perception of influence today is different than when Burg wrote The Go-Giver; it was written in PSM times…pre-social media times. Well, that’s not technically true…social media was around when the book was published in 2007 but it was not the social media we have today.

The Law of Influence is not about becoming an influencer by gaining the attention of followers by any means necessary. The majority of “influencers” today that fail to follow Burg’s Law of Influence.

According to Burg, The Law of Influence states that your ability to gain influence is determined by how much and how often you focus on the interests and needs of others first. Most of today’s influencers provide some type of value to their audience, but it is rarely done putting the interests of their audience first. Of course there are exceptions to the rule and these are going to be your influencers who do not fall out of favor, but by and large influencers come and go because their motives are self-interested.

The Go-Giver’s Law of Influence encourages you to pour into others without keeping track of the score; Gary Vaynerchuck is famous for saying give, give, then ask (he even wrote a book titled Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, which is another way of saying this). The premise should be we give more than we ask and we give first, without the expectation of ever making an ask.

Another way of looking at the Law of Influence is, as a mentor described to me, making deposits into the Bank of Goodwill. Whenever you do something for someone else, create with the intent of helping others, or just put someone else’s needs in front of your own, you are making a deposit into the bank. Eventually, you’ve built up enough in the Bank of Goodwill that you make a withdrawal. You aren’t going back to the individuals you helped for the withdrawal, you’re going to the bank–it’s not about repayment. 

I’ve experienced the benefits of The Law of Influence–I stumbled into it because that’s just how I’m wired—I’ve written and talked before about my father’s example of selflessness. I grew up admiring how he put everyone ahead of himself, almost to a fault and as I write this today, I realized he never took withdrawals from his Bank of Goodwill–I literally just realized this as I was typing. 

There is another law, the Law of Receptivity that compliments the Law of Influence. We’ll explore this one more soon–but the high-level explanation is it’s just as important to receive from others than it is to give to them. We’ll come back to this…

But for now, as you pursue your authentic life, be sure to look to help others more than you help yourself–there are certain aspects of your life where you need to put your oxygen mask on first, but in all others being a Go-Giver, especially if you are a Creator, is the way to be.

Genuinely be a Go-Giver, that is. The Universe knows when you are giving from the heart and when you’re doing it to be able to ask for something in return.

Be a genuine Go-Giver.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC