A short time ago, I received a special gift from somebody that I admire greatly. It was totally unexpected, but I was very grateful for the gesture. Some people just think “give first”, and those people have it figured out. In this case I am certain that it is not a business strategy, rather it is just who he is.

The gentlemen’s name is Bob Burg. I did not ask him for anything; we had just been having dialog about an online purchase I had recently made of one of his audio cds. In return, I got a very unexpected gift. And I LOVE telling the story now.

A couple of weeks back, I spoke to another “giver”, Mr. Paul Castain. Of course, I told the story about what Bob had done for me. Paul’s response,

“Tim, I have heard one thousand of those stories about Bob”.

My only response was “WOW”.

I need to be clear about something. When I use the phrase “give-first mentality”, I don’t mean to give everything away for free. Last time I looked, businesses are developed to drive revenue, but hopefully change lives for the better as well.

The “extract value from people as soon as possible so you can ride off in to the sunset” strategy does not sit well with me. I truly believe if you “give-first”, good things will happen for you.

Don’t kid yourself, those who are paying attention know who the “value extractors” and the “value givers” are. Everyone claims to understand this concept, but do they really?

Here is one of my favourite quotes from Bob Burg:

“All the great fortunes in the world have been created by men and women who had a greater passion for what they were giving – their product, service or idea – than for what they were getting. And many of those great fortunes have been squandered by others who had a greater passion for what they were getting than what they were giving.”

You can check out Bob’s fantastic content (especially his new book “Adversaries Into Allies”) over at:

http://www.burg.com/books/