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SNM275 Grow Your Business by Giving Gifts with Steve Buzogany

• Jonathan Green : Bestselling Author, Tropical Island Entrepreneur, 7-Figure Blogger

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Welcome to the Serve No Master Podcast! This podcast is aimed at helping you find ways to create new revenue streams or make money online without dealing with an underpaid or underappreciated job. Our host is best-selling author, Jonathan Green.

Today's guest is Steve Buzogany is a successful real estate professional who discovered the power of building relationships in his industry. Starting off in real estate, Steve struggled with the usual challenges of generating clients and growing his business. However, a mentor enlightened him about the significance of focusing on relationships rather than transactions. Taking this advice to heart, Steve shifted his approach and began cultivating strong connections with his clients. As a result, he started receiving numerous referrals, leading to a staggering 73% of his business coming from trusted recommendations. Steve's ability to foster strong relationships did not go unnoticed by his peers. Other agents in his office marveled at his expertise in generating referrals and sought his advice on replicating his success. Steve shared his strategies, emphasizing the importance of giving thoughtful client gifts and going the extra mile to nurture relationships. 

 In this episode, Steve Buzogany shares his journey from struggling to generate clients in real estate to finding success by focusing on building relationships rather than just transactions. He saw 73% of his business come through referrals as a result. Recognizing the market for this service, Steve started Appreciation Advocate. During the episode, Steve questions the value of corporate gifts, comparing them to pens with pharmaceutical company names on them. He emphasizes the importance of giving useful gifts that won't be quickly discarded, like pocket knives or wallets. He also discusses the pitfalls of giving gifts that are not easily personalized or those that are branded and may inconvenience international recipients. They underscore the importance of personalized gifts to balance intentions and avoid lazy and impersonal options like gift cards. They also explore the power of networking, the value of lower-level employees, and the need for thoughtfulness and effort in gift-giving. 

Notable Quotes

-  "if you focus more on the relationship, they would give you referrals, and then you could work with the referrals who would come with a preexisting trust, and then you wouldn't have to work as hard." - [Steve Buzogany]

-  "If you're wondering why you're not getting a lot of referrals in your business, then maybe it's because you're not building a deep enough relationship with people."- [Steve Buzogany]

-   "The barrier is so much lower than people think. We all hear the phrase, it's the thought that counts, but no one believes that." - [Jonathan Green]

-   "There's something that I learned because I'm really a big advocate of networking and a lot of people don't realize the power of the introduction." - [Jonathan Green]

Connect with Steve Buzogany

Connect with Jonathan Green

Jonathan Green: Grow your business by giving gifts with today's special guest, Steve Bizogany on today's episode.

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Announcer: You tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to Serve no master podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.

Jonathan Green: I'm really interested in this topic because I remember growing up, my father would get all these barrels of popcorn around Christmas, the three different kinds, the sweet kind, the spicy kind, and then the one that nobody wanted, right? It was like sweet butter and cheddar. Nobody wanted the butter. And after Christmas, we'd have 20 barrels with the one third that nobody'd eaten over the entire holidays. And I think that was like the popcorn gift craze before people realized you could cook popcorn at home. So I do remember that time, and I know that what you do is very different. So I'd love to know your approach to gratitude and how that became your approach to marketing. I want to hear about your journey. Sure.

Steve Buzogany: So my whole thing started with real estate. I was doing the whole whenever you get started in real estate or any kind of service business, like lawyer, accountant, whatever it is, we always have to generate your first couple clients. It's a grind. And I was doing that, and I had a mentor tell me, like, hey, man, you're working really too hard. It's very transactional, and if you focus more on the relationship, they would give you referrals, and then you could work with the referrals who would come with a preexisting trust, and then you wouldn't have to work as hard. I said, all right, that makes a lot of sense. Let's do that. So I did that, got a lot of business. Long story short, did really well with it. 73% of my business started coming by referral. Other agents in the office were like, hey, Steve, you're like the big king referral guy. What's going on? What are you doing? And I would tell them, like, hey, I'm giving clients gifts and going to see them doing all these things. And people were like, how do I do that? And I'm like, okay, just do all the things I just told you. And they're like, oh, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that, and I kept hearing that over and over again, and I'm just like, you know what? There's a market there. I could just do it for people. And that's basically how appreciation advocate got started.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, it's very interesting, because a lot of people, they think the barrier is really high, so that they think, oh, if I'm going to give someone a gift, I have to give them a gift that's, like, worth 10% of what they spent with me, right? They bought a house for $100,000. I got to give them $10,000 gift, right? They have this perception, and this is something I always talk to ladies about. I'm like, nobody ever gives a guy a compliment. I get so few compliments compared to my wife, and nobody buys me a drink, right? So if someone people are like, how do you meet millionaires and billions? I'm like, Dude, you can buy almost any guy a drink, no matter how rich is. And they're like, wow, no one ever does this, and it makes them feel good. So the barrier is so much lower, I think, than people think. And we all hear the phrase, it's the thought that counts, but no one believes that, right? We're like, yeah, no, sure, the thought counts, but we don't believe it. So where is the barrier? What is the gift that gets someone attention? And is the thought enough? Is the small gift okay?

Steve Buzogany: Sometimes yes, sometimes yes, sometimes no. So the phrase the thought that counts. I have a mentor named John Ruland who is fantastic and probably one of the most brilliant. He's on my Mount Rushmore before best mentors in my life. He's one of them. And his quote is, it's not the thought that counts. It's the thoughtful thought that counts, and that's what makes it next level. So you can really make a thoughtful thought. You could put a thoughtful thought together for $12 and really blow someone's mind away. You can also have no thought into it and spend $125 and make zero impact at all. It really all depends on where you're coming from. I have a whole series of criteria that I use to make a good gift, and I can actually, if you want, I can go through them for you, but we can do that later or now, whatever. But basically, your gifts got to hit these criteria, and if it's not typically, then you're on the bad gift list, which I can go through that list, too, if you want.

Jonathan Gree: Yeah, because I think when people think about this, they go, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll make a list of all my clients, and I'll send them all the same thing. I remember there's another thought. My dad, when he worked in a big office later on, he's, like, would send my mom to buy 25 or 30 of the same thing because he had to give everyone the office a gift. And I get that if they're all in the same place. You can't give people different gifts because then it becomes, oh, your gift is better than mine, right? Whenever I have a birthday for my four kids, I have to give all of them gifts on everyone's birthday. Otherwise it's a war, right? They can't even comprehend the idea of only the birthday kid getting their gift and nobody else. That would be an entire war zone. I've already set a bad precedent. I'm already trapped here. I'm nine years deep. My kids are obviously spoiled because of the terrible move I made early on to stop the tears, screwed it up. And it's the same thing at Christmas, right? It's not who has the biggest gift, it's how many gifts you get, right? And it becomes very tricky. It's a whole war. So a lot of people go, Well, I don't want any of that. I don't want there to be any disparity. So I'll give everyone the same gift, and that does erase all the thoughtfulness. Like, maybe the first barrel of popcorn seemed thoughtful, but by the time 30 different people have given you the same gift, right? Like, how much popcorn can I eat? Turns out a lot. But that's the thing that's missing. So I am interested in your process for what makes a good gift or a bad gift, because I think that thoughtfulness is very like, we don't remember people's spouses names or people's kids names or people's very we know very little about each other. It's like, what's the least amount of information I can learn about you to extract the money I want before I can eject from this conversation or this relationship?

Steve Buzogany : Yeah, so that right there, what you just said, what's the least I can do? John Ruhlan also said something like, what's the most you can do? Is a better question to so here's the way I see it, is people have both financial bank accounts, and they have emotional bank accounts, and you have to make deposits and withdrawals appropriately. So the thing is, the quickest way to get a financial withdrawal from someone is to make an emotional deposit. So that's the best way to go about doing things. So in terms of the gifts and balancing out the intentions and things like that, I'd say you can actually get a lot of your clients the same gift, but they can be personalized. So I've got mine clients in real estate. I've gotten them scissors from cutco, but I had all of their names engraved on. So they all had technically, a different pair of scissors. They all had their last name, or maybe it was the couple. And I got both their names on there. So it was unique to them, and it was a nice gift. It will last forever. I've gotten people speakers, like those pill speakers that people bring on things. I've gotten them customized the colors and things like that to the clients, and they're unique to them, but everybody got the same thing, but they don't all look the same. So you can do that. You can get people the same, but as long as with some personalization always helps.

Jonathan Green: Let me ask you a question. Do you put your name and phone number on the actual gift? Because I've gotten a lot of those.

Steve Buzogan: Hell no. Definitely no. Because that switches it from a gift to a promotion.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, it's like, here's a free magnet. Is it a free magnet? It has your phone number on and your picture and I have to look at you every day. And I think that yes, that's exactly right. I feel like in our culture, one of the things I've taught a lot about early on is that we don't know how to give a compliment anymore. Because when we give a compliment, we wait for the person to compliment back or say thank you. I go, that's not a compliment, that's an obligation. And my parents never talk about parents as much on episodes, but somehow because Gift gave me a thing about they gave my oldest sister a car when she graduated either high school or college, and she sold it. And it was like they were, like, stuck because no, we gave you a car, but she wanted money, not a car. Right. So the trick is, if it's really a gift, someone could do whatever they want with it. And that's really hard for a lot of people, right? It's like, no, I gave you this gift to do what you want with it. Like one time early on, before we were married, I said to my wife, she has a twin sister, hey, Beyonce is going to be here. Why don't I give you guys tickets to Beyonce? And her sister goes, well, how am I going to eat tickets? She has a very different approach to life. She's like, I would rather have money or food, right? And I was like, It's very direct, right? And people aren't often that direct in America. I was like, yeah, that's fair. Very clear what you want and don't, right? Like, I want something that's useful, not something that's not we don't we often give people what we want to give them, right? It's like when someone you want to give someone cookies, like, oh, I'm actually allergic to something. And they're like, oh, thanks. You know what I mean? Now you're annoyed.

Steve Buzogany: Thanks, jerk.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, it's like, just try them. Like, oh no, just try one. You're still going to like it. But it will kill me. And that's why people avoid it, right? It's like, well, how do I deal with it? And it is hard to personalize because most of us don't pay that much attention. We don't remember. And I'm guilty of this. I am not innocent. I've had someone call me with a referral and I go, I have no idea who this person is. And they're sending me another customer. And I'm like, I'd done a three month project with them, so I now have tools to help me remember people because it's not intentional. I don't remember a lot of stuff. I just realized, oh, I need software to help me remember every person. So I have software that I use after every podcast, I put a picture of the person in and what we talked about because otherwise I will never remember them.

Steve Buzogany: That's fair, but that's good. Yeah.

Jonathan Green: I learned this the hard way because I went to a conference and said to someone, oh, it's finally nice to meet you in person. And we'd met before, and he was so mad, and I was like, Whoa. But I was also like, Is it my fault? Maybe if you were more memorable. That didn't make it better, that made it worse. What you're talking about, though, when I do it right, is when I learn what people care about. And then I can remember that. I try to learn one thing about each person, like what matters to them. I'm in business with some people that they want to go out drinking, and that's what they do at conferences. And other people are like, hey, I'm married. I'm super religious. I would never do that. And they want something completely different. And I remember told this guy, I said, hey, this is someone really big deal in our industry. We've done a project. I'll introduce you. And he walks up the guy, he goes, hey. I said, Talk to him about your getting married and your fiance. Talk about your relationship, because that's all he cares about. He walks the guy, hey, we're having a party. We're going to have models. We're going to have tequila everywhere. You got to come. And I was like, that guy's never talking to you again, you dummy, because you said the three things that really bothered the guy. Got married in college, had his first kid by 20, and that's his lifestyle, and that's fine. But if you don't pay attention to people, you can give them a gift or invite them to something that actually does the opposite result, because you haven't paid any attention. And I told the guy what to say, and he ignored me. And I was like, well, you just burned that bridge.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah. So that's the thing. A lot of people do give the gifts, and it's about them instead of the receiver. A real gift is about the receiver, not the giver, because then it becomes a promotion or whatever it is, or an obligation or a you know, it's got to be no strings attached.

Jonathan Green: That's so hard for people, though, because I know. So there's this I lived I've lived in a lot of countries. I lived in Japan. When you give someone a gift, they take it home, they don't open it in front of you. And smart, I think it's so smart because how many times have. I had one of my siblings open a gift for me, and the look on their face tells me they hate it. Like, one time I bought my younger sister a dress. Don't buy clothes for your sibling. Don't buy clothes for your sibling, especially a girl. Terrible mistake. She hated it so much. Fastest return I've ever seen. She's like, Next time, just give me the cash. I'm like, yeah, lesson learned. But that's the thing. We want the person to open it in front of us because we want that feeling. So it's so hard to give a gift and not care if the person never mentions it. That's really hard, isn't it?

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, that's where you follow up. So that's part of what I do for small business owners and stuff. We send the gifts. We tell our business owners, like, hey, call behind the gift two days after it shows up. That way you can give you a. Reason to call that's not overly salesy. Because being the introvert, I was that's what I did. I needed something to break the ice, to call my people and not be a salesperson. So I just say, hey, how are you? Just wanted to touch base with you. How are you doing? I sent you a gift because I appreciate you guys for being in my business and being helping me put food on my table for my family. I just wanted to make sure you guys got the gift. And they're like, oh, my God, Steve, this is the greatest thing ever. Oh, my God. You're never and then, by the way, because they know you're a realtor or they know you're an accountant or whatever, or a small business owner of any kind, they're always going to ask, So how's business? And now it becomes an organic conversation versus, so do you know anybody else so do you know anyone else in insurance? Do you know anyone else who needs a good accountant? You know what I mean? Like, do you know anyone else who's going to be moving and needs a realtor? But it's not as organic anymore when you're calling just for that. And then they also feel like, oh, you just called me because you wanted to see if I knew anyone, versus, like, you called a check on the gift. That's why you called.

Jonathan Green: Interesting. I like that. Yeah, let's talk about bad gifts. I'm more interested in that, like, the things people get wrong. Because I think of we always see on, like, the sitcom where someone gives them it's a picture frame, and they look at that. It's a picture of themselves. Why would I want a picture of you? But that's what every single real estate agent does. That's what every single person who sells cars does.

Steve Buzogany: It's like, I could go down real estate.

Jonathan Green: How many pictures of you do I need? And it's the same thing as, like, every pharmaceutical company just gives you pens with the name of their drug and their name on it, right? Because I know there's a lot of these companies that do corporate gifts and every gift is like, put your brand name on it and I get it. There's something like you want your name out there, but that's not really a gift. Now, if it's really useful, sometimes people give away something useful. If you give me like a sweet pocket knife, that could be something I keep for a long time, right, or one of those cool wallets that blocks radiation and makes you live forever. Maybe someone will keep that around for a long time. One of my friends got one of those and he's been using it for three years as a gift. But most of the times it's like, oh, here's a pen that's going to break in two weeks, and things like that. And it does maybe keep you top of mind for a while. But I think those have like a short shelf life, right? It's like how many USB sticks don't last very long because like, oh, this one's ten megabytes. Who would still have one of those, right? Because it's constant changing of what works. So what else constitutes a bad gift? What's some of the worst gifts? That's what I want to hear about the magic.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah. So some people actually, believe it or not, think that the thank you email, like to say thank you for your business is like a gift. And it's like, guys, that's just the end of a purchase transaction. That's not actually a gesture from thanks. Like thank you. So that's one, which is awful. Then there's the bottle of, like this is bottle of champagne. This is stereotypical realtor gift. And I can say that because I'm a former realtor, so I'm allowed to make fun of real estate. We love you. But anyway, bottle of champagne, food, item, anything that makes one impression. We call them fart in the wind gifts. So basically it makes one impression and gone. So that's why bottle of champagne, food, anything like that. Alcohol, no good. And then this one might be a little bit of a surprise, maybe not. Events and experiences. So if you were going to take someone out to lunch, to breakfast, coffee, dinner, the Super Bowl, those are all no goes because that's all one impression. And in marketing, what we do is we pay for impressions. And now do you want to pay $250, $6,000 for one impression? Or do you want to pay 100 and $200 for one impression every day for 910 years? That's the way we think. So that's another thing. So anything events or experiences are big. No, no's flowers, which are nice, but again, not ideal. So for example, a way to switch this, normal flowers are going to die in a week. They're going to mold away and the water is going to get disgusting and it's going to smell bad. And then you got to clean the vase and that's ugly too. And it's just no, but what I did at once, there's a jeweler around where I live and he dips roses in gold and it solidifies the rose forever. And I got my wife that was way because it's going to last forever. That rose going to last forever all the time. And he does a different color every year. So I think this year's periwinkle, which is like a purple. But that's a way to make a flower a good gift that lasts forever. And then obviously this is the one that's going to pretty much I think we're all guilty of this at some point in our lives is where, like you already said, swag bags. Like swag swag stands for stuff we all get. So it's a different S word though. I'm trying to be PG, but stuff we all get. And then promo items, which they are promo items. And then last but not least, our favorite, worst gift of all time is gift cards. Anything that's gift card e gift cards. Even worse. Those are terrible because a gift is supposed to be a symbol of what you see the relationship as. Now if you see the relationship a gift or a gift card or egift card, they're lazy gifts. So you could basically say something like the symbol you're communicating to the other person be like, yeah, you're just not valuable enough for me to actually spend time on putting this together. So I got you a gift card here. Now you go shop. It's like, run along, Junior, get yourself something nice. And it's like the impression that makes is not a good one. One, it only makes one impression, but two, it's that you basically communicated to that person. You didn't have time for them to put real thought into it. And that's the problem.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, I think that's very interesting because when we think about the gifts, when we hear about corporate gifts or business gifts, you basically list all the things that are recommended. It used to be popcorn, now it's like a food basket, right. And it's like there's these huge companies that are doing massive volume and I couldn't tell you a single person that had ever sent us a food gift. I'm thinking about it, right? The idea of something that will be around or lasting. Now you talk about scissors and things. Do you think usefulness is a big part of a good gift?

Steve Buzogany: Oh, massive. So I got these things really cool actually over here there are these wine bottle openers, but they're like custom wine bottle openers, really cool things called cork pops. You get them engraved with people's names on them and they can open a bottle of wine in a quarter of a second. It's just a pull the whole cork out versus like the whole corkscrew thing where you're doing all that and it's actually a bit of a show. Like I had a client in real estate where she would say, steve, every time I got my friends and family over, I cannot wait to open a bottle of wine with my show them your gift. And they come over, and it's like this big show, and they're all like, oh, my God. And then I tell them that you got it for me. And of course, I get referrals because of this freaking $17 Cork Pop thing.

Jonathan Green: And it's her name on it, not yours, right?

Steve Buzogany: Yes, exactly. Definitely not mine, because nobody wants anything with my name on it. It's not a promotional item. It's about her and her experience with it.

Jonathan Green: Okay, all right. I like that. What else? So you talked about longevity, something that gets multiple touches or they'll see or use multiple times. I did think when you talked about the roses dipped in gold, I was like, wow, he's giving his clients roses, but it makes more sense to give that to your wife. I like that idea.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, that was definitely a wife gift.

Jonathan Green: I wouldn't know if a business partner gave me a golden rose, I was like, I don't know what this means.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, depends. Maybe it's a flower shop or something. I don't know. Depends on what kind of small business we're serving. Or if it was, like, a flower shop doing it for their clients, maybe it would make sense. Yeah. I'm not giving it to my clients because I'm not a flower person. Mostly my clients are small businesses. My clients are Average Joe and mom and Pop and the Solopreneur. That's who I but yeah. So the other things you were saying you wanted, some of the other qualities. Again, focus on the client. It's got to be high quality, not a piece of crap. It's got to be personalized to them, and it's got to have deep emotional impact, so it's got to be something that's significant to them. So if you're able to play people's heartstrings, that's where you're ahead of the game there. And then obviously, we talked about staying power, usefulness visibility, those things what make a gift really keep you top of mind rather than subconscious mind. And then obviously let's not forget the basics here. Let's build a connection where put a personal note in there, put a video, something that or show up in person, give it to them, but make the connection.

Jonathan Green: So when you send a gift, you don't send it directly from the manufacturer of the person. It comes to you, and then you resend it.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, it comes to us. And then we dress it all up, make it look really fancy, like nice wrapping paper, bows, what do you call it stuff? Crinkle paper. And we put and then flowers. And some of them, if they're a flower company, we want the gift when it's opened to be an experience, not just like, oh, look, another cardboard box from Amazon that I got to cut the tape and go through know, oh. Cool, whatever this is. But when it's wrapped and it's got a bow on it and it's dressed up nice and it's wrapped professionally, and it's not know, you should see the first package I ever god, it was terrible. Absolutely horrible. Showed up in three pieces.

Jonathan Green: You're bringing up something that a lot of people don't think about, which is presentation.

Steve Buzogany: It's more important than the gift.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, because I don't know about you, but I had a friend who gave his wife an engagement ring from Tiffany's, and the first thing she said is, well, where's the like, it's important. Right. Tiffany's box is, like, a whole thing. I didn't know that either. I wouldn't have known. But there are certain things that's one of the things that really matters, like, oh, where's the box? Like, the ring was a lot more expensive than the box. Yeah, but the box really matters in the presentation, even though the way you give it an there's no box. Right. And we don't think about that. Right. And they get the box. And even worse is if you're sending from Amazon and it gets batched with something else they ordered. So it's like they just put their order and your gift in a box. I could see that happening. So that's very interesting because it's the small things we don't think about that make the biggest difference. They do. Yep. 1000%.

Jonathan Green: Most people think it's all about the cost. Like, cost is the name of the game. Game. And you're right. Someone gave me I mean, the thing is, if they gave me my wife, like, let's say it's a really expensive bottle of champagne, it's more expensive than we normally spend, then we would just save it and never use it. So it's even worse. The experience doesn't happen. Correct. And then experiences is like, I don't know if this has ever happened to you where you say to someone like, hey, I got two tickets to the football game. And they go, Great, I'll take my wife. And you're like, you don't even get to be there for the experience. Like, you mess it up or it's bad. I once in college, took a girl. I was like, oh, let's go see the messenger. It's about a woman who's, like, a leader. Like Joan of Arc. I forgot how Joan of Arc life ends. Right. This movie has more violence than Braveheart. In the middle of the movie, someone's foot gets cut off and rolls right in front of the camera. And I go, oh, I'm never seeing this girl again. This is over. This movie tanked me. Yeah, well, I don't like for dates. I don't like anything where there's something outside my control that could make it worse. Right. And so many things can go wrong. At a restaurant or a game your team loses. All they remember, oh, you brought me to the Super Bowl. Or my team. Lost, and it's not your fault. And they have a bad memory. All of these things can happen. So I get why experiences are a bad idea. And I think about, like, my kids school had a silent auction where you could win all of these different experiences. Like this hotel, that hotel, because we live on an island where it's all hotels. And I was like, These are bad. Because I remember as a childhood, right? You win the silent auction experience, and you never even do it. You never go skeet shooting or white rotter rafting, right? You win this prize, and then you don't actually want to do it. And that's the problem with the experiences. It's like they don't really want to go, or something can happen. So I get the outside thing, and I get the presentation matters. What else is important when planning your gift? Because I think that the hardest part of what you said is making it personal. I think that's a real struggle for you, because someone's like, Well, I don't know enough about my past clients, so let's talk about that specific scenario. I'm thinking about me, right? I'm thinking, okay, what if I send I go to my top clients that I've worked with over the past few years. I'd have to look to see from when they bought me, if I have their address and things like that. Because I get the message sometimes someone I don't know if this happened to you, someone will send me an email like, hey, what's your address? I want to send you a gift. And then it's a T shirt with their company brand on it. And it's a massive inconvenience for me because I have a PO. Box in America. I don't live in America. I've lived abroad. I've lived abroad for ten years. So it's a whole thing. But one person, they got my mom's address, and they sent a sweet pair of AirPods. And she goes, I don't know what this company is, but these are sweet. Do what they want. I was like, It was the smartest anyone had ever done. She's like, I don't know what this thing they want you to promote is, because it was like a product launch. And she's like, These are sweet, so do it. And I was like, that's pretty smart. Maybe I should just send gifts to everyone's moms, because they certainly worked on her, and it worked on me. I did the project because it was like, the first time someone had sent me a gift that was useful, and it wasn't branded. They actually thought they were sending them to my house. It was an accident. So it was sent to me by my mom, opened it thinking it was to her. And it was like, that's one of the few times, like, a gift has worked where I've received it. But the thing is like, oh, I don't know what someone wants or what someone needs and if I ask them, I telegraph it. So what can someone do when it's like, oh, I'm after the moment when I should have asked.

Steve Buzogany: Well, there's nothing wrong with telegraphing it a little bit. When I was doing real estate for me, I told my clients on the first of the year, first week of the year, I said, hey, guys, just want to let you guys know how much I appreciate you guys, how going to be stepping up my appreciation game this year. So be on the lookout for all kinds of random cool things coming from me this year. And I just let them know, and they didn't think anything of it. They were like, okay, that's cool. And then they get started getting the gifts. They're like, whoa, this is super cool. And I'm just like, there's nothing wrong with that. And then I let them know, like, ahead of time I'm going to be calling, might ask you some funny questions. What's your favorite color if I get you something? Or where your favorite place to spend your time is? Anything like that. So those are things. There's nothing wrong with that. And it shows them that you are. Thinking of them even though you don't have a gift in your hand at the moment. It's just like, hey, look, steve's going out of his way to show us that he cares about the fact that we've used him as a real estate agent. That's super nice that he's doing that. It's a great reason to call. Like, hey, remember when I said I was going to appreciate you later this week or later this year? I've got something in the works for you. I'm kind of putting something together. Just want to know your favorite color. Can you tell me a little bit more about that or whatever or anything? Whatever the heck you're doing. And they're like, oh, my God. Because then now they're excited, and now they're thinking of you, and now the anticipation is up. So there's that and then there's other times where you do know the person really well and you can go in and you know their address. Like, for me in real estate, there was never an address I didn't have because I know where everybody lives. So for me, that was easy. But for that, it was like, you get to know them and you build that relationship with them, and it's an excuse to call them when you want to gift for them. And so that's the thing, is if you're wondering why you're not getting a lot of referrals in your business, then maybe it's because you're not building a deep enough relationship with people. So maybe if you have a larger client base, 700,000 people or more, and you're just like an inch deep with all of them, start having some events. Create a mastermind group and pick your top 20 people. Start connecting with these people at a deeper level. Increase the value ladder. And again, you can get paid for that even more. Like you have it on Inner Circle or a Mastermind Group or something like that. Top 50 people only or whatever they pay for that. But now you get intimate with these people and find out what's going on, what makes them tick, what's their spouse's names. And that's another thing. You did bring it up, by the way, and the reason it brought your mom, like your mom got the gift. But a lot of the gift thing we do is if you're trying, like we have this package where we can help people get access to anyone they want. Where we reach part of the process is reaching out to their sphere of influence and touching base with them. It might be their assistant. I'm not chasing family members down, but I'm talking about their sphere of influence at work. And people will talk about it. You spend that time if you blow up someone's assistant enough, that assistant is going to be in their ear being like, hey, I don't know about you, but this appreciation advocate company is pretty cool. They've been sending me some really cool gifts and they're really good at their marketing, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And that's happened. That's why I worked with you. They worked on your mom. They used your mom, not the assistant. But it worked on you.

Jonathan Green: No, there's something that I learned because I'm really a big advocate of networking and a lot of people don't realize the power of the introduction. Any company you want to do business with, you can meet the janitor. He introduces you to his manager, he introduces you to the doorman. You work way up with the vice president, introduce you to the president. The president doesn't know about anyone other than the vice president. He just thinks, oh, I get introduced to you by this guy and so you can climb up. Exactly. That is like, I've done deals where I'm like, I know this project is on the edge of what this person works on. I know they're going to go home and talk to their wife about it. And so I said, let me meet your wife and let me tell her what we're going to do and let me explain everything to her because I know it's going to go through approval process. That's why I got a really big project with someone once. I was like, yeah, because I knew that's what this guy was going to do. And I said, let me make sure that I can explain everything, and I know that it'll be fine if I do. And it was a really good project, but we oftentimes people were so busy, like, not thinking about those things. But it's exactly there's so much opportunity because how often does a secretary get treated like just a doorstop, right? For me, my assistant is such an important person, but to everyone else, they're just an inconvenience. Like, oh, I got to break we call them gatekeepers, right? Like, I got to break through or sneak past this person like a prison guard. And it's like, you'll get more with honey than with vinegar, right? And it's often someone I worked for early on, twelve or 13 years ago, he sold websites to real estate agents. And so he called this company that sells leads to real estate agents, and he said, hey, every time you send me a referral. Because a lot of these people don't have a website. In the early days, no one has a website. And they were like, no way, you're trash. We would never work with you. So he just called them and kept talking to each person in the call center and said, hey, anytime you send me a new one, I'll send you $100. As soon as he sent him one lead, he sent the girl $100 PayPal. The same day his phone was ringing off the hook. So the top of the company didn't want to do business, but he was just getting it from the bottom of the company for way less. And I've always taken that lesson with me of like, you don't realize how much power a lot of people have, not the top person. And there's a big opportunity there. And yeah, a lot of people, let's be honest, don't get treated very well, right? And so there's a huge opportunity. Just like I mentioned earlier, men very rarely see, I got to buy my own gifts, okay? When I let my kids buy me a Christmas gift, it's going to be a bad Christmas for daddy, and it's the same thing for Father's Day, you know what I mean? And same thing. There's a lot of people that don't get a lot of gifts, don't get a lot of appreciation. And this is very interesting. You have some pretty sophisticated answers, which I'm glad we had you for this because you're really good at this. So let's talk about numbers, right? Is there a ratio of profit from a project to the price of the gift? Is there a math in there?

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, there is for us. We do five to 10% of whatever the client's net value is to you. So that's the annual budget. So if you've got $100,000 client, you should be spending $5,000 on that client over the course of the next twelve months. And you can get one big ass gift, or you can do it into we don't go more frequently than quarterly. Maybe you want to do a $5,000 gift, split it up 1254 times a year. You can get a lot of cool stuff, one $250. And that's just the budget. You don't have to spend the whole five grand or the whole ten grand. I've made some really cool impactful things with a $12 gift, but you can do some really cool things. Maybe your budget is one $250 for each gift for each quarter, but maybe you only spend 500. How many? Cool. I have made some really cool gifts for $215 or 300 or $113 or something. You know what I mean? You don't have to go nuts, but you can because you got the budget for it as long as you budget for it. That's the most important part, is that people, they take the profit of it and they don't run with it. They don't set any aside, any money as side to give back. And that's where the problem creates itself.

Jonathan Green: Yeah, this is very interesting. So your brand is Appreciation Advocate, and that's where tell me exactly what you guys do. You help people, you handle the entire process. Like someone just tells you who they want to send a gift to and you do everything. Tell me what you do.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, that real short. Simple way to explain it is we use gift giving for small businesses and that generates them more referrals. That's basically the easiest way to put it. So you could go to our website and buy our do it for you service, or we could just build the plan for you and you can execute it yourself. I mean, whatever you want. The whole purpose of the company being formed was because most gifting companies cost a fortune, like 1015, 2020, $5,000 for the consulting fee. That's like before you even bought a gift. I wanted to give that access to consumer or small business owners so that they could compete with the big corporate America types. And I was like, let's not charge people $25,000. Let's put it this way. My most expensive package that I have costs less than a part time assistant. So mom and Pop and Average Joe could show up for that conversation versus like 25,000 for the consulting fee plus the gifts and the shipping that's like, mom and Pop aren't there for that conversation most of the time.

Jonathan Green: It's funny to say, oh, I had to pay someone 25 grand to know what to give you.

Steve Buzogany: Takes away a lot of kicking teeth.

Jonathan Green: You had to pay someone else 25 grand to know that? I could use a really cool wine opener. Now you really don't know me. That's so much worse if you find out. So that's interesting. Okay. And that's at appreciationadvocate.com.

Steve Buzogany: Yes, you can go there or if you just want to reach out to me directly. I do actually check my email. It's not somebody else. I'm pretty active in the process, so you can just send me an email at steve@appreciationadvocate.com. Awesome.

Jonathan Green: Thank you so much for being here. I know people are going to like it. I certainly found it informative.

Steve Buzogany: Good, I'm glad everybody listened and gets some good value out of it as well,

Jonathan Green: I think So. Thank you so much.

Steve Buzogany: Yeah, no problem, John. Thanks for having me on.

Jonathan Green: Thank you for listening to the Servemaster podcast. Get a free copy of my bestseller, fire your boss right now on Amazon. Go to slash getfire or just search fire your boss on Amazon.

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