The Power of Thoughtful Giving: Transform Your Career with Authentic Connection === [00:00:00] Introduction and Greetings --- ​[00:00:00] [00:00:07] Donna Serdula: hey, Isaiah, how you doing? I'm [00:00:09] Isaiah Hankel: Hey, good. Donna, how are you? Yeah, [00:00:12] Remembering John Rulan --- [00:00:12] Donna Serdula: Um, I a few weeks back, um, John Rulan passed away. I'm really very sad. Um, he was on vacation, but John wrote that book Giftology. I I I have to admit I did not read it. I have gifted it to people. Um, but you know, I had, I did follow him, uh, you know, on LinkedIn and, you know, read a lot about, you know, and watch some videos that he would do. And I found him very inspiring. Did, were you ever into him in any way? [00:00:48] Isaiah Hankel: I met him a couple of times at a event called Mastermind Talks. And yeah, really nice guy. I mean, it's one of those guys where he could make anybody feel really good just talking to him. [00:01:00] I actually have a close friend that for his company that's helping take things over. Um, it was, it was a pretty big loss. Anytime somebody's, you know, their, you know, Really in their prime. [00:01:12] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:01:13] Isaiah Hankel: he was doing really big things and he was, uh, he was very authentic. I mean, I, I didn't know him extremely well, you know, we weren't friends or anything, but I think, I think anytime you have somebody that's really into a particular mission like that and has built a following of people that have been affected by that, that makes it, uh, extra, extra hard. But yeah, [00:01:37] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:01:38] The Art of Gifting --- [00:01:38] Isaiah Hankel: I have the book on my bookshelf in the back there. It's good. I love it too, because, you know. Smart. He just had, he's had this little thin book that it was easy to gift. You know, he did a lot of, um, one thing he always talked about was gifting. He gifted a lot of like knives, like knife sets, like Cutco knives, like he's really nice knives. And [00:01:59] Donna Serdula: Yeah, [00:01:59] Isaiah Hankel: [00:02:00] kind of where I knew it when I first met him. I mean, this was like 10 years, 2013, 2014, now you see, you can still go to his Instagram page, whatever it's just doing these gifts that are mind blowing. really big celebrities, you know, like these, uh, I think his most recent thing he was doing was these incredible like paintings or images and that that would be [00:02:22] Donna Serdula: yeah. [00:02:23] Isaiah Hankel: gigantic, beautiful works of art that he would give people. And of course, they'd be blown away by it. And then these celebrities would have these pictures in their background they're doing interviews. [00:02:31] Donna Serdula: What I loved so much was, you know, his idea of that swag, you know, like, let's emboss our logo on some cheap item and give it away and people will actually, like, love it and be excited about it. And it was the first time I heard someone say that, like, You know, it's, it's who, who wants that pen with your logo on it? Like, and, and does that pen that [00:03:00] cheap pen that breaks, what does that say about your brand? Right? Like, what does it really say? It's not helping you. And I love that. I also loved how, and this is something that affects really affected me because I work with these, you know, I work with a spectrum of people, but a big part of who I work with are these really high level CEOs who have. Enormous, enormous wealth, and for me to send them a little gift, like a pair of earbuds, which might be great, you know, for normal everyday people, these, they were like, what's this garbage? You know, and you almost, you have to think in terms of, you know, one, there's the value piece. But also, what's the value piece? Who are you gifting? And he had said, don't give a cheap watch. If you don't have a lot of money, give, give, you know, maybe give like a key chain, but a key chain that's, you know, gold or [00:04:00] real leather, like the best key chain ever. And I just, it was to me at the time, it was all mind blowing because I was not there in my own. [00:04:13] Isaiah Hankel: Well, you brought, I mean, in that little sequence, you brought up a lot of factors that people have to work through mentally. It's like, okay, well I don't have a lot of money. Like if you're starting out, it's like, okay, perfect. But you can still play the quality game either way. [00:04:25] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:04:25] Isaiah Hankel: get them a watch. That's a, a, a incredible timepiece for, you know, 10 K to actually. You know, but instead of giving them your little timex or whatever that you think is great gift and they think it's crap, like I said, a little like a key chain, but the most incredible key chain, like not a 5 key chain, but give them like a, a 500 key chain. And they're [00:04:48] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:04:48] Isaiah Hankel: crap, this is the best key chain. I love that. [00:04:50] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:04:51] Isaiah Hankel: I think it just helps in terms of quality. Like, it's so easy to think, okay, and I, I always start way too big, especially on the quantity side. I [00:05:00] want a gift. I want to come up with a gift that I can send to everybody. And then I work out the numbers. I'm like, well, if I did that, you know, the gift's going to be like this for everybody, but instead look at like, who's that one amazing person in your life. It could be that, that one amazing client. It could be that one amazing person at a you want to work at. It could be that one amazing friend in your life. But what if you just focused on that one person and got them the best thing possible that blew their mind that they could not stop talking about to everybody that'll have way bigger impact. [00:05:29] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:05:30] Isaiah Hankel: send out some small thing to a bunch of people [00:05:32] Effort and Authenticity in Networking --- [00:05:32] Donna Serdula: You know, and, and, uh, for some reason where my brain went is what else can you give them that maybe isn't a dollar value? Maybe it's not even tangible. You know, could you do something where you go onto LinkedIn and you really think of the people who've impacted you and, and, and made a difference, impressed you, you know, and go on and give them a LinkedIn recommendation without them even asking. [00:05:59] Isaiah Hankel: and a [00:06:00] long one, [00:06:00] Donna Serdula: Yeah, [00:06:01] Isaiah Hankel: one because people value effort. Yeah. It's really not about money. It's about the effort to go through with, with any of that, any of those things. I mean, we see it like, yeah, LinkedIn comments, right? There's, there's. If you look at the ratio of how many people click the like button versus actually comment, I always take that I work with to like a company's page because I used to work in a marketing communications department, a company. So I've actually seen with my own eyes in this particular company all like that. A team of PhDs, like 20 PhDs just responding to social media posts. all they do is talk about if somebody else, if they got enough people to share this post or what post went viral or comment, comments on the post, can go to Pfizer right now, see a lot of their posts, thousands of likes, four people commenting. [00:06:45] Donna Serdula: yeah, yeah [00:06:47] Isaiah Hankel: biggest companies in the world. you comment on that post in a meaningful way and consistently do that, that company is going to, [00:06:53] Donna Serdula: notice you yeah [00:06:54] Isaiah Hankel: notice you. If somebody goes to your page right now and leaves a very long positive review. If they leave two [00:07:00] lines say, I really like working with Donna, she's great. Thank you. Grateful for that. It's awesome. But if you sent like five paragraphs with like detailed things of what it was like to with this person or be around this person or how, you know, things, how they've impacted your life, that kind of effort people are impressed with [00:07:17] Donna Serdula: Yeah. And, and people, it's easy for a person, like people write reviews when they're angry, when something has gone wrong, right? That's the motive. Like, it's like you've always said, you know, where is the pain? The, you know, a person sits down because they're angry. They're in pain. No one sits down when they've had a really great experience. It's so rare. You know, so there's that. The other thing is, you know, when you were talking about comments, I have been noticing this on my LinkedIn posts more and more. There must be, I know there are, there's apps that now automate. the commenting process. And so I keep seeing these inane comments [00:08:00] where they just sort of take what I wrote and then they just sort of jumble it around and reiterate it and they put it into the comment. And it goes back to what we keep saying, right? It's like, did you put any, there's no effort. There's no effort. There's no value. Like, yes, 500 people today, but. Did it really move you an inch forward? [00:08:27] Isaiah Hankel: And people know now, I mean, like we talked about before, too, people are, the human brain is a pattern recognition machine. So it can figure out very quickly what is AI and what not. Like the first few times it might fool somebody, but then they see it and then they really don't like it. They know that it, there was no effort. Like people really, you almost like despise it in a sense. A lot of people do. I [00:08:46] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:08:46] Isaiah Hankel: okay, this person didn't put any effort. They're doing this to save them time and to waste my time. Cause now I'm reading this. And they spent no time doing this. [00:08:55] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:08:56] Isaiah Hankel: Employers are experiencing the same thing. When they see these resumes that are [00:09:00] clearly generated by AI, they all kind of look the same. They feel the same. It's like the same thing over and over with just different facts put in it. Dude, they hate it. They hate it. [00:09:09] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:09:09] Isaiah Hankel: you are making employers hate you because you're wasting their time to read this. And it was easy for you to do. They, they want to see you spend a couple hours targeting your resume by yourself. You do that work [00:09:21] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:09:21] Isaiah Hankel: and it makes their work smaller. But instead we're doing the reverse. We're like, what can make my work smaller and make them harder [00:09:29] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:09:30] Isaiah Hankel: if it's real or not? [00:09:31] Donna Serdula: Yeah. It's, it's one of those things I, and I know, right, like we're busy, there's a lot going on. There's a lot demanded of us. It's, you know, I recognize that, but you know, at one time, and I think for most job seekers as well as. You know, for anyone who is, you know, maybe even stable in their own career, it's, it's almost in their minds that they say, let me spray, let me, let me, let me [00:10:00] be everything to anybody. Let me be as general so I can fit in as many boxes, you know, let me, let me put out as many comments, but you know, let me do it in an automated way. Let me put in as many applications and something will come back and we need to, we really need to. Yeah. Yeah. It's it. [00:10:20] Isaiah Hankel: I did it. People are just desperate. So they do that. [00:10:23] Donna Serdula: Yeah. And it reeks of desperation and there's nothing more. I mean, you, you want to get away from desperate people as fast as humanly possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:37] The Impact of Personalized Effort --- [00:10:37] Isaiah Hankel: And the most important thing you can do is stay warm to avoid hyperthermia. They start taking off their jackets and stuff because they're panicking. So they actually start taking off and shedding clothes. And so they find these people, right? That, that pass away getting lost their clothes off. It's the craziest thing from hyperthermia. And so they, they cause their own demise faster. That's exactly what it is. So they're, they're [00:11:00] like, Oh my God, I need a job. They wait until they get into a desperate situation. And then they're like, they're just, they're shedding all this stuff, making it worse, getting themselves tanked in terms of reputation and all kinds of things. So I just think, and it's, I've made this mistake too. I think you can make this mistake as a business owner. You can make this mistake as any person going for a goal. when you're going for a goal, is undeniably something that you want that you're trying to get. And so, and you have to be very determined to get that. So you're trying to make something happen, but if you lose sight of the other factor of the adding value first factor, leading with value, that's probably my favorite phrase [00:11:39] Donna Serdula: Yeah, [00:11:40] Isaiah Hankel: you lead with a lot of value and you've done this too, just in terms of content, even [00:11:47] Donna Serdula: yeah, [00:11:47] Isaiah Hankel: You'd be surprised on, on what effect that'll have, because it [00:11:51] Donna Serdula: yeah. [00:11:51] Isaiah Hankel: a value exchange The problem is, is that you have to probably lead with about 10 times as much value, if not more, than you want in return for the optics [00:12:00] of it for other people to see it as even equal. [00:12:02] Donna Serdula: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's that excellence, right? It's it's really saying, how, you know, how can I, how can I differentiate myself, especially now, with all of the noise that's out there? But also, you know, it's it's how can I use these tools to in a smart way, right? Because we now have, you know, chat GPT. How can, how can, how can I use that to write that review? You know, maybe rather than say, just write me a recommendation, maybe really go in there and, and, and write it yourself. Put as much effort, put as much detail into it and then say, clean this up. [00:12:41] Isaiah Hankel: Yeah, if you had to, I mean, if you had somebody, if you're looking for a job, to go back to that example, and you actually got somebody to talk to you about the role, maybe did an informational review, a lot of people will send like a little message saying thank you for that, and then maybe ask for something like a referral, but very few people will go to that person's page, write them a huge, a long note on LinkedIn, thanking [00:13:00] them for their time and how amazing this person was. As like a reviewer that could stay on their page for years, [00:13:05] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:13:05] Isaiah Hankel: can also be good for you to be on this person's page for years, really. [00:13:08] Donna Serdula: Oh yeah. [00:13:09] Isaiah Hankel: but we don't think of that. I tell people I saw a study. It was one of the first blog articles I wrote. I would say maybe it was like five years ago the thing that's the most impactful that stood out the most to hiring managers. [00:13:26] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:13:28] Isaiah Hankel: letter or card after an interview, something like increase their chances of getting the job offer, like 80 percent insane. Like once you got to that interview level [00:13:38] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:13:38] Isaiah Hankel: and I talked to most people, they never think to send anything. And today's it's easier. There's, there's like apps, like handwritten is the one I recommend affiliation with it. But basically you type in whatever the message is, person will write it by hand and then mail it for like three, 4. [00:13:52] Donna Serdula: Oh my goodness. [00:13:54] Isaiah Hankel: It's incredible. And I'm like, but are still, people are also tactile. I think there's [00:14:00] something here we're not talking about too, which is, do you remember when like Amazon and eBooks first came out everybody was like, oh my gosh, eBooks are going to take, there's not going to be any physical books. There was talk of being no physical [00:14:10] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:14:11] Isaiah Hankel: but [00:14:12] Donna Serdula: There is. They're still there. [00:14:14] Isaiah Hankel: 50. Still right to this day, it's really evened out 50 50 about half of booksellers or eBooks half or audio books and then half are actual physical books because people are tactile. So when you send somebody something tactile. It is such a huge differentiator [00:14:27] Donna Serdula: Yeah. [00:14:28] Isaiah Hankel: Anything. [00:14:29] Donna Serdula: You know, a guy sent to me, so he used my LinkedIn headline generator [00:14:34] Isaiah Hankel: Yep. [00:14:34] Donna Serdula: he did the, he did something I've never seen before. I've never seen it since. It was so amazing to me. Impressive. What this, what this guy did is he had a little piece of like stationary paper and it was really cute. Like I don't, I can't remember what was at the top. It was like a cat. with yarn or something. It was just, but his last name had like cat in it. So it all sort of, you know, played [00:14:59] Isaiah Hankel: [00:15:00] makes sense. [00:15:00] Donna Serdula: and he wrote a handwritten note. He said, dear Donna, in the most beautiful cursive handwriting, dear Donna, thank you so much for your LinkedIn headline generator. This free tool absolutely helped me level up my presence. I'm seeing a difference. I really appreciate it. Um, and uh, you know, I just want to let you know that You know, thank you from the bottom of my heart. He sincerely writes his name. Now, this is what, this was the interesting part. He put it on this thing that kind of like held it and he took a picture and he emailed it to me. So via email I got this letter from him [00:15:39] Isaiah Hankel: Wow. [00:15:40] Donna Serdula: and you know, it was a great way of melding the tactical that, you know, the fact that he sat down and he did it, but then he emailed it to me because he didn't know my address, you know, but I thought that's an interesting way to do it. But everything about it was quality. The picture, [00:16:00] the way it was taken, you know, the background of the image, just his handwriting. It was, there was effort. There was effort, even though it was emailed. There was effort. [00:16:10] Isaiah Hankel: And you're talking about it to this day, which I think everybody listening needs to realize because I still remember from, from decade plus ago that people sent about how a book or a blog article or something you did a presentation changed their life, like a very detailed email and you're like, Oh my God, I'm actually something I'm doing on earth is making a difference. So you carry that with you [00:16:31] Donna Serdula: Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:31] Isaiah Hankel: a lot. And, and I get that people, they think, well, nobody's doing that for me. Right. So why should I do that? But I, and I'm sure you did too, had to do that a bunch before you ever had anybody do that back to you. Like I had to do exactly this yarn thing. You just told me my very first book deal came because I stood on my head in front of this person's book. They had put a blog article about standing on a head to do whatever. So I stood, I took a picture of myself doing a headstand in front of their book, reading their book upside down. Send it to this author who is a [00:17:00] best selling author. They saw this, they commented back. It was on Twitter. This is like, again, 2012. Invited me to event that they had. I had to fly to like the UK for it. Invited me to this event to meet these other publishers. Wiley happened to be there. Talked to Wiley there. Got the book deal there. All because I stood on my head literally in front of a book, sent a picture to somebody and then sent them thank you and how much I love their book. [00:17:26] Donna Serdula: It's. [00:17:26] Isaiah Hankel: Same kind of thing. [00:17:27] Donna Serdula: What very few people realize, now we know this, you go up, you speak in front of crowds, you know, you're, you're, you're, you do these podcasts. How often do people truly reach out? I'll do a presentation and I'll give them my phone number and I will say, call me and I mean it, call me if you have any questions. No one calls, no one calls, no one takes that step. I, I think, I think in their own minds, maybe it's their, you know, they're just focused on doing their own [00:18:00] thing where they think, Oh, they're inundated, they don't care. But I do believe, I mean, even in your own company, again, going back to career leadership, even in your own company, I bet they may have an open door policy, but no one takes that leadership team up on it. [00:18:18] Creating Your Dream 100 List --- [00:18:18] Isaiah Hankel: You know, there's uh, Russell Brunson, who I know you know too, has this concept of like the dream 100, the dream 1000, where you create this list of a hundred, a thousand people that are your dream people to connect with. And if you're looking for a job, this could be your thousand dream companies or [00:18:33] Donna Serdula: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:35] Isaiah Hankel: companies you would love to connect with. Most people will never even make a list of those people. They will never sit down and actually make a list, let alone start going through that list. And that one thing, having any sort of Dream 100 list can, and then finding a way to add value to that, even if it's just through effort. one thing you can do to move your life to whatever new phase you're trying to get through, [00:18:56] Donna Serdula: Yeah. Love it. Love it. I think so. So the [00:19:00] takeaway is create that dream 100 list. [00:19:03] Isaiah Hankel: That's right. [00:19:03] Conclusion and Farewell --- [00:19:03] Donna Serdula: Thank you so much for today. Bye. Bye.