Could This Person Reciprocate Today

I think a lot of business longevity comes down to being a good person.

Part of what I think being a good person is, is being generous. So I think we should be generous anyway, because it makes us good people, and that’s reason enough on its own.

But I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t also make business sense. It does.

I just think the way most of the industry goes about it means they end up with neither.

Because when I look at coaches trying to be generous - whether that’s genuinely well-meaning, or whether it’s because someone told them it’s good for business - it’s almost always aimed at the buyer.

They offer things like discounts, they over-deliver, they might give bonuses, throwing in extra calls to help people. All of this is pointed at people who are already paying them.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s still generous.

But I’ve always believed that true generosity is about being generous with people who are out of power and who can’t do anything for you.

A simple question to test - Could this person reciprocate today?

If the answer is yes, and that’s part of why you’re doing it - it’s probably not ‘true’ generosity.

I’ve spent quite a few years helping people early on in their nutrition careers, whenever they’ve asked for help or a call etc I’ll always try and help out.

That isn’t some kind of funnel - because I think it’s the right thing to do, and because I think it makes the industry better.

But I’d be lying if I told you it hadn’t come back.

It has. I know it’s had a real effect on my business over the years and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Which brings me to the part I think most people get wrong.

Plenty of coaches do give freely to people who aren’t buying anything. It’s called content - top of funnel stuff.

So it isn’t really about who’s receiving it.

It’s about what you’re expecting back, and when.

If there’s a campaign running and you’re being generous into it, that’s an acquisition cost.

And I think that’s the actual line.

Not whether there’s a return - I’ve just told you there’s a return.

It’s whether there’s a date on it.

Expecting something back eventually is honest.

Expecting it back by Friday is probably more for your marketing.

The reason that distinction matters is that the two build different things.

When somebody is out of power or in trouble, very few people are willing to help.

So the ones who do show up get burned into the memory of the person they helped, in a way that nobody who turned up during a launch ever will.

And the only way to build one of those relationships is to spend time with someone when there was nothing in it.

There’s no shortcut through it, and there’s no version you can run in a fortnight.

So by all means, do everything you can to make it better for the person buying from you.

But if you show up for people when there’s nothing in it for you, generally that’s the time when there is something in it for you.