Hello readers, this is Mike Neilan one of the Co-Founders. I’m excited to share this post with you about something that not many people do, but many more people should be doing. 

Do you know who Gary Vaynerchuk is? If not, check him out! He is a social entrepreneur and CEO of a digital agency called VaynerMedia. They work with some of the biggest brands in the world such as Toyota, Pepsi, Budweiser, Chase Bank, and more. 

Anyway, a few months ago I was watching some of Gary’s YouTube videos and he was talking about a theme that he had brought up many times in previous videos. This theme was about giving without expectation from the other person. In this one video I watched, he talked about how important and how much it means to give rather than take. Too many people in business just go straight for the “take” meaning they ask for someone else’s business or ask for something. ‘Will you buy my book? Watch my video, sign up for my course, etc.” 

This is an example of the theme of giving he talks about. The video I saw he specifically mentioned giving something away for free just to be nice and to create a general awareness for your brand. So I followed the advice. That day I posted on social media and to my WeWork page, “Like and share this picture and I will pick a few people to give a free print to” I ran it for a day or two, picked a few people and shipped them their pictures. A week later I got an email from one of the people who got a free print. She said “Hi Mike, I got my picture today, it’s beautiful! Thank you so much for doing this. I see that you do video work. I am the CEO of a marketing company and we need some video content for our website. Is this something you could help us with?” I sure could.

2 months later, my partner Mike and I were on the 8th floor of the WeWork office by South Station in Boston, MA shooting video of 3 marketing presentations setup by that CEO. The CEO I’m referring to is a woman named Lori Richardson from a company called Score More Sales. In her opening to the presentations, she gave the audience a first tip and sure enough, it was about giving. Check out the video below.

Lori brought up the exact story I just told you and explained how well it can work and how it can really separate your business from others. Now Lori wants to do more of these marketing presentations and have us shoot those as well.

Food for thought. Don’t go right for the ask, try giving and see how it can work for you. You never know.

Have a great day and as always, if you have any questions for us or just want to introduce yourself, don’t hesitate to shoot us a note at hi@focusforwardmedia.com!