As the various foreign-language translations of The Go-Giver make their way into their various marketplaces, we are starting to hear from readers from around the world, and the more we do, the more we see confirmation of this basic truth: Human beings are human beings.

Bob and I are always delighted when we hear news from distant parts of the world about ways our little book has helped people and added value to their lives. What is even more delightful is how familiar that feedback tends to be.

“I have read your book Go-Giver and it has changed my way of thinking and doing business. I am going to buy 25 copies of your book to give it to all my staff because it does make a lot of sense and we all have to act toward it.” — Waleed Hamad, Director of I.T., Al-Ahli Hospital, Doha, Qatar

“All the way out here in Cape Town, South Africa, I am probably your ten millionth reader who has just finished reading your amazing Go-Giver. And all I want to say is, thank you!” — Maggie Casewell, Capetown

“The word giving is my biggest lesson in life and by reading your book we become friends, even though we haven’t meet yet, because finding friends is easy, but finding mind-friends it’s a gift. Thank you for giving me a great moment, reading your book felt so deep and heart inspiring, especially for a young man like me how looking every day to higher my own mind standard.” — Eitan Azaria, Israel

“I’ve made posters for my office wall with the points I need to remember. Tomorrow, our staff are all stopping work to listen to The Go-Giver. A new staff member starts Tuesday and his induction will commence with The Go-Giver. My husband already has a copy of The Go-Giver organised to give to another businessman he talks to. This is not something we can keep to ourselves.” — Tricia Velthuizen, Australia

“Good day! I am a reader of Go-Giver. Thanks for your sharing of such great idea. I love your book and will act the principles in live.” — Arain Yu Yan Wai, Hong Kong

Even when from widely disparate cultures, and with different customs and languages, those traits, aspects and experiences we share in common are vastly more in evidence than those that separate us.

People are people.

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There are so many ways to give, from donating money and volunteering to devoting time and attention to a worthy cause. Another way to give is encouragement — simple, imaginative, thoughtful encouragement — especially to those who need it most.

A great example is my friend Maralene Strom, who is business counselor for Supported Self-Employment, an agency serving adults with disabilities.

One day while shopping, Maralene was approached by a woman she had never met but who knew one of her clients, Brenda. The woman thanked Maralene for giving Brenda motivation and instilling self-confidence in her.

Brenda, who has a cognitive disability, had begun her own cleaning company, Little Dynamo, which is also Maralene’s nickname for her. Brenda wanted to show Maralene one of her poems but hesitated, saying, “No one thinks they are any good.” Maralene encouraged her to go ahead, and she read the poem.

“She doesn’t write rhyming poems,” says Maralene, “but they are still very good. This one was called The Storm.”

Maralene found a picture of a storm, put it on PowerPoint slide along with the poem, which she reformatted, taking care to include Brenda’s name as author and added a © copyright symbol. Says Maralene:

“You cannot believe how proud she was to see it printed and in a frame. She cried. Since then she’s written several more, and I’ve let her select which photo to put with each one.

“She wrote one about the Special Olympics, which she had won; I combined it with a picture of her gold medal, printed it out and framed it. We made a big deal of her presenting it to the director of Special Olympics — took pictures and everything.

“The director told her that the next newsletter would have the picture and poem in it. She was so thrilled, and I told her, ‘Yay, you, are now published!’”

What a wonderful bit of encouragement. So simple, so easy to do—and that’s all Brenda needed to dig deeper into the depths of her being and continue to create. Maralene’s adding value to her through encouragement has now allowed the “Little Dynamo” to add even more value to the world.

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The First Law of Stratospheric Success in The Go-Giver is “The Law of Value.” While John and I say it’s providing more in value than you take in payment, that simply means to make the customer experience so magnificent (remember Ernesto’s explanation of the three types of restaurants) that he or she will be blown away, want to come back, and tell all of his or her friends why they should buy from you, as well.

That doesn’t mean it has to cost you any more more money. Though, it might cost you a bit of thought (and that always pays dividends).

The owners of smaller, independently owned local businesses often complain about the bigger chains coming to town. “After all,” they ask, “how can I compete against their prices?”

Well, you probably can’t. But, as business-building expert and turnaround specialist Rebel Brown teaches us in one of her latest blog posts, you can complete – and win – on value.

Take the advice Rebel shares from the proprietor of that fourth “Ma & Pa Gas Station” and find a way to make yourself that added value.

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Not long ago, writer and minister Rev. Christine Green, who wrote a wonderful post about “Releasing Scarcity” on her blog “Empowered Thoughts,” wrote a brief review of The Go-Giver:

This is a great little book with a powerful message. A very clever way to talk about universal principles. I found it to be a great message for anyone on their spiritual journey. The authors not only give the principle but demonstrate how to put it into action. Great read!

Bob, Fiona and I all happened to find the blog and write comments thanking her. Rev. Christine wrote me this note:

Dear John,

I have recommended many books but never had the author actually write back to comment! Thank you for your kind words.

You will be thrilled to hear how I was given the book. After having coffee with one of the members of my women’s group, she said she had a gift for me. I walked to her car and she opened a box from Amazon filled with your books. Said it made such an impact she plans to give them to friends and clients. I plan to do the same. Thanks for taking the time to write.

I wrote back and told Rev. Christine that I would love to know who was this mystery woman with the Amazon box. She told me: it was a Portland realtor named Kate Eskew.

So I wrote to Kate and thanked her, and she wrote back:

Hi, John!

What a treat to hear from you. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. And the story really begins with my business coach, Garrett Frey.

Garrett and his wife Sarah have a coaching business that they run together. They are on their way to great things. They sent The Go Giver to their clients for Christmas last year.

It incubated on my shelf for a couple of months and then I picked it up and devoured it one weekend. It was just the message I needed at the time. And I’ve turned the laws into affirmations that I read every day.

So (can you guess what’s coming next?) I wrote to Garret and Sarah Frey to thank them. Here is Garrett’s reply:

The book was originally given to me by my mentor and friend Larry Kendall. He is connected with The Group, Inc. in Fort Collins, Colorado, and also the developer of “Ninja Selling.” He put the book into my hands about a year and a half ago, and I have been sharing it ever since.

I have given out over 90 copies of your book the The Go-Giver, and every time I give it out, they love it. Thanks for writing something that is changing the lives of the people around the world.

Can you see where this is going?

So I wrote to Larry Kendall, and thanked him for passing the book on, and here’s what we heard back a few days later:

The viral marketing of your book is truly amazing! I was given a copy by a friend and top producing realtor in Denver named Bruce Dunning. Bruce is also a Ninja-trained salesperson and teacher. Bruce was in the hospital with life-threatening heart surgery when someone gave him The Go-Giver. Bruce said the book changed his perspective and his life.

The first time I saw him after he got out of the hospital, Bruce gave me a copy of the book. I have since given away dozens of copies of the book and promote it in my classes. It is a classic.

Needless to say, we straightaway wrote to Bruce, to ask him the identity of this mysterious benefactor who first gave him the book. This time the answer came back within hours:

My oldest son, Robin Dunning, works at our local Barnes and Noble. He lets me know when new business books come in. I asked him if he had seen anything new come in, and he said yes, they just received a shipment.

I was looking for something to read while I was laid up in the hospital. I was being told I could be on the sidelines from work from two to four months. I knew that would drive me nuts unless I kept my mind busy. So I bought The Go-Giver and read it while I was in the hospital.

I want you to know that after I got home and wasn’t on drugs, I reread it, just to be sure of what I had read. I was back to work in ten days.

It really hit home. I had just started a small real estate company. I felt these were the eternal principles that all businesses are based on, so the Five Strategies became our guiding principles. I have given out about a dozen of these to friends and family.

Thanks again for awakening my heart of hearts.

So there you have it: from Robin Dunning to his dad Bruce, to Larry Kendall, to Garrett and Sarah Frey, to Kate Eskew, to Reverend Christine . . . to you.

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Over the past twenty months, our readers have come up with some pretty creative ways to explain and apply the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success. But I think you just have to give Heather O credit here: her recent post, The Go-Giver, The Grateful Dead and Social Networking puts things together in a way that, well, would not have occurred to me.

Who would have thought that Jerry Garcia had been to the stone mansion, sat at Pindar’s knee and heard his Condition?

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Law #3 of The Go-Giver is The Law of Influence, which says, “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.” Sometimes, however, things - be they attitudes or pre-judgments - get in the way of our doing that, don’t they?

In this wonderful article by our friend, Gil Namur, we”ll learn how he corrected a mistake and ended up being humbled by an angel.

When you read the article, you’ll notice that both of them were ultimate Go-Givers via their final exchange; each giving as much in value to the other as possible and – as a result – both reaping rewards far and above what they gave.

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Chelle O’Connell, a new friend who just read The Go-Giver, writes in with this observation:

After 25 years of marriage, I realized that there is more than one meaning for the word “listen.”

My ex-husband frequently said, “You aren’t listening to me.” I would ask for his advice or input, and if I didn’t do as he recommended, he would say I hadn’t “listened.” What he really meant was that I hadn’t obeyed him.

When we say someone isn’t listening to us, we need to step back a moment and ask ourselves, “Is it the word listen or is it really the word obey that I am using?”

In your book, Susan was using the word “listen” in its true sense.

Beautiful insight! It’s quite true: people often have very different interpretations of what “listen” means, just as they often give very different meanings to the words “agree,” “disagree,” “talk,” “respect,” and many others.

But listening may well be one of the most underdeveloped muscles in modern culture.

Yesterday I interviewed Duane Elgin, author of The Living Universe and Voluntary Simplicity, and in the course of our talk Duane cited a source (I cannot remember the source, though it’s in my notes somewhere; if you want to know it, feel free to email me, and once I dig it up I’ll send it to you) who said that awareness and love were two words for the same thing.

If that’s so, then listening must be the beginning of loving.

What a great way to approach the world — and how sad not to.

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Imagine a man who spends his time reading books filled with golden nuggets of wisdom. Not hard to imagine that. But wait.

Let’s say he then dissects those books, extracts those wisdom-filled nuggets, provides his own commentary, and sends it to you in a weekly email. Okay, not real hard to imagine. Hang on.

Then let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that he charges a very modest price of $45 for 104 of his brilliant summaries (that’s two per week). While that’s a truly great price for a lot of truly great quality, it’s still not particularly difficult to imagine.

But now picture this: guess what he does with all that money? He gives it away. All of it.

Hard to imagine? You don’t have to, because it’s all true. His name is Colin Lewis. We love this guy, and in fact, everyone we know who knows this guy loves this guy.

Colin is a European entrepreneur who lives in Poland and does great things for this world. If 100 percent of the monies he brings in from his WisdomNotes project didn’t go to orphans via the Chiva Foundation (which Colin and his wife recently established with a $55,000 contribution of their own), we’d still recommend subscribing. His WisdomNotes are that good.

But the fact is, it does.

So, here’s a win/win: click here and subscribe for just $45, and you will receive the benefit of Colin’s remarkable wisdom summaries—and be supporting some terrific and needful kids at the same time.

It’s a very Rachel’s Famous Coffee Foundation sort of thing he’s doing, don’t you think?

This world has so many Go-Givers. We’re very proud to know this particular one.

P.S. The book’s Colin has already succinctly and beautifully summarized in WisdomNote editions include Man’s Search for Meaning, Tao Te Ching, The Letters of Seneca, Think and Grow Rich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Wisdom of Heraclitus, A New Earth, Happy for No Reason, The Success Principles, Joseph Campbell Companion, The Magic of Thinking Big, The Writings of Emerson, The Diamond Cutter, The Prophet, Walden … and a few dozen others. The man has been busy.

P.P.S. Colin recently honored us by reviewing The Go-Giver in a special edition of his WisdomNotes. He has made the review available as a gift for all our Go-Giver buds. You can download it here.

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Thanks, everyone, for your comments on that last post!

The point that I would make in reply to Vickie’s fascinating review is this:

The idea that one could possibly calculate which are the “right” people to give to in order to get the “right” results is so far-fetched as to be completely impractical. How would you know? You wouldn’t. Because events work in mysterious and unpredictable ways.

The “choose the right people to give to” strategy isn’t how things work in real life. And it’s not even how it works in the story. Ernesto didn’t give his phenomenal hot-dog-stand service only to customers who were obviously affluent or well-connected. He gave phenomenal service to everyone, kids included.

And when Joe gave that lead away to a competitor, he wholeheartedly believed that it not only would do him no good whatsoever, but if anything he was hurting his business.

And truth to tell, we didn’t really make this up. We’ve both seen this kind of thing happen again and again in the course or ordinary life.

So, how do you know when an act of giving will turn out to be to your benefit? You don’t. Happily, you don’t need to. Because if you give unconditionally, if you simply adopt a habit of living with generosity, the “right” people will find you.

At least that’s how we see it.

Let the comments commence!

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Legal columnist and former trial lawyer Victoria Pynchon wrote a fascinating review of The Go-Giver that included some wonderful insights.

For example, the review starts right out by referring to the book as, “The Go-Giver: A Guide to a Life Lived Richly.” What a great way of holding the book’s message!

Victoria also makes a point or two with which I respectfully (and I mean that) disagree. See what you think:

”Unfortunately, as a guide to financial success, The Go-Giver is more fairy tale than instruction manual. All of the business icons Joe visits ascribe their riches to acts of authentic generosity. It is apparent from the context in which these stories arise, however, that the key here is neither virtue nor the inherent satisfaction to be found in giving.

“The key is choosing the right people to give to — those with wealth, monied connections or the power to create economic opportunities for others.

“If we are moved to visit shut-ins; bring recovery meetings to incarcerated felons; or make micro-loans to third-world entrepreneurs, this book is not for us. This is focused giving and the focus is on the ‘haves,’ not the ‘have nots.’”

To me, there is a flaw in this logic and its conclusion—but before I yammer on about it, I’d love to know what you think.

Is Victoria right about this? And if not, why not?

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