The Go-Giver Marriage
A Little Story About the 5 Secrets to Lasting Love
“To say love is what makes a marriage work is like saying it takes oxygen to climb a mountain. Yes, oxygen is necessary. But not sufficient.”
A position has opened up at the top of the multinational giant Rachel’s Famous Coffee, and Tom desperately wants the job. To gain the position, he must first go through a series of interviews with the company’s top executives, including its eccentric CFO, Jeremiah.
Tom’s wife, Tess, is facing her own challenges. The couple first met on the job, where Tess was a rising star—until her career was put on hold by the birth of a son with special needs. The trauma and heartbreak of the past six years has put tremendous stress on their marriage. Now, Tess has learned that her best friend Amy is getting a divorce. Could she and Tom be drifting in the same direction? The thought leaves her stomach in knots.
But Tom and Tess are about to have a transformational day. Over the next few hours, they will each learn from a wise cast of characters (including some surprise guests from previous Go-Giver stories) about five powerful secrets to building a love that lasts.
Over the years since the original Go-Giver’s publication, the term “go-giver” has become shorthand for a defining set of values that has helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world find greater professional success. Now, with its charming fable-within-a-parable, followed by an in-depth practical guide, The Go-Giver Marriage brings the personal side of The Go-Giver to life.
The Go-Giver
A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
“Most people just laugh when they hear that the secret to success is
giving . . . Then again, most people are nowhere near as successful as
they wish they were.”
The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. And so one day, desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees simply as the Chairman.
Over the next week, Pindar introduces Joe to a series of “go-givers”: a restaurateur, a CEO, a financial adviser, a real estate broker, and the “Connector,” who brought them all together. Pindar’s friends share with Joe the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and teach him how to open himself up to the power of giving.
Joe learns that changing his focus from getting to giving—putting others’ interests first continually adding to their lives—ultimately leads to unexpected returns.
Imparted with wit and grace, The Go-Giver is a heartwarming and inspiring tale that brings new relevance to the old proverb “Give and you shall receive.”
The Go-Giver Leader
A Little Story About What Matters Most in Business
“I met last week with your leaders,” Ben began. “I heard what they had to say. And you know, they make a good point.” He paused. Take charge, Ben, he told himself. Take control. He looked around the conference room. Take, take, take. Was that really what he was here to do?
Allen & Augustine has manufactured high-quality chairs for decades. Its people take pride in their work and feel loyal to their owners and management team. But this long-revered company is now at a crossroads, hurt by a tough economy, foreign competition, and a cash crunch. The air is filled with the scent of uncertainty, anxiety, perhaps even panic.
Into this setting enters Ben, who’s been assigned by a larger firm to promote a merger that will rescue Allen & Augustine. Ben’s facts are undeniable: the chairmaker can either merge and modernize or go bankrupt and vanish. So why can’t he convince anyone to buy in, from the CEO on down?
During his week at the company, as Ben gets to know its people and meets with its top executives, he begins to realize that his aggressive style is actually making it harder to reach his goals. As one character puts it, “How far can you push a rope?”
Will Ben find a way to sway the employee shareholders before the climactic vote? And can Allen & Augustine survive without losing its soul? The answers may surprise you, as you follow Ben on his journey to understanding that the path to genuine influence lies less in taking leadership than in giving it.
The Go-Giver Influencer
A Little Story About a Most Persuasive Idea
“All of this,” said the Coach, “negotiation, solving problems, winning in business, is about influence. If you want to persuade, don’t box the other person into a corner, where they feel they have to agree with your point of view. Because then they never will. Always leave a back door open.”
The Go-Giver Influencer is a story about two young, ambitious businesspeople: Gillian Waters, the chief buyer for Smith & Banks, a midsized company that operates a national chain of pet accessory stores; and Jackson Hill, the founder of Angels Clothed in Fur, a small but growing manufacturer of all-natural pet foods.
Each has something the other wants. To Jackson, Smith & Banks represents the possibility of reaching more animals with his products—if he can negotiate terms and conditions that will protect his company’s integrity. To Gillian, Angels Clothed in Fur could give her company a distinctive, uniquely high-quality line that will help them stand out from their competitors—if Angels Clothed in Fur can be persuaded to give them an exclusive.
At first, the negotiations are adversarial and frustrating. Then, coincidentally, Gillian and Jackson each encounter a mysterious yet kindly mentor. Over the next week, while neither one realizes the other is doing the same, both Gillian and Jackson learn the heart of both mentors’ philosophies: The Five Secrets of Genuine Influence.
The story ends in a way that surprises everyone—and with lessons we can all apply in our efforts to resolve conflicts and influence others.
Go-Givers Sell More
“The great upside-down misconception about sales is that it is an effort to get something from others. The truth is that sales at its best—at its most effective—is precisely the opposite: it is about giving.”
With their national bestseller The Go-Giver, Bob Burg and John David Mann took the business world by storm, showing that giving is the most fulfilling and effective path to success. That simple, profound story has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers around the world—but some have wondered how its lessons stand up to the tough challenges of everyday real-world business.
Now Burg and Mann answer that question in Go-Givers Sell More, a practical guide that makes giving the cornerstone of a powerful and effective approach to selling.
Most of us think of sales as convincing potential customers to do something they don’t really want to. This mentality sets up an adversarial relationship and makes the sales process much harder than it has to be.
As Burg and Mann demonstrate, it’s far more productive (and satisfying) when salespeople think like Go-Givers. Cultivate a trusting relationship and focus exclusively on creating value for the other person, say the authors, and great results will follow automatically.
Drawing on a wide range of examples of real-life salespeople who have prospered by giving more, Burg and Mann offer tips and strategies that anyone in sales can start applying right away.
A Teacher’s Guide to the Go-Giver
“As educators, we ultimately are called to improve the world through our students. The Go-Giver and this Teacher’s Guide will assist us in that noble calling!” — Tim O. Peterson, PhD, associate dean and professor of management, North Dakota State University
Over the years we have seen a steady stream of educators using The Go-Giver in their classes, with students at every level from high school to graduate school. The demand for an organized curriculum guide finally became so strong we decided to team up with high school educator Randy Stelter and produce one ourselves.
Randy picked the book up shortly after its publication in 2007, and began using it to help enhance his students’ perspective on “what it’s going to take to be successful in the real world.” He has taken his school’s senior class through the book every year since. In 2015, Randy worked together with Go-Giver coauthors Bob Burg and John David Mann to create this Teacher’s Guide, a detailed lesson plan that includes vocabulary lists, assigned readings, questions for comprehension and critical thinking, extensive topics for class discussion, and a set of final projects designed to deepen students’ understanding of the book and to ground its lessons in their own everyday experience.
Designed as a high school curriculum, the Guide’s content and approach can also be readily adapted for use by college professors in higher-education settings.