In part 2 of my interview with the incredible Chris Jarvis, author of Be the Giraffe: 14 Paths to Reach Higher in Business and Life, we continue our deep dive into the key lessons from his book and explore even more strategies for elevating both your personal and professional life. Here are a few key takeaways that I know will resonate with you:
Embrace Adaptability
Chris emphasizes the power of adaptability in business and life. He shares how evolving his business model to meet clients’ changing needs opened doors to new opportunities and innovative solutions. It’s a reminder that success isn’t about sticking to one rigid path—it’s about staying open to change and finding the best path for you.
Identify Your Unique Value
One of the most powerful insights from our conversation is the importance of understanding what makes you uniquely valuable. Chris recommends reaching out to former colleagues or clients and asking, “What was it like working with me?” This feedback helps reveal your strengths and the distinct value you bring, enabling you to position yourself better in the market and confidently charge for your worth.
Be Intentional with Your Time
Chris talks about the importance of being deliberate with how we spend our time. He shares a strategy of setting clear goals and measuring every opportunity against them. This approach allows us to prioritize tasks and eliminate distractions that don’t serve our objectives. For entrepreneurs feeling overwhelmed, focusing on what truly matters leads to greater success and fulfillment.
I invite you to listen to this episode and think about how these insights can be applied to your life and business. Chris’s advice goes beyond motivation—it offers practical, actionable steps that can create real change. Don’t miss this powerful conclusion to our two-part conversation!
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Transcript:
Amberly Lago:
Welcome to the Amberly Lago Show, Stories of True Grit and Grace.
Amberly Lago: Thank you for tuning in to the Amberly Lago Show. We are back with the one and only Chris Jarvis, and we are going to get into his book, Be the Giraffe. We’re going to get into some questions this episode. So thank you for hanging out with us and being here. I’m so excited for people to learn from you. And we also have a studio audience and questions that will be asked in this episode as well.
Chris Jarvis: Sounds like fun.
Amberly Lago: Yeah, I want to get right into questions for the book because I love that you use the analogy of a giraffe and just how to be different as a business, how to be different in life. So I want to go into what made you decide to be the giraffe? How does that set you apart in business?
Chris Jarvis: So the name of the book is Be the Giraffe, and it’s 14 Paths to Reach Higher in Business and Life. And the idea is there’s 14 cool stories about the giraffe. They’re relatively short, but they’ll be things you didn’t know. And then how do you apply that in your personal life to get more out of life? And how do you apply it in business to get more out of business? And this whole idea in business is people want to reach out. They want to reach higher. They want to stand out. They want to be seen. They want to get to new heights. It just makes sense. And so this book was something I started four years ago, five years ago, I got 70% of it done. a matter of weeks, and then it sat there for four years until I had a moment where I was asked, because I had a bunch of business opportunities and a bunch of books and a bunch of different things I was working on, and I can remember being asked, which one, if you didn’t get to it, would you truly feel was the greatest regret in your life if you died without doing it? And it was writing this book.
Amberly Lago: Wow.
Chris Jarvis: And so I finished it. I mean, I’ve done 19 books. It’s by far the best of all of them. It’s the one that will sell a million copies. It’s the one that will be taught in colleges.
Amberly Lago: And it’s the one that’s on audible too. So I love listening to audible books and it’s on audible. So y’all go out and get it on audible as well. Um, I love the lessons in the book. Can we talk about some of the different lessons like that? You have 14 paths. And can we talk, I know we won’t get to all of them, but can we get to some of those today? So entrepreneurs who are listening to the show, who are struggling because you shared something in your interview with Jack Canfield, who you’re great friends with. about how you were an entrepreneur and in this business and really miserable. And I know there’s a lot of people out there that are struggling. They’re not happy. They feel like, you know, they are just a prisoner to what they do. And how can they get out of that and start to enjoy what they do?
Chris Jarvis: It’s a lot of questions. Okay. So I know it’s a lot. In last week’s episode, we talked about the first chapter of the book is getting your head out of the weeds and stopping to ask, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? What are you getting out of your effort? And does that still serve you? And that was last, that was what we talked about. And what’s really important for me was I built a business that I thought was, because I had been kicked out of a previous business, I started again in my 40s back to ground zero, had nothing. And I built a business, but the business became something different. There was a lot of work that wasn’t the stuff I didn’t like doing. It wasn’t serving me. I needed to build a company to actually have some money so I could live, so I could raise my family, so I could survive. So I started it when I was truly in survival mode. And then I was making a lot of money, but my life was, it was hard. We had, it was a tax practice. 85% of our work happened in November and December. So I would work 18 hour days in November and December. Maybe more. I petitioned my family twice to move Christmas to January. Both times they said no. In both years, I worked on Christmas Eve and worked Christmas night. I’d come back in the office. So I was like, this just isn’t working. Yeah. And so I realized that I built a business, but the business was also so reliant on me that it wasn’t marketable. So I needed to get out of the business, but I had had an investor who invested in me when I was, when I had nothing. So I didn’t want to shut the down, shut down the business and have my investor lose money. So I said, I have to build this to sell it, to pay them back. So at least I have the good karma of not He would have been happy if I just shut it down, but I was like, no, I’m going to, I’m going to get you out of this thing. Yeah. And I worked really hard for two years to sell the business, pay him back half a million dollars. You invested me plus another million bucks.
Amberly Lago: Well, where does somebody start when they have a business and they realize the business only. succeeds if you’re in it, how do you start to exit out of that?
Chris Jarvis: I mean… Right. So there are a couple of things. One, I knew I needed to put systems in place that would work without me. That was really important. So I needed to do the things that are not… For an entrepreneur, systems and processes are not exciting. But those are the things that let you scale. So you have to pull yourself back, hire people who can actually do tasks so it’s not so reliant on me. Because if it’s reliant on me, no one’s going to buy it unless I stay in it. So then I’m in the same role and I don’t have any control and that’s hell. So I had to put, hire people, systems and controls, and I had to focus on growing the company. So we had very specific goals. Literally, we had three goals for the next year and a half. And we started every single meeting with reiterating what our company’s three goals were.
Amberly Lago: Wow, that’s important.
Chris Jarvis: Every single meeting started.
Amberly Lago: So what did you say? What did you say when you would start the meeting?
Chris Jarvis: So the three goals were we want 25 new client, new corporate clients. When we said that we had seven, we only had, we had, we had nine, I’m sorry. So we had nine. We said, we’re going to get 25 more and these are clients paying between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars a year. So we said, we’re going to get 25 of them. We said, we’re going to do some personal financial planning and we’re going to generate, um, a million dollars of revenue from our own direct client stuff. And then we’re going to make a half million dollars a year working indirectly through other people. So we’ll support them on the back end. And we started every meeting with that. And then when we had an opportunity, a meeting, a cost, something, we asked ourselves, which of those three goals will this thing help us do? Or if we ignore this thing, which of these three goals will that hurt us? And if we didn’t know what that task would affect of our three goals, we just canceled it. Like what do we tell somebody? We’re not interested. But this person wants to meet, don’t have time. I can’t see how you help me with the three things I want. So I’m not taking the meeting. I’m not going out to your place. I’m not speaking at your conference. I’m not, unless I can see that it’s going to do one of these three things for me.
Amberly Lago: That is huge. And even before we started recording, you sat here and you talked with me and you were like, Hey, let’s do this episode and let’s see if we can get more people in your mastermind. Right. Like you were thinking about me and my business. Like you, from the get go, you had that intention of let’s see what we can do. Sure. That’s so important to start every call and also to eliminate the things that aren’t going to serve you.
Chris Jarvis: Right. We only have so much time. And so that’s what the wild factor, which everybody who gets the book, Be the Giraffe is going to take this wild factor. And I think in the show notes, everybody’s going to get it for free. It looks at your life from health, finances, career, relationship, and fun, and it grades your life in all five areas. And based on what score is highest, you’re going to be an elephant, an eagle, a monkey, a dolphin, a penguin. And it’s really fun. And if you want to know more, look in the show notes and take the quiz. And it’s free for you. But what I realized in this thing is that everything in life is a trade-off. And everything that we do, we could be doing a billion other things. So with this FOMO crap that people talk about, there’s seven, eight billion people on the planet. You can never, never know what’s going on with everybody. You’re always missing out on everything. People who are sitting here and watching this show right now, they could be at the gym, they could be taking a nap, they could be having dinner, they could be talking to any of the other eight billion people on the planet. There’s a lot to do. So whatever you’re gonna do, just be intentional about the thing that you’re doing. Really be in it and be present. I don’t know how you don’t be present because you can’t get to everything. So to spend my time half with you and half with something else, there’s so many other things. Do the thing, do it right. And focus on that and I found in business is such an important thing to piece things together and say let’s do the things that are intentional now that year we’d only had seven clients and we had made $250,000 with financial planning revenues the year before that next year we had we got 24 new corporate clients not 25 so we did fall short, but we quadrupled the size of our company and We did 1.7 million, not 1 million of revenues from our own financial services. And then with outside people, we did like 50,000 instead of 500. And we realized that working with outside people was taking up 70% of our time. So we literally took an entire business unit and 25 strategic partners we were under contract with and canceled all of them.
Amberly Lago: Oh, you’re kidding.
Chris Jarvis: Killed off an entire business unit that I had filed trademarks for, I had written books for, I had built out websites, I had, but it wasn’t serving us because it was, it was taking so much time. And so that’s, there’s a chapter in the book, avoid hyenas and lions, which are the predators and the scavengers in your life. Some of those are people who are negative and sometimes it means their products or their services or their markets you’re working in. So they just, if you looked at your business and said, how much time do you spend on everything you do? And I would say for business owners, look at everything you sell or everything, every service or product that you provide to people. How much time do you spend on it and how much profit do you get? And if you do that, it will jump right off the page that there’s some stuff you need to cut. Cause it’s a lot of time and it’s not a lot of money. Like you don’t need to offer everything. You can offer specific things that solve specific problems for specific people in specific situations and say, there’s some power in saying no to everything else. If you try to do everything for everyone, you will pretty much do nothing.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s so important to really take a look. And I think sometimes as an entrepreneur, when you’re, you get busy, you say busy, you get, well, what is it that you’re really, Working on what are your intentions and what do you need to get rid of I think that’s important and you know Sometimes you might upset some people.
Chris Jarvis: I know I have not sometimes You’re always going to if you thank you for saying that yeah, if you open your mouth You’re going to upset somebody and if you don’t upset anybody you’re not saying anything interesting or impactful
Amberly Lago: Yes, thank you for saying that. I remember the first time I got haters and I was so upset and my husband was like, congratulations. Yeah, you matter. Finally, finally, you’re getting your message out there. And I was like, oh, okay.
Chris Jarvis: Well, because if no one hates it, it isn’t interesting. That’s just the way it is. If it’s right down the middle of the fairway and it’s boring and it’s beige, then what’s the point? You’re not adding any value. And I’m not saying you should instigate you know, start fires everywhere, but takes aren’t going to be liked by everybody.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. Well, you talk a lot about taking risk. That’s part in your book as well. And so many, so often people are afraid to take risk. So how would you encourage someone to take more risk with what they’re doing with their business?
Chris Jarvis: So I said on the last episode that I don’t spend very much time on social media at all, which is true. There is one person I pay attention to. And I remember watching, he got a similar question to the one you just asked me. And the reason why people struggle is because they’re trying to be perfect. So they want to make three decisions. They want to have three posts. They want to have three books. So they want to have three of something, and they want to be 3-0. They want to have three wins and no losses. And so they’re very careful. And the guy’s name, I mean, Gary V is just, you know, he’s a friend of a friend. I have never met him. Um, but I love his pitch that he’s not trying to be three and oh, he said, I want to be a 118 wins and 97 losses. I want to make decisions. And then if I have 21 more successes than losses, I did better. But it’s that fear of making any mistake is you’re never going to get anything done. And there’s all kinds of cliches that Thomas Edison said. He learned 9,999 ways not to make a light bulb. He tried 10,000 times. And so you just have to try things and put yourself out. Like my financial firm now and the things that I’m doing with coaching entrepreneurs, it took so many changes over the last 25, 27 years. And I had a life changing conversation with a coach in January that I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to who’s spectacular.
Amberly Lago: Hey, thank you for saying that because I think it’s so important to even somebody with your success, you have a coach. I have a coach. I have a mastermind and I’m a part of another mastermind. I have a mentor and I mentor people. And I think that is very important. So I’m glad you touched on that. How important it is to have a coach, to have some guidance in what you’re doing.
Chris Jarvis: Completely. Well, you should be, And it sounds cliche. A third of the time you’re with people who are at your level and you’re working together. A third of the time you’re looking up and you’re in rooms that you don’t really belong in, that you’re trying to elevate your life. And a third of the time you’re giving back. And that’s a good one. Don’t forget where you came from, give back, spend some time. But if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room, as they say. So again, recently my life has changed dramatically. My fees went up 900% this year.
Amberly Lago: Your fees went up 900%?
Chris Jarvis: Because it was all value based because I had some issues about what’s time worth and I can remember a coach looking at me and saying, nobody cares what your time is worth.
Amberly Lago: Yeah.
Chris Jarvis: Except you.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. So how do you figure that out? Give me an example on how you figure that out as far as like your time.
Chris Jarvis: So really important questions when people, when business owners are talking to clients or coaches to clients or to your customers or whoever it is, the questions of what are you trying to accomplish is really important. What do you want to get out of this? It doesn’t matter what I have to sell in my briefcase. It’s what do you want? And then the next question, super important, what is it worth to you? If I don’t know what it’s worth to you, when I say to clients, what are we trying to accomplish? I wanna grow my company, I wanna sell it. Okay, why is that important to you? Just to get some context to see if the thing that they say they want is actually gonna deliver the outcome they want, because sometimes we’re confused or misguided. And then it’s, well, what is that worth to you? If you could grow your company, if you could increase sales, if you could expand, if you could hire people, if you could raise capital, if you could, If I know what it costs, I know that I can charge a percentage of what it costs. So my model with clients is a quarter for a dollar. You pay me a quarter, I will save or make you a dollar. And I tell people that’s my theory. And now I’m looking for people who have enough dollars worth of problems that make it worth my time to spend quarters worth of my time. And so I want people with with a million to $10 million problem so I can charge a quarter million to $2.5 million to help them solve it. But the quarter dollar thing is easy, whether you’re doing it with a quarter and a dollar or a quarter million and a million or a quarter billion and a billion. I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t trade a quarter for a dollar. So if we get the theme right, now it’s, well, what is this problem worth to you? And the bigger the problems you can solve, the more money you can make. So with millennials or younger generations that talk about wanting to be billionaires, I get asked all the time, what do you think of the younger generation all wanting to be rich? I don’t have any problem with them wanting to be rich. They don’t know the math though. It’s not about likes and follows and all this other stupidity. It’s about solutions provided. You can be a billionaire if you can create five to $10 billion of value for other people, whether it’s one person or it’s a dollar for 5 billion people, but you can take, you can take five to 20% of the value you create. But that’s it. Like, there’s no, like, that’s how it works. So go solve big problems. And big problems are either really big problems that are easily, um, identified, or there are things that like quant, really quantified, meaning a tax savings. For example, if I saved you $10 million in taxes, it’s obvious what that’s worth. But sometimes it might just be like, what would be, what would be worth to get rid of pain? Like if someone had something, you’d fly to all ends of the world to do that.
Amberly Lago: I flew to a different country. I had $2.9 million worth of medical expenses because I was like, okay, you say you can get rid of my pain. I’ll pay it, whatever it takes. It is providing that value. And I think so many millennials and so many people, they get caught up in the social media and the likes and the follows and all that. And it’s like, no, it’s it’s providing value. How much value can you give? And with that being said, we do have a someone in the studio audience, Tiffany. I would love for you to be able to ask a question to our guest today. So, Tiffany, do you have a question for our guest on the show?
Chris Jarvis: Is that a yes?
Amberly Lago: I do.
Amberly Lago: Yes. Put you on the spot. Okay. So,
Amberly Lago: I absolutely love that you guys also talk about how you have mentors and coaches also as you’re mentoring and coaching other people. Because one big thing for me I know is that my mind got me to where I’m at, so I need someone else to help get me to where I want to go. So I’m really grateful that you’re here. Financially, I definitely need some new direction and bigger heights to see something new. I don’t know what that looks like for me yet. And I’m here because I’m trying to discover that. And even hearing you talking, I’m like, what is my value that I can bring? I don’t know how to find that. So if someone’s stuck trying to figure out what is my value, what can I charge a quarter for to bring them a dollar?
Chris Jarvis: So good question. If you’re trying to figure out what you do, one way to start, as I did, was go back to people you’ve actually worked for in the past. I assume you’ve had a job at some point in your life. And so if you’ve had a job and you’ve done something or you’ve consulted with people, go back and ask those people, what was it like working with me? How was it different from other people? What did I give you? What did you get out of it? Or anytime someone calls you, ask the question, why did you call me? Some people often ask me, why should I hire you? It’s like, I don’t know, you just flew across the country and you’re sitting in my living room. You tell me. Like something happened before you got here that made you think that you’d get something out of the conversation. So they don’t have to fly to your house, but if someone is contacting you, why are you here? What is it about me that you think is different? Or what is it about your current situation you don’t like? So every decision for a client is based on pain or aspiration. Everything is based on pain or aspiration. Wow, I didn’t think of that. And so the pain always leads to the aspiration. So the aspiration can be to not have the pain. But if you can’t identify the pain or the aspiration, you are going to struggle mightily. So talk to people and figure out what’s bothering them. So when it comes to finances, the question becomes, well, what is it you want? I want more money. Okay, fine. Why? What do you think it’s going to do for you? Is it going to make you more attractive? Is it going to make your dad love you? Is it going to make your mom not dislike you? Is it going to solve, is it going to make the world, make you feel like you have purpose? Is it going to undo the pain of being bullied as a kid? Like some of the questions you get to the feeling is sometimes the aspiration that you have is not tied to a rational thing. And so when that happens, I try to stop and interrupt people to say, well, are we sure that this goal is going to get rid of that problem? Or is there a different way to solve the problem? but getting to clients of what is it you want? What are you happy with? What are you unhappy with? Just asking the questions and listening to the answers of what, whoever your clients are, what is it you don’t like? One of my favorite examples I teach is car buying experience, positive or negative for most people? Negative.
Amberly Lago: So- It’s positive for me. I just bought my daughter- Because you just write the check and you just buy the cars and not everybody- I just bought a truck for my daughter. Can I tell you something real exciting, too? Go ahead. Let me tell you something real quick.
Chris Jarvis: It’s your show. You get to derail everything you like.
Amberly Lago: Well, I just have to tell you all this because it’s a big thing. Not long ago, we had a lien on our house. I’d lost my career, $2.9 million worth of medical expenses. And there was a time I couldn’t buy a car. And when I went to the dealership, I’d go in and The salesman goes, Miss Amberly, come sit down here. Can I tell you something? And I’m like, oh crap. He goes, you have the highest credit score out of anyone who has ever been to our dealership. And then I guess when I went outside, the finance guy was talking to my husband and said, man, what does your wife do? We’ve never seen a credit score like hers. And it made me feel so good that you can be down in the dumps and you can rebuild your life. So anyway,
Chris Jarvis: Okay, so I just want to go back to Tiffany. So for you to buy the car, you said it was a wonderful experience. It was not because but because you said there was a time when you couldn’t get a car. And then all of a sudden you could so that the act of buying a car made you feel like I have
Amberly Lago: Raised my credit score, no. You’ve made it back, right? I’ve made it back. I’m accomplished.
Amberly Lago: It symbolized something else.
Amberly Lago: And the fact that I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am and I go into the dealership and I’ve got on my kind of rugged looking old clothes, workout clothes. Last year’s suit. Yeah, last year’s suit. That’s a good way of putting it. And you know, I’m the only female in the place and here my husband, he always looks good, but I’m buying the car. It’s in my name for my daughter that they were like, Oh wow. What does your wife do? Wow. We’ve never seen, you know, it just, it made me feel like I’ve worked my butt off and I’ve finally, done some good.
Chris Jarvis: It was a big affirmation. It was a big positive thing for you. Yeah. Right. So you have that experience. The rest of us go to the car dealer and hate the banter in the back and the forth and everybody’s so afraid of getting screwed in the deal, right? You don’t want to buy the car, come home and find out. Oh, I like haggling people.
Amberly Lago: I’m like, throw in the leather seats and maybe I’ll take the truck. I like it.
Amberly Lago: Sorry, go ahead.
Chris Jarvis: No, that’s okay. This point is going to fall completely flat based on this interview. But the point about the car dealers is people don’t like the idea that they might not get a good deal. And so as a result, some car companies like back in the day, Saturn, and then Carvana and CarMax decided to go to flat fee pricing. When I got my Tesla, it was the same thing, flat fee. There is no negotiation.
Amberly Lago: Yeah, I’ve got a Tesla and they don’t negotiate at all. It’s like, there’s your fee.
Chris Jarvis: So you know you didn’t get a bad deal. You know exactly what anybody bought in your state for the same price. Well, Volvo went a different direction. So Volvo and a couple other German companies, well, Volvo is a Swedish company. other European companies did overseas delivery. If you order a car from Volvo on Volvo overseas delivery, when your car is ready, they will send you to business class tickets to fly to Sweden. Now we’ll get your car off the assembly line. You can drive it on the test track. And if you want to drive it all over Europe for as long as you want, you can. And then they will ship it back to you. And so they give you a chance to come tour the plant. So they turn it into a wonderful experience instead of a bad experience. It’s an experience, yeah. So I use that example for people, for businesses. Whatever industry you’re in, find the thing that people hate and do the opposite.
Amberly Lago: Oh, well that’s, you know what? I’m so glad you said that because going back to my mastermind, just cause I have Tiffany here who’s in my mastermind and I love you girl. I was in masterminds and I hated some of the experiences. I got ripped off. I overpaid. They overpromised and under delivered. And I thought, you know what? Screw this. I’m going to make my own. And I went and got certified with the Mastermind Association. And I was like, I’m going to make this exactly how I would want a mastermind to be. So I did exactly what what you said, and also even with speaking, after we finished at AmpCon, at Rene Rodriguez’s event, who I was so grateful to be able to speak at his event. Afterwards, it’s like the end, it’s like the VIP dinner, and Tiffany was right there with me. He goes, Amberly, I appreciate you being the kind of speaker that sticks around for the whole event. And I’m like, absolutely. And I want to set myself apart and be there and show up and sweep the floor if they need help doing that, whatever, but not just the kind of person who’s in and out. Like, you know what I mean? And so I think that does make a difference in business. And I think that’s why I’ve been asked to speak at different events. It’s not because I’m the best speaker. It’s because they know I’m going to be there to help them with anything they need help with. So I think that’s really important. Now I want to know about like adaptability in business and how important is that and how does Be The Giraffe relate to that?
Chris Jarvis: So last week we talked about my first company and how we changed so many times. The business evolved from Sometimes a business evolves because the customer needs something different. Sometimes it evolves because the customer is different. So I use the example that we were working for pharmaceutical companies, helping them get in front of doctors. Then we were working for lawyers getting in front of doctors. Then we were working. for financial people getting them in front of doctors. And we just work directly for the doctors. And so sometimes it’s a, is this a B2C business to consumer? Is it a B2B to C business that helps businesses get to consumer? Or is it, you know, or is it a straight B2B? You’re just working between businesses. And so sometimes the business changes and it changes based on your observation. It changes based on the economy. It changes based on the business model. I mean, just things outside your control. So, adaptability, what do your clients need? If you only sell one thing to a person, that’s a huge mistake. Because once you have a client and a client has bought something from you, it’s something like 500% more likely to buy a second thing from you than somebody who’s just off the street. So, just talk to your clients and ask them what they need. So when I go into companies and the thing that the wild factor, we use it to assess prospects, clients, and all of their employees to understand.
Amberly Lago: Can you give us the link? It’s going to be in the show notes, but can you just tell them really quick?
Chris Jarvis: Sure. Um, chrisjarvis.me, the website slash wild factor, and you’ll see wild factor at the top of the top navigation. And then in there, there’s a code. The code will be in the show notes, but we can use, do you want to use Unstoppable? Is that our code that we want to use? Do you want to use Amberly or do you want to use Unstoppable? Unstoppable is perfect. That’s our code. Unstoppable makes it free. It’ll save you 20 bucks. And you’ll get a 19-page report customized to you based on your life and your behaviors and how to help you get your life to another level.
Amberly Lago: You are so generous. Thank you so much.
Chris Jarvis: You’re welcome. Well, if it helps. But the point with adaptability is when we do this for people’s employees, we want them to understand how their employees make decisions, what they can and what they will and won’t do for themselves so you can provide a better service for them. So we need to understand the people who work for us. We need to understand the people we serve. And so there’s a depth of asking questions. What is it you want? And there’s so many ways around this with the adaptability. I just had this conversation with a client this week. For your clients, there’s another chapter, Feed Differently, which is my favorite in the whole book. I’ll let you read it or listen to it, because it’s really good. But the idea is to become uniquely invaluable to the people in your life. Become uniquely invaluable to the people in your life. That could be your family and friends It could be your customers. It could be your investors. It could be your vendors. It could be your employees Do something for people that someone else wouldn’t yeah, I don’t mean become a doormat I mean, do something other people won’t do. So for example, you sticking around makes Rene want to have you come back as a speaker because he realizes you weren’t there just to get the fee to get paid to speak. You actually stuck around and went to the event and chatted with people, which made the event better for him because now other people who were at the events want to see all the speakers, not just the host. And so you made the whole event for Rene better So I’d be highly surprised if he didn’t invite you back. That’s a thing that you do. So for employees, if they want Fridays off in the summer, great. Ask them if they’ll work. Either offer to pay them 20% less than they can have all their Fridays off, and a bunch of them will take it. And if they do, they’ll still do the same amount of work because they’ll work harder Monday through Thursday because they’re excited about their three-day weekends.
Amberly Lago: Yeah.
Chris Jarvis: you know, get him to work more hours or say, Hey, if you can knock out this much stuff or say, Hey, if by in the first six months of the year, if at the end of June, we’ve hit this number, I’ll give everybody Fridays in July and August off, which you want them off to. But then they hit a number that already made you so far ahead. Like if we can actually hit our number, our year-end profit number that we expected to be in August, by June, you can all have Fridays off in the summer. People are like, this place is great. You’re like, well, great. We’re already where we want it to be. But just find creative ways to do things with people so they say, wow, nobody else would do that for me. whatever, whatever that is.
Amberly Lago: And that’s another reason why I like being at this studio and because the owner, Jeff Crilly, is so amazing. But people here, when, you know, a lot of times at work, people will have lunch and they will want to go out and get away from work. No, they all stick around. He provides lunch for them. Everybody wants to stay here and it feels like family. He does it differently. It’s not, you know what I mean? It’s just great. It’s just different. Um, so how has doing, I know we’re almost out of time. We’re actually almost out of time, but I can sit and talk with you for hours. How has be the giraffe, like the book? I mean, I know you’ve written 19 books, but how has that helped? you and others with personal development.
Chris Jarvis: This one’s really, I’ve had people from the ages of 10 to 75 tell me their lives were changed by the book.
Amberly Lago: Yeah. Everybody in the mastermind is getting a copy of your book. I’ve already, as soon as I got it, I posted it in the group. Did you see the picture that I posted in the group for the, for your book, because it’s so great. And we all want to not just survive, but really thrive. And so I also want my daughter, who just turned 16, to read it as well. But sorry, go ahead.
Chris Jarvis: So my 16-year-old read the book, and she said, Daddy, it’s great. I said, thank you, sweetie. Why was it great? And she said, she’s a very talented artist, and she’s looking to go to school, to art school. It’s what she’s going to do.
Amberly Lago: What kind of artist is she?
Chris Jarvis: Well, she does a whole lot of things because she’s 16, but she also has her 99 average in high school and she’s very smart, but she is very talented. She wants to go the art route and that’s perfectly fine. I don’t need her to go become an accountant because money is not really going to be that big of an object. I want her to be happy. She said, dad, I don’t know what kind of art I want to do, because you could do sculpting, and you could do drawing, and you could do digital arts, and you could do set design, and you could do toy design, and you could do jewelry design, and you could do, there’s a million things you could do. She said, I don’t know which one I want to do. I have interest in a lot of things. But then different schools have different programs for different things. So she said, since I don’t know what thing I want to do, I don’t know where to apply. And so she has this paralysis with the whole college thing. She’s a junior. And she said, when I read your book, I read that you change partners, you change cities, you change businesses, you change industries. She jokes, you change wives, because I got divorced, Brianna and I remarried. And she’s like, you’ve changed all these things. And you still found success. And a lot of times you change and it was involuntary. Things were pushed upon you to change. And despite all those changes, you kept finding success. And so I realized that I don’t have to stress that much about this college decision because if it doesn’t work, I’ll just try something else.
Amberly Lago: Oh, I love that.
Chris Jarvis: So if that’s what somebody gets out of it.
Amberly Lago: Oh my goodness.
Chris Jarvis: I was on Tim Castle’s podcast and he said he started listening to the audio book. and said, he realized at one point he’d been walking for three and a half hours. Wow. And he listened to the story about my dad passing. And he said in that moment, he had a bunch of guilt from when his mom died and he wasn’t there. And the way I told the story of my dad passing, he said, your story gave me chills. And I immediately lifted all the weight that I had, self-guilt about not being there at the moment my mom passed. And then I said something else on the podcast that he got chills again and said, you’ve just, this has never happened. Reading a book, listening to another book or anything, you’ve just done it to me twice. And I said, oh, I guess that’s what this is meant to do. And so my 24 year old niece Alyssa read it and was like, I got chills every chapter. I felt like it spoke to me.
Amberly Lago: Isn’t that amazing that your kids actually read the book?
Chris Jarvis: Two of the three have read it. The third, I’m teasing, she hasn’t read it yet. But two of the three have read it. Well, they’re your kids, right? So even my son said, your book was great. He’s 22. And he said, it was great, but it was a little weird. I said, OK, what’s weird, Tyler? And he said, well, you have this inspirational kind of motivational speaker tone. It’s just weird. Yeah, thanks a lot. So like everybody else, I go on the road to speak because nobody listens to me in my own house. I completely understand.
Amberly Lago: It’s the same for all of us. I’m right there with you.
Chris Jarvis: So with the book, people are getting, these other finance books were written to teach you things that I’ve done that you might want to do with me or somebody else. Be the Giraffe is this open architecture that’s meant to get you to think about your life differently using the clever metaphor so that you can pull out of whatever’s in you. I don’t know what’s there, but by not talking about my successes and talking about a lot of failures and setbacks. that or redirects or whatever you want to call them, challenges that this book has brought a lot of things out for a lot of people who’ve decided to try different things, do different things, look at relationships differently, look at business differently, decide to move on in their careers or whatever it is that if this frees people in some way, from some of the things they have, then for me, then that’s the gift. Yeah.
Amberly Lago: And the foreword is by our good buddy David Meltzer, which is amazing and unbelievable. So what is the best way for people to reach you? And we will have this in the show notes so everybody can find you easily.
Chris Jarvis: So the website is chrisjarvis.me and there’s a whole lot of links at the website. The Instagram is Chris Ray Jarvis, which I did as a joke, and it’s stuck, and now it’s there. I had no intentions of using the handle, and then it went a little crazy at one point, and so there it is for now. I’m on LinkedIn at Chris Jarvis, and yeah, and there’s books all over Amazon in different places, and yeah, happy to help. People can reach out any way they possibly can, and I’m happy to help any way I can.
Amberly Lago: Well, thank you. Thank you for your generosity and giving us that link so they can take the assessment. And thank you for being on the show two weeks in a row. Thank you so much. And thank you all so much for tuning in to the Amberly Lago Show. Please make sure if you got value out of this episode, take a screenshot, share it on your Instagram and tag us. And when I see that, I always reshare that in my story. So we’ll see you next week. Thank you.
