5 Examples of How Altruism Can Catapult Business and Marketing Results

One commonly overlooked tactic for becoming more successful is to become more altruistic. In his book Give and Take, Adam Grant discusses research studies on sales people, which showed that top performers were givers and averaged 50% more revenue than their colleagues.

So why does generosity work so well?

Because many people will be naturally inclined to reciprocate when someone does something nice for them.

Not everyone will return the favor, but a percentage of people will and if you reach enough people, then your business will definitely see the results. Having a generous mindset allows you to give freely without expecting anything in return.

Here are 5 examples of people and businesses that achieved growth by being generous.

1. Leo Babauta uncopyrights his content

Leo Babauta is a well known blogger who shares tips and ideas on how to be more successful and live a more fulfilling life. Leo makes money from his blog by selling eBooks and courses.

In January of 2008, Leo decided to uncopyright all of his content and release them to the public domain, including his blog and eBooks. This means that anyone can reuse his content without asking permission.

People are even allowed to edit and sell his content without giving Leo any credit.

One argument people made against uncopyrighting was that he would lose revenue from book sales since people could just get it for free from someone else. But Leo says that he has made more money by far since he’s released copyright than when he had it in place.

Leo reasoned that many people who got the book for free might not have paid for it anyways, and by allowing free distribution, he would be able to reach more people.

2. Neil Patel’s $1.2 Million Sale

Neil Patel is one of the most well known digital marketers in the industry. Asides from generously sharing his knowledge through blogging, he also has helped people in other ways.

For example, in this article (see #4 in the bottom list), Neil talks about how he helped a guy at a conference for free. No one else wanted to help him because his English was not good and apparently he had body odor.

Later on, the guy told everyone about Neil and a company he talked to hired Neil’s consulting company, resulting in a $1.2 million sale.

When interacting with influencers, I’ve found that influencers are actually more likely to help people out even though they are busier than most people and get much more email.

Just as a personal example, when I first started blogging and was unknown, I used email outreach to share my blog articles. Some influencers shared my articles on Twitter and some of them even went viral.

3. Orlando Import Auto Specialist

I took my car in to the Honda dealer to have an oil change and a few weeks later, oil was leaking from the bottom of the car. A family member recommended Orlando Import Auto Specialists, so I took my car there to get it checked out.

It turns out that the oil valve wasn’t tightened all the way, so they tightened it and didn’t charge me for it.

Several months later, I took my car back for an oil change and to replace one of the headlight bulbs that wasn’t working. They discovered that the headlight was still working, but just wasn’t screwed in all the way, so they fixed it without charging me for that.

They really over-delivered when they decided to fix a big dent in my front bumper for free. I didn’t ask them to do it, but I guess since they had to take the bumper off to fix the headlight, they figured they’d go ahead and fix the dent too.

So basically, I got everything above done for the cost of an oil change.

Although the shop doesn’t have the name recognition of a national chain and is not on a heavily trafficked road, the lot is always full and they seem to have plenty of business. They also have over 100 Yelp reviews with 5 star rating and it’s definitely a place I’d go back to and recommend to others.

4. Take the Lead Studio

I use to do salsa dancing for fun and my friends Jen and Garincha owned a dance studio in Philadelphia called Take the Lead studio. I met a lot of other salsa instructors in the area and some of them would say “hi” when they saw me.

But Jen and Garincha actually talked to me and we became friends over the years. A lot of dance studios were impersonal and focused on just teaching dance moves, but Take the Lead’s owners wanted their studio to feel more like a community where people would feel welcome and be able to make friends.

One day, Jen told me that a lady had contacted them and wanted to sell them SEO services. Their site actually already had enough natural links to rank well, so I told them I would help them for free.

I told her how to include keywords on the home page and we added phrases like “salsa lessons” and “salsa classes” to the title tag.

They quickly ranked for long tail phrases and eventually ranked for their main keywords, which resulted in more than a 3x increase in targeted search engine traffic.

I went back to visit Philadelphia in 2017 and had lunch with Garincha, a few years after he sold his studio to focus on other projects. We talked about how he went from being working over 80 hours a week to running a successful studio where most of the lessons were being taught by other instructors.

He would post jobs and interview people for positions like teaching ballet to kids. During the interview, he would ask the teacher how much they wanted to make.

The teacher would say something like, “I want to make $15 / hour”. And when he found someone he wanted to hire, he would say something like, “Well, how about we pay you $25 / hour”?

The instructors were so happy with getting paid more that they went the extra mile to bring in more students and make sure they had an amazing experience. Their classes grew and students kept coming back.

Sadly, after he sold the studio, the new owner decided to cut back salaries and the instructors left. They were replaced with cheaper instructors and the students stopped coming back as well.

The studio shut down when they couldn’t afford the monthly rent. Generosity made a very noticeable difference in this business’s success.

5. Michael Podznev

Blogging is very competitive and a lot of people are trying to teach others how to grow a blog. One blogger who succeeded at quickly building a following is Michael Podznev from I Wanna Be a Blogger.

Michael used what he called the BFF commenter technique to build relationships with other bloggers. Basically, he would find other people he wanted to build relationships with by finding bloggers who wrote comments on other popular blogs in his niche.

He would then share their content on social media, comment on their blogs and use email outreach to build relationships with these people.

Michael’s blog is currently showing only 34 pages indexed in Google, but his blog has accumulated thousands of backlinks and a lot of his articles have over 100 blog comments and over 1,000 social shares.

Source: SEM Rush

While most bloggers focus on asking for links and social shares, Michael’s blog growth exploded because he focused on building real relationships with other bloggers without asking for anything in return.

Develop a Generous Mindset through Practice

The examples above are just a few examples of how generosity pays off.

Like anything else, sometimes you have to practice being generous before it becomes natural. Join charity groups and events and find opportunities to help other people, even if you don’t get anything in return.

Figure out ways you can help out other people or businesses until being generous becomes a natural habit.