My Love Language Isn’t Gifts
My love language is acts of service. I’d rather make you dinner, help you fix a workflow, or give you my best airline lounge hack than pick out a wrapped present.
Gifts don’t come naturally to me. I don’t expect them, and I definitely don’t excel at choosing them. (Ask my husband about the time I gave him socks… again. To be fair, they were very nice socks.)
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I can find a way to combine an act of service into a gift. For example, I’m still unreasonably proud of the year that I took my husband’s dozens of concert ticket stubs and spent hours laying them out and framing them into two massive pieces of wall art. Ten years later they still hang proudly in our guest bathroom because Paul wanted everyone who visits to be able to see them. It also creates the most interesting conversations when people come out of the toilet…lol! “Simple Minds three times in one week?!” Yep, that’s my man.
Anyway, as a speaker, clients do sometimes give me a gift, and I’m always surprised. And incredibly grateful. It’s never expected, which I think makes it even better.
Last week, I was completely wowed.
Meghan, the Director of Brand Marketing & Special Events at a world-class mortgage company, had a package of gifts so personal and thoughtful waiting for me in my hotel room that I was floored. They weren’t super flashy. They were intentional. Personal. Personalized. And it reminded me how rare that kind of gifting really is.
Most of us? We fall back on safe options. A notebook. A water bottle. Maybe a gift card if we’re feeling wild. Useful, yes. Memorable, not so much. (Unless you count the plant I once got that I managed to kill in under a week. Not my proudest moment.)
Meghan, though, has a superpower. She nails the kind of gifts that make people feel seen. As I gushed to her about my delight and envy at her skill, she shared that some of their mortgage advisors had tried to use AI to suggest gifts for their clients… and the outputs were bland and forgettable at best.
This made me sad. First, because I hadn’t thought of using AI for gift ideas before. Second, because I knew AI could be guided to do better. Gauntlet thrown! Challenge accepted!
I found myself asking: why were they getting predictable output and how could AI help me (or anyone) capture even a sliver of Meghan’s magic? (Spoiler: AI did not suggest socks. Or the plant.) Not surprisingly, it all came down to the approach.
Generic in, generic out
If you’ve heard me deliver an AI keynote, read my newsletter or blogs, you’ll almost surely have heard me say that AI is really a giant prediction engine. It connects dots. And it tries to give you the most connected dots based on the dots of millions of other people. In other words, ask a generic question, get a generic answer.
I proved this using a simple prompt with myself as a test case: “Give me some gift ideas for a speaker.”
The results were about what you’d expect:
Presenter remote with a laser pointer
Power bank or wireless charging pad
Noise-cancelling earbuds
Premium neck pillow
Gift card to a restaurant or spa
Not bad. And sometimes these gifts are really useful (I LOVE my NASPD-branded cable organizer). But they aren’t exactly OMG-you’ll-never-guess-what-I-got gifts.
These are vending-machine answers. Exactly what happens when you ask AI a vending-machine question. Still tasty treats, just not gourmet. (Trail mix, not tiramisu.)
The 20-60-20 reminder
One of my favorite models to share for collaboration with AI is the 20-60-20 equation. It’s the way I remind myself (and others) that AI is a partnership, not a handoff. This framework reinforces that we – HUMANS – have to bookend our use of AI.
20%: Lead the Way — You pick your strategy, goals, tool, and prompt
60%: AI Actions — AI cranks and does the heavy lifting
20%: Add the Human — Review, edit, polish, and execute
This gift experiment drove that home for me. By leaning into the first 20, the middle 60 was more creative, and the final 20 became a joy rather than a rescue mission.
“The difference between predictable and powerful lives in that first 20 percent.”
The First 20 Packs a Punch
The real magic isn’t in how you fix AI’s first answer, beating it into submission. It honestly breaks my heart when people tell me they “tried AI” but walked away disillusioned and disappointed. Give bad instructions, get bad outputs. (Like asking a toddler to make you dinner and being surprised when you get Play-Doh spaghetti.)
The secret sauce is in what you do before you hit Enter. Giving it your intention… clearly.
That means knowing what matters. Who it’s for and what your goals are. Where the boundaries are. And then briefing AI properly so it can actually stretch to meet the challenge.
I say this a lot when I’m on stage:
“Everyone will be an AI-user, but the future will belong to the AI-empowered.”
Being AI-empowered means you don’t outsource your thinking. You lead with it. (Because let’s be honest: would you really trust an intern to just “wing it” on your behalf?)
This is also where my PREPARED Prompting Framework comes in. I won’t unpack it all here, but the short version is: if you give AI context, clarity, and constraints, you give it a fighting chance of surprising you.
The AI Fit Factor
Another concept I often share with audiences is the AI Fit Factor. It’s about knowing where AI belongs and where it doesn’t.
It comes down to two things:
Rate: how repeatable and scalable the task is
Weight: how high the stakes are for your brand or relationship
High-rate, low-weight tasks? AI can run with them. High-weight, emotional moments? That’s still us. Even then, AI can help in the background — brainstorming, stretching ideas, or prepping drafts that we humanize. (Think of AI as the onion slicer. You create the right recipe for your dinner guests. You plate up the meal putting on all the final touches. And you, rightly, get all the glory when it tastes amazing without having shed an onion-induced tear.)
The experiment
So I tried again. This time, I wrote a better prompt, a proper prompt. I gave AI specifics: think about hobbies, quirks, travel, family milestones. I told it to focus on meaning, not money. And I asked it to suggest gifts that would feel personal and spark loyalty.
Did it work? Absolutely.
Here’s what it recommended for me (and for those who know me, you can probably imagine my eyes lighting up at each one of these!):
A Custom Dog-Trick Training Kit with agility hoops and puzzles for Luna and Echo, complete with a “Vizsla Circus School” certificate. (No pressure, pups.)
A Personalized “Fuel for Flight” Travel Set with a monogrammed bag, a premium travel pillow, and a Mountain Dew for the road (my guilty pleasure on speaking days!). Meghan DID gift me a travel gift… including a personalized toiletries bag so I know this prompt is channeling a bit of Meghan’s magic.
A Bespoke Margarita Experience Kit with engraved glasses and a cocktail shaker labeled Holmes Margaritas – Est. 1999. (LOL… I guess my marriage is truly old enough to drink.)
A Luxury UK–US Bridge Hamper mixing British teas and biscuits with American treats like jerky and theatre popcorn. (Basically, my pantry in a single box.)
These weren’t random, generic gift ideas. They were the result of a stronger pre-answer setup.
“If you ever see me teaching Vizslas to juggle or sipping margaritas from an engraved shaker, it's possible that AI had a hand in it — but hopefully we'll never know for sure because somebody used it to empower themselves and then delivered it as only a human could.”
Try it this week
Before you type your next prompt, pause for thirty seconds and check yourself:
- What outcome am I really after?
- Who’s this for, and what context matters?
- Is this a Fit Factor task where AI should scale, support, or just brainstorm?
Closing thoughts
This little gift experiment wasn’t really about the presents. It was about demonstrating the difference when you’re AI-empowered and you collaborate with it.
When we take the lead, AI becomes a force multiplier. It helps us be more personal, more creative, more thoughtful. But only if we do the work up front.
I’ve been running exercises like this with leaders, sales teams, and innovators across industries. The pattern is always the same: the people who lean into that first 20 are the ones seeing real results. Think your leaders, teams, or audience could use some inspiring, engaging, and entertaining AI-collaboration strategies? Drop me a note (or a gift… lol) and let’s talk about a keynote or workshop.
P.S. Meghan also shared that one of her top gift-picking strategies was sharing something that she personally LOVES. I’ll work on adding that idea to the prompt in the future. Afterall, as humans, we’re always learning and growing so we should make sure our AI collaboration does the same.