HOLDAY GIFT IDEAS

OTL /HOLIDAY 2020

Deck the halls with gifts that keep giving

STORY BY MICHELLE KELLER

On the cusp of closing a challenging year at long last, the season of giving is here. Let’s give 2020 an extraordinary send-off and pump more happiness and positivity into the season than we ever have. Grab your mug and fill it with cheer, sit down and let’s have a chat. We’ll talk about the best of the best in 2020 gifting, we’ll discuss options for that person who has everything, we’ll go over giving gifts that give back and we’ll talk about non-traditional and traditional gifting.

The best of the best in 2020 elite gifting should include a combination of a luxury, a charity, a service and a gift that keeps on giving. A few lux items we adore this year include a ladies Lagos Smart Cabiar Diamond Pave 38 mm bracelet watch. Artist and master jeweler Steven Lagos pioneered a new category of jewelry, between fashion and fine jewelry. From Caviar bracelets to new collections, LAGOS identifies as classic, iconic jewelry. The features are what sold us on this piece. It combines technology with class in a neat package. Compatible with Apple Watch, the watch fits from a 38mm to a 44 mm watch head. In a total diamond carat weight of 2.48, this magnificent piece is a stunning gift for ladies of any age.

For the audiophile on your list, help them take a trip back in time with a DIY tube amplifier kit. Manufactured in Japan, the Elekit TU-8600S 300B Tube Amplifier Kit - Lundahl Version, is a Single Ended DIY Stereo Tube Amp Kit. Always in pursuit of great sound quality, Elekit has updated and improved the amplification, power, and feedback circuitry with this new design. The result is an amplifier with amazing sound quality and super low noise, that can also be used with headphones. The newly available version comes with custom Lundahl output transformers, an ALPS potentiometer and sounds like liquid.Elekit developed is a tube amplifier with dazzling sound quality and super low noise that can also be used with headphones. This could be a great father-son/quality time project. This four-star sound kit can be found at tubedepot.com.

Can you see where I’m heading with this? I’m inviting you to give the one thing you value the most this year, your time. Sure, the sentiment is as old as time itself, but it’s like hearing I love you, you can never hear it enough. One thing we’ve all learned this year is that time is valuable and not in the sense of ‘time is money.’ How many times have you heard someone say, “I used to love playing guitar or I really want to finish writing my book? I just don’t have the time.” Reality is we have to make time. So give them the nudge they need with a simple reminder of that thing they love. If it’s reading, buy a subscription to Kindle or a subscription to a hobby you know that their heart is committed to. Whether online or in hard copy, magazines for crafts, sewing, hunting, and many others are still being published and read. For the writer in your life who has always wanted to write a book, give them a gift that can help them save time and complete the project in 90 days. That’s right, they can become a published author in just 3 months. That’s a double gift of time and service that will be remembered forever. Simon & Schuster author, New York Times bestselling ghostwriter, SiriusXM host, book coach and freedom fighter Joanna Hunt brings us this service. When asked what brought her into this business Hunt said, “I have been writing for New York Times bestselling authors for nearly 20 years and it has been a joy and honor to bring wildly successful books to life. My work is considered high-touch and high-investment which only allowed me to work with 2-3 clients per year. Throughout the years, people would ask me to help them write their books and it always bothered me that I couldn’t help more people because my time was committed, or my services were beyond their budget. I would hear stories of people longing for years to write a book, but they were stuck and didn’t know what to do. Others would have 2-3 good chapters and hit a dead end. Writing books comes easy to me so it was just painful to hear these stories.” She continued, “Because of my experience, I’ve been able to distill down the book writing process and I have developed strategies that enable me to get a manuscript finished in as little as 6-8 weeks. In my 12-week course, I teach people these strategies and it’s been so exciting

to watch my students, with no prior experience, bring their books to life very quickly and have a blast in the process.” Publish & GO Press is a hybrid model where the author has control of the process and keeps all the rights and royalties like they would self-publishing, but they have a project manager and get global distribution on all major platforms, and expert level design services like you would with a top 5 publishing house at about half the price.”

Following Hunt’s direction, her client Roxanne got her first draft finished in about 14 weeks and received fantastic feedback from her beta readers. Publish & GO Press got her book produced and available for purchase globally and the results have been astounding. In the middle of all the craziness of 2020, Roxanne wrote, published, and released her first book and in her first month, without spending a penny on advertising, she had $25,000 in net sales and she is just getting started. “Her book, “My Dog Can Preach: 40 Lessons of God’s Love Unleashed” has been wildly successful and I am so proud of her and honored to walk alongside her to dream through,” Hunt said.

According to Hunt, an estimated 85% of Americans have a dream to write a book, yet only 1% actually do it. “The reasons on the surface are varied,” she says. “But in the end, it boils down to two things: number one, lack of knowledge about how to write a book, or what I call an external roadblock, and number two, self-doubt, or what I call an internal roadblock. My course addresses both of these things and I am 100% confident I can take any willing person and help them get their book done in as little as 12 weeks. Another thing I teach in my course is that writing is like cooking. Two people can follow the exact same recipe and have very different results. You can always tell the difference when someone loves what they do. You can taste the love in food, and I believe you can “taste” or experience the love in a book. It’s very important to feel confident in the process and love what you are doing because that comes through. So I address all of this in my course—it’s not just about getting a book done, it’s about getting it done well. Mechanics is easy, passion makes the difference. My approach with an author is this: find and feed the passion inside and the end result will be amazing.” To give this service contact Hunt at joannakhunt.com.

Now let’s talk about gifts that keep on giving. At Gifts for Good, that’s exactly what happens. The company serves professionals with high-quality goods that people love to give and love to receive and redirects an extra 90 billion per year to address the world’s most pressing social, economic and environmental challenges with its proceeds.

Core values at Gifts for Good are to inspire the world to give thoughtfully, so they built it into how they do business. The company’s mission statement reads, “Fostering creativity to constantly explore new ways of delivering value and impact through gift-giving, we exist to connect people to a marketplace of gifts made by nonprofits and social enterprises.”

We checked out the goods and these gifts aren’t the kind your boss gives that end up hiding in your file cabinet until the end of your term. These are quality gifts that you would most likely buy from another source where the profits aren’t repurposed.

Company website giftsforgood.com makes choosing your charity and gift easy with each charity listed under the gift of choice. Examples include the Los Angeles Impact Box, where each purchase fights poverty and homelessness and employs

and empowers disabled individuals or the Gratitude Gift Box which benefits women refugees, includes a hand-poured Burmese Gratitude Candle and a set of two Brazilian Agate coasters boxed in a luxe gift box with a story card explaining the social impact of the products.

The Humanitarian Sock Gift Box features

The purchase of a Venus Diamond Pendant Necklace, bracelet or cuff will help fund women entrepreneurs. For the hot sauce collector in your group, a Weak Knees Spicy Gift set includes three different sriracha flavors that will help feed children in need. Handcrafted in small batches, the Simple Delight Gift set includes candles with coconut wax and an eco-friendly room spray made in Los Angedesigner socks that support the movement to end malaria. You can purchase a California

Burgundy wine trio and help abused animals. les from the finest luxury ingredients.

This set provides 30 minutes of labor for an individual in Los Angeles with developmental disabilities. Buy a guy a Don Javier Handcrafted Briefcase and you’ll provide seven days of schooling for a child in Honduras.

This year we wanted to bring you a variety of things in a gift story. We’ve covered gifting time and services; luxury items and gifts that continue to give. We think you’ll agree that this year is different in many ways and we should honor it as such. Wishing you all the happiness the season can bring and gifting that dreams are made of, the good ones.