How to generate referrals without ever asking, with Stacey Brown Randall

Welcome to Building your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Stacey Brown-Randall. Pull out the last three years of clients that you brought on board and then identify where they heard about you. Any name on that list of who they heard about you from is a referral source, and that now is your list of gold. I don't care if it has three people on it or 33 people on it. You need to know who these people are because they are usually the closest to your next couple of clients than you are. Hi there, and welcome back to Building your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gental, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise, intentionally amplifying their unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you're here, take a moment to subscribe. It helps me a lot, not going to lie, but it means you won't miss a single thing. If you are new to the show and you think you might enjoy this? You will even more enjoy the personal brand business roadmap. It's 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. I'm going to introduce this week's guest by using the word referral. Referral is a word that lights the hearts of pretty much every business owner. If you ask any business owner what they would like more of, it's probably going to start with the word referral. To talk referral and referral magic with me today, I'm delighted to welcome Stacey Brown-Randall. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me back, Bob. I'm excited to be here again. I think I mentioned your message to me to say, Hey, I'd like to come on your podcast. It beat my message to you saying, I'd like you to come on my podcast by about 20 minutes. Oh, really? Yeah, it was very, very close. In the last six months, I'm probably responsible for a surge of purchases in your last book. Thank you. Which was called Generating business referrals without asking. I swear that book has made such a difference for me. When I saw you had another book coming out, I thought, I need to talk about this. Before I get carried away again, can you maybe just tell the listener a little bit about who you are, where you are, what it is you actually do? I work with small business owners on how to referrals in a way that works for them, which means for most of us, we don't want to ask for them, we don't want to compensate for them or incentivize, and we don't want to be promotional and gimmicky, and we don't want to feel like we're networking all the time to constantly be seen. So I have a strategy and methodology. It's rooted in the science of referrals, and I teach people how to generate referrals without doing all the stuff you don't want to do, but it's still working. And we call that generating referrals naturally, But that doesn't mean there's not work involved. I have been teaching my referral strategies. There's actually 20 of them in total, but I've been teaching... Well, I should say 20 right now. We're always adding as new things come up. But I've been teaching my referral strategies for just over a decade. We hit 12 years in business this year, and I am located in North Carolina. If you spend any time exploring the world of referrals, one of the things you'll frequently encounter is being told Ask. Ask for referrals. I've done this. I think everybody's done it, and it can work. But there's probably a downside. I know there's a downside, but in your experience, you spend all day thinking about referrals. What is the downside to proactively and consistently asking for referrals? There's two main things that when people decide that they are going to generate referrals by asking for them, they do two things. And it's more of just be aware of it. And if you don't care or you're good with it, then go ask. If it doesn't fit who you are or how you want to show up in the marketplace, then maybe consider not asking. The first one is, it's a more tactical one. And then if people only refer to you because you're asking them to, the ask becomes the trigger. And I want the trigger not to be something you have to do every time. And that's one of the tactical, logistical lifts that's heavy when you decide to ask for referrals is that you have to constantly be asking, which means you have to always be doing it. Usually, people who do ask for referrals will tell you they have to be asking in person. Sending an email blast out to 15 people or 1,500 people or 15,000 people, that stuff is ignored. That then becomes this in-person ask that I have to do. And so that's a time commitment, massive. And it means if you stop asking, you're not going to generate referrals. So that's the first thing that people have to pay attention to is what I just call what it's on you. What are you going to feel in terms of the logistical lift and the extra work that's going to be added to your plate, consistently, like forever. The other thing about it is actually what it's doing psychologically to the person you're asking. And in some cases, it's probably psychologically to what it's doing to you, too, especially if you're uncomfortable with it. And there's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with it. If you are uncomfortable with it, you shouldn't do it. And don't worry, there's another way. But what people don't pay attention to in the second piece is actually how it makes the person feel that you're asking. And that's a big piece that people sometimes overlook. We're so focused on ourselves and what it means for ourselves. We forget that there is a reaction and that there is an impact to the feelings of the person we're asking. And what they won't usually tell you is that a couple of emotions are hitting them. Unless they love you dearly and you need a lot of help and they love you dearly, they'll probably be like, How can I help? But if you're asking your clients, that's it's not the same situation, or prospects, or people that you've met in networking groups that aren't in your inner circle of five or six people, when you're asking them to refer you, the feelings and emotions that they have is like, Oh, you just added work to my to-do list, and my to-do list is long enough. You put them in a place to immediately have to think of somebody and their minds go blank, and they're like, Yeah, no, I'll get back to you. And then we are like, But they don't. And so you're asking them to artificially create or manufacture something that does not exist. And a referral has to exist naturally so they could actually be somebody who wants to spend money with you. And so that's the thing that people have to keep in mind. It's the negative impact it's having on the person you're asking, and it becomes the way that you're going to generate referrals means you have to always be asking, which is a huge time commitment. For me, that's been reality for a long time. That was how I was brought up to approach referrals. It did work, but it always left you feeling a little bit needy and probably looking a little bit needy. From a personal branding perspective, if you want to come across as a strong, authoritative, in-charge brand, it feels like it's tarnishing that all the time. What I loved about the last book, the Generating business referrals without asking, was it offers a very clear approach to escaping that. Before we get into the new book, do you want to maybe just offer what that five-step framework in loose terms actually looks like? Yeah. Here's the thing that I have found, and I never had to think about it like this until I wrote a second book. Then people started asking me about it, and I was like, Oh, wait, let me put some things in Context. So the first book that I had, Generating business referrals without asking, it's actually based on one of my three foundational strategies. I believe all businesses need three foundational strategies. I may teach 20, you may not need them all, but you're going to need these foundational three. The first book was based on one of those strategies, which is people who already refer you, what's the process to getting them to refer you more? So it's how the five steps are built, right? And so when people is like, oh, so if I read your book, then I'll get all the referrals that I'm supposed to get. I'm like, oh, wait, no. You'll get referrals from one of the three groups. And the first group, which is always the low hanging fruit, it's probably why that's the first book, because I know if you Do the things in it, you'll have some ROI because it's people who've already referred you. It's easier to get people who've already referred you to do it again. And so the five steps are built around cultivating people who've already referred. You can't take those five steps as pure as they are written, and apply them to the other two groups because it doesn't fit. So the other two groups are your clients, right? Having clients refer you, which is what the second book is on. And then the third group is new people referring you. It's potential referral sources, people who've never referred you and getting them to refer you. So I have people who read the first book and they're like, well, I'm going to take this process and I'll apply it to my existing referral sources, my clients and potential referral sources. And I'm like, no, it won't work. Actually, it'll backfire in some ways, and it won't be the right potential referral sources, it won't land correctly. And with clients, you're just missing all the key pieces, right? With the first book, with our existing referral sources, so think about these five steps in relation to humans who are already referring you or have referred you in the last couple of years. First thing you have to do is identify them. Then you have to make sure that you know how to thank them every time they do refer you because they have referred you in the past, and they'll probably do it in the future. So making sure you have a thank you process. Then you need a plan in place that is going behind, like when they refer you, you're sending a thank you note, right? Great. But what happens in between those referrals received? Well, you need a plan. We call it a touch point plan. You can call it an outreach plan, whatever you want. It typically It really falls somewhere between five and seven touch points over the course of 12 months. So we're not doing something daily, weekly, or even monthly. But what we're doing matters. And there is a piece of what I always call it consider like that, that special piece of how we build what those five, six or seven touch points are and what those look like. Then you have to have the next step. The fourth step is having the language that goes along with that touch point plan. And that truly is what I believe is my secret sauce. When I discovered how planting, we call it planting referral seeds, how planting referral seeds works and what's the formula of the language and all the pieces that I teach my clients, when I figured that out, that turbocharge everything I was doing in terms of knowing who my referral sources were, thanking them when they referred me, having a plan to take care of them, and then using the right language. And then that fifth piece is like, you're a business owner and you're busy. And this cannot be a one-hit wonder. You cannot do one touch point and then fall off the wagon. Or We're going to do two touch points and then fall off the wagon. You have to be consistent, which means you have to figure out of your touch points, which ones can you automate? It's not going to be the automation the way you think about it. This is not a twelve-point email campaign. Email is not allowed. But is there something you can automate? Or is there something that you can use technology to make it easier? But also you're going to have to look at it. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes some of that one-on-one stuff you need to do, virtual or in-person, you're going to have to do. But what can you delegate? What can you outsource? What just needs to go on your to-do list so that you get it done when the calendar says, Hey, it's time to do this next touch point? Those are really, really important that I think people miss. And so those are the five steps. But it is specifically for a group of humans who are referring you or have referred you in the past. I think what I love about this, I'll tell you a story. Well, I'll tell a listener a story, but I'll tell you as well. I have a friend, Valerie, and I refer I had a client to Valerie, and it was quite a bit of money. It was probably worth about three grand a month, I think, which for Valerie was decent. She called somebody I know, and she said, Bob's referred me a big client. I want to get him a gift. What do you think he might like? This gift arrived, and it was a folding firepit that I could take camping with me, because where I go camping, you're not allowed to just light a fire unless it's in a contained firepit. It was the perfect gift for me, and I've never forgotten it. I probably would have referred Valerie again, but I probably referred her a dozen times subsequently. Not because I was waiting for another gift, it's because I had imprinted on her like a little baby chicken on a cartoon cat. She created a powerful emotional response in me. This is really powerful. I think it's important for people listening. When you talk about these touch points, they're not transactional. Like you said, they might be a little bit of work, but it's probably the most important work outside of whatever it is you do for money. Because if you can take care of these people, that's the foundation of your business. Yes. And that's where it comes from. I had somebody ask me the other day, they're like, Aren't you manufacturing goodwill? And I was like, Not at all. If you believe the people who send clients to you and are taking care of your business deserve for you then to take care of them, then And this fits perfectly and aligns perfectly with your character. That's what I believe. I believe that if you refer a client to me, and I got to know it, and that's the other piece to it, right? So if you refer a client to me or a prospect to me that doesn't become a client, either way, it doesn't matter. But if you take the time to refer someone to me, I feel that it is the right thing to do to take care of you. And it may not be, and here's what it is. This is what I want people to hear. It's not because I can refer back to you. There's plenty of people who refer to me that I'll never have the opportunity, probably, to refer back to them. But if I can, I will, of course. But this is that plan of 5-7 touch points in a year, is how we show up in a way. And exactly what you said, the imprinting printing, the baby check, the imprinting of how they're going to remember you. And there's a piece in the framework that I teach my clients where we talk about memory runway. We talk about the things that we do and how they impact us, or in this case, how they impact our referral sources, and then how long that is remembered. And that is a piece of it. I mean, that's an important part of what that looks like. It also means, and I just need to say this for all your listeners who are like, oh, my gosh, do I have to go buy a gift every single time somebody refers me? Or are all five or six or seven touch points gifts? No. Variety is a huge piece of this feeling like normal and feeling like it is genuine because it should be. And you don't send a gift to somebody five times a year. Nobody that right now. So that's not genuine. So there's variety. You don't need to do it. And I would say, had she sent you a handwritten thank you note instead of the Folding Camping Pit, had she sent you a handwritten thank you note, you would have welcomed that readily. And then if one of her five to seven touch points throughout the year was a customised what does Bob want of Folding, it would have had the same impact. It didn't have to come attached to that first referral you sent to her. It worked. So great, right? But if she had a plan on the background where she's constantly taking care of Bob in little small ways, and maybe one big way because she figured out something you would really want and she made it happen, it would have the same effect. And that's what I think people are missing is that people are like, Hey, I got this referral for the first time. I want to go big. You can. But it also puts you in a position to feeling like, do you have to go big every time now that they refer you? And that's more us. We feel it, not really... Like you said it, you weren't expecting something big every time. But as the giver, we feel it, not necessarily as the receiver. So having a system and a process behind it, I think, is very, very important. I think the most important thing for me is that this doesn't come across as a routine thing to the other person. Yes. And that it's not taken for granted. Right. And that we also reciprocate the feeling. We need to interrupt the pattern of the predictable. It'll be very easy to send an email and say, Oh, I really appreciate that referral. It was wonderful. You really made my day. But that's not interrupting their pattern of thought sufficiently for them to go, Wow, I want to repeat that behaviour. Yeah. And that's why variety matters. You can do small things, and they're going to have a huge impact on someone. And you can do slightly larger things, and they have a huge impact. But what really is that what I tell folks is we're not doing this as a onesie twosie. When we do five or six or touch points throughout the year, we are actually building an experience. And that's That's what as your referral source, they're experiencing is this experience from you. And that is critical. That's key. We've got the three groups that we're looking at, but the experience for the referrer is really important. I want to back up for a second and maybe illustrate to the listener why this is so important. I did a study recently because I'm somebody who's traditionally put a lot of emphasis on to outbound sales activity and ads and content and content marketing. I think these things all matter. But I looked at what drives success in consulting businesses in particular, and companies like EY and McKinsey, all the way down to small business. Healthy is not what I thought it was. In a healthy consulting business at any size, 60% of business comes in through referral. That's a constant. It never changes. If a business is unhealthy, then that's not what you see. Knowing this, it puts referral strategies and referrals enhancement and referral amplification and the people who refer you as the most important people in your business, which is why your new book is, for me personally, really timely, because the referable customer experience is actually rare and suddenly really, really important. So let's look at the second group or perhaps maybe introduce the second book. Yeah. So this is going to happen in the majority of businesses, but not every single business has the second group. And the second group is what my second book is on, The Client Experience. It's your clients being able to refer to you. It's interesting. When people would ask me to talk about my first strategy with my first book of those existing referral sources, I always found myself with this disclaimer. And Bob, I probably said it on the interview we did prior. At some point, I'm guessing, I feel like I said it all the time. Like I was a broken record with it, but it was that important. And that was that, Hey, I'm going to teach you these five steps about generating more referrals from the people who already refer you. And I'm making a really big assumption here. And so my assumption and my disclaimer is, I'm assuming you're referable. And that was like, after you say it so many times you're like, Huh, maybe I should do something about that. Maybe people aren't as referable as they need to be, and so we need to look at that. So I always tell folks, when you're thinking about your clients and you're wanting to generate referrals from them, you first have to be referable. You have to put the things in place, and there's a formula behind the referable client experience. It's not just doing great work. It is more than that, which I know is hard for people to hear because you're like, Oh, can I just do great work and then get all these referrals? But nobody does. So they're like, Oh, clearly that's not working. I got to do something else than just doing great work. So with our clients, it's really understanding that it's not just the plan we put in place, that we can get referrals from them. We first have to bring them to a place where they would want to refer. And then we bridge the gap to receiving referrals from them. So I've been teaching this strategy to my clients for a number of years inside my programmes. And so it's always taught in that order. So the book is written in the same order. It is first, let's make sure we understand what the client experience is. Then let's make sure we're doing the things through the three stages of the client experience to be referable. And then, third part of the book, we can now bridge the gap to referrals because I've seen it time and time again. People jump to the bridging of the gap to referrals, and they're like, Let me just figure out what some of the tips are, and I'll get some referrals, and then it doesn't work. And I'm like, it doesn't matter how many times you say the things I tell you to say. If you're not referable, it's landing on deaf ears. So we first have to make sure we're making our clients feel as if they're having that referable client experience. And they'll never articulate it that way to you. We want the actions. We don't need their words. We need their actions, and their actions that they do refer. From your perspective, what does a referable client experience look like? We have these three stages of business. Each of them, I guess, has their own life cycle, risk points, and advantages. But how do you illustrate that? The three stages that we talk to everybody about is new, active, and alumni. Now, if you have clients that are on retainer with you and and you want to keep them forever, you don't move to the alumni stage. You actually stay in the active stage, and then the active stage becomes ongoing. So think like a CPA or an accountant who wants to prepare your taxes every year, or a financial advisor who wants to manage your money every year. So they go new, active, and then active becomes ongoing. But a lot of businesses are going to have all three stages. The key, though, within those three stages is understanding the client experience formula. And the client experience experience formula is not just the work you do. That's one piece of the equation, but it is not more important. It is equally important, but not more important than the second part of the equation, which is driving relationships. It's building relationships. So if the work you do, and we call them work touchpoints, right? If the work you do are your work touchpoints, then the relationship building touchpoints are the things that show your client that you see them, that you understand where they are, and that you just are building that goodwill or that feeling of them feeling really seen by you and really cared for. So how you do that is you look at the new active and alumni stages and you get really clear on, here's the work we do, right? But then here's how we actually build our relationship touch points through them. And the easiest ones are to do where you're seeing your client, where they are based on what they're going through. And that's a big thing because client experience is how your client feels while working with you. That's most It's how your clients feel when they are working with you. And so impacting feelings is not... You impact feelings in multiple ways, it's not just rational, it's not just logical. Sometimes it's the other things that actually really move a client to really say amazing things about you and then are willing and open and see the opportunities to refer to you as well. You can get great results from a client or from a company that you've worked with, but the experience be like below average. When someone says, Oh, how was that? Your response would probably be, I mean, I got what I wanted, but it wasn't great. But it requires quite a bit of personal self-reflection. It's very easy when you're in the weeds doing the work with a client and they're going through a hard time thinking, Oh, they're just being difficult at the moment, or, Well, they're just not doing the work. We can reflect the blame back on them. But how they feel is the key to the referable experience. And I'm curious to know what strategies will you offer your perhaps less empathetic clients to systematise this? Yeah. So when we look at... Okay, there is something that I always talk about with my clients, and it's in the book as well, is that the truth is, is that I want you to build this amazing referable client experience. And if it's not repeatable, it's not really a client experience. It's not something you do just because you're not busy. So it's this repeatable client experience that's happening. And the reality that people miss is that there will be some clients that don't have the experience we want. Sometimes there are just difficult clients. Sometimes they're difficult clients that it's actually how they're feeling is rooted in something else. And so I have the benefit. There's some of my programmes that I work with my clients, I'm only working with them for 90 days. There's other clients that I work with, and we're together a year. And there's other clients I have where we're together about 13 to 14 months. It was a number of years ago when I realised, okay, when someone's with me for 90 days, that looks very different in terms of how they engage with me, then versus someone who's with me for a year, and about four, five or six months in, it's like we're in a routine and they start slipping. Something that we instituted a couple of years ago was what we call the monthly roundup. To each of my four programmes on the first of every month, we send out a monthly roundup. Sometimes it's as simple as just saying, Hey, remember, here's all the ways we can support you. And that like, reminder to them, that is a work touch point. That's not necessarily a relationship building touch point, but it is like letting them know, Here's all the ways we can support you. Here's all the ways that we can help you. Then, Of course, I will reach out personally to people as well. I'll be like, Hey, how are you doing? Haven't seen you in a while. But I'm really clear up front with my clients, I'm not your mother, I'm not your older sister, and I'm not going to chase you. But I don't have to chase my clients while they're working with me because I'm really clear about that upfront in terms of how I set my expectations. What I find, and I think it's the root of your question, what I find is when we don't have mechanisms in place that are reaching out to our clients pretty consistently, particularly when we work with them over a long period of time, that keeps us connected to them when we don't have scheduled meetings and things like that, when we don't have those things in place, and then our clients disappear or get grumpy, they have a right to get grumpy about that. And we need to solve that problem. It's like seeing them where they are. I always tell folks, when people move from the new stage to the active stage, you have to be really clear on, does your business have what we call the waiting game? Do your clients move into a season of you're doing all this work behind the scenes and they see none of it and they're just waiting? They're just waiting for the thing, right? You've got to have moments of work touch points and relationship building touch points that hit them where they are in those moments because they're playing the waiting game. So it's looking at your client experience of what are your clients experiencing? And then what do we need to do to really come together and make sure the work touch points also has that relationship aspect to it as well, because it makes them feel like, Oh, they see me. And that's one of the ultimate reactions that I want my clients to have with their client experience is that, wow, I didn't expect that from Bob while working with him, and he really sees me. I think what's really interesting Another thing is, a lot of the time, our clients don't know what good product or good consulting looks like. They trust us to know. And something I find myself repeating again and again is the The main thing that your customer is going to take away from working with you is how they feel about working with you. They will trust you know what they're doing. They're not going to be comparing what you do to what other people do. We do that, but they don't. The number one thing is How does your customer feel about working with you? Knowing this, when we're busy, putting systems and frameworks in place to protect us from our own negligence when we're busy is really powerful because it is the most important thing. If our customers don't feel good about working with us, then all that's left is money. They're just transactions, and they're not going to refer us. I don't think anybody listening will think, No, I just want my customers to think that I give them the money and transact. I want them to care about me. So yeah, that gives me a lot to think about. Not that my clients don't know that I love them and care about them, but I definitely could be more systematic about it. And that's the key. I find that most people, when I work with them with our client experience, we're not blowing up what they already have. And we're usually never starting from scratch because it's so bad. We're usually tweaking what's already there. It's usually already pretty decent pretty good. The work touch points are happening. It's sometimes that we're filling in on the emotional side of what the clients are feeling. So sometimes we're just adding the relationship building touch points. We're just adding that, let's be seen, let's show care a little bit differently. And sometimes we are helping to manage expectations. There's an activity that I teach in the book in Chapter 4 called the Expectation Map. And I have found that when clients put that into place, it really allows the client to not make assumptions and to not assume what this is going to be like. And when they get into the waiting game, if you've already labelled, Hey, when we move into this time, you're going to feel like you're just waiting around for something to happen. Here's all the things that are actually happening. The expectation map is actually a visual representation of what your client, what it'll look like to work with you. When you made it visual, then you've labelled everything and you've removed the stigma to the, Why am I waiting around? No, that's right. Bob told me, We're in the waiting game. This is where we are. This is normal. That helps manage expectations, which then will manage emotions. I think anybody in the creative industries will listen to that nodding their head and thinking, Yeah, waiting for content, waiting for design mockups. All of these things take time. It's not what I do anymore, but it used to be in my life. The clients don't know. If we allow that void to exist, they'll fill it with their own imagination and assumptions. It won't be positive towards you. No. No matter how much they love you. It really won't. It doesn't matter. In the beginning, they may be like, Oh, I'm sure everything's good, everything's good. But then eventually they're like, Oh, they start to doubt. We just want to avoid that if we can. I'm interested to hear from you before we move on to the three amplifiers section, as I'm starting to call it now. What is the most referable customer experience you've ever seen? Oh, wow. You mean from one I've experienced or one with my clients? Either. I think I'm really looking simply for an illustrative example for people listening to so they can go, Oh, that's what great looks like. Okay, so I have one client that when they work with the client, it can be a year or longer. And all of that is indicative of what's happening that is out of my client's control. And they put together an expectation map that allowed them to walk their clients through what to expect. And then they made sure during the new stage, the active stage, and then, of course, in the alumni stage, they had a few key relationship building touch points that really spoke to the waiting game in the active stage and really spoke to what we call the quiet voice in the new stage and really allowed them to show up differently for their clients. And that has made all the difference, not necessarily in increased referrals. It's definitely done that. But that's just a number. That's just a metric. And I know everyone's like, well, that's the ROI I'm looking for. But what I find what's different about a referable client experience is how it changes you, you as a service provider. When you are providing that referable client experience and you are receiving referrals, yes, but your clients are responding differently to you, and your clients are not as many headaches as they used to be, and you feel really confident that you've got this and your clients know it because you've articulated it, you've shown it, and you're showing up. And impacting how they feel. It grows confidence in us as a business owner. So yes, of course, results come from that, from a referral perspective. But the client experience one is actually what I tell folks. I'm like, I'm less concerned about how many referrals you get because I have 19 other strategies that are going to help you get those referrals with other people if that's what's necessary. This one, I'm most interested in how it impacts you and how you feel about your own business and about how you work with clients, because when you feel more confident about how you work with clients and the results you get for them and how you take care of them, all those pieces, you show up differently to every prospect you ever talk to about, Yeah, this is what it looks like. We're going to walk you through it. Here's a map. Let me walk you through it. This is what you expect. And then you know you're going to show up in ways that they're not expecting that are going to surprise and delight. You have confidence that exudes when you're talking to potential clients. And that, sometimes to me, is the biggest game changer. In addition, In addition to the fact, yes, your clients are going to start referring you more to, that is what I find when I look at clients, the growth that I see is them being like, the business feels different. I think that's more valuable than we got 10 more referrals this year than last year. That's super valuable, too. I'm not trying to downplay that. I just know that the value that comes from this experience or from this strategy is more internal than it is anything else. I think we all know how we feel about things impacts our behaviour and impacts how other people treat us. I think everybody's familiar with the idea of imposter syndrome in comparison from the perspective of our content marketing and our personal brands. But it's equally true of our customer experience. If we don't feel great about our customer experience, we don't put systems around making sure that we do provide a consistently good customer experience, then if we don't feel good, even at a subconscious level about what we're doing, that's going to impact everything that we put out into the world, which will have a direct consequence. I was going to ask about strategies for amplifying referrals from our clients, but you've already touched on, that's not the point at this stage. This is about being referable. Rather than activating the referral mindset in our clients. Let's move on to the next stage, the three amplifiers, Stacey, Brown, Randall. What is amplifier number one? Okay, I'm going to be a little selfish, but I'm going to say that Amplifier number one is to go buy my new book, The Referrable Client Experience, because the things you and I have talked about, like how to do an expectation map, is in this book. Just go read it. There's an example in here, too. We do a secret link that you can only access if you're a reader, if you actually purchase the book, where you can go and get more resources to help and support you. I know if people are like, Hey, I want to have a referable client experience, I know the first stop for most folks is to read the book and then get additional resources and really start working towards building that referable client experience. That would be Amplifier number one. I know it sounds self-serving, but I also know what changes in people when they get new information to how to improve their business. I echo that, and I'm going to add to it, also buy the first book while you're there. Because I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the most gifted and recommended book of the last year and a half for me, and it's making a huge difference for my clients. Thank you. Amplifier number two. Okay, so the second one is actually something that anybody can do, whether they buy my book or not, it doesn't matter. But after listening to this episode, the number one thing that I would say you want to consider doing, like an action you're going to take for your business, is to map out what you're doing now. And I mean like old school, like piece of paper, bullet point it out, draw it out like it's on a map or whatever. But the minute somebody says yes to you, what's What's the first step that's taken? And then what is all steps that happen after that? And map them out. And then go back and mark the ones that are purely work. They sign a contract, we send an invoice, they pay the invoice, we have a meeting, we send the update, we send the whatever it is that we do for them. Once you've mapped out everything that you do for your clients from start to finish, from the day they start with you to the day they're done, and you map out all of your touch points, go back and identify with a W, the ones that are work. And then the ones that are purely just relationship building, put an R beside. What I know is going to happen for most businesses is you're probably only going to have one, maybe two pure relationship building touchpoints. You're Our goal is to improve that. If you have 40 touch points, we do not need 40 relationship touch points. That is weird. Don't do that, right? But if you're looking at 40 work touch points, you're probably going to want to make sure at a minimum, you've got three, maybe four relationship touch points, but you're probably going to start getting into the 20 %, probably are ultimately going to look like relationship building touch points. And some relationship building touch points can be combined with work. So that makes it easier to deliver. But go back and look, how many Ws do you have versus how many Rs do you have? It's a really important exercise. I think that's really powerful. I mean, I reflect on, I've got a lot of work to do. So hopefully people at home are thinking, yeah, I can I immediately see how I can let these people who are the most valuable people to me know that they're the most valuable people, and they're not simply transactions or line items. So thing number three, the final amplifier. Yeah. So This one is a little bit outside the client experience, but it's because we talked about it, and I think that it is the easiest thing for people to do if they want to know where their low hanging fruit is that's hanging out in their business right now for getting more referrals. Just think about it over the next 90 days. This is the thing you want to do if you want to at least start moving in the right direction. And that is actually identifying if you have existing referral sources. So now I'm pulling a piece out of the first book, Generating business referrals without asking. But if you have people referring you now, it is the low hanging fruit and usually the fastest way to increase your referrals. But you have to know who they are first before you put the 5-7 touch point plan in But when I work with my clients, I always like to say this, when people go to my website and they see all these amazing case studies, Oh, she tripled our referrals in one year. She quadrupled our referrals in 90 days. It is usually a portion, not a whole, but a large portion of that quadrupling or tripling or doubling of referrals is because they had people referring them. And all I had to do was be like, Do you know who they are? Great. We've got them identified. Now let's layer in this touch point plan. And once we do that, everything starts to shift. But you do not know what to do until you know who you are doing it for. So you really need to work through the process. And it's actually in the book, in my first book as well, but I'll just really quickly give the points. When you're identifying who your existing referral sources are, you don't do it by who you think or recency bias or who has most recently referred you. You do it by looking about, over the last couple of years, list out all your clients and then list out where they come from. And if you list out a name, like, Oh, this person came from Bob, right? Bob is my referral source. All the names you list, those are your existing referral sources. If you can do it for one year, great. My clients always tell them you're going to do it for three to four years. Whether you become a client of mine or not, it doesn't matter. You might as well go back and do three years. But pull out the last three years of clients that you brought on board and then identify where they heard about you. Any name on that list of who they heard about you from is a referral source. And that now is your list of gold. I don't care if it has three people on it or 33 people on it. You need to know who these people are because they are usually the closest to your next couple of clients than you are. I did this about three months ago, and there were some real surprises there. Yeah, there always is. Yeah. So, Stacy, we're going to have to wrap things up. I am really grateful for your time. I would love to have you back again soon, definitely when you get to the third book. I think it's going to be probably everybody wishes you start with the third book first, but I bet we'll be Glad you didn't. Thank you. If people want to find out more about you, if they want to get closer to your world, how can they do that? Homebase is my website, stacybrownrandel. Com. I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes page so everybody spells Stacey correctly. But There you'll be able to find about my podcast, the free resources that we have, both books as well. Every book has its own book website as well. So if you want to go to a referable client experience, it'll tell you where you can purchase the books. It's wherever you like to buy books is where you'll be able to purchase the books. So we have links to, if you're in Australia, Bookshop, right? If you're in Canada, to Indigo. So wherever you want to buy the books, we've got those options on the website. And you can also download a free chapter and just test it out before you make the decision to buy the book. But either of those two websites are a great place to start. Awesome. That does bring us to the end of another episode. Thanks at home for listening. If you did enjoy the show, I would gently encourage you to leave five star reviews wherever you listen to podcast. That's five. Count them and share the show with just one person. If you did enjoy the show, again, you will love the personal brand business roadmap. Fifty pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. 100% free as a gift from me. Just click the link in the show notes or visit amplifyme. Agency/roadmap. Thanks again, Anne, for listening. And Stacey, thank you for your time. You've been awesome. My pleasure.