Ep #196: Speed of Starting Small

Stacey Brown Randall: We’re all looking for momentum in business. Sometimes it’s just momentum to get our day started. Other times, to start or push through on a pretty big project. And sometimes it’s momentum to take the next big leap, which can be scary. So how do you find your momentum?

You are not just another hustling salesperson. You are the expert, the
resource, the valuable partner for your clients, and how you grow your
business should reflect how your clients see you.

Welcome to the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast. We generate
referrals without asking, build positive client experiences, and help
you take control of your business.

Here’s your charmingly sarcastic host, Stacey Brown Randall.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Hey there and welcome to Episode 196 of The Roadmap To Grow Your Business Podcast. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. Before we dive in, let me give a quick shout out. This shout out for GBR student goes to Lena. Lena owns a web design and digital marketing firm. So, we’re talking about referral results when we do these shout-outs and I’m excited to share Lena’s. She averaged about 50 referrals a year. She was looking to grow, but not by too much. Capacity can sometimes always be an issue but about having a process and a procedure and a way of taking care of her referral sources in place. So she averaged about 50 referrals a year. Within her first year of following the processes and strategies that I teach, she added 10 new referral sources, which means 10 people who have never referred her before, referred her for the first time and she received 72 referrals in one year. Congratulations, Lena.

                           If you want to be like Lena, then just reach out to me. I’d be happy to walk you through the options of how I can support you. Whether that’s joining what we call our whole enchilada, which is Building A Referable Business, which is where you get weekly access to me, where that’s group sessions and then there’s also one-on-ones throughout the year, in addition to having access to all the strategies that I teach, but doing it in a 90-day roadmap and a 90-day sprint, so that you continue to make progress every single month. Then of course, BRB, Building A Referable Business, is probably for you. But if you’re just looking to deploy one of the strategies that I teach, well, you can do that too. Just reach out and let us know. You can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and I understand I’m on a few other channels as well. Of course, you can always send me an email at [email protected].

                           Let’s dive in to today’s episode. Momentum. We all need it to do the things we don’t want to do. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that the truth? I mean, sometimes when it’s like, oh, we’ve got to just, something basic, like start laundry. It’s like the momentum of just picking up the dirty clothes basket and making our way to the laundry room. Momentum is important. Whether it is the momentum to put our feet on the floor, out of our nice warm, cozy bed in the mornings, to get up and get our day started. Or, when it to work the momentum to get that long list of to-dos done. In specifically, when you’re working on a big project or a big goal, you’re trying to tackle for the year, momentum helps get you started, keeps you going while you’re in the muck of the middle, and then of course helps you finish strong.

                           Momentum. Forward motion. One step after the other, even if they’re baby steps. Momentum’s really, really important. But sometimes finding it is not easy. We know it’s important. We understand we’ve got to have it to make things happen, but how do you find momentum? Or more importantly, keep your momentum when you’re just not feeling it? I have those moments. I won’t say daily, but I have those moments often and something tells me you’re nodding your head and laughing along with me, thinking to yourself, “Yes, Stacey, you are not alone.” I know I’m not alone. I know it’s hard to find momentum. No matter how much we love what we do, no matter how good we are at what we do, sometimes finding momentum for our businesses can be hard.

                           I never really thought about the best way to find momentum until I watched my clients do it within building a referable business. So you guys have heard me talk about BRB. That’s Building A Referable Business. We call it BRB for short and it’s where you get access to all the strategies that I teach in our online portal and you get to come every single week to weekly sessions where you get to ask your questions. You’re never more than seven days away from having your questions answered, live by me. You get to dig in to things you’re dealing with. You get to ask questions about the trainings that you’re going through and the strategies that you’re in the process of deploying. And then of course, we also sprinkle in a number of one-on-one sessions, with just me and you, to really dig in and to make sure you’re making progress.

                           There’s a concept that we use in BRB, that I realized is at the heart of the momentum I see my BRB clients having and it really is where their speed and progress is coming from. It’s pretty freaking incredible. It’s not a new concept. It’s just the first time I’ve deployed it in this way, with clients of mine going through one of my programs. Now BRB is different. It’s not just an online program combined with a Facebook group. It is all the programs, and access to me, and community and weekly group sessions. It’s like all the things. I understand it’s totally different, so the deploying this one strategy that I’m going to talk to you guys about, isn’t something I would have done with my other programs or clients that are in my other standalone programs like, Growth By Referrals or Referring Machines, programs like that.

                           But I realize that I’m watching these BRB clients have success when they’ve sometimes been in programs. They’ve been in Growth By Referrals and they have started and stopped multiple times and never fully implemented a referral plan. And as much as we’d love to say that never happens, folks, life gets in the way. And sometimes you have the best of intentions, when you decide to invest in a program you’re going to get started and then months go by and you haven’t. And there are folks, and it does happen, more than we would like to admit, that people start and then stall out.

                           We all know that accountability is a big part of your ability to move forward and there is a big, huge piece of accountability that’s built into BRB because every single week I’m holding you accountable to what you are accomplishing. Every single person, we talk about it, one-on-one, in our weekly sessions, every single week. So there’s some really cool, different things that we’re doing in BRB that have just never been able to offer before, which is why BRB is what we call the whole enchilada because it’s like everything.

                           There is a concept that we started using, probably just a few, like maybe the first or second folks that started in BRB. I just kind of came up with this idea on the fly. Again, it’s not a new concept, it’s just a way that I’m applying it differently for my clients in BRB. The concept was a 90-day sprint.

                           So when I sat down with the very first person who joined BRB, who’s an attorney, when I sat down with her and we did her onboarding call, which everybody has to do before they can join. I mean, when you join BRB, that’s the very first thing you do is have an onboarding call with me. You answer some questions, you have an assessment, and then you have an onboarding call with me and we go through your assessment and we develop a plan of where you’re going to start. But we developed it in this way, that I call 90-day sprints. Now every single person in BRB, now operates from a 90-day sprint.

                           When they finish one, they get to, we build another one together. And so that’s how it works through. Their entire year, they should have a minimum of four 90-day sprints. I say minimum because if they move faster, we build new ones and then they just make progress faster and that’s the secret that I am finding. I mean, not the secret, but that’s the cool thing about watching BRB evolve we’re now in it almost four months, it’ll be over four months by the time this podcast is released.

                           What I’m finding really cool is this concept of these 90-day sprints. It’s how we build the framework, the roadmap, of what you should be focused on and allows me to hold you accountable to what you’re supposed to be doing, and gives us a chance to celebrate, which are all three very important things you need to have when you’re trying to make progress. When you’re trying to make progress, you need to know what your plan is, what your framework is. Where am I going? And then when I’m done with that, where do I go next? You need to have accountability. So that someone’s like, “Did you do it?” And you can say yes or no and then re-motivate yourself to find the momentum and keep moving forward. And then celebrate when you do. Those are the three important pieces to making big things happen that you normally don’t do on any given day. That’s what it is when you come into a program like mine or any program that you decide to invest in, or any coach you decide to work with, or any training that you decide to go through.

                           At the end of the day, these are things that you don’t normally naturally do on a daily basis, but you want to develop a strategy, a process, a plan, build your skill in a certain area, so you invest in training. Whether that’s one-on-one, whether that’s coaching, whether it is online program, whatever it is, a mastermind, these are something you want to get better at, which means you got to take the time to learn it and implement it and execute on it, and then watch it work before you build onto the next strategy.

                           So, in BRB with our 90-day sprints, we break down what you’re going to do for your first 30 days. Then when you’ve completed that, what are you going to your second 30 days? And then when you’ve completed that, what are you going to do for your third 30 days? When I look at the progress that my BRB members, my clients are having, it is tied to them tackling one strategy at a time and going faster because we’ve broken it down to smaller bite size, manageable pieces.

                           So just to give you an idea of what this looks like, if you had been in Growth By Referrals or Inner Circle, which used to be available, and then you were moving into BRB, which means you have implemented on your referral plan for at least a year, but maybe a couple of years, depending on where you are and how long you’ve been a part of the GBR program. And if you were upgrading and upleveling yourself into BRB, then the very first thing you’re going to have in your first 30 days is we need to do a cleanup because we need to make sure you have your plan in place for this year. We need to make sure you have your master list of who are your referral sources going into this year. And when I say this year, it doesn’t matter to me if that’s in January or July. It’s whenever that clock of one year starts for you. Waiting for the calendar to tell you it’s time to do something in terms of it’s January 1st, now you can take care of your referrals, is probably not a good strategy. Just FYI.

                           When the time is right, jump in. Don’t worry about what month it is. But when you understand, as somebody who’s coming into the program that’s actually been participating and been executing, maybe in fits and starts, but has been executing on what I teach, the first 30 days is always going to be cleanup. But then, we’re looking at where are your other gaps, when it comes to building a referral business. Then, that may be what you focus on in your next 30 days, your second 30 days. It may be actually, you know what you really need to do. You need to focus on some testimonial and you need to focus on how you can get referrals through your testimonial process, without asking for those referrals.

                           While we have a program that’s just for BRB members called Testimonials Made Easy, that actually helps it to make it easy for you to gather testimonials and of course, plant referral seeds at the same time. And so if you’ve been in the program for a while, you may be thinking, all right, I’m going to do a cleanup and then I’m going to go tackle Testimonials Made Easy. And then you may do your third 30 days, maybe implementation of what you learned in Testimonials Made Easy, or maybe not. It may be that you’re moving on to the next strategy and if you’re brand new coming into BRB, we determine where you are.

                           I may have you go through the first two modules of GBR and then we determine what your number of referral sources are and I’m like, stop now. Go over here and start this training because that’s how you’re going to get the fastest momentum and you’re going to make progress the fastest. That’s really ultimately what I’m seeing, is this progress that my BRB members are making is because again, it’s tied to tackling one strategy at a time, knowing what you’re doing and just tackling it, and then going faster because that has then been broken down for you in smaller steps that you can accomplish. So you can look at it and say, “I’m going to do this, this week and that piece next week,” And you’ve got 30 days to make it happen.

                           Now, this is just how we are using the 90-day sprint framework within BRB. But you can do the same thing in your business when you are trying to tackle things in your world. So what could would you create a 90-day sprint around? So if you want to take this concept and you understand that your speed sometimes starts because you’re starting small. Your speed sometimes comes from your ability to start small and build momentum and do one small thing and then the next thing and the next thing, and before you know it, you’re halfway through tackling that project or that goal.

                           I want you to think about this concept of this 90-day sprint, and then think about how you can use it. If you come into BRB, you’re going to use it. We all use it. It’s how we hold you accountable every week, in addition to making sure you’re making progress. But your 90-day sprint can be a goal you’re trying to accomplish. If there’s a goal you want to accomplish for this year, you can break it down in just a 90-day sprint. I’m not saying that goal would be accomplished within those 90 days, but what I am saying is that you’ll make so much progress within those three sets of 30 days.

                           So within that 90-day sprint, maybe it’s a goal you will want to tackle for the year. Maybe it’s just a big project that you need to accomplish in your business and that could be maybe it’s on the operational side. Maybe it’s on the marketing side. Maybe it’s on the sales side. Maybe it’s on the referral side. If it is, I want to talk to you.

                           Or, your 90-day sprint, maybe it’s how you’re going to get some momentum and some speed to knock out a bunch of tiny tasks that are just hanging around your neck like a weight, that if you could just get them done, they would create processes and systems and things that would be off your to-do list and would make your life easier.

                           There’s no right or wrong way to build a 90-day sprint. Now I’m sure people who like really teach this stuff would probably say, “Actually, Stacey, there’s a specific way we use 90-day sprints.” But I’m saying, I’m giving you permission to decide what do you need to use it for to make some momentum? Because what I’ve watched with my BRB members is that their progress and the speed at which they are making this progress is built around the concept of starting small and how we’re starting small is with a 90-day sprint, but only focusing on the first 30 days with a deadline attached to it. When that first 30 days is done, hopefully by the deadline, but maybe even sooner, then you move to your next 30 days. When that second 30 days is done, then you move to your third 30 days. When that is done, you celebrate. Yes, you do. And then you build another 90-day sprint.

                           It is the concept though, of starting small, which is going to give you all the speed and momentum you ultimately need. I use this concept in my own business. I have for years and now I’m teaching it to my BRB members, so that they get through the trainings and implementation and they start implementing the things and we start seeing them have success and that’s just an important thing for you to keep in mind as what this should look like for you.

                           The truth is when I think about how we do our 90-day sprints within BRB, what I love most about it is, we type it up for them. A BRB member, we actually put it in writing, which is also super important. That 90-day sprint cannot live in your head. It’s got to be on paper. I don’t care if you write it out or you type it up or you put it in some fancy Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc. It doesn’t matter to me, but it has to be written out.

                           What we do during our onboarding calls is I’m making notes as to what they’re going to focus on in their first, second, and third 90 days, then they get an email from me. That’s like, “Okay, here’s your first 30 days. One, two, three. Here’s your second 30 days. One, two. Here’s your third 30 days. One.” I mean, the numbers are irrelevant. I’m just saying they know exactly what to do in exactly where to go to get started and then I hold them accountable to that.

                           The only piece to this that you may need to build into this is who’s going to hold you accountable to accomplishing your first 30 days, your second 30 days and your third 30 days, but I know you can do it. I mean, maybe you can hold yourself accountable. I can’t hold myself accountable, but some people have that gift. I’m not one of them. But if you can, then hold yourself accountable. If not, find a as buddy to do it with you. That doesn’t mean you can’t apply the 90-day sprint concept to your personal life as well. Of course, I’m just teaching it to you within your business world.

                           So try it out. Build out a 90-day sprint for a goal, a project, trainings, whatever it is, a bunch of tiny tasks that you just need to knock off the list of to-dos. Build it out and then come tell me about. Tell me how it went. I want to hear about your progress or your thoughts around building out a 90-day sprint in our free community, which is our Referrals Without Asking Facebook group. Of course, I’ll link to that group and of course we’ll have some information about this 90-day sprint on the show notes page or this episode, Staceybrownrandall.com/196. Again, that’s Staceybrownrandall.com/196. Stacey has an E.

         Okay. Next week coming up is episode 197 and we’re going to talk about business one more time from a high level, with this concept I call, The Four Quads. Another important thing I want you guys thinking about, as we’re entering second quarter. But until then, take control and grow your business. Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast. To
access all resources and links mentioned in today’s show, and to
connect with Stacey, head over to www.staceybrownrandall.com.