Ep #272: When to be a Scuba Diver vs Astronaut

Stacey Brown Randall: What do scuba divers and astronauts have to do with referrals? Well, let’s not delay. Let’s get right to it.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 272 of the Roadmap to Referrals Podcast, a show about helping you build a referable business. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

My journey from a business failure to a successful business now 10 years in, I know generating referrals naturally and consistently has made all the difference. Working with clients around the world, we leverage the science of referrals, protect relationships above all else, and help you build a referable business.

Okay, admit it. When you listened to the title or maybe you heard it in the tease of this episode, you were like, “Seriously, Stacey, scuba divers and astronauts? I think she’s officially gone off her rocker.” Admit it, you thought there for a second, “Okay, seriously, how is she going to relate this to referrals?”

It’s okay, because to be honest with you, I never thought twice about scuba divers and astronauts when it comes to the A, world of business, let alone the world of referrals, until it hit me of how they actually relate.

And I didn’t come to this on my own. So, let me give credit where credit is due. I actually read about this concept in a book, and the book is called Every Word, and I will link to it in the show notes for this episode. The show notes link for this episode is staceybrownrandall.com/272.

So, I’m reading this book and out of nowhere, I read this line as it’s used in the concept for the book. I mean, it’s in context for the book itself, which had nothing to do with business. But I read it and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that so applies to business and that applies to referrals.” So, what better way to share it with you than to do an episode about it.

So, here’s what I read in the book, it was a couple of lines, I’m going to read it to you and then we’re going to dive in. So, from the book, Every Word, this is what is stated:

“A scuba diver, the patient explores who go deep beneath the surface to experience the colors and the textures of the underwater world.

Astronauts are high above the earth’s atmosphere. They are rewarded with the majesty and the beauty of the entire planet. Both scuba divers and astronauts experience the same world, but from different perspectives.”

Let’s dive in. What do I mean scuba divers and astronauts from a business and then referral perspective? When I read this concept in the book, they were applying it to how we were going to read the book, and we were actually going to read it from an astronaut’s perspective.

So, we were going to read it from a high above the earth atmosphere where we’re rewarded with the beauty of the entire planet, like taking it all in, which is actually very different than reading, in this case, a book on a singular topic where you can be an explorer who goes deep beneath the surface to experience all the wonders of the underwater world.

It’s just a perspective, but that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take the scuba diver versus astronaut perspective and apply it to your business.

Here’s the thing. As a business owner, you absolutely 1000% need both roles in your business, no doubt about it. You need to know when to be an astronaut and when to be a scuba diver.

nd in fairness, I’m really actually going to take some creative license with how I apply scuba diver and astronaut to your business as well — meaning creative license for how it was presented, this concept in the book.

The question isn’t, do you need both? Yes, you absolutely need to need both perspectives. You need to know how to do both roles in your business. The question is when you should deploy either one, when does a situation call for you being an astronaut versus you being a scuba diver? What makes one better than the other in different situations?

So, to provide some context for you guys as you think through when to be a scuba diver versus when to be an astronaut in your business, I thought I would break it down. And of course, this is not an exhaustive list of the things that are like scuba diver versus astronaut when it comes to business, but you’ll get the idea with some of the examples I’m going to give you. And then don’t worry, we’ll break it down even further when we dive into it from a referrals perspective as well.

So, the scuba diver perspective or viewpoint helps you dive deep into a part or even a subpart of your business. And maybe that part or subpart of your business is the onboarding process of your new clients.

You could have a whole entire client experience that you deploy in your business, but taking the scuba diver view of it, maybe it’s just a piece of that, a subpart of that client experience, and it’s the onboarding process. When someone says yes to working with you as you get them onboarded into your world, what does that look like?

It could be a process or a procedure that drives a specific part of your marketing. It could be the integration of some software or connection between some of your software. So, we’re talking about this from a scuba diver viewpoint, which means in reality, we are diving deep.

That is the benefit of a scuba diver. It’s going deep beneath the surface, to like dig in. I wouldn’t say necessarily you’re taking a singular focus, but maybe in some cases, you are.

So, maybe it’s an individual sales activity that you’re doing. You’re going in deep to see how it’s working. Or maybe it’s you taking some time to figure out how you can back into specific results you want to get within a piece or a part of your business.

In those situations, the onboarding of your clients, a process or procedure that drives your marketing, the integration of some of your software, an individual sales activity — in those situations, you need to be able to dive in, go deep and typically solve what’s not working or improve upon what’s already there to make it better.

Now, the perspective though of an astronaut is to take stock of your entire business or maybe the entire area of a business, depending on how large your business is. Maybe that is, for example, the overall strategy of your business, looking at your model, making sure the model is working for the overall strategy, and the offerings that you have.

Maybe it’s looking at your growth trajectory (where are you going?) It could be progress that you are trying to make towards long-term goals. It could be the overall financial health of your business and quite possibly maybe even some forecasting.

The idea here is recognizing when you are working on your business, not necessarily in it. But when you are deciding to work on your business, it’s the recognition in that moment that you need to know whether to apply a scuba diver or astronaut.

In some cases, the astronaut view will lead you to needing to deploy the scuba diver view, but not always. And in some cases, you may need to apply a blend of both. So, what should you do now with this information in this moment that you are listening to this episode?

Hey there, pardon the interruption. When it’s time to double, triple or quadruple your referrals now, you need to join us inside the Building a Referable Business Coaching Program. Go to staceybrownrandall.com/referable to learn about everything you receive inside BRB and to submit your application.

The link again is staceybrownrandall.com/referable. Okay, now back to the episode.

So, with a question that we need to consider now is great, now you have an idea of the scuba diver versus astronaut viewpoint within your business, what in the heck should you do with this information? Well, I’ve got a little assignment for you if you’re open to it.

If you’re listening to this episode around the time of its release date, which is pretty much late August, very early September, then it may make sense for you to pick this time of year to use as motivation to take some action. So, take some time, whether that’s a couple of hours, maybe it’s a half day or a full day, and apply one viewpoint to investigate your business.

Okay, so what do I mean about taking the time of year for motivation, specifically, if you’re listening to this around the release date? Well, some find that the back-to-school promotions that are happening and the reality of the calendar of the year does good motivation even if you don’t have kids at home. I mean, you can’t walk into like a store without seeing a massive amount of promotion for back-to-school discounts.

So, sometimes people use this back-to-school time as motivation to get back into doing something they know they need to do, get back into doing the work they need to do, it Just jump-starts your action.

For others though, it’s the start of this new season. Hey, fall is coming. I mean, for some of you in the south, it’s going to take a little longer to get here in terms of like cool weather. But let’s be honest, pumpkin spice and peppermint, they’re going to be around the corner before we know it. First, pumpkin spice everything and then peppermint.

Or maybe you look at it as, hey, this is the final month, September before fourth quarter begins and that can motivate you to jump start some action.

So, what I want you to consider doing, is to apply one of these viewpoints and investigate your business. If you’re going to be a scuba diver, then I want you to dive in on maybe something that’s not working and give yourself some space and some time find the motivation to do it, don’t just block it off, and then barrel right past it with a bunch of other things that are screaming at you from your inbox.

We all know I’m talking about everybody, including myself. Block out some time and take a scuba diver viewpoint and dive into something not working in your business.

Or it could be that maybe actually you know what? You really need to take the astronaut viewpoint and look at your business in a totality perspective, especially doing it now versus waiting until the end of this year or beginning of next year.

But if you are listening to this episode at a different time, find a different motivation to apply one of these viewpoints, scuba diver or astronaut, to investigate your business and do it now. The truth is you probably do both of these without realizing it, and more than likely, you do think like an astronaut at the end of the year as you reflect back on the year and plan ahead, and that’s the premise of goal setting.

But I really want you to take some time now. I just feel like there’s something about the start of September, the back-to-school season, the start of fall, the last month before fourth quarter that can be highly motivating for people to be like, “You know what, Stacey’s speaking something that the little voice in my brain has always been saying and I just need to do it.”

So, you’re going to take some time, please, and you’re going to investigate your business as an astronaut or as a scuba diver. You decide, you pick. I don’t need you to make this like a take a week off and do it. I mean, you certainly could, that’d be amazing, but at least just spend a little bit of time.

Of course, you know this and you know where I’m going with this. You can also apply the scuba diver or astronaut perspective to your referrals as well. Let me just give you a quick overview here.

So, astronaut perspective, it’s big picture. Now, we do talk about the big picture within referrals within your business and we call it the referral ecosystem. And I talk a lot about the referral ecosystem in episode 256. So, I will link to it that episode in the show notes for this episode. Of course, the show notes link for this episode is staceybrownrandall.com/272.

But in episode 256, we talk about this big picture, this astronaut view of your referrals in your business, and we refer to it as the referral ecosystem. But the astronaut viewpoint, the astronaut perspective of referrals is also going to be answering the questions of how’s it going? Are referrals working? Are you receiving consistent referrals in your business?

Here’s another one that people don’t ever think to ask, but how does it feel? There’s something to be said about recognizing how things feel to you within your business. I look at the end of every year and I always ask myself, “Okay, what was it this year that felt heavy?” And then I work a really hard not to have that same heaviness show up the next year as well.

I make specific choices in my business as quickly as I can when things feel heavy. But you can do that from a referral perspective as well.

So, listen to episode 256, understand the referral ecosystem. Look at your referrals in your business from an astronaut perspective and answer the question, how’s it going? Is it working? How does it feel? If you had more referrals, are the right kind of referrals, what issues would it solve? And also, make sure you answer the question of what are your long-term expectations of referrals within your business?

Okay, so let’s flip that and look at referrals from the scuba diver perspective. This is investigating one area more closely. So, maybe as a scuba diver, you’re going to dive in deep and you’re going to look at just the closing ratios of the referrals you receive, which means you get, let’s just say for sake of argument, 30 referrals in a year. You close 15 of them, you have a 50% closing ratio.

How many of you can tell me exactly without thinking or figuring it out or guessing exactly what your closing ratio of referred prospects are to paying clients? That’s your closing ratio of referrals, not knowing that you could take a scuba diver perspective and like, “Let’s dive in deep and know this answer.” So much reveals itself when we do that.

Another scuba diver place to investigate within your referrals is even deeper to that, let’s go down another 10,000 feet and think about the closing ratio from just one of your referral sources. If you get a lot of referrals from one referral source, well that’s great. If those folks don’t actually close into paying clients, it’s not really that great. So, that’s something to consider.

Maybe it’s the tracking of your referrals received. So, you want to track actually, “Hey, how are we tracking the referrals that we do receive?” Which could be that the one thing being a scuba diver uncovers is that you need to do a better job of finding out how your clients hear about you earlier in the process, either right when they become a client or hopefully, sooner than that, right when they become a prospect. So, that could be as simple as maybe just changing the client intake form or of adding a field to a contact form on your website.

Again, scuba diver. Here’s another one. How do you institute referral moments within your client experience, paying attention to it just by an individual stage within your client experience and be like, “Hey, how can we institute referral moments in that new stage of our client experience?”

Or what about taking the scuba diver viewpoint to being able to generate referrals while you’re gathering testimonials? So, within your testimonial gathering process, what are you doing that helps you generate referrals in that?

Those are all things and that’s just like … guys on both of these, astronaut and scuba diver, from a referral perspective, I’ve just like barely scratched the surface, but I just wanted to get your brain turning. I want to get you thinking about this differently.

Not only can you apply scuba diver and astronaut to your business and how your business functions and runs and performs and grows, but also, to what’s happening within your referrals. And you can do this to anything, but obviously, I’m going to talk to you about doing it from a referral perspective because that’s my jam.

So, my encouragement to you, is after you finish this episode, is to take some action as a scuba diver or astronaut, or both, be it business overall or referral specific, just remember one thing, knowledge is power to making the right decisions in your business. Though of course, knowledge is never more powerful than your implementation from what you learn.

Alright, I’m wrapping up. The resources mentioned in this episode, it’s going to be the link to episode 256 on the referral ecosystem, and I’m also going to link to the book where I read about the very idea of scuba diver versus astronaut from an investigative perspective. It can all be found on the show notes page at staceybrownrandall.com/272.

Coming up next week is episode 273, and I’m sharing how I make decisions on what I deploy within my sales strategy. This will be an interesting one.

Until then, you know what to do, my friend. Take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.