Ep #431: Referrals Step by Step

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there, do you love referrals but hate asking for them? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Roadmap to Referrals podcast and I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

For the past few episodes, we’ve been tackling what I call the referral fundamentals. It’s the way that you can see and understand referrals clearly and correctly. That way you can take the right actions to be able to generate more of them.

Now, we do have a few more referral fundamentals to go, but I’m gonna pause for this episode because I wanna introduce you to Angelique Thomas.

Angelique is a South Florida real estate attorney, and she represents clients in high value residential and commercial real estate transactions. Now, she founded her own law firm, Vellum Law, after working for other firms for almost two decades.

When I first met her, it was last year in May, and she had just joined my starter program, Your Next Five Referrals.

And she showed up for one of the monthly office hours that I do as a bonus for those who were in the Your Next Five Referrals online program.

So she had recently returned to Florida to open her own law practice and was growing a new network. Even though Florida was home, she was growing a new network, and she wanted referrals to be at the center of her new law firm.

Now, today she is also a member of my coaching program, Building a Referable Business, which she joined earlier this year after having excellent success in the Your Next Five Referrals online program.

The coaching program was just the next logical step for her with her focus on growing her referrals. So I’m excited for you to join us in this conversation as we break it all down. Here we go.

Stacey Brown Randall: Angelique, I’m so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks for being in here with me today.

Angelique Thomas: Thanks for having me, Stacey.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, so let me just ask you, you did not know this question was coming. It’s so unfair, but have you done a lot of podcast interviews like this?

Angelique Thomas: This is my first one. My mom will be watching.

Stacey Brown Randall: I love that. It’s so funny. So I kind of knew the answer to that question, but I wanted you to be able to share it.

So I know sometimes when people are like, I don’t just like go be on podcast and like be interviewed on podcast at a time. Sometimes they’re like, what is happening?

And yeah, but we are here to talk about your journey, working with me. So this will be a conversation that you know intimately. So it’ll be nice and easy from that perspective.

So welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here. Before we dive into all things about what you’ve been learning and results and things like that with referrals, why don’t you just take a moment and share with my audience what you do, what your business is.

Angelique Thomas: So I am a real estate attorney based in South Florida. I’ve started my law firm 10 years. I work with clients on both commercial and residential transactions.

Stacey Brown Randall: Perfect. Now, how long have you been in Florida?

Angelique Thomas: So I’m originally from Florida, but I moved out of state for seven years and I just moved back home to South Florida last June. So not even a full year yet.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. So this is an important piece to the story, right? Of what we’re gonna talk about.

So you may be only back in Florida for, at the time of this recording for less than a year, but it’s not like this was your first year being an attorney.

Angelique Thomas: Exactly. Practicing for 16 years now.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes. So yeah, we start saying numbers like that and doesn’t it make us feel old?

Angelique Thomas: Yes.

Stacey Brown Randall: I wanna say I’ve been practicing for six years, not 16.

Angelique Thomas: Right, exactly.

Stacey Brown Randall: I talk about this business turning 13 years old this year and I’m like, and then most people who know my story know that I also had another business that wasn’t quite five years before it failed and then I had to go back to corporate.

And I didn’t even start my first business to my 30s. And all of a sudden, I’m like, I’m just old. Like that’s just all those numbers.

Angelique Thomas: Time is flying. Can’t stop it.

Stacey Brown Randall: Can’t stop it. That’s so true. Okay. So let me ask you kind of a general question about referrals.

I think this is always an important one for other business owners who are listening to our conversation to kind of see like how other business owners talk about the importance of referrals.

And so tell us a little bit from your perspective, why are referrals so important for your business and how you bring in clients and how you grow your business?

Angelique Thomas: So as a real estate attorney, that’s mostly B2B. I mean, referrals are kind of the lifeblood of my practice.

I’m not really a consumer facing attorney like a family lawyer or an immigration attorney. So I really rely or depend heavily on professional relationships to really grow my business and bring in new clients.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, I think that’s so key. Like we talk about any business can get referrals but there are definitely some businesses where your ability to get in front of the ultimate prospect, right, the ultimate new client is sometimes best served coming through other people.

So it’s like the lifeblood piece of referrals for how your business runs. It’s different than just other folks who may like, now I’m not saying you can’t get leads and potential clients from like online marketing strategies and things like that.

But there is a piece of work you do as a real estate attorney that you, that vouching for and somebody else saying, hey, this is who you need to work with is a critical piece of what you do.

Angelique Thomas: Definitely.

Stacey Brown Randall: So you started first working with me. You came into what we call, what we affectionately call our online program. It’s our starter course.

It’s kind of like the dip your toe in, like what is Stacey all about? Let’s figure out if like, I like her and I like what she teaches, and can I have success with it?

And that is our Your Next Five Referrals online starter course. And so you started with that. You knew you were kind of like new, right, in Florida.

And you’re like, I need to have some processes and some strategies and some things that will help me with that.

So you started out with the starter course. You went through Your Next Five Referrals. You got 12 referrals, your time in that session.

Angelique Thomas: Fourteen.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh, 14.

Angelique Thomas: Yes.

Stacey Brown Randall: Shame on me for giving the wrong number, particularly a lower one. You got 14 referrals.

Our goal for Your Next Five Referrals, the goal for everybody is to get at least five referrals, to prove to yourself that you can do this, that it will work, right? But you’ve got 14, that’s almost triple the number, which is fantastic.

And so one thing that I offer, so for folks listening who aren’t familiar, one thing we offer with the folks who come into our starter course, Your Next Five Referrals, is once a month, not every single month, but almost once a month, I go live with the people just in that program so they can have a little bit of access to me to ask questions.

Because it is an online course, right? It doesn’t come with like one-on-one time with me. It doesn’t come with, you don’t get to email me questions every time you have something.

So we also know how lonely that can be, to be like, I’ve got this four-module program, I’m watching these videos. We try to be as clear and as laid out and as step-by-step as we can be, but we know people will have questions.

So once a month, I go live for just the members of that program, and they can come on and ask me questions.

And I will never forget, I know you came on to a couple of them that I remember, but I’ll never forget the one where you came on and I could, you were asking questions and I could see the wheels turning of like, there’s more to this, I can do more.

And I was like, okay, this is like, you’re starting to think like it’s more than just these 14, right? It’s more than just what I have seen with these.

I think there’s eight strategies inside your next five referrals, but they’re like the basics, right? They’re not the in-depth signature foundational strategies. There’s pieces of them, but not the whole thing.

And I can see the wheels turning about potential for you and about what this would look like. But a big thing for you was the overcoming of I’m back in a new city.

Angelique Thomas: Yeah, being new in town again.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, so tell us a little, because I think that’s really important for folks to understand.

Like, tell us what that was like for you when you’re like, you’re moving your law practice, you’re now back in South Florida, you’re starting to go through Your Next Five Referrals, you’re starting to see success, you’re starting to see things happen.

And then you make the decision to upgrade into the building a Referral Business, the BRB coaching program.

What was going through your mind as you were kind of making those decisions to invest in different things and move along and upgrade with me as well? What was kind of like that whole first year looking like for you?

Angelique Thomas: Well, I remember like during one of the live sessions with you during Your Next Five Referrals, you gave me just such key advice.

And that advice was like, when I’m out like networking, let people know that I’m new to town, I’m looking to meet new people.

So I started like using that piece of advice whenever I went out networking, when I told people that it just snowballed from like one introduction to the next, to the next, to the next.

And I was just meeting so many people, and I knew that I had to follow up and stay top of mind. I didn’t really know how to do that besides sending a thank you card when I had a one-on-one with them.

So I knew, okay, I needed to work with you, Stacey, to kind of like really cultivate those relationships I was building over the long term that would turn into referral sources, potential clients.

So it was a lot of people that I met and just like learning how to manage all of that and working with you so far in BRB has just been like priceless.

Stacey Brown Randall: Awesome, I love hearing that. And here’s the thing, see, that’s how I knew the wheels were starting to turn because we started to think about the situation you were in and then applying what you were learning.

And specifically, I remember I told you, because I give this advice to everybody, like everyone thinks like when you move to a new city or you move to a new town, like it’s so overwhelming to start meeting people.

And I’m like, are you kidding? You have the one thing for about 12 months. And after that, you really can’t use it anymore.

But you have this one thing that makes people want to take notice and that’s to tell them you’re new, you’re new in town. Like people are like, oh, they immediately shift into how can I help you mode.

But when you’re three years in, you’re not new anymore. Like you can’t like pull that one out of the, so I was like, oh my gosh, yeah.

So that’s why I find those Q&A calls, those bonus Q&A calls for the people in Your Next Five Referrals program so key.

But also as you know, it’s since you moved into the coaching program, you also see that continue because we do a couple of times a month Q&A calls where the community of the folks in the coaching program can come together and ask questions and get feedback on things.

You also then can have access to one-on-ones with me throughout the program and can email me anytime you have questions.

Like all of that’s included in the coaching program because what I’m always looking for is exactly the question you asked in that early Q&A session with me about a key piece of context of being new in Florida.

And then I was like, wait, there’s more here that I need you to know that’s very specific for you. And there’s no amount of prerecorded training that can solve for that specific problem or issue or like situation.

That’s when the live interaction is so very important. So I always tell folks, you’ve got to come to those things.

Angelique Thomas: Yeah, they’re included, so yeah.

Stacey Brown Randall: They’re included. You’re already paying for them. You might as well come to them.

But that’s when I get to know things are happening in my client’s world. And I get to be like, hey, let’s do this. Let’s adjust this.

Because the truth is everything I know and have taught people about referrals and experienced for myself with referrals over 13 years, I can’t put that in any one place. I can’t put that; there’s not enough video recordings that I could do.

There’s not enough, I can’t write enough books to capture all those things. Because some things are situational in the moment.

You give me just enough context or just enough background. I’m like, wait, let’s approach this this way. And that for you changed everything, which was so valuable.

Angelique Thomas: One piece of advice, I ran with it. So thank you to this very day for that piece of advice.

Stacey Brown Randall: Well, but you said the next most valuable thing, you then ran with it.

Angelique Thomas: Yeah.

Stacey Brown Randall: Right? How many times do people get advice and then they sit on it?

Angelique Thomas: That’s so true.

Stacey Brown Randall: We’ve all done that. I’m guilty of that. We’re all guilty of that. But that’s the truth, right?

And that’s why every way that I work with my clients, whether it VIP, Accelerator, the coaching program, and even Your Next Five Referrals, the starter course, they all include access to me, like talking to me. It may be one-on-one.

It may be in a group setting, but the ability to get feedback and to allow me to put my brain on your business for a little bit of time, I think is critical for why my clients have the success as long as they will, of course, as you know, show up.

Angelique Thomas: Yeah, and they show up.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. Okay, so at the time of our recording, you have just, and I know this marker specifically because you responded back to the 45-day email.

So when you join the coaching program, there’s a few markers that we kind of reach out to be like, hey, take a minute and like email back to me everything that you’ve accomplished.

Because I’m like helping you remind yourself of everything that you’ve accomplished. So you responded back to the 45 days, one of our marker milestone points, date points.

You responded back to the 45, I’m like ruining it for anybody who comes into the program later in the future, but you responded back to that.

And you specifically said, thank you for helping me remind myself of everything that I’ve accomplished in just 45 days.

And the very last thing you wrote in that email was some additional success you’ve had. And that was cultivating more new people into referral sources and more new referrals that you’re receiving.

So with your time in Your Next Five Referrals, and then less than two months in the coaching program, how are you feeling right now about referrals in your business?

Angelique Thomas: I am super excited because it’s like, I know exactly who I wanna meet.

I’m kind of like implementing a lot of strategies to meet them and then to follow up and to kind of like keep everything warm and stay top of mind with them. So it’s super exciting. I mean, the momentum is definitely picking up.

Stacey Brown Randall: Which is amazing. And you’re just at the beginning, right? Let’s be honest. It’s only just starting.

So now let me ask you a question about you looking forward, right? So one of the things that I love about what I do is that I know everything you’re learning and that you’re putting into practice inside your law firm.

You have the potential, right? As long as you choose to, to use them not just this year, right? Not just in year one, but still be executing on them in year five and in year 10. And they still be supporting you to generate referrals.

So as you look out to the future, like years, right? Maybe even a decade out into the future, what are you most hopeful about now having some of these referral strategies in place? What are you most hopeful about with your business and referrals when you look out into the future?

Angelique Thomas: As an attorney, I like to be very like, you know, organized. So just having a very like organized, systematic way to kind of like, you know, stay, I guess, top of mind with all of these referrals and potential referral sources year after year.

Like I know what I need to do. I’m kind of like putting that into place now as a newbie in the program. And I can just definitely see this going, you know, for years to come.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes. And I think that’s the value of it. I don’t know, at the time of this recording, I don’t know if you had a chance to listen to, or if sometimes when people come to clients, they like stop listening to the podcast and they’re like, I get it all from her anyways. I don’t need to listen.

Angelique Thomas: I’m still listening.

Stacey Brown Randall: You’re still listening, okay. There’s some folks who still do. I don’t know if you heard on the interview I did with Amanda Mingo.

She’s the attorney that she was part of the Where Are They Now series. So hers just came out a couple of weeks ago at the time of this recording.

But she talks about how she worked with me like way back in 2014. Here we are like, you know, 11 plus or 10 plus years later. And she learned this stuff.

And then this is how she runs. Like she talks about it. Like this is how my firm runs from a referral perspective.

And she talked about like, these are the things that we do. Like we learned them from Stacey over, you know, a couple of years and then we just keep doing them. And that’s what I love to hear the most.

Angelique Thomas: That’s what I wanna be.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yes. I want you to be the next Amanda who comes back and you’re like, look at all my success. Yeah. I want that for you too.

But here’s the thing that you and Amanda have in common. And the thing that all of my clients, you included, have to do to be like Amanda, which is it’s all in the implementation. And it’s all in the consistency of the implementation.

And Amanda would tell you, there’s years she was really good at the implementation. And then years, not so good because things happen. Family things happen. Life happens, right? But she always had the processes she could go back to that she could rely on.

So as you’re building and learning all the things you have yet to do inside the coaching program, just remember, it’s like looking for these pieces that are like, this is a foundational piece, and I’ll do this year after year after year. And it’ll just be part of how you like run the firm.

So I kinda wanna give, I know we’ve talked about your results and partly like as we’re answering different questions but as you look at your results, right?

And you’re looking at the number of referrals that you’ve received between like the Your Next Five Referrals and then moving into BRB, the number of referrals that you’ve received and the number of new people that you have cultivated and you’re starting to see that this is possible.

Has that shifted for you, how you think about referral goals in your business?

Angelique Thomas: Absolutely, I mean, I feel like now that I can set a number goal and I know the steps that I can take to reach that goal and probably even exceed it.

I mean, when I started out with Your Next Five Referrals, I was thinking if I get five referrals, I will be happy with just that.

I got 14, so I kinda feel like goal setting, it makes sense, it’s something to work towards and something to kinda like just exceed.

So absolutely, yeah, setting goals, do it. And with your help, I’ve been like blowing way past those goals.

Stacey Brown Randall: Which is my favorite way to set a goal and to blow past it, right? That’s the best result that we’re actually ultimately looking for, that’s awesome.

Okay, so I ask everyone this one question at the end of all of my interviews. So I know you know this is coming and probably my listeners do too.

But I always think if you were speaking to one or a couple of business owners right now who are listening to you and they’re trying to make the decision, should I join any of Stacey’s programs.

Whether that is Your Next Five Referrals to kinda like dip my toe in or I’m ready to dive in and do the coaching program and joining you inside the coaching program or being in the Referral Accelerator to the business owner who’s like sitting on the fence and they’re trying to decide, should I do this?

What would you tell them about why they should just, you know, pull the trigger, make the decision and work with me?

Angelique Thomas: It’s like a no brainer. Before I met you, I was doing a ton of just like aimless networking, going to so many events.

So it was actually a CPA that I had this conversation with and he’s the one that referred me to you.

And just by working with you, I learned that there’s such a better way to network and really maximize my time where I just wasn’t spinning my wheels as a business owner because you’re trying to do so many things as a business owner, right?

So, I mean, like it’s just a no brainer. There is a better way and working with you, I mean, I kind of feel like I’m learning that way and so can others.

Stacey Brown Randall: So I wanna give a shout out to Paul Carlson because that’s who referred you to me. We love Paul, he’s fabulous.

So yeah, and I love hearing the way you talk about, you know, the idea that there’s so much more to come.

I think that knowing that there’s, you’ve learned so much, you’ve had some great success, but there’s so much more to come.

And I also love the fact, I mean, at the end of the day, obviously I believe in what I teach to folks. I’ve watched it happen and work, but it only works because you are working it.

So as much as I like to take credit for like everything, to be honest, you really get all the credit because you’re doing the work you’re implementing.

And when you have questions, you come back and you’re like, hey, this happened, how should I handle this in the future? Or what would you say here with this email?

Like, that’s the stuff that lights me up. And you’re really good about like, I’m here, I might as well tap into Stacey’s brain, right? Like I might as well make sure that that’s where I’m getting my answers from.

So you’re doing the work, which is why you are getting the referrals you deserve. And I know there’s many more to come.

So I would love for people that wanna learn more about you, particularly I know we have a lot of folks that listen to the podcast and are a part of my world in Florida in general.

So I would love for you to just to share if someone wanted to find you and connect with you, where’s the best place for them to do that?

Angelique Thomas: I feel like I live on LinkedIn. So reach out to me on LinkedIn, Angelique Thomas, that’s the best place to reach out.

Stacey Brown Randall: Perfect, we will link to that. We’ll also link to your website on our show notes page for this episode. So everybody will be able to connect with you.

But thank you so much for spending time with me today and being, and I feel very honored that I was your very first podcast interview. I hope you have many, many more.

Angelique Thomas: Appreciate it, thank you so much, Stacey.

Stacey Brown Randall: We’re gonna make sure to provide all the links for you to be able to connect with Angelique, whether that’s our website or on social media.

For those links, make sure you head on over to the show notes page for this episode, which is StaceyBrownRandall.com/431.

Or of course, just if you’re watching this on YouTube, check below the video, her links will be there.

I really appreciated Angelique taking the time to come on the podcast. Actually, I love it when all of my clients take the time to come and be interviewed by me for your benefit when people are listening, of course, or watching this podcast.

I think there’s no better way to understand what’s possible than to hear somebody else talk about the success that they had.

And as you heard Angelique say, some success I wasn’t even up on yet. She was explaining to me the actual results that she had. I was looking at old numbers and she had new numbers.

Now, it’s been a while since Angelique and I actually recorded that episode. So she has even more results to share. And so we’ll get an update from her as well on how that’s going for her inside the BRB, Building a Referable Business Coaching Program.

Now, remember, if you like this video, wanna leave a five-star review or subscribe to this show, either through your favorite podcast app or through YouTube, I would really, really appreciate it.

And remember, I also love feedback. So don’t be shy, drop me a comment. Okay, bye for now.