Ep #194: Business Protection and Referral Success

Stacey Brown Randall:          Two topics that you wouldn’t think go together would be business protection and referrals. Okay, well, you’re right, because they don’t really, but you are going to want to stick around for this episode as we dive into both.

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 194 of the Roadmap To Grow Your Business Podcast. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. Real quick before we dive into today’s episode, I want to give a shout out to another one of our building a referable business clients, yes, that is right to Adam. Adam is a franchise consultant and when he started last year implementing some of the referral foundational strategies that I teach, specifically the one to get more referrals from his existing referral sources and turn potential referral sources into actual referral sources. So getting people who’ve never referred him before to start referring him, he set a goal of 40 referrals. So this was throughout last year, 2021, he set a goal of 40 referrals to be received. Now, remember guys, when folks set goals, it’s typically double or triple and in some times quadrupled what they’ve averaged before.

                           So typically when you look at a number like 40, that probably means, and I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but that probably means that Adam’s numbers were somewhere in the 10 to 20 range that he would receive on average year over year. And the goal that we set was then 40. And that’s because he was implementing two of the foundational strategies. There are three, but he was just implementing two to start with. He’s now in BRB implementing the third strategy amongst a lot of other situational strategies as well. But his goal was 40 referrals in one year. How many did he receive? Drum roll.

                           I don’t even know if you can hear that. 55 referrals in one year. Congratulations to Adam. And what’s really cool is that he increased the number of his referral sources from 22 to 40. So two huge goals hit there. Not only did he surpass his goal and receive 55 referrals in one year, he also did it by almost doubling his referral sources, new people referring him from 22 to 40. Congratulations, Adam. Okay, let’s dive in to today’s episode. So this one’s a really fun one for me. And you’re going to see me do a few more of these throughout the year. We’ve actually got a couple more on deck that I’m really excited about, and this is where I’m actually reaching into my community of my clients and I am locating and finding people who have really good business advice to share in addition to the fact that they’re a client of mine so we can also talk about the referral success that they’re having.

                           Now, the truth is I only know that they’re amazing as the business expert that they are in whatever they do and whatever that their service is or product is. I only know that they’re amazing and awesome because they’re in one of my programs, they’re either in BRB or GBR referring machines, et cetera. So they’re even in one of my programs, and then they’re somewhat active, which means they’re asking questions in the Facebook group. Or if they’re in BRB, they’re showing up weekly to our sessions and they’re doing their onboarding and their milestone calls with me and things like that. So I get to know them and I get to know how really stink and smart people are that I have the privilege of working with. And sometimes I have a conversation with them.

                           I’m like, “Yep, you’ve got to be on the podcast,” because this is information other people need to know. So today I’m super excited to have my buddy Joey on, he is just an awesome guy. And he is going to talk a little bit today about business protection. And then of course, we’re also going to talk about his referral success because he’s been in the program for a while and having great success. And he actually had a team member go through, he went through growth by referrals, the GBR program, he had a team member go through it. And so he is also going to talk about that. So we’re going to do a combo. We’re going to talk about both things. We’re going to talk about what you need to be thinking about from a business perspective or a business protection perspective, and we’re going to talk about referral success and how you can have it as well.

                           Joey Vitale is an internationally renowned speaker, award-winning attorney and business growth consultant. We also always connect over our love and maybe loathing of writing a book. Maybe I’m the only one actually ever talks about loathing the writing of a book, but so we definitely get to connect over that as well. He does have a forthcoming book that’s entitled the Business Growth Advantage: How to Run Your Business in One Hour a Week, Crack the Social Media Code and Make Limitless Income and Impact. Doesn’t that title just make you want to go grab the book right now? Joey is a trusted business growth consultant. He helps mission driven law firm owners who want to achieve exponential growth and transform into recognized thought leaders so they can have a bigger impact.

                           Of course, he is also a trademark attorney, which is one of the reasons we have him on the show today to talk and he helps and has spoken to tens of thousands of people all across the world. He also has an amazing podcast, that book coming out, and of course just a pretty awesome guy because, well, he’s in the GBR program. That’s why we consider them awesome. All right, let’s dive in to our interview. Here’s what I want you to know, Joey and I first talk about, and I think he gives a really good visual of how to think about the legal world when it comes to your business. And he’s going to talk about these four buckets and then how the legal piece maps into these four buckets. And here’s the thing you may have been in business for three years, five years, 10 years, 15 years and you’re like, “Stacey, I got the legal thing figured out.”

                           That is awesome. The truth is you’re a unicorn. There are not that many business owners that have every piece of the legal part of their business buttoned up. And I speak from experience because I’ve had two businesses and we talk a little bit about my cease and desist letter, my first business who received after about a year in business, maybe it wasn’t even that long in business. And we talk a little bit about that at the beginning of the interview, but if you’ve been in business any amount of time, I’m sure you have some pieces of the legal part set up. Maybe you have your formation, you’ve got your LLC or you’re an S Corp or you’re a C Corp, whatever it is.

                           You’ve got the articles of formation or the articles of incorporation, whatever it is for your business, most business owners get that started when they get going. And if you have employees more than likely, you probably have some type of contracts and things like that. But there are so many other parts to having a business protected that Joey is going to talk about. And that is all the way from your brand to your content, to your relationship, and then making sure of course that you are just separating that from who you are as a human versus who you are as a business owner. Okay, so we’re going to dive in.

                            And then after we talk legalese and we talk fun legal stuff, then we’re going to talk about the referrals and the amazing success that Joey and his team member Caitlin had as they went through the GBR program and how many referrals they brought in in one year and how they have made that a part of their practice as they move into year two. And I’m so excited to share this interview with you all. Joey, it is always so fun to have somebody on the podcast that I feel like I know, and yes, because you are a client of mine, but also because I have been able to be interviewed by you and you’re writing a book. So we get to talk about that from time to time and the joys of book writing. So it’s just so fun to have someone on that is a friend as well as a client. So thank you for joining me today.

Joey Vitale:         Well, thank you so much for having me, Stacey, and I really do mean it when I say that it’s such an honor to be here and to be featured on your podcast because the episodes that you’ve done in the past have meant so much to me that if we hadn’t gone through that process of getting to know each other, I’d probably be having a fanboy moment right now.

Stacey Brown Randall:          No. Because now behind the curtain you’re like, no fanboy moments necessary.

Joey Vitale:         Well, no, you’re more of a friend than just that really amazing thought expert who, how cool would that be if she name dropped me one day.

Stacey Brown Randall:          I appreciate you saying it that way, but everybody listens to this podcast is like, he’s probably talked to her for real. He knows the crazy that happens behind the scenes in her world. But thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. So I was excited to have you on when we were talking about this episode, obviously I was like, okay, well I want to have you guys on, because I want to talk about the great results that you guys had following your referral plan for the first year, but I’m not going to squeal that everybody’s going to have to wait till we get to that section.

                           But what you had also then mentioned is a little bit about just business protection and the legal stuff that comes from running a business, because obviously that’s what you do. You’re an attorney, but that’s what you also help your clients with from business owners perspectives and help them with. And I thought you know what, we could do a combo episode where I’ve got some questions that selfishly, I’m going to ask. And then I think it’ll help the listeners as well, since the majority of our audience are business owners that need to be doing this stuff, even if they don’t want to. And then we’ll talk about some of your referral success as well. So we’re going to do a two for one special, does that sound good to you?

Joey Vitale:         Sounds good to me. And for everybody who’s second guessing having tuned into this episode, just know that I will keep all of this as plain English as I can and not talk in legalese. I know this stuff can get overwhelming and confusing and scary quickly, but I’ll do everything that I can to make this part of the conversation enjoyable for you.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Absolutely. And it can be scary.

Joey Vitale:         Oh yeah. You’re looking at the worst case scenario side of what your business can look like.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yeah, totally. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this before in the podcast. I think other people know this story, but I remember with my first business, that’s the one we talk about the HR consulting firm that failed, I will never forget getting a cease and desist letter regarding the name of my company. And that was just a momentary panic mode and being like, what is happening? And they’re written, what is that about? They’re written so meanly. It’s like, can you not just say, “Hey, listen, you’re using our name. We’ve been here first.” Can we not be nice about this? They’re all you know. They do, they come across as really scary. I just remember getting that cease and desist and I was like, “Well, I think there’s some point in my future I’d be like, you haven’t lived until you’ve gotten an angry worded letter from an attorney.”

Joey Vitale:         It’s so true. It’s one of those rare occasions where you have a real life freak out moment that feels almost like a nightmare. It’s like, oh, is this one of those things where it’s another I’m back in school and I’ve got a test coming up that I didn’t study for, but it’s real life. And it makes sense when you say it this way, but it’s powerful to remember that I have yet to talk to a client who didn’t have a scared reaction to receiving a cease and desist letter.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yeah. And what’s even crazier, the name of my business was my initials. I was like, “I’m pretty sure there should be part of that that I own no matter what,” but it was really interesting how all that worked. And then obviously I had to hire my own attorney and then we had to figure it out. And then we had to go through the, do you care enough? Do you want to fight this? It is your initials, but do you just want to change your name, kind of a thing. And it was really, I’ll never forget the attorney putting in the letter. She will continue to call herself by her own name and her own initials. Because people refer to me as SBR and those were the initials of the first company. I’m like, that actually is, I’m not putting that a letterhead. That’s not how I’m filing my articles of incorporation or anything like that. But it was just really interesting to go through that process.

Joey Vitale:         Well, I’m sorry you had to go through it.

Stacey Brown Randall:          You learn a lot. Okay, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about this because business protection, the legal stuff, it can be overwhelming. And so why don’t you break it down for my audience? Just let’s start it just the basic legal protection that a business owner should have in place. Now I know this is dictated by what they do, so I know there’s a lot of different could options here from that perspective, but just break it down. Just some basic legal stuff that someone listening can say to themselves, I got that, ooh, maybe I don’t have that.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. So here’s a way of thinking about it that I love and that my clients really, really appreciate and find refreshing, because it’s just an easy way to think about the legal side. So when you really zoom back, way back and you look at what your business needs to survive and thrive, you’ve really got just these four different boxes that you need to worry about to keep the business going and thriving. And the first box is your brand. So what makes you stand apart from your competitors and others in the marketplace? And this is especially true for anybody in the service provider community.

                           Because one of the things that you hear a lot of marketers and sales people talk about is the importance of raising your prices or having more high ticket offers in the service space. It’s really hard to do that if you’re a commodity. If there’s nothing unique about your brand that makes you worth investing more in than other options, you’ve got a problem and that’s more of a commodity based business. So the more that you have a distinguished brand, the more that you can justify those higher priced items and services. So I like to think about it as when you walk down the serial aisle version of your industry, what makes you different than your competitors? So that’s the first box, your brand.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay. Got it. I actually drew out four boxes on my piece of paper, I’m ready.

Joey Vitale:         Perfect, great.

Stacey Brown Randall:          What’s box number two.

Joey Vitale:         The second box is separation. And what I mean by that is this, it’s really important as a business owner to not have your sense of self worth and value tied to the health of the business. And no matter how good or bad the business is currently doing, you can’t let your sense of self meaning come from the state of the business. And so you have to have this, I know that it’s cheesy and woo, but you have to have that mindset separation of you not being in your business.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Probably really important when the cease and desist letter shows up telling you to stop using your name.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. The third box is relationships. And relationships come in all shapes and sizes for businesses, whether they’re customers and clients or people on your team or people who are visiting your website or following you on social media or signing up for your email list, whatever it is, we have all of these relationships that we have to juggle and complete our end of the bargain with in terms of making our business run. And that also includes, I have to say in part of this podcast, things like referral partners, right?

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yes.

Joey Vitale:         So that’s the relationship box, it’s a big box. And then the fourth box is your content. This is stuff that goes on your website, your blog, social media, wherever. It’s stuff that you put out in the world that makes you more visible and allows you to get and maintain attention from potential customers and clients. So those are the four boxes and a lot of times people come to me after I spell this out and they’re okay, let’s talk about this other box, this legal box. But the truth is there’s no legal box, there’s just a legal layer to each one of these four boxes.

Stacey Brown Randall:          I knew you were going to say that. See how well I’m listening? This is so good. So brand, separation, relationships and content. Now tell us how legal weaves into all of those.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. So when it comes to brand, that’s where trademarks come into play. So trademarks protect those distinctive business names, slogans, logos, podcast names, course names, the stuff that’s on the packaging of your serial box. And so again, if you want to be a non commodity business, you’ve got to have those distinct developments of your brain and then protect them with trademarks. When it comes to separation, that second box, you and I can talk about all this mindset woo, woo, you can hire an expensive life coach. At the end of the day, if you still have a sober proprietorship, you literally and legally are your business.

                           And you don’t have that actual separation unless you form something like a limited liability company or a corporation if you’re fancy. It’s just a lot of people, I think, rightly think that the main legal advantage of creating a separate legal entity is getting those asset protections. And I agree, but I think that that all takes a second seat to when you form a separate business entity legally, and you recognize what that means, it allows you to show up and perform in a way that you couldn’t if you knew that at the end of the day you were your business.

Stacey Brown Randall:          I think that’s such a key point, is that recognizing that, I say this a lot, you’re the business owner, you’re the big boy, the big girl. You get to make these decisions, you get to make these choices because you are the business owner and you’re in charge, but it certainly helps when you feel like the business owner as well. And knowing that you have some type of formation, some type of entity established, it’s the same thing when you move from your business name @gmail.com and you move to your business name or something comes after the @ in your email address. It’s like having a website that is legitimately built. It’s all those things that make you feel when you put yourself out there to the world, it’s backed up by you feeling with a level of confidence of being I’m an owner, I’m a real owner.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. And this is a little crude, but it’s not bad language. One of my favorite business owner friend, who’s also a coach has this phrase that she says to her clients that I love, which is, “Unclench your butt hole.” And I know it sounds, but I love using that visual and saying it to myself and my team because it’s this physical thing that you can do with your body, that forces you to just let go of control. And the more we try and operate our business with a clenched body, or with our foot always on the brakes, if you like that better, the harder it is to grow your business.

Stacey Brown Randall:          So true. Yep, and mindset is the start of all that. So then tell us about the legal within relationships.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. So that’s where contracts come into play. And there are all kinds of ways that a contract can look, whether it’s in writing and people sign it, or it’s the terms of use at the bottom of your website or even just email back and forth, here’s what it’s going to look like, here’s what you can expect from us. I’m thinking in the context of a referral strategy plan, here’s what you can expect as someone who’s sending us work constantly and here’s what we hopefully can expect from you out of it. Like when you make a referral, you’ll send an email introducing us to the person that you’re referring us to and explicitly state that it’s a referral. See, I listen to what you’re saying, Stacey.

Stacey Brown Randall:          You do, but I’ll tell you what it’s like everyone’s listening right now is like, “Joey, I wish all the people who sent me referrals did it exactly the way you just said it.” We’re still working on some folks actually being able to do that. But yeah, absolutely.

Joey Vitale:         But that can be an agreement of moving forward, what can the best case scenario of us working together or collaborating together look like? And can we agree on how we’re going to do that moving forward?

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yeah. And I think probably with some folks that are… I think some people could have referral partners or referral sources, or maybe it’s even more of a strategic alliance where they have somebody doing the referral piece and they actually do have those conversations. Obviously as you know, most of the way that I teach that is more about just how you take care of that relationship from that perspective. But yeah, I definitely think that there are probably ways in which, depending on the type of relationship you have with the person who’s going to refer you particularly, obviously if you’re in a strategic alliance that looks a little bit different. And then obviously affiliates being totally different when compensation is being given. But again, agreements need to be there as well. I guess it could also be like employment contracts too, that’s all in the relationship bucket.

Joey Vitale:         Oh, totally. Absolutely.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Let’s talk about then the fourth box, content. Where does legal weave into that?

Joey Vitale:         So I’ll talk about this fourth one, and then there’s a very short next stage to this framework. So the fourth box is content and that’s where copyright laws really help you out. I don’t want to get too into the weeds of copyright because it can get confusing and complicated fast, but I will say that a lot of people get confused between trademarks and copyrights. And that’s a really helpful way to think about it in terms of trademarks to protect your brand and copyright protect your content.

Stacey Brown Randall:          And your opinion of the content is anything that you’re putting out from a visibility perspective in any place you’re putting it. Like you said, social media, your articles, or your blog on your website, on a podcast, all the places from that copyright perspective of protection.

Joey Vitale:         Yeah. I will say trademarks and copyrights both fall under this umbrella of intellectual property rights or IP rights. And the world of intellectual property is weird. One of the things about it that makes it so weird is that there are different layers of trademark rights and different layers of copyrights. And what’s true about both, but it’s really important to remember when it comes to copyrights is that you are entitled to copyright rights automatically. You don’t have to file any paperwork or pay any money to the government to have copyright rights. The problem is you don’t have any evidence of those copyright rights without hard proof.

                           And it’s very difficult if not impossible/super expensive to try and start a lawsuit around copyright infringement without a copyright registration. So it’s a helpful next question to ask, okay, what should I be thinking about registering with a copyright office? And for that, I would say that for most business owners, if you’re thinking about what to protect and file to get copyright registrations for, so you ever needed to rely on enforcing your rights, focus on your content that you’ve created that has the most value in the long term that you’re not tweaking constantly. And that would most affect the business in a measurable monetary way if someone stole and reused.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about your law firm then, and specifically from the perspective of some of the awesome success you guys have had with referrals. So I think it’s so good that you were able to provide us the context of your brilliance, and all the legal stuff, the four boxing is actually really cool in terms of how you break it down. But I also want to talk a little bit about the referral success you’ve had. Now you had a team member, Caitlin, who went through the training. So you guys had joined Growth By Referrals and she went through the training and she implemented the process and you guys have really awesome success.

                           I think the last bit of numbers that I had from her at your end of your first year, put you at 78 referrals in one year, which is amazing going through this process. So my first question is actually more specifically to the fact that you are the business owner, but you delegated this to a team member to go through the training, implement the process, and then of course, keep the process going. What tips do you have for other firm owners or business owners who would be considering the same thing besides having a fabulous as Caitlin on their team?

Joey Vitale:         Well, I’ll say this first, before you do that, and this goes along with something that you said earlier, make sure that you reach out to the creator of the course, the leader of the community and make sure that they’re okay with you sharing access.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Well, that’s really kind of you to say, because I don’t think everybody would think to reach out and ask, and I’m always delighted when people do. And of course my answer is yes, however you need to get through it, let’s get you through it. Just remember you got one seat license, so we’re not sharing it with anybody else.

Joey Vitale:         Well, yes. And I’ll add to that clarify for your own perspective and the situation for the program, if you would actually like to go through the course with… And I did this with you, Stacey, where I made it very well known to you that Caitlin was going through it, but that I would love access to the course. And I didn’t want you to get thrown off by getting stuff from one of my teammates, but then also having me in the Facebook group. If the owner of the program isn’t as understanding as Stacey is, you can still move forward and just say, I’m going to delegate all of the, Caitlin will be the only person involved in accessing the course and joining the Facebook group and they will be like the main implementer. So in this case, yes, Caitlin was definitely the main person who was in charge of going through the course and implementing everything. But I’m very grateful that I was allowed still in the group and that both Caitlin’s name and my name could be in the collective audience.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yeah. And I would say, I think the other thing that made this work is that this wasn’t something you heard about in passing and you made a snap decision without a lot of thought and research to decide to purchase, to then have one of your team members go through and then try to figure out really what you were wanting them to do with it and what it would ultimately look like. You had heard about me from another attorney, you had made a decision, you had read the book, you’d listened to the podcast.

                           You had probably more than skimmed the page that gives you all the details. God bless you. Skimmers made get really hard, but you had actually gone through and been like, yes, this strategy, this philosophy, this mindset, this is what I want in my business, but I know to make it happen I need whoever in this case happened to be Caitlin. I need Caitlin to make it happen for us and then I will work with Caitlin on the implementation of it when it comes to the things that I need to do as the business owner. And that’s key to your success.

Joey Vitale:         Oh, well, thank you. I’ll add this too if it’s helpful. So when I came across all of Stacey’s great resources and was thinking about helping, I was putting all of this referral plan strategy under this marketing bucket. And in my head, it made sense that, yes, these are client facing, yes, there’s a component of sales to all of this, but it would make sense for our marketing department to really take ownership of our referral strategy. And Caitlin is the lead in my marketing department. And so I don’t know if I told you this, Stacey, but before we invested in your program, we made a decision that for that quarter, we were going to pick one high level marketing program within the marketing department that Caitlin and I would run on together and she would implement and do. And so then we identified your program as the program that we were going to focus on for the quarter.

Stacey Brown Randall:          I did not have that little tidbit of information. I feel very special. Thank you for letting me be the spotlight of your quarter. And then to have you guys have such great success. And the truth is I will have people that they’ll email me, they’ll direct message me, they’ll show up in the Facebook group for their clients in the program. And they’ll be like, “Look at all the success I’m having. Thank you, Stacey.” And I’m always like, I will definitely take all of the success you want to give me. I’m not afraid to take credit for all the success. But the reality of it is, and you know this, Joey, this comes down to you and Caitlin implementing and executing. And execution is always the difference between moving forward and thinking about things and staying in the same place. And so whereas I am just as happy to take credit for those 78 fabulous referrals that you guys got in your first year, the reality of it is you did the work and you continue to do the work and you did the work throughout the year, and that’s why you were rewarded.

Joey Vitale:         Well, thanks. And I want to emphasize that I’m also in the course creation world, and I know a lot of people will say things like people buy courses and no one finishes. And I’ll offer this reframe to that, which is that, yes, I do think it’s true that generally speaking few people that buy courses finish it, even fewer implement it, but very few people make it a priority for a business at a quarterly goal level to implement a program. And this might be the biggest tip, even more valuable than all the legal, yes definitely more valuable than all the legal stuff. I think one of the smartest things we did last year was think to ourselves, what is a course that we could take and implement? That would be so valuable for us, that would give us such a strong ROI that it’s worth being one of our three quarterly goals and having an entire rock mapped around it. And then working backwards from there. Because once you place that much value on going through a course and implementing it, it’s relatively easy to do because you’ve made it such a big priority.

Stacey Brown Randall:          I just feel so special that the GBR program got to be a part of your rocks, and it got to be a part obviously of then making sure that it was implemented. I think that’s really, I agree that’s how it happens, but I don’t know that’s how it ends up having being successful. But I don’t know if that’s how many business owners think about going into it. I think they think like, I need to get more referrals, I’m going to go into Stacey’s program and I’m going to do the work. And when they do that, yay, great things happen. But I don’t know if they necessarily come in and say, this is one of our goals for this year. I think some do, but this is one of our goals for this year.

                           And you’re talking about obviously the EOS modeling when you’re talking about rocks and things like that, I’m assuming, but this is one of our rocks, this is one of our big things that we’re focused on. In my world it would be the cam-bam way of it’s one of the three things I can work on and can’t do anything else until it’s done. And making it such like this is how it’s going to work, because we are making that significant statement of this is one of our big things. Again, well, however it works for you, it gets to work for you. But to be like, “Hey, we’re going to do this and we’re going to do this this quarter, and this is the program we’re going to do.” I think that’s A, why you had success and, B, I’m just thrilled that it was GBR-

Joey Vitale:         If you didn’t design a course that was that valuable, and if you guys go through the course you know it’s a very, very valuable program on the inside, but I mean what your course is about is so valuable is that when we did the math and we were like, “Oh, most of clients are coming through referral partners anyways, we have all of these processes and systems and content calendars built around our social media and everything. Why don’t we have similar processes in place to get more referrals.”

                           It was such an obvious gap in our strategy that we were like, “Well, yeah duh, we need help in this regard.” And I’m also a bit of a course buying junkie in terms of I buy courses and have people on my team go through them a lot. But mostly that’s just like go through this course, take notes, take action, we’ll get a little bit of an ROI on it. The ROI of a referral program is so huge because most business owners aren’t awake to the fact that there is actually a strategy you can implement to be in more control of how many referrals you get each month.

Stacey Brown Randall:          And I love that you bring up the ROI piece because that’s one thing that we actually changed. And I don’t remember exactly all the changes they start running together after you’ve had a program that’s been out there in the world for so long. But we actually added a change that you remember or Caitlin would probably remember when she would go through module two and she was completing all the identifying the existing referral sources and then you set a goal. Like What’s your average referrals received over the last three years? You get your average and then you set a goal for how many you want to get to. We don’t set the averages or goal we’re reaching, but then we added a line in there that’s like, “Okay, now if you closed, you won’t.”

                           But if you closed every single one of those referrals that you just wrote down as that’s the number you want for your goal, times the amount that an average client spends with you, what is the ROI on all those referrals? It’s been amazing how many people, when they’ve uploaded that work for me to review have come back and been like, “Yeah, that made it real.” We say it doesn’t mean you’re going to close every single referral you receive, that’s crazy. But if you got half of them, if you got 75%, if you got 90% of them, that dollar amount, that’s what makes it real for people. And I think that’s really, really important.

Joey Vitale:         Well, and a hundred percent.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Oh my gosh, Joey, you have shared so much good stuff from the legal side, and then also how to think about referrals and then of course, with the success that you and Caitlyn have had and your firm has had going through it. There are obviously other questions I could ask you, but I think that you have really hit the nail on the head in so many ways. I do want to see though, if there’s anything else you wanted to share that I didn’t ask you about that you want to make sure that you mention before we wrap up?

Joey Vitale:         Well, I don’t know how much more time we have and I want to respect your time, but I did want to speak to the topic that I know you’re writing your next book on about even being referable. And I just want to offer an insight in case that’s helpful to anyone listening. I’m not one of your law firm owners who spent 20 years at a firm, built a lot of confidence, became partner, and then decided to go out on my own. I’m being a little vulnerable here, but I went out on my own after two tough years of feeling like I was a really bad lawyer. And then thinking, oh, maybe if I own my own firm my own way, I could capitalize on my strengths that I can’t as an associate attorney.

                           I say that because when I started doing the client work, I was very concerned that I wasn’t doing a good job for my clients. And so much of what if my clients aren’t happy was in my head. And one of the things that I now love about our business, and again, I’m so grateful to you, Stacey, in so many ways, ways that you don’t even know, but the fact that our firm is now set up where I’m not as involved in the day to day operations. And I’m also have someone steering the ship in terms of referral strategies, it allows me to have that mental space and separation between these important relationships so that I’m not always in my head thinking, oh, is that good enough for that person? Were they upset with me but didn’t say something?

                           And so I think for me, a huge battle of how can I be referral worthy is not creating stories in my head about me actually not being referral worthy. And as much as I’m looking forward to all of the tidbits that you’re going to share in your book, I’m really grateful for you first starting to talk about referral strategies, because that kicked me out of that seat of… It shifted my focus from how can I deliver the best experience to my clients, to how can I focus on building referrals? And if I don’t get what I’m looking for with that action, then maybe there’s some problems with how the firm is operating.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Yeah. Oh gosh, I’m so glad you said that. That’s such a good way to think about it from that referable versus getting referrals perspective. Because I do have some people who come to me and they’re like, “Hey, I don’t really get new referrals. Is there something wrong with my business?” I’m like, not necessarily, it just could be that you generate business in other ways. And it depends on what strategies you’ve been following. And if you haven’t made space for referrals, they don’t fall from the sky. It’s like you don’t need to feel bad if you haven’t gotten because they haven’t fallen from the sky, you do actually need to be intentional about it. So I didn’t think about writing my book in these orders, but I do think as to what you’re saying, that certainly helps for people to connect with it in a way of like, “Hey, let’s focus on some referral strategies and then we can come back around if needed or just to make it better.”

                           From that referability perspective and being referable. Oh my gosh, Joey, I can’t thank you enough for being on our show today. Thank you so much and you are welcome back anytime. Wasn’t that just an awesome interview. I am so excited to be able to share Joey’s results of 78 referrals received in one year. It’s just so exciting. And I love the fact that he is like a case study of somebody who bought into the philosophy, understood that, hey, this referral thing is going to be a priority for us this one quarter. And because I have a team, and I get it not all of us do, and because I have a team I’m going to assign it to somebody on my team who’s going to run with it. But Caitlin was able to succeed because she had her bosses, the CEOs, Joey’s buy-in.

                           And having that buy-in and knowing that he has determined, hey, this is a great strategy that we’re going to implement, you go off to the races and do it. That is why she was able to be successful. And that is why she was able to be… When Joey reached out and was like, “Hey, can Caitlin take my seat, but I still want to be around?” I’m like, “Of course.” That’s just one thing that we do here with our programs is particularly for folks now in BRB, you may be the person, the business owner in BRB, but more than likely your assistant or somebody else is also getting emails. And they’re the one showing up to the meetings and asking questions and doing the work on your behalf and I’m holding them accountable. So that’s definitely an option. There’s also a lot of business owners where it’s me holding them accountable. They don’t have an assistant or a team member that’s doing it for them.

                           But I do love how Joey broke down what it looked like for Caitlin to be successful. It was because he had already decided he was buying into this, he agreed with it. And then it was part of their rocks that they did moving forward for one of the quarters. And they dug in and did it and then executed on it throughout the year. And then guess what, they had success because that’s how it’s supposed to work. You can’t be falling off the wagon all the time when you’re trying to generate referrals. If you want to generate referrals consistently, you can’t be falling off the wagon all the time. And they didn’t and they were consistent with it, and here they go into year two.

                           Of course, I’m going to link to all Joey’s social media and Joey’s website and all the good stuff that you can find Joey, on the show notes page for this episode at Staceybrownrandall.com/194, that’s 1-9-4 for episode 194. And of course Stacey has an E. And I don’t even have to mention, if you love this podcast, please leave a rating and a review because Joey already did it for me, which was super awesome and I appreciate him so much for doing that. Next week, coming up, we have episode 195, and we’re going to be talking about something really, really important about putting your busyness into perspective. Until then my friends 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.