Generate Referrals Without Asking | Stacey Brown Randall | 282

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Dan Kuschell

July 27, 2020

Stacey Brown Randall is a serial entrepreneur and award-winning author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking. Using her expert methodology, Stacey helps business owners and solopreneurs get quality referrals without any gimmicks.

Stacey has worked with some of the biggest names in the world, and she also hosts the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • How Stacey Brown Randall used her business failure to build a successful referral methodology
  • Stacey discusses the number one mistake business owners make when going after referrals
  • Stacey’s step-by-step strategy for getting quality referrals
  • The four types of referral sources and which are the most sustainable
  • Stacey talks about the most impactful ways you can approach yearly touch points and check in with your referral sources
  • Take Stacey’s Referral Ninja Quiz now!
  • Stacey’s disclaimer: Are you referable?
  • How being a certified productivity coach helps Stacey balance a high-performing business and a family
  • What Stacey wanted to be when she grew up and when the entrepreneurship bug bit her

In this episode…

Every business owner knows the importance of referrals, but many still don’t have a system in place that brings in new clients without the use of gimmicks, cold calls, or manipulation. What if there was a simple way to generate referrals without even asking?

While that may sound too good to be true, Stacey Brown Randall is proving that with the right methodology, you can build your business by referrals while staying authentic to your brand. As an experienced entrepreneur herself, Stacey has determined the best ways to stand out in your field—which, by the way, she details in her book, Generating Business Referrals Without Asking.

In this episode, Dan Kuschell interviews Stacey Brown Randall about her tried and true strategies for generating a referral explosion. They discuss the number one mistake most business owners make when trying to get referrals, how to best check-in with your referral sources, and what inspired Stacey to become a successful entrepreneur. Stay with us.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:02

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation, and leadership, we’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and grow your sales, grow your profits. More importantly, so you can have the ability to make a bigger impact, have a bigger reach and make a bigger contribution. Let me ask you, how excited would you be if you could learn a simple system to be able to generate referrals without even asking, like, now let me speak to the elephant in the room. That probably sounds too good to be true, right? Well, by the time we’re done, you’re going to walk away with a blueprint to be able to do just that. You’re going to want to grab a piece of paper, grab a pen. If you’re driving, pull over, don’t go to work. Well you’re probably not going to work these days but at the time of this segment, but grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, jot down some notes because we have got a special expert for you today. Her name is Stacey Brown Randall. She’s a serial entrepreneur, multiple award-winning author of Generating Business Referrals Without Asking, host of the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast, and national speaker. She helps businesses, maybe like yours, maybe like mine, help solve a lot of problems, right, help get control of their referrals, help with the client experience, and a whole lot more. She’s worked with some of the biggest names in the world. Keller Williams Real Estate, you know, law firms book, CPA firms, and a whole lot more. She’s been featured in national publications for business. I could go on and on but here’s the bottom line: you care about you right? So let’s help you get this all. Let’s help you generate more referrals without asking, is that fair enough? By the way, you want to come back to this episode, you can do that at growthtofreedom.com/282. That’s growthtofreedom.com/282. You never want to miss an episode go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe. So Stacey, welcome to the show. How are you?

Stacey Brown Randall 2:01

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Dan. it’s great to be here.

Dan Kuschell 2:05

Awesome. Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a while because of course, the idea of generating referrals without asking is fascinating enough, in and of itself. But before we get into the system around that, or some, you know, action steps that our viewers or listeners can take, let’s talk about you, just like why are you doing what you’re doing today? I’m just curious, how did you get into this world of referrals without asking?

Stacey Brown Randall 2:30

You know, it’s interesting, it’s not like I woke up one day and said, Hey, I’m just gonna come up with a way that people can get referrals without asking, it would have been awesome if it had happened that way. And I just, you know, God was like, you know what, Stacey, go do this. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say go do this. But I went on a really crazy path to get here. And actually, the reason why I have the ability to sit here today and have a conversation with your audience about how to generate referrals without asking, really came down to sheer necessity and the grace of God and for me, it was coming out Have a business failure, I had an HR consulting firm, it was you know, from outside looking at it probably looks pretty successful and out of it had some secrets that weren’t making it so successful. But from the outside looking in, it looks pretty successful. My big name clients like KPMG, BBO, Ally Bank, you know, and I did, you know, very specific HR consulting that was published and big publications, and I, you know, was recognized and in terms of like on Bloomberg News and things like that. So you would have thought that business was doing well, except for I wasn’t consistently filling the pipeline with new prospects, which means every time you do land a client, you work incredibly too hard. For each and every client, you do land. And with a couple of kids that wasn’t really sustainable in terms of how I needed my business to grow. I couldn’t spend every night networking or every morning networking and I didn’t want to stop people on social media or cold calling. And so I really that business made it four years, didn’t quite make it to the five year mark. And that business failure when I kind of looked back on it, I had to go get a job when that business failed. But when I reflected back on why that business failed, I realized there’s a few key things I was missing. And one of them was filling the pipeline of prospects consistently in a way that works for me. And so when I looked at how I did bring in clients and how others were bringing in clients, I was like, wait a minute, I didn’t bring on any referrals like zero referrals, and my HR consulting firm. In fact, the only referral I ever received from my HR consulting firm came two years after I’d already shut the business down. Wow, I was like, I think I’m missing something. And so like everybody else, I went to the all knowing Google right, and I was like, tell me how to get referrals. You should teach me how to get referrals. Google, and it did. And I got results that came back with articles, and books, and trainings, and opportunities to learn how to generate referrals. If I was willing to ask for them, or pay or compensate for them or be really overly promotional and gimmicky like, bordering on cheesy. And for what I was starting as my second business, which at that time was a productivity and business coaching practice, as I was starting my second business, and I was like, Okay, first of all, I can’t go through another business failure, know what I have to fix. But I don’t like any of these ways that it’s telling me I have to go generate referrals. And I know I need referrals for my business to be successful. I got to figure out another way. So it really just guinea pigs on my coaching practice, and I was like, let me see if I can figure this out. And my first year I received 112 referrals without asking for them. And I’ve consistently received over 100 every year since I’ve been in business. And a number of years ago did a complete and total pivot in my coaching practice. And now all I do is teach people this methodology that I created that made my business’s success. Now I’ve had, of course, hundreds and hundreds of I call them students, clients, whatever that go through my program growth by referrals, show that I can teach them how they can also generate referrals in their business without asking for them. And we’ve been doing that now for a number of years. almost seven years, and it’s been great because I think people are so rooted in the idea, I have to ask if I want referrals or have to compensate, or I have to be really gimmicky in promotion, like put in my email signature line, the best compliment you can give me as a referral. And then when they realize, wait, I don’t have to do it that way. I can do it differently. It’s kind of like a breath of fresh air and it’s just a new way of figuring out that you can get referrals, even if you don’t want to do those other tactics.

Dan Kuschell 6:26

That’s amazing. And we’re gonna get into the new way as you’re listening right now. I mean, like, what would it be worth for you to learn a proven system to generate upwards of 100 plus referrals a year and fill your pipeline automatically without being cheesy without being over salesy. Not being gimmicky, right, and I haven’t something that just connects with you and your values, that’d be worth it. Well, we’re going to get into that here in just a few minutes. So we’re gonna say, I want to dive right into it, like with this new way that you’ve come up with, right? Like what do you find is first of all, the number one mistake most people make when they try to go after referrals.

Stacey Brown Randall 7:04

So I think the number one mistake that people make when they’re going after referrals is they don’t actually understand the human dynamic and the psychology behind how and why referrals happen. And because of that, we find ourselves believing the advice that says, if we want referrals, right, we got to ask to pay, or be promotional and gimmicky. But when you really understand why somebody is actually referring you, then you can understand, oh, they’re actually not referring me, because I asked them or because I’m paying them. They’re referring me because they know somebody that has a problem. And they’re going to help that person. They get to be the hero to that person who has a problem by referring that person to me, because I’m the solution provider and I can solve that problem. So typically, a referral source is referring you because they’re helping someone else. Nobody wakes up and says, How much of how I can help Stacey’s business grow today, right? We don’t just wake up and think about all the other businesses we can help grow but if we know somebody has a problem, we want to help them solve that problem.

If we know somebody has a problem, we want to help them solve that problem. - Stacey Brown Randall Click To Tweet

And so we kind of when we think about that’s the core reason why a referral happens. So when a referral shows up in your business, and you know, you’ve gotten a really good referral, when they’re quicker to close, easier to close, less price sensitive, right? They already trust you. Connections have been made there ready to go and start working with you. It is typically because they had a problem, and they sought out somebody who they thought could help them solve it, or that person helped them realize they had a problem they needed to solve. And they took their recommendation and trusted them to be connected with you. So when you understand that’s why referrals happen. It’s natural, then to get Oh, well, the only thing I need to be focused on is the relationship I have with my referral source. So that I’m always the one that they end up referring. And that may mean you need a number of referral sources or you need a few. It really depends on how many clients you can serve and help in a year. But really looking at it from that perspective is Oh, this isn’t about me asking someone to give me a referral, it’s about making sure I have a relationship with them. So when the referral comes along that I will be the one that receives it. Now we’re going to get into there’s a little bit more to it than just that but that is at the heart of really understanding what makes them happen.

This isn't about me asking someone to give me a referral. It's about making sure I have a relationship with them, so when the referral comes along, I will be the one that receives it. - Stacey Brown Randall Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 9:14

And as you’re listening or watching right now, like think about it, like how would it impact you if you were in a place where you could set the stage right? Where you could just have people automatically want to turn to you as the to solve a problem, right? And they know you solve a problem and they feel good about introducing you and recommending you to solve a problem to the people they love, care about, do business with and a whole lot more. Well guess what? When we come back we’re going to talk about the step by step strategy you can put in place to be able to do just that. And by the way, if you never want to miss an episode, you can go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe. If you want to come back to this episode, you can go to growthtofreedom.com/282. That’s growthtofreedom.com/282. More with Stacey Brown Randall right after this, on growthtofreedom.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation you do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit you can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Stacey Brown Randall 10:58

And this kind of reveals a whole lot of data about our business, from the perspective like looking at it in terms of who’s on the list, who’s not on the list that we thought would be on the list. And who are we surprised it’s on the list. And we’ve totally neglected them for the next for the last nine months, right? You, there’s a lot of revealing factors to that list. And I call that list of referral sources. your business’s biggest asset, it is legit, and my opinion, your list of gold, because those are the people who help you grow your business easier. And if you’re taking care of them, right and you’re doing a few the other steps I’m going to talk about, then it’s easier for you to get more clients from them are more referrals from them and turn those referrals into clients. So step one, is making sure you understand who are your referral sources. Now, if you’re a newer business, this is probably a step that you can’t do because you don’t have any referral sources. That’s okay. There’s a way to turn clients and contacts into referral sources, but typically where it starts for a business is Do I have any referral source versus the identification process. And it’s the data process. It’s sometimes the boring process, I’ll be honest, it’s not really sexy to go through all your data and be like, Alright, let me see if I can figure out where these people heard about me. So it’s going through your, your, through your referral sources and understanding who they are. The other thing to consider is, what category do they fall into? there’s actually four types of referral sources. And I think people forget that it’s not just clients. And it’s not just centers of influence that can refer you, family and friends can refer you and also so called strangers. Now, the way I teach this as I teach above the line below the line, so if you are with that piece of paper, right that you told them all to grab when they’re getting started, unless they’re driving, and you draw a line, and then you put numbers one and two above it, and numbers three and four below it. Number one, and two, of course, your clients and your centers of influence. The way I describe or define centers of influence is really it’s just the people who know what you do. They don’t do what you do, so there’s no competitive overlap. And of course, they come across your idol client, so they have that people to refer to you. So of course, you can get referrals from clients. And then of course, when your centers of influence, and those are the ones we build a plan for, so we can continue to cultivate more referrals. But that doesn’t mean on your list, you won’t notice that maybe you have some family and friends that have referred you. And let’s say when you’re getting started in business, your mom referred you to their neighbor. But really, Mom will probably never refer you again. Most family and friends aren’t sustainable, unless they’re in business themselves or their business development professional, and then you would move them up to the center of influence line, and then strangers. And that’s the one that typically I think surprises people, because they’re like, Wait, is there a stranger? How can they trust me? How could they possibly refer to me? And what’s interesting about that is they’re a stranger to you. You may not be a stranger to them, meaning maybe you’ve been around for 10 or 15 years and have a great reputation and they trust that or you were interviewed in an article and they really like how you defined or explain something, and that just built trust over time. So when someone came across a needed what you do, they’re like, well, I don’t know, right? I’ve never used them. I don’t know exactly, but I think really highly of this person. And then that’s why that’s the reason why that you are referred. So understanding who your referral sources are, and what categories they fall into also helps you realize, okay, who can I build a sustainable plan for, and it’s usually the two above the line. It’s the clients and this is centers of influence. Now, I do teach that you could easily go and try to try to get connected and get to know those strangers, so they’re no longer strangers and they move up to the center of influence line. I always call that like low hanging fruit if you don’t have enough referral sources, but really, we’re just looking at our clients and our centers of influence. From there. What we ultimately need is a way that we can strengthen and deepen a meaningful relationship that we have with our referral sources. We want to be memorable and meaningful and top of mind, we’re not keeping in touch. We’re not sending a new newsletter. We’re not sending our promo swag with our logo on it to be memorable. All right, we’re trying to be memorable and meaningful, stay top of mind with the outreach that we do to our referral sources. And I teach somewhere between four to eight touch points per year. So not every day, not every week, and not even every month. But it’s memorable and meaningful. And that’s why you can do less of it. But what makes that outreach work is how it impacts the referral source. They’re going to know that you care about them, because you’re going to show and tell them that you care about the fact that they refer business to you. And you’re going to plant referral seeds, which is just the language of the messaging that we use, that gets them thinking about us. That’s right, Dan really does care about me. But we’re also just dropping in these referral seeds. So that’s how they think about us. And when you combine those pieces together, when you combine, who your referral sources are, and you combine it, keeping and making sure that you have a way to keep yourself Top of Mind with them in a memorable and meaningful way in a way that impacts how they feel about you. They know you care. This is being very genuine thoughtful and having full of gratitude and thankfulness and being authentic. When you impact that right then and you do it consistently year over year over a year and you’re using the right language, they naturally just start to think about you more and more from that referral perspective. And I tell everybody, what we ultimately want. When we know who our referral sources are, we have a plan, a referral plan that’s memorable and meaningful, that will allow us to plant referral seeds and we build it into a system so we can keep it going as a business owner, that when we do that, and we start doing it, your referral explosion never starts as an explosion. It starts as a trickle, and the trickle will then snowball and the snowball will then hit the explosion that you’re looking for. And your explosion number is really based on how many referrals you need in a year, not based on hitting some grand number, right? And so thinking about it in that way helps people understand okay, it’s just this the step by step thing I have to do and then once I’ve done it, keep it going for consistency.

We want to be memorable and meaningful and top of mind. - Stacey Brown Randall Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 16:59

What would you say? Stacey is the number one way that you go about these touchpoints, these four to eight per year like, well, what are the top 123 ways that people can do that? Is it like an email? You know, just checking in to let them know you care? Is it a phone call? Right getting into a, you know, conversation meeting them face? So like, what is your approach? And what sort of things do you recommend for that?

Stacey Brown Randall 17:26

Yeah, so actually, you know, the way that we teach it is it’s the things that actually hit the memory runway. And so it’s this idea that what I do, you’re going to remember longer depending on what I do. So email actually falls at the bottom of the runway, just sending an email to check in. And then it’s so here’s the thing, can you send an email to check in and someone respond back and be really appreciative? Yes, of course, right. You can send a handwritten note the same way you can send a video the same way. But the question is that if you’re going to do so many of these a year, on the fourth email, what are you going to Say, right? Like, that’s the question is when people think, okay, I just got to email people 48 times a year don’t get referrals. I’m like, No, you’re missing the point. Because the idea here is, is that what you do needs to have some variety, right? You need to be doing different things. Your budget, though, is a big consideration. So when my students go through my program on, like, when we build out their plan, like there’s a line item for budget, like what are all these touch points going to cost? Because some people have big budgets, and some people have no budgets, and it can still work for them, just a matter of what they’re going to do, that they can actually afford. And that is what their referral sources need. So a lot of people will always ask the question, well, what should I be doing for my referral sources? And I always say, well, that’s irrelevant until we know who your referral sources are. Because when you look at that piece of data in your business, you’ll start to realize, wow, you know what, this is like a great group of folks and I’ve maybe I want to bring them together for an event that I’m going to do just for my referral sources. Or if you’re like me, you look at your list of referral sources and you’re like nobody’s local, right? Like everybody’s all over the country or all over the world. So what can I do because an event isn’t going to be possible. So sometimes what you end up doing will be dictated by who your referral sources are and where they are and what your budget looks like. That’s not to say that you can’t obviously, the handwritten cards are great, right? The outreach that you do to them, if you can do face to face is great. But it really is understanding what’s going to work best when you can actually deliver, right from that idea of being impactful to them knowing Wow, Stacey really cares about me. And it’s that moment that you’re like, it looks a little different. We do group these we call touch points. We do group outreach are the touch points together so that we can manage them. We’re trying to do them in bulk, so to speak, and so it’s looking for the commonalities among our referral sources. But I would say anything you can do face to face will always trump anything you can do over email. But that’s not to say that that couldn’t be a part Your plan, you do have four to eight touch points we’re working with. And so from that perspective, you know, it’s the idea behind it of making sure it’s what you’re going to do is going to work for you. And if there’s a variety to it, you can’t just do the same thing over and over again.

Anything you can do face to face will always trump anything you can do over email.- Stacey Brown Randall Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 20:13

And as you’re listening or watching right now, imagine what would happen for your business, if you could build your plan that four to eight touch points with variety to be meaningful and memorable. How would it transform your ability to stimulate referrals? And it’s just a very cool, elegant, you know, just human personal way? Wouldn’t it be amazing right now, Stacey, I mean, we’re, I know, we’re just scratching the surface. And this has been awesome. Like, where if people want to go deeper with these strategies and like, want to know how to put you know the runway in place and put the touch points in place to, you know, have different variety of ways to be memorable and meaningful, where can they go to get in touch with you learn more about your stuff, your services, your programs, all the cool stuff. You’re up to

Stacey Brown Randall 21:00

So I will say obviously my book Generating Business Referrals Without Asking can answer all those questions you just said along with the episodes on my podcast, where I always tell folks a great place to start to understand what it would look like to generate referrals and how good you are at generating referrals right now. And to get a roadmap kind of for where you need to go is to actually take my Referral Ninja Quiz, just go to referralquiz.com or you can get to it from my website, staceybrownrandall.com as well. But just take the Referral Ninja Quiz. And it allows you to answer nine simple questions super fast, shouldn’t take you too long. And it will actually, you’re going to land at one level of a referral Ninja, there’s three levels and you’re gonna land at one of them. And if you land at the beginner level, which is the beginning level, don’t worry because the thousands of people have taken this quiz typically 83% to 84% land at that level, but then it’ll give you a roadmap to see okay, where do I need to go to move myself to the master level and really at that point, Master has ever we call referral ninja masters. What makes them different from those referral ninja beginners is really is that they have this referral plan in place and they are consistently receiving referrals because of it. They understand how the language piece the referral seeds fits in with being memorable and meaningful. And it’s the results that they receive that makes them at the master level. So just a great place to start taking that referral quiz. And then really understanding where am I starting from and then that’ll be able to show where you need to go.

Dan Kuschell 22:29

So I want to encourage you to go take the quiz right now. Take the quiz right now, get an idea of where you’re at. It’s going to help you understand where the gaps are, the holes are for where you can go and then also go check out what Stacey’s doing at her site. Go to referralquiz.com. That’s referralquiz.com, right, no, referralquiz.com. And then make sure to jump over and check out all the amazing resource, her podcast, her book, books I should say. Go there, staceybrownrandall.com. And by the way, if you’re driving, if you’re listening on the go right now you can come back to this episode of growthtofreedom.com/282, and get access to all the notes, all the quotes, all the resources that Stacey has been sharing with you, and probably want to watch this or listen to it again and again and again, because there’s so many nuggets of wisdom here. Now, Stacey, what is something I should have asked you that we haven’t gotten to yet?

Stacey Brown Randall 23:29

Well, I think you’re a really good interviewer. I feel like you asked all the good questions. I will tell you this. When I, one thing I always like to say is that perspective of understanding when you are starting in my process to look at who your referral sources are, and how do you put together that four to eight touch points to be memorable and meaningful and how do you plant referrals in language, it does come with a pretty big disclaimer in the beginning, which is you’re actually referable, which means you’ve got to have what I call a sticky client experience. You’ve got to do great work, you’ve got to nurture relationships with your clients, you have to create that buzz factor that repeat client, if that’s what your work allows you to do, you’ve got to be able to be someone that people want to talk about and want to refer. So that’s probably a pretty big disclaimer to being able then to be able to get more referrals or to get or to start receiving, or referrals. Just make sure you’re referable.

Dan Kuschell 24:22

And I would suggest to you if you’re not referable, the first step is to figure out a way to become referrable. Right? You know, I don’t think that means, you know, cutting your hair, you know, brushing your teeth, or any of that sort, but actually serving your clients at the highest highest level, right offering and adding value, you know, even ahead of getting paid, right, these sort of things makes you a show, you know, I think I’ve heard Dan Sullivan, a Strategic Coach, say refer ability habits or do what you say you’re going to do show up on time and say please, and thank you, right, those are a start for a good criteria because so many people don’t even do those basic things. So take that first step. Be referable. Then you can look to put the system in and again, you want to identify where you’re at right now, to have a game plan of how you could get on the path to be developing, you know, 50, 60, upwards of 100 referrals a year in your business. Take the first step by going to referralquiz.com. That’s referralquiz.com Stacey, what would you hope, what would be like 1 to 3 action steps that you hope our viewers, our listeners would take as a result of our time together today?

Stacey Brown Randall 25:31

Well, obviously, I hope they all go and take the referral ninja quiz. I think that is a great way for them just to kind of understand where they stand and like you said, it’s really good to know your gaps when it comes to something as important as referrals in your business. But truly the one thing that I would say you just have to do, like think practical tactical, Stacey said how to do this. I can go read it in her book if I need to. It’s all in chapter eight, is identifying your referral sources. I believe that if you have the willingness. And you have made the commitment to go through the process to identify your referral sources, and really get clear on who they are. Everything changes about how you think about referrals in your business. And because when you know who the who is, right, you know, you’ve identified your referral sources, it’s either going to trigger you to want to do more, or not. Right. And I would prefer you be triggered to want to do more for those referral sources to get more referrals. But that is the game changing moment for folks, when they start thinking about am I going to get serious for referrals or not, is when they’ve identified who’s referring them, and then deciding, these are people I want to take care of, of course I want to move forward. But it really is. It’s kind of like that indicator point. It’s like the tipping point for people who decide they want referrals. I can’t get anyone to get more referrals if they don’t at least take that first step, which is identifying their referral sources.

Dan Kuschell 26:53

That’s amazing. So as you’re watching or listening, I encourage you, again, go to referralquiz.com right now. Don’t wait, go to referralquiz.com, you can still listen to the show, open it up in a separate browser, go there right now. And on top of that, take the time to put together a list. We do this every year, we identify, we run a group of our clients from what you know where they’re at, in our model, their value, your value ladder for the year, and we run run that list and we go through and we identify who are the clients, we likely for me what it does go man, I should be doing a little bit more for that client, how can I help them more? How can I serve them at a higher level? And when you take that approach consistently, one, I think it leads to a higher, longer term, greater reputation. B, it’s amazing to serve others, isn’t it? Like you’d be amazed how you can just be meaningful and memorable taking one step which is just call, reach out to somebody and have a conversation and how can I help you? What’s one thing you need the most help with right now. Right now that’s just scratching the surface and there, as Stacey mentioned, dozens and dozens of ways to add variety to that. But if you do nothing else, run and identify the list of the potential people that you could be more in contact with, with your clients start there, right. And it doesn’t matter where they’re, where they’ve been, or how long you can reconnect, this is another great way to reconnect with your clients, find out what some of their problems are, and be able to help them solve it, whether it’s your services, or someone else. Right. So Stacey, I want to shift just a little bit and pivot. You know, you have three kids. You know, they’re about the same age as my kids, which I find fascinating. And you’re, one of your businesses had been this productivity business, right? So like, as a mom with three kids, how do you navigate three kids and being this high performing high achieving serial entrepreneur? I want to ask you that.

Stacey Brown Randall 28:51

Yeah, no, I think it’s a great question. I think every day that we end the day and everyone’s still alive, is a win in our book. So I think something Sometimes we need to lower our standards of what it’s supposed to look like in terms of, you know, having a great family and a high performing business. Like sometimes you just gotta lower your standards. So you know, I think for us, because I am a certified productivity coach. And even though I don’t do one-on-one coaching anymore, it’s very much what my children, not so much my husband, but so much that my children have kind of adopted from me. So the fact that my kids will sit down on a Saturday, and we’ll time block out their Saturday, so they get done everything they need to get done. So they can have that elusive iPad time. Like, my son in particular, my son’s a lot like me, one of my sons, he’ll sit down and be like, Okay, Mom, what do I have to get done today? And let me time block it out. So I have time for everything, because that’s really important. I have time to do this. So I think they pick up things for me in that way. But we are really big into schedules. I think that’s important. We give a lot of flexibility within the blocks of time within our schedules because it’s not like dinner’s at five every night because that’s not possible. Right? So it’s really that idea of what it looks like for your family. For us, we’re more scheduled. But there’s lots of freedom within that. And like, there may be four or five things you have to do within this three hour block. So it really just depends on what works best for your family. But the idea here is if we can get them to the end of the day, we’re all still alive. We take it as a win.

Dan Kuschell 30:22

Yes. Now I want to ask you because I always find the journey, the path, the connection to the journey, very interesting. So if you can think back to when your kids ages, right? Your oldest like your oldest child, and you were at that age like can you remember when you were inspired, triggered? That likely for you it was going to be different than just a typical job corporate route that you were going to become an entrepreneur, especially now a serial entrepreneur. And if so, what what was that inspiration like that?

Stacey Brown Randall 30:59

So you know, Yeah, so you know, it’s interesting. I don’t so my oldest is 12. It’s actually our nephew. We’ve had custody of him for the last five years. So he came to live with us when he was about seven. So Danny’s our oldest at 12. Jacob is our biological son. He’s 11. The boys are the same grade. So it’s really interesting. They’re different years, but then the same grade and then our daughter, Mackenzie is nine. I don’t think I was ever like, I mean, at that age, I thought I was going to be a Broadway actress. And then that quickly morphed into later on and Middle School, high school is gonna be the next Katie Couric. So I never thought about what I’m doing now then. But I do think the entrepreneurship bug bit me pretty early on without me realizing it, because I come from a family of entrepreneurs. So and, we are, well, my family is the crazy kind of entrepreneurs because they are all in the restaurant business.

Dan Kuschell 31:53

Oh, wow. Yeah.

Stacey Brown Randall 31:55

Yes. So I can call them crazy because they’re my family and because I know they are because I lived through it. So I mean, at one point in my life, I was the granddaughter, the daughter, the niece, the sister and wife of business owners, so, and restaurant at that. So, you know, I think being an entrepreneur was like the thing you wanted to be, because that’s when you could go on vacations when you wanted. And you know, there was more freedom to it. And people were more like, restaurants are crazy and hard. But even when you’re in control, right, there’s a little bit more freedom to it a little bit more manageability and more control of your future. And so I always kind of knew being an entrepreneur was something that I wanted, it was just a matter of figuring out what it was going to be. But definitely the dream shifted from childhood through adulthood and to where I am now.

Dan Kuschell 32:43

What was your earliest influence or inspiration,

Stacey Brown Randall 32:46

My earliest influence or inspiration—

Dan Kuschell 32:49

Whether it was a book, whether it was a person, a mentor, any sort.

Stacey Brown Randall 32:56

You know, it’s really interesting. So my father passed away two years ago, but he was probably my biggest supporter and the biggest champion of me having self confidence and belief in myself. And he was kind of always known for like shooting straight if it didn’t hurt your feelings in that perspective, but knowing, you know, I think from that perspective that my father was like, I would be I can hear him talk to other people, or what he would tell me, he’s like, I don’t really care what you do. But I know you’re capable of doing a lot. So let’s just not undershoot our potential. So— and I really loved the freedom and my parents were that way with my brother and I both, it was never about you’re going to become or you should be or doctors make a lot of money or right there was never that it was like, just be independent. That’s most important. And from that perspective, I think that gave a lot of freedom for my brother and I, of course, he went the crazy route and ended up in a restaurant, right, but still, it’s kind of looking at it from that perspective of just, you know, really having that vote of confidence from our parents from a very early age. I think really kind of just set us both up for like, when we of course we can do this. Why couldn’t we do this? We never had I heard that we couldn’t, that doesn’t mean everything worked out. But I think that kind of built that seed of self confidence with us.

Dan Kuschell 34:06

That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Now, you have three kids, you’re married. If you were going to turn to your husband today, which you probably do some version of this already, but if you’re gonna turn to your husband today and say, you know, Honey, I’m grateful for what would you What would your gratitude be Stacey for how he shown up to allow you to be, you know, this amazing, strong, independent female in business serial entrepreneur, changing people’s lives and, you know, you know, making making a huge impact. Oh, that’d be—

Stacey Brown Randall 34:44

Yeah, so this is something he gets quite often. And I always say I’m just thankful that you don’t need me to validate your manhood. Like it’s just really, really important that I you know, my husband is like, the nicest guy Everybody loves him. His name is Norm like Norm from Cheers, right? Like, everybody loves him. He’s the nicest guy. But he’s really got that like quiet self confidence in himself to where I’ve never been a threat to him. And I know a lot of my strong business owner, female friends, they don’t have those kinds of marriages. I’m not married to those kind of men. And so there is that competition factor. And I’ve never had to worry about that. I mean, obviously, there is, you know, it’s important to be respectful of both people in the marriage. But I know for me, it’s like, my success is his success, and he is happy for it and never feels threatened by it. And that is such a beautiful gift that a man can give to a woman. And you know, in our case, it’s such a beautiful gift that he gets to me. And he’s always like, How high do you want to go, I’ll be right here if I have to, making dinner, making breakfast, so that you can go do it. Because what’s most important to him is to be the dad that his dad really wasn’t around to be and so he is very secure in terms of the businesses. He’s run and the jobs that he’s had and what he does, and he loves them. But he also wants to make sure that he’s home to be a dad, which really gives me a lot of freedom to do the things that I want to do. So I think that makes a really good partnership between the two of us.

Dan Kuschell 36:12

That’s awesome. And thanks for you know, sharing your personal, you know, side side of things as well. And, you know, as you’re listening or watching right now, I mean, we’ve had a 360 view of business side of things, personal side of things, kids side of things, marriage side of things. Now, what are you going to do with it? Right? I encourage you, the first thing that you want to do if you want to go deeper, you want to understand about how to generate referrals without asking if you want to do it more from the human being side and not try to come up with some marketing, you know, tacky system so to speak, but have something that’s authentic, that’s genuine that’s memorable and meaningful. Go check out what Stacey’s doing, go to referralquiz.com. That’s referralquiz.com. Also go check out her work. Right at staceybrownrandall.com. That’s staceybrownrandall.com. Stacey, it’s been a pleasure to have you here with us today. I mean, this has been an amazing conversation. And I know our viewers, our listeners are gonna get a lot from it for sure.

Stacey Brown Randall 37:12

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Dan Kuschell 37:14

You’re welcome. And I encourage you to take action with what’s I’ve got three and a half pages of notes here. And I do this pretty often. And I mean, there’s so many amazing nuggets that you can walk away with, from understanding what she learned from her business failure, what you can learn from that right to avoid some of the mistakes, the understanding the psychology of referrals, right that referrals at the end of the day are different than what most people think. Right? And she gave real clarity on what the differences she also gave the number one mistake that most people make about being meaningful and memorable four to eight key touchpoints throughout the journey, right setting up the runway, if you will, and a whole lot more. If you want to come back to this episode. I encourage you to do that at growthtofreedom.com/282, that’s growthtofreedom.com/282. You never want to miss an episode go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe, that’s growthtofreedom.com/subscribe. Seize the day. Make it a great week. We’ll see you next time on growthtofreedom.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com, that’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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