Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Stacey Brown Randall's Business Failure to Referral Expert: Building Sustainable Growth Without Asking

Transcript

Stacey Brown Randall's Business Failure to Referral Expert: Building Sustainable Growth Without Asking · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:16
  today's guest is Stacy Brown Randall, founder of Building a
• 0:20
  Referable Business. She is one of the country's
• 0:23
  leading authorities on referrals for professional service and
• 0:26
  creative firms. Stacy's entrepreneurial journey
• 0:30
  includes starting a human resources consulting business
• 0:34
  with a pivot into productivity coaching that eventually LED her
• 0:38
  to discover a repeatable, science backed approach to
• 0:41
  generating referrals. Without asking or paying.
• 0:46
  Pay attention to that last part without asking or paying.
• 0:49
  It sounds impossible, but we're going to get into it.
• 0:51
  Over the last 12 years, she's turned that approach into a
• 0:54
  suite of programs, a weekly podcast nearing 400 episodes and
• 0:59
  two books, generating business referrals without asking, and
• 1:03
  her newest release, The Referable Client Experience.
• 1:07
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:10
  brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency.
• 1:13
  Listen, if you run a business, you are likely stuck in the
• 1:16
  cycle of rising insurance premiums.
• 1:19
  You're paying more, but your team is getting less, and many
• 1:22
  people can't afford coverage at all.
• 1:24
  We do things differently. We offer a solution that
• 1:27
  provides your employees with unlimited access to doctors,
• 1:30
  therapists, and prescriptions. That's always free for them to
• 1:34
  use. But here's where you really need
• 1:36
  to pay attention. Unlike every other employee
• 1:39
  benefit out there, our program leverages different insurance
• 1:43
  frameworks to put more money into your company's bank
• 1:46
  account. Just as an example, we recently
• 1:48
  helped a client increase net profits by $900 per employee per
• 1:53
  year. Results vary, but the
• 1:55
  consultation is free, so see if you qualify today at Add Back
• 1:58
  benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 2:01
  today, the founder and CEO of Building a Referable Business,
• 2:05
  Stacy Brown. Randall, thank you for making
• 2:07
  the time to Share your story today.
• 2:09
  Thanks for having me on the podcast, I'm excited to be here.
• 2:12
  Let's get right into it, Stacy. So tell us about your early
• 2:15
  background, where you grew up, the entrepreneurial influences
• 2:19
  of your family that you were surrounded with.
• 2:22
  Yeah, You know, it's interesting.
• 2:23
  So I'm originally from South Carolina, and in my family, the
• 2:28
  weird ones are the ones with the W twos.
• 2:30
  So we have a lot of entrepreneurs in our family,
• 2:33
  which I don't think many people probably can say, especially
• 2:37
  thinking about, you know, you know, being a child of the 80s
• 2:41
  and teenager of the 90s. But it was always an influence
• 2:45
  in my life becoming a business owner.
• 2:47
  It was the, what would I do? My family comes from a
• 2:50
  restaurant background. Like not all of my family owns
• 2:53
  restaurants or in or is in the hospitality industry, but a
• 2:56
  majority of our business owners in the family are.
• 2:59
  And so it was kind of like always a part of my life.
• 3:01
  I mean, I grew up working at my grandmother's restaurant.
• 3:04
  My brother now owns it today. My mom still works there because
• 3:09
  she just likes to work. She likes to help her kids.
• 3:12
  So she still works there, like nearing 80 years old and you'd
• 3:16
  never know it. And so for for us, it was like,
• 3:20
  okay, we like like especially with my brother and I, that idea
• 3:24
  of the, the ability to kind of decide what your world would
• 3:28
  look like. He went the route of owning the
• 3:31
  restaurant and loving being a workaholic.
• 3:34
  I went the route of owning a business that allowed me a lot
• 3:36
  of time and freedom and that was more important.
• 3:39
  So, you know, those are heavy influences on my life in terms
• 3:42
  of, you know, you in a restaurant, you learn to work
• 3:44
  hard, but also understanding kind of that whole idea of being
• 3:50
  your own boss from a very early age.
• 3:53
  So I always tell folks, my one claim to fame with working for
• 3:56
  my grandmother is that was the only grandchild not fired.
• 4:00
  I should have been a couple of times.
• 4:02
  I got caught doing things I should not have done a couple of
• 4:05
  times. But I was the only
• 4:07
  granddaughter, so I was and I was the baby.
• 4:10
  So I got babied and I did not get fired.
• 4:13
  But I do hold that over my brother's head.
• 4:15
  OK, one quick story. What did you get caught doing
• 4:18
  that you shouldn't have been doing?
• 4:19
  OK, so my grandmother's restaurant is it's on a lake and
• 4:22
  it is huge. It's a two-story restaurant.
• 4:25
  And I mean, obviously she built onto it over time.
• 4:27
  So it in the restaurant there's this ramp that goes from the
• 4:31
  upstairs to the downstairs and one waitress.
• 4:35
  So I've done everything in that restaurant book cook.
• 4:36
  I was never allowed to cook. It was kind of like my dad's
• 4:39
  rule. He was like, I don't want her by
• 4:40
  the fryers. Like I just don't want her
• 4:42
  cooking. My brother did, but I did it,
• 4:44
  which is awesome. To this day, I still can't cook
• 4:46
  and I think that is a great badge of honor.
• 4:49
  But so I've done everything. I've wasters, I'd bus Boyd, I
• 4:52
  have work take out. I've been a Hostess.
• 4:54
  I run the cash rushers. So at this time I was a waitress
• 4:58
  and one of the waitresses, whatever section was as close to
• 5:02
  that ramp, you had to sweep that ramp.
• 5:04
  But at the bottom of the ramp was a koi pond.
• 5:06
  Like my grandmother did a lot of crazy things in her restaurant
• 5:08
  and she had this koi pond of like live fish swimming around
• 5:12
  at the bottom of the ramp. And I was sweeping that ramp and
• 5:14
  I didn't think anybody was watching.
• 5:16
  And I swept all that stuff right into the koi pond and she saw.
• 5:21
  Me. Oh my gosh, terrible.
• 5:23
  I never did it again. And I mean, I will be.
• 5:25
  I mean, she saw me and she went bananas.
• 5:28
  She was a very, very strong, strong woman.
• 5:30
  We always said she was always full of piss and vinegar, so she
• 5:34
  definitely was not happy with me.
• 5:35
  But that still didn't get me fired, and it probably should
• 5:37
  have. OK, that's funny.
• 5:40
  I appreciate you sharing that. OK, so your brother chose to be
• 5:43
  a workaholic in the restaurant business.
• 5:45
  You chose a different path, a business that afforded you more
• 5:49
  free time. What was it and what was the
• 5:52
  inspiration for starting it? Yeah.
• 5:54
  So I didn't graduate college and start a business.
• 5:57
  Like that wasn't how my journey worked.
• 5:59
  I kind of, I always kind of talk about like my 20s, like before I
• 6:03
  started my first business was kind of what I would refer to as
• 6:06
  like a portfolio career. Like I had different jobs, I did
• 6:09
  different things. I was exposed to a lot of stuff.
• 6:12
  I had no idea what I would start a business in like wanted to had
• 6:16
  no idea what what it was that I would like have expertise in or
• 6:20
  that I would have a product in. And so I had some fits and
• 6:23
  starts with like, you know, investigating things and kind of
• 6:26
  paying attention to things. But it wasn't until a couple who
• 6:30
  owned a research company that did some work at a job that I
• 6:33
  was in came to me and said, hey, you know, you're really good in
• 6:37
  this area. And at that time, it was my
• 6:39
  generational diversity expertise that I did for a company.
• 6:42
  And they're like, you're really good in this area.
• 6:44
  We'd love to open up an arm. Generational diversity.
• 6:47
  What does that mean? The different generations, the
• 6:49
  Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen. X, Gen.
• 6:52
  Z, Yeah. So I was having, I was an expert
• 6:55
  in understanding working with different generations and would
• 6:59
  give presentations and some strategies and things like that
• 7:02
  for companies. And so they're like, you should
• 7:05
  join our research firm and develop that area of expertise
• 7:10
  for our firm. Like we'll use the research side
• 7:12
  and you're able to use the data to tell the stories about how
• 7:16
  people can work better. Intergenerationals like baby
• 7:18
  Boomers. Like at that time, it was like
• 7:20
  baby Boomers working with Xers and Millennials.
• 7:23
  And I was like great. And so that was like my first
• 7:26
  kind of step into business ownership, but I had the comfort
• 7:29
  of a partnership, but I was a partner with a married couple,
• 7:33
  which means it was 2/3, one thirds for pretty much
• 7:35
  everything. And it was a great learning
• 7:38
  opportunity. They were a great company.
• 7:41
  But our first client that I landed was actually a large
• 7:44
  accounting firm that I landed for that partnership.
• 7:47
  That chief HR person said you could really do the piece that
• 7:53
  you do on your own and you should consider starting your
• 7:55
  own business. And I was like, this is it.
• 7:58
  This is what I'll do. And so I had a contract from
• 8:00
  that accounting firm. I went out on my own.
• 8:04
  And this is the part of the story I don't think people
• 8:05
  always know. So when I made the decision to
• 8:07
  leave my like W2 job to join that research company as a
• 8:12
  partner, I was 4 weeks pregnant and didn't know it.
• 8:15
  Oh boy. Yeah.
• 8:17
  So I've never known a maternity leave.
• 8:21
  I really would love to know what that would like.
• 8:24
  That's why I do if I I was like 1 regret maybe maybe more than
• 8:27
  one, but one regret would have been like, what does it like to
• 8:29
  work for a company that paid you to be out for 12 weeks?
• 8:32
  Like that would be really cool to know.
• 8:33
  I don't know what that's like and I'm not having any more
• 8:36
  children, so I'll never know. But so I started that and so I
• 8:40
  was pregnant and then of course, right building that and that was
• 8:44
  probably. Sorry to interrupt Stacey.
• 8:46
  I want to better understand what it was that they thought you
• 8:48
  specifically did so well to go out on your own to do for them.
• 8:52
  So I was their generational consultant.
• 8:55
  I helped them understand how the generations worked Better
• 8:58
  Together. And so it's just as a consultant
• 9:01
  helping them understand the data.
• 9:03
  We did a lot of employee engagement surveys.
• 9:06
  We did a lot of like breaking it down and helping folks
• 9:08
  understand how the generations work together, how the baby
• 9:11
  boomers could understand the millennials, right?
• 9:13
  Maybe we talked about this. Every cycle, a new generation
• 9:15
  comes along and, and really, like, I would do presentations,
• 9:19
  I would do trainings, I would do coaching to help the leaders
• 9:22
  understand how best to retain their younger employees.
• 9:28
  And so that's what I started doing on my own.
• 9:30
  And so, you know, when I started that company, like, so when I
• 9:33
  left the research firm, kind of broke away from the research
• 9:36
  firm, they were still partnered with them on things and started
• 9:38
  my own company. That was 2009.
• 9:42
  Yeah. Because Jacob was born in 2008,
• 9:45
  so that was 2009. I really started out the best
• 9:48
  way a company can start, which is with a contract with, with
• 9:52
  money already coming in the door.
• 9:53
  I had a six figure contract coming in from that accounting
• 9:55
  firm. I worked with them for two
• 9:57
  years. And the unfortunate thing about
• 10:00
  that is it kind of load me into complacency.
• 10:02
  It kind of was like, well this is great, but I did not do the
• 10:06
  things I needed to do to really build that business.
• 10:11
  There's no business development going on in the meantime.
• 10:13
  Right. I wasn't.
• 10:14
  And that's one of the lessons I learned when that business
• 10:16
  eventually failed after four years.
• 10:19
  So I mean it, I had that contract for two years.
• 10:22
  I did pick up other clients, but I never kind of hit the ground
• 10:26
  running probably the way I needed to, which of course I did
• 10:28
  very different when I started the business I have now and
• 10:32
  which is I referred to as business #2.
• 10:35
  And so with that HR consulting firm, when I was working with
• 10:38
  that accounting firm and I was definitely picking up other
• 10:41
  contracts and stuff, but no, really like long term
• 10:44
  engagements didn't do enough business development.
• 10:46
  And it's one of the lessons I tell folks is like, you got to
• 10:49
  figure out how to touch business development every day.
• 10:51
  It doesn't mean you're picking up the phone and cold calling
• 10:53
  every day. Hopefully you're not ever having
• 10:55
  to do that. But you have to have mechanisms
• 10:57
  in place and you have to have a strategy and a plan that you
• 10:59
  follow where you are constantly focused on business development,
• 11:04
  whatever that looks like, whether it's active or passive,
• 11:07
  depending on how well your business is doing.
• 11:09
  And I didn't do that. And so when that contract ended,
• 11:12
  I really like it was feast or famine for a couple of years.
• 11:15
  And finally I just waved the white flag of surrender.
• 11:18
  I was like, I can't do this anymore.
• 11:19
  So the business made it four years.
• 11:21
  It didn't quite make it to the five year mark.
• 11:23
  So I'm part of the 85% of small business owners that will fail
• 11:27
  before the business hits Year 5. I actually had little badges
• 11:31
  made that said business failure club.
• 11:33
  So I have my own membership badge.
• 11:35
  You sort of celebrate it. So like I.
• 11:36
  Didn't or take the. Sting out of it?
• 11:38
  Is that sort of the idea? So not in the beginning.
• 11:41
  And my ego was way too wounded for that.
• 11:44
  Like, you know, having to have say, I had a business failure
• 11:47
  and had to go back to corporate America was really hard.
• 11:50
  And it's hard in all the ways you think it would be.
• 11:53
  Financially, of course, it is hard, but the biggest blow is to
• 11:56
  your ego. And it was just dealing with
• 11:59
  that. And it was just like figuring
• 12:00
  out how I talked about it, figuring out how I would spin it
• 12:03
  in some cases so it could take the sting out of what I was
• 12:07
  doing and why things were changing.
• 12:09
  And it was interesting when I was in my corporate job.
• 12:13
  So after my business failed and I went back to corporate America
• 12:15
  and I was in my corporate job, I got certified as a productivity
• 12:19
  consultant or a productivity coach.
• 12:21
  Sorry, sorry to interrupt Stacey, but can we dive in a
• 12:24
  little bit more to that really painful experience?
• 12:26
  Sorry to pick up a scab, but I I think I I was.
• 12:29
  Just I was just going to say like when I got certified as
• 12:32
  that productivity coach, one of the things that I realized when
• 12:35
  I started this business I have now is that I, it took me
• 12:40
  through going back to corporate America, starting my second
• 12:43
  business, having some success with my second business before I
• 12:47
  could finally celebrate the fact that it was actually a business
• 12:51
  failure. I never talked about it until I
• 12:53
  can make the connection to how it informed my past and how it
• 12:58
  informed my future. And that was a really important
• 13:01
  lesson. I remember sitting in a group
• 13:03
  with a couple of other business owners and trying to figure out
• 13:06
  like how to explain the business failure to the corporate America
• 13:10
  to now I've got my own business and I realized the failure was
• 13:14
  the theme. It wasn't something to hide.
• 13:18
  It was something to celebrate. Now I had to get some distance
• 13:22
  from it, right. It was a lot easier when the
• 13:24
  second business started being successful and it continued to
• 13:27
  be successful. And now I'll hit thirteen years
• 13:30
  in business this year, later this year.
• 13:32
  And so you know, it's it's a, I'd look at it totally different
• 13:35
  now than I did back then, but it took time.
• 13:38
  It was more of a don't talk about it.
• 13:41
  It was, Yep, I did the company. Then I had this great
• 13:43
  opportunity to go to corporate. So I went to corporate.
• 13:45
  But the truth is I was miserable and I wanted to go back out of
• 13:48
  my own. The certification program just
• 13:50
  became the mechanism to have A to have a reason and to have an
• 13:54
  expertise to be able to start a coaching practice.
• 13:58
  But everything about that second business had to be different.
• 14:01
  And so I wouldn't be a two time member of the business failure
• 14:04
  club, but it did take time. So yes, when you say do you
• 14:07
  celebrate it? Absolutely.
• 14:08
  Now, I mean, I don't know if celebrate it's the right word.
• 14:12
  Huge part of why I am the way I am today, of why my business
• 14:15
  looks the way that it looks today, of why I do what I do
• 14:19
  today. Like millions and millions of
• 14:21
  small business owners will fail every year.
• 14:23
  And that is just heartbreaking for me.
• 14:25
  And I know what it's like and I know what it's like to be on the
• 14:29
  other side too. So I understand both sides with
• 14:31
  it. And, you know, I think that's
• 14:34
  part of why I do what I do. I do it in a very unique way.
• 14:37
  But that's why I do what I do because, you know, the business
• 14:40
  failure could have defined me, right?
• 14:42
  And people are like, oh, it's not a failure.
• 14:44
  It's a lesson. I'm like no like.
• 14:46
  I tell that to your ego. It's OK.
• 14:50
  I learned from it. That's all that matters.
• 14:51
  Yeah. And it, it's a it was a hard
• 14:54
  lesson. It was an important lesson.
• 14:55
  Apparently it was a lesson God thought I needed to learn, you
• 14:58
  know, So I took my lumps, but it did take time before I could
• 15:03
  talk about it. And I remember the first time I
• 15:05
  publicly talked about my business failure, I was giving a
• 15:07
  presentation and I was explaining something about, I
• 15:11
  don't remember the exact presentation, but I was
• 15:13
  explaining something about like what I did before and how it
• 15:16
  informed what I do now as a productivity coach.
• 15:19
  Like that's what I was doing when my second business started.
• 15:22
  And I remember saying, and this all happened because my business
• 15:25
  failed. And then I heard myself say
• 15:28
  those words again, like at least a dozen more times in the
• 15:32
  presentation. Like I'm pretty sure the
• 15:33
  audience was like, why does she keep saying her business failed?
• 15:36
  But for me, it was like this moment of reckoning of like, I
• 15:40
  can talk about this, I can talk about this, and I can still be
• 15:43
  seen as an expert. I can still be seen as a a
• 15:45
  successful business owner. It doesn't define me.
• 15:48
  It's just a part of the past. And it makes you more relatable,
• 15:51
  right? Because they're everybody's,
• 15:53
  everybody falls on their face. And I think that's the thing
• 15:55
  that a lot of people don't recognize is they see where
• 15:59
  somebody is today, this quote, UN quote, finished product,
• 16:02
  which is the wrong term, but they have no idea sort of the
• 16:05
  trials and tribulations that you went through.
• 16:07
  And for somebody who has never had a failed business, lost a
• 16:11
  business that they poured their heart and their soul and their
• 16:14
  identity into, they don't understand just how soul
• 16:17
  crushing that is, right? It's not only a financial loss.
• 16:21
  It you use the word ego multiple times.
• 16:23
  And I think that's a good point to hit on because there is a
• 16:27
  part of you, there's a part of that ego inside that dies, feels
• 16:31
  like a death that has taken place.
• 16:32
  Yes. Yeah, Oh, definitely.
• 16:35
  I mean, let's be honest, right? There's nothing really worse
• 16:38
  than feeling like a failure. And, and I think that's the
• 16:41
  piece that you just have to kind of reconcile, right?
• 16:45
  But it's not really the failure that defines you.
• 16:47
  It's whether you decide to pick yourself up and keep moving on
• 16:50
  and figuring out, you know, what the failure is going to mean for
• 16:54
  you moving forward. But yeah, it was, it's really
• 16:57
  hard. I mean, there are definitely
• 17:00
  days when I was like, I don't even want to get out of bed.
• 17:02
  But you do because I've had children, right?
• 17:05
  Like by the time my business failed, which would have been in
• 17:09
  2012, because that's when I went back to corporate, like early
• 17:13
  2012, I had two kids, then I had a four year old I guess, and a 2
• 17:18
  year old at that point. And so, like, there's no real
• 17:22
  time to just, like, mope around in bed and feel sorry for
• 17:25
  yourself. I was like, had the failure, had
• 17:29
  to go to work. Had, like, my husband and I are
• 17:31
  A2 income family. We have always created our lives
• 17:34
  like that. Nobody gets to stay home with
• 17:36
  the kids. It's kind of our motto.
• 17:38
  If he can't, I can't. If I can't, he can't.
• 17:40
  And so, yeah, it was like, you just have to keep moving
• 17:44
  forward. And eventually, you know, the
• 17:46
  sting fades and eventually you figure out how to talk about it.
• 17:49
  But a real turning point for me was learning to talk about it
• 17:55
  as, as like this is the celebration of why I get to be
• 17:59
  where I am today, because of what I experienced in the past
• 18:03
  and because what I, you know, survived and I guess and then
• 18:05
  maybe thrived through afterwards.
• 18:08
  OK. So let's talk about what that
• 18:10
  next business was, how the idea came about for that.
• 18:13
  Yeah. So when I was in corporate
• 18:15
  America, I, I remember sitting in the lobby of my interview
• 18:19
  being like, OK, this has got to be temporary.
• 18:23
  I want to do a really good job because I am one of those folks
• 18:26
  that like, I'm a, I'm a three on the Indiagram.
• 18:28
  I'm a high achiever. I want to do well wherever I am,
• 18:31
  but I was always looking for my exit strategy.
• 18:34
  I was always like, how do I get out of here?
• 18:35
  How do I get back to being a business owner?
• 18:38
  And so while I was in that corporate job, Carson Tate came
• 18:43
  to me who is a highly recognized and sought after productivity
• 18:46
  coach. She happens to be in the
• 18:48
  Charlotte area, but she is known, you know, internationally
• 18:52
  and she came and she said I'm certifying productivity coaches.
• 18:56
  She was. And then 2000 and something I
• 19:00
  don't remember, I was pregnant. So I guess it was 2000 and
• 19:03
  seven, 2008, I went through one of her boot camps because I just
• 19:08
  knew I was about, you know, working, going to have a baby.
• 19:11
  My whole life was going to change.
• 19:13
  I wanted to brush up on being more productive and just having
• 19:16
  some better tips. And so I dragged my husband with
• 19:18
  me and we went to her boot camp where she taught productivity
• 19:21
  strategies. And she was like, you're just so
• 19:22
  good at it. She was like, you've done it
• 19:24
  most of your time. Like you, you're a productive
• 19:26
  person to kind of begin with. You kind of have their own
• 19:28
  systems. She was like learning mine is
• 19:30
  only going to accelerate it. And she's like, and we need more
• 19:32
  coaches. And I was like, OK, so I got
• 19:35
  certified as a productivity coach.
• 19:37
  And then when I left my corporate job, it was to start a
• 19:41
  productivity and business coaching practice.
• 19:43
  And what I found, I went all in on the productivity piece, but
• 19:47
  what I found is having conversations with small
• 19:49
  business owners. So my niche was small business
• 19:52
  owners who were also parents and I worked with actually a lot of
• 19:56
  husband and wife teams, but also a lot of individual business
• 19:59
  owners as well. But the one thing they almost
• 20:01
  all had in common, not all but a majority of them had in common
• 20:04
  is that they also had parents. They were also parents and they
• 20:06
  had kids. And so it fit really well into
• 20:10
  the the life I understood and the reality that I was walking
• 20:14
  through. I think it made me very
• 20:15
  authentic in terms of like talking about what I did and how
• 20:18
  I did it and then what my other clients were doing as well.
• 20:23
  And so I started that productivity coaching practice,
• 20:26
  but you don't talk to small business owners about their
• 20:28
  inbox without also talking about their business.
• 20:31
  And so I quickly morphed into productivity and business
• 20:36
  coaching. I used to tell folks one of my
• 20:39
  not wanted superpowers is that I can see a business headed
• 20:43
  towards failure just be how the owner would talk just about
• 20:46
  things of like I could just hear it.
• 20:48
  I'd be like, oh they are saying that to make themselves feel
• 20:51
  better, but that is a lie that is actually not true.
• 20:55
  Sorry, let me let me jump in just for the quick question.
• 20:57
  So the productivity coaching is about setting up systems,
• 21:01
  processes. How do we breakthrough
• 21:03
  bottlenecks, this kind of a thing?
• 21:05
  Yeah, so we did a lot with like, you know, managing your
• 21:09
  calendar, learning how to time block, you know, taking control
• 21:13
  of your inbox. But a lot of it's around
• 21:16
  mindset. A lot of it has to do with,
• 21:18
  like, where you decide to give your attention and figuring out
• 21:22
  how you're going to prioritize. So there was a lot of tactics to
• 21:25
  it, a lot of tactical like, OK, you're in 21 meetings throughout
• 21:29
  the week, You clearly have no time to get your work done.
• 21:33
  Let's look at these 21 meetings and figure out which ones
• 21:35
  somebody else can go in your place and you don't have to go
• 21:38
  or you can cancel all together. Like it was things.
• 21:40
  It was very tactical in terms of helping people just create more
• 21:43
  space and more margin in their days.
• 21:46
  And then how they take their whole self to work and to home
• 21:50
  at the end of the day too. And so then when you started
• 21:53
  sort of rolling in bigger level business coaching on top of that
• 21:57
  productivity coaching, it's because you could see in advance
• 22:01
  that businesses were on their way to failure and was that path
• 22:04
  that they were often marching down because they didn't have
• 22:08
  that sales funnel full, they didn't have the business
• 22:10
  development piece in place. Not always and not every, never.
• 22:14
  Most of the clients I worked with, I never saw that, right?
• 22:16
  I could just see it from time to time.
• 22:18
  And some folks I'd be like, oh, I don't know if they'll still be
• 22:21
  in business a year from now. And those weren't always the
• 22:23
  folks I was coaching. I could see when I was in
• 22:25
  networking groups or when I would go and talk to business
• 22:27
  owners, but what the work that I was doing with them.
• 22:32
  As we evolved beyond productivity and we started
• 22:34
  talking about business, a big part of what we were talking
• 22:38
  about was their mindset and business development.
• 22:42
  And because I always tell folks the three lessons I learned from
• 22:46
  my business failure was the 1st is that you have to protect your
• 22:50
  mindset. It's actually the most important
• 22:52
  lesson you can learn. I can distinctly trace back to a
• 22:56
  moment where I believed something that someone told me
• 23:00
  that led me to look at my business differently, my first
• 23:03
  business differently and was kind of the beginning of the
• 23:06
  end, even though it took a while for that business to eventually
• 23:09
  die. And that was I was going for an
• 23:12
  award. I was women business owner going
• 23:14
  for an award to a women business organization and somebody who
• 23:18
  was there who had who had a business kind of like mine said,
• 23:22
  oh, Stacey, businesses like ours don't win awards.
• 23:26
  We're like a lifestyle business. And this is before lifestyle
• 23:29
  business was a thing, right? So this is before people talk
• 23:32
  about lifestyle businesses and then they've got pictures of
• 23:34
  them laying on the beach and their Lamborghinis in the
• 23:36
  background, right? Like that.
• 23:38
  This is like the oh, our businesses don't really they
• 23:41
  earn income and they do OK, but they're not powerhouses.
• 23:45
  It's kind of how she implied it. And I probably was still in the
• 23:49
  nursing phase, if I had to guess, with my second child,
• 23:52
  with my daughter. And I probably bought it hook,
• 23:54
  line and sinker. Like it was like, oh, yeah,
• 23:56
  that's OK. I don't win a ward.
• 23:57
  That's OK that I feel like doing laundry at 1:00 on a Wednesday
• 24:00
  when I should be doing something else.
• 24:02
  And it was like an excuse, like she didn't intend it the way
• 24:06
  that I took it and to the length that I took it to.
• 24:10
  She meant it as probably trying to protect me from the fact that
• 24:13
  you're going up against other business owners for this award
• 24:15
  and you're not going to win. And she was right because I
• 24:18
  didn't. But it was very, very, it was
• 24:22
  very much that moment of the end is here.
• 24:26
  And I didn't know it at that time, but I could start seeing,
• 24:29
  if I looked back, I could start seeing how all my behavior
• 24:32
  started to shift. So the first thing I was tell
• 24:35
  folks is my first business lesson learned from a failure is
• 24:37
  you have to protect your mindset.
• 24:39
  You have to be constantly working to protect your mindset.
• 24:42
  The second lesson I learned was you can't scale while you're
• 24:45
  drowning. So I was always trying to figure
• 24:48
  out how to scale my HR consulting firm, but I was
• 24:51
  always drowning, and that's an impossible task, which meant
• 24:54
  when I started my second business, I was always looking
• 24:57
  for the thing I would scale. And the third lesson being the
• 24:59
  one we've already talked about, you got to touch business
• 25:01
  development every day. You got to know what you're
• 25:03
  doing with your pipeline on an ongoing basis.
• 25:06
  And so those lessons I was always coaching my clients on
• 25:10
  and our conversations would evolve past just help me time
• 25:14
  block, right, or help me get control of my inbox with some
• 25:17
  rules, putting some rules in place.
• 25:20
  And so the business coaching kind of evolved as well into how
• 25:24
  that I would help those business owners.
• 25:26
  So how do you protect your mindset?
• 25:28
  And then I want to get into how the whole referral component of
• 25:31
  this kind of evolved for you. Yeah.
• 25:33
  So the mindset thing, I think it's, I think it's different for
• 25:37
  every person, right? I think that the way I protect
• 25:41
  my mindset now is that I have, I have moments like when I
• 25:47
  recognize I'm, I'm backsliding into how I used to be.
• 25:52
  And that's just unique to my situation, though.
• 25:54
  I bet we all have them, right? We all have moments like I have
• 25:57
  this one coaching client that I talk to you every once in a
• 26:00
  while and we kind of catch up on me.
• 26:01
  And I haven't coached him in like, I don't know, a decade,
• 26:03
  but. And I remember one time he was
• 26:05
  like, like, like recently, it was like last year, he reached
• 26:08
  down. He was like, hey, can I just
• 26:09
  grab like 20 minutes on your calendar?
• 26:11
  And he was like, I'll pay you. I'm like, you don't have to pay
• 26:13
  me like for a client for forever.
• 26:16
  I'll talk. And I knew 20 minutes would be
• 26:17
  an hour and 20 minutes because that's just how we are.
• 26:19
  But we were talking, and he was talking about some decisions he
• 26:21
  needed to make in his business. I haven't coached this man in 10
• 26:24
  years, but we were talking about things he needed to make in his
• 26:27
  business. And I said, like, what?
• 26:29
  And I'm going to change the details to protect him.
• 26:31
  But I said to him, I was like this is not Detroit.
• 26:36
  And he was like that's what I needed to hear because I knew
• 26:39
  something from his past about a business failure he experienced
• 26:42
  where he lived somewhere else that he always brought into the
• 26:46
  business he has today, which is multi $1,000,000 successful,
• 26:50
  nothing like what he experienced before.
• 26:52
  But he has this marker place where he will drop back into a
• 26:55
  fear factor or concern factor of it's going to be Detroit all
• 26:59
  over again. And I'm like, this is not
• 27:01
  Detroit. I was like, you're so far past
• 27:03
  Detroit. That's that's not even in your
• 27:05
  rear view anymore. Like you can't even see it.
• 27:08
  You've crossed so many mountains from it.
• 27:09
  I was like, stop making decisions from that place.
• 27:12
  And you know, as someone who coached him for a number of
• 27:14
  years, I'm uniquely positioned to say that to him because I
• 27:17
  know it and I remembered it right.
• 27:19
  So we all have those things right in our lives.
• 27:22
  I remember I had one client where whenever she would fall
• 27:26
  back, and this is my productivity coaching, whenever
• 27:27
  she would fall behind on things, we would we literally she had
• 27:31
  this one big project she fell behind on and it like haunted
• 27:34
  her for like a year. And there's a lot of things that
• 27:38
  go into why that happened and it had to do something with trains.
• 27:41
  And so I told her I was like, when we processed through that
• 27:45
  from a productivity perspective, and then we processed through
• 27:47
  the mindset perspective of it, I said, I want you to go out.
• 27:49
  I want you to buy yourself a little small, Thomas the train
• 27:52
  or some type of train or something that is a train like
• 27:56
  comes from a toy. I don't really care.
• 27:58
  Buy a Model 1. I don't really care.
• 27:59
  But I need it on your desk and I need it on your desk forever
• 28:02
  because I need you when you start backsliding and you start
• 28:06
  exhibiting, right, the behaviors and the mindset that's going to
• 28:11
  put you in another train place, I want you to look at the train
• 28:14
  and be like, Oh, I'm not going there again.
• 28:16
  And I want you to switch yourself over.
• 28:18
  And so I think we all have those.
• 28:20
  I think it, it takes you have to figure out what it is for you
• 28:23
  from that perspective. But we all have those markers.
• 28:26
  And for me, I knew with my mindset, for me, it was more
• 28:30
  about growth and focusing on what can I learn next?
• 28:34
  So I'll give you one example, something I do now that I would
• 28:38
  just laugh at back in 2000 and eight 2009 two thousand and
• 28:42
  eight 2000 and nine 2010. Stacy would laugh at 20/25/2020.
• 28:47
  Well, I guess it started for me in 2022 would laugh at is like
• 28:50
  this understanding of affirmations and manifesting and
• 28:54
  understanding how your mindset and what you believe impacts how
• 28:58
  you actually show up and what energy you put out into the
• 29:01
  world. And that is a big part.
• 29:03
  Like just knowing how to, you know, calm my nervous system
• 29:08
  when things aren't going my way and how to focus on right what
• 29:12
  it looks like. I used to just white knuckle
• 29:14
  everything. I'm just going to white knuckle
• 29:16
  it and push through and make it happen.
• 29:19
  Versus that ability to like, take a breath, relax, let the
• 29:24
  knuckles turn back to their regular color and be like, I
• 29:27
  just got to do my piece and let everything else fall into place
• 29:30
  the way it's supposed to. And I think that that for me,
• 29:34
  there was a few books that I read.
• 29:35
  There was a mastermind that I was in and that all set me on
• 29:38
  this journey for kind of where I am today.
• 29:40
  And the the things I look for in terms of like, oh, I like there
• 29:44
  was something that happened in 2025 and I was like, oh, I sound
• 29:49
  like I could see the spiral down start happening.
• 29:52
  I'm like, I am spiraling down. I'm not spiraling up.
• 29:55
  And so that was, you know, I start noticing it and I make
• 29:57
  shifts for it. So if I pulling from your
• 30:01
  different stories there, if I'm kind of hearing you correctly,
• 30:03
  it's I, I've sort of identified 3 steps in that process.
• 30:07
  So being honest with yourself, asking yourself what is the
• 30:09
  pattern that I keep repeating? It's different for everybody as
• 30:12
  you pointed out. The second is identify when you
• 30:16
  are in the process of repeating that cycle, and then the third
• 30:19
  is telling yourself that this time is not that time.
• 30:25
  Right, yeah. And then I was at the 4th step
• 30:27
  is, is making sure you have some type of mechanism in place to
• 30:31
  move forward in the right way. Whether that is, you know,
• 30:35
  something like sometimes it's calling somebody and having a
• 30:38
  conversation, right? And being like, this is not
• 30:40
  Detroit and that's all you need to move forward.
• 30:42
  Sometimes for me, it's like getting up out of my office and
• 30:45
  going for a walk. And so it's figuring out what it
• 30:48
  is you need to bring yourself. Like it's, it's recognizing it,
• 30:52
  right? It's knowing it happens.
• 30:54
  It's recognizing when it happens.
• 30:55
  It's calling yourself out on it. And then it's the what do you do
• 30:58
  is the fourth thing is like, what do you do that kind of
• 31:00
  moves you into the right direction?
• 31:03
  That action, there's got to be some type of action that you
• 31:06
  take. I like that.
• 31:08
  OK, Stacey, now build the bridge for us how we got from where
• 31:11
  we've been talking about to the whole referral side of the.
• 31:14
  Business to why am I an expert in referrals, right, Because we
• 31:17
  haven't talked about it at all. Most people are like how did
• 31:19
  that happen? OK, so.
• 31:20
  There's so much great ground to cover, but.
• 31:23
  So much I know, so life well lived, right?
• 31:27
  So with my SO here's what I always tell folks, I did not
• 31:31
  wake up one day and decide to go from being a productivity coach
• 31:35
  to an expert in referrals. That's not how this journey
• 31:38
  went. I didn't wake up one day and all
• 31:39
  of a sudden I'm brilliant when it comes to referrals.
• 31:42
  One of the lessons that we've talked about that I learned when
• 31:44
  my first business failed and then I started my second
• 31:47
  business was that business development piece that you've
• 31:50
  got to figure out how to touch business at touch business
• 31:53
  development every day, but you got to do it in a way that'll
• 31:55
  work for you. And that was a big key for me,
• 31:58
  right? So I always tell folks like you
• 31:59
  have to figure out how you want to grow your business and get
• 32:02
  new clients or prospects to get new clients in the door in a way
• 32:06
  that not only works, but works for you because you will have to
• 32:10
  keep doing it. Anybody can cold call for a day.
• 32:14
  Most people can't do it for longer than that unless you are
• 32:17
  like a Unicorn, right? It's just a tough go at it.
• 32:21
  Same thing with like dropping off things at other people's
• 32:24
  businesses, right? Or things like that, like the
• 32:26
  drop offs, the drive bys, the whatever.
• 32:27
  Like there's, there's a, you know, some people can network
• 32:30
  and they love it. And other people are like I
• 32:32
  maybe once or twice a month and then it just drains me, right.
• 32:34
  So the most important thing to figure out is how do you want to
• 32:38
  grow your business? Because you have to, right?
• 32:40
  You have to bring in prospects to be able then to turn them
• 32:43
  into paying clients. But you got to figure out how
• 32:45
  you're going to touch business development every day in a way
• 32:46
  that works for you. When my business failed, I kind
• 32:50
  of looked back up to where all my clients came from.
• 32:52
  And I realized that I landed all of my clients for the most part
• 32:59
  from networking and all of those situations with all the clients
• 33:03
  that I landed. And we're talking like Ally
• 33:05
  Bank, BDO, KPMG, Coca-Cola, Gonzalez, like, right, We're
• 33:10
  talking about big name clients, right?
• 33:12
  It was being in the right place at the right time.
• 33:15
  You know what that really means? It means being in all the places
• 33:18
  all the time. And it is exhausting.
• 33:21
  And so here I was right starting my first business and I, yes, I
• 33:26
  had that contract. But when that contract looked
• 33:27
  like it was coming to an end, I was like, I'm gonna do
• 33:29
  something. I better start like, right.
• 33:31
  So I was networking already, but it was like turbocharged it, you
• 33:34
  know, I had, I had babies at home.
• 33:36
  Like it was just a really like tough season because what I knew
• 33:41
  was networking, but it was exhausting.
• 33:43
  And then it got to the point where like T-ball started.
• 33:45
  I'm like, I'm not missing games, like I got other priorities.
• 33:49
  And so for me, it was paying attention to how you're going to
• 33:52
  grow this business. And I looked back where all my
• 33:54
  clients came from. It was mostly from networking.
• 33:56
  The only referral my first business received was two years
• 34:01
  after I shut that business down and had started this business
• 34:04
  I'm in now. And that referral showed up and
• 34:07
  I'm like, wait a minute, this is pretty awesome.
• 34:12
  Like this. This client was easier to close,
• 34:14
  quicker to close because they already trusted me.
• 34:18
  They didn't waffle at my price. I didn't have to feel like I
• 34:20
  needed to, you know, negotiate against myself.
• 34:23
  They said yes right away. They hired me and I was like,
• 34:27
  and it was for something that I could still do.
• 34:29
  So I did it. But I was like, all my business
• 34:32
  comes because people know me and then they hire me, not because
• 34:36
  they're referring someone they know to me.
• 34:39
  And so it was one of those things that I started paying
• 34:41
  attention to. And then the, the job I took in
• 34:43
  corporate, it was actually in the insurance world.
• 34:47
  And so it was in the financial advising and insurance world.
• 34:49
  And so you are surrounded by people talking about referrals.
• 34:53
  And I saw how they taught it and I saw how they taught to ask.
• 34:56
  And I was like, I would never do that.
• 34:58
  I could never do that. Like, and I was like, must be
• 35:01
  why I didn't get any referrals with my first business.
• 35:03
  And then I got a referral for my first business once it had
• 35:06
  already died and it was now in my second business.
• 35:09
  And I was like, I, I want to get more referrals, but I can't ask
• 35:14
  for them. That's like a cousin to cold
• 35:16
  calling. I you know.
• 35:17
  That just felt uncomfortable to you?
• 35:19
  It's just so uncomfortable and it just doesn't fit who I am.
• 35:22
  And so can I do it once? Sure.
• 35:23
  Will I do it twice? Nope.
• 35:24
  I will find an excuse. I know me, right?
• 35:27
  Knowing yourself is really important.
• 35:28
  You just had to be a business owner and you got to know how to
• 35:31
  identify your own blind spots. And I was like, OK, so I started
• 35:35
  my productivity practice by what I knew networking, right?
• 35:38
  And I used a very specific strategy when I started, but I
• 35:41
  started by meeting with people who was, I was already a client
• 35:44
  of theirs because they're not going to say no to you.
• 35:46
  So my attorney, right, My mortgage broker, my financial
• 35:50
  advisor, right? Like I started meeting with
• 35:52
  those people when I started my second business because that's
• 35:56
  what I knew. I knew networking, I knew how to
• 35:57
  stack coffee meetings back-to-back to back.
• 36:01
  And I was just telling the story of the here's what you knew me
• 36:03
  as, here's what I transitioned to do, here's the certification
• 36:06
  I got. And it was all networking.
• 36:09
  And the first three people that hired me were the actually the
• 36:12
  first three people I just told you I was already their client.
• 36:14
  So now they're my client. And it was one of those first
• 36:17
  three people that also then referred me to my 4th client.
• 36:21
  And I was like, whoa, here it is again.
• 36:23
  This is pretty amazing and I was like, I got to learn more about
• 36:27
  this. I didn't know what I was doing.
• 36:29
  I was like throwing spaghetti on the wall and figure out what
• 36:31
  would stick because I refused to ask.
• 36:33
  I physically could not bring myself to ask and I could not
• 36:37
  conferencing. You could not ask somebody to
• 36:40
  help coach you on how to get referrals or you could not ask
• 36:43
  somebody to give you a referral. Yeah, I couldn't ask someone to
• 36:46
  refer me Like when that when that referral for my 4th
• 36:49
  coaching client showed up, I was like, this is amazing and I
• 36:51
  didn't have to ask for it. How do I do more of that?
• 36:55
  Right. And so and I wouldn't ask and I
• 36:59
  wasn't making enough money to pay somebody to compensate
• 37:02
  somebody to refer me. And I didn't like the idea of
• 37:04
  kickbacks. I don't like it when somebody
• 37:08
  refers you to someone else and then you find out later it was
• 37:11
  because they made money, right? Not because maybe they referred
• 37:15
  to the rest to the best person. They referred to the person who
• 37:17
  was going to pay them. Like to me, I have a fundamental
• 37:20
  issue with that. And that's how a lot of this is
• 37:23
  before affiliate programs were really, really big, right?
• 37:26
  And that's all disclosed upfront, right?
• 37:28
  And so I'm talking about the kickbacks, under the table stuff
• 37:30
  that still happens to this day. And so it's when it's not
• 37:34
  disclosed, that's when I have an issue with it.
• 37:36
  So I was like, well, I won't ask and I won't pay.
• 37:38
  And the the other thing you're taught is, well then just
• 37:42
  network all the time. So you're constantly seen so
• 37:45
  that people will refer you. And I'm like, well, I've done
• 37:47
  that and it gets me clients, but it doesn't give me referrals.
• 37:50
  So clearly I'm missing something.
• 37:53
  And it wasn't that my clients didn't love me.
• 37:55
  It wasn't that I didn't have glowing testimonials for my
• 37:57
  first business clients and my early second business clients.
• 38:01
  And so I just paid attention to the fact that I got that
• 38:03
  referral and I was like, OK, let's just try some things.
• 38:08
  Let's just take care of the people who are referring to me
• 38:11
  or the people that I want referring to me in a different
• 38:13
  way. And I made a lot of mistakes.
• 38:15
  I threw a lot of spaghetti on the wall to see what what would
• 38:18
  stick. But in my first year as a
• 38:19
  productivity and business coach, I received 112 referrals that I
• 38:24
  never asked for or paid for. 112 referrals in one year.
• 38:30
  Your first year of throwing spaghetti against the wall to
• 38:33
  see what's stuck. You didn't know what you were
• 38:35
  doing and you got 112 referrals. A. 112 referrals passed my
• 38:39
  corporate salary, I get the six or seven month mark and I was
• 38:43
  like I'm on to something. Went on a wait list, was raising
• 38:46
  my coaching rates like it changed everything.
• 38:49
  Less than a year later, I would then have office space, like it
• 38:52
  changed everything. And I was like, how did this
• 38:54
  happen? And that's the thing.
• 38:56
  I don't know how it happened until I do something that I'm
• 38:59
  pretty good at, which is reverse engineering why it happened.
• 39:03
  So I am not one of those people that can always pay attention
• 39:05
  why it's working in the moment. I mean, I can now I'm much more
• 39:09
  evolved, but back then I couldn't.
• 39:11
  I could just be like, this feels right.
• 39:13
  So do this, this feels right, so do this.
• 39:15
  Oh, that felt good. Let's do it again.
• 39:17
  And there were a few key moments, few key moments that I
• 39:21
  remember that stuck with me, that I just kept doing those
• 39:24
  thing over and over again. One of them was when a new
• 39:27
  client would hire me as their coach.
• 39:28
  And I talk about this in my second book, the referable
• 39:31
  client experience. One time I would, you know, I
• 39:35
  would send these welcome cards, which I tell folks they're like
• 39:39
  better than a typical, thanks for being our client.
• 39:41
  We're so glad to work with you, which is what most people send,
• 39:43
  if they send anything. I was in the handwritten card
• 39:46
  that was more like a journey card.
• 39:47
  Like welcome to the journey we're about to go on together,
• 39:50
  right? It's going to be hard.
• 39:51
  And I'm here with you. Like acknowledging, right, the
• 39:54
  elephant in the room of that quiet voice of what they're
• 39:56
  worried about after just paying to work with me.
• 39:59
  And I remember I walked into that client that was referred to
• 40:03
  me, my 4th client. I walked into her office.
• 40:08
  And I saw the card up on the board and I looked at it and she
• 40:11
  saw me looking at it and she was like, I've never gotten a card
• 40:13
  like that before. And I was like, Julie noted.
• 40:16
  We will be doing that again, right?
• 40:18
  So it was just moments like that that I realized that.
• 40:22
  Noticing what people respond to. Yes.
• 40:24
  And noticing it and then like do it more.
• 40:26
  Do it more. And so after the end of that
• 40:29
  year, I didn't know I had 112 referrals while the year was
• 40:32
  happening. I was compiling the numbers
• 40:35
  because I wanted to look like the year in review.
• 40:38
  So like most people, right, I wanted to look back and I wanted
• 40:41
  to figure out where my business came from.
• 40:42
  I just knew that was always an important metric to be able to
• 40:44
  know where my business came from.
• 40:45
  And that's when I added it up and I was like, Oh my gosh, 112
• 40:50
  referrals, right? And yes, other business came
• 40:52
  from people who knew me. They were part of my network and
• 40:54
  they decided to hire me. But the majority of my business
• 40:57
  came from referrals, and it literally changed everything
• 41:01
  about my coaching practice. I mean, literally changed
• 41:04
  everything. And it was before that first
• 41:07
  year was over. When I am now, clients can't
• 41:10
  just book me, can't buy a coaching package for three
• 41:13
  months. Now they've got to do a full
• 41:14
  year. And they're like, what happened?
• 41:16
  And now I'm like, yeah, and the rates gone up and they're like,
• 41:19
  what? What's going on?
• 41:20
  I'm like, yeah, demand, right? Like when you have a ton of
• 41:24
  demand, you get to make different choices for your
• 41:25
  business. My clients inevitably started
• 41:28
  asking the question, So what are you doing?
• 41:33
  How are you growing? And I was like, I'm getting
• 41:35
  these referrals. And then they started asking the
• 41:38
  question, what does that look like?
• 41:41
  Like, how are you doing that? And they're like, thanks for
• 41:43
  teaching me how to tame my inbox.
• 41:45
  But I would also like us to talk about whatever you're doing to
• 41:48
  get referrals, which forced me really fast to reverse engineer
• 41:52
  what I was actually doing and how it was working and doing
• 41:55
  that in my first year and starting to have conversations
• 41:58
  with clients as part of their normal coaching package, right?
• 42:01
  They were still hiring me for productivity and business
• 42:04
  coaching. But the ones that were
• 42:05
  interested in it, we started having conversations around
• 42:08
  referrals. And it was in teaching it to
• 42:11
  those first couple of clients, I really started to refine some of
• 42:17
  the processes of what I was doing.
• 42:19
  And what's crazy, the things I named, like the frameworks that
• 42:23
  I would name on the fly in a coaching session to one of that
• 42:27
  first or second clients be like, oh, we called this and I'd be
• 42:30
  like the running 5, keeping warm.
• 42:33
  Those frameworks still exist today and.
• 42:36
  Still have the same names. Same names.
• 42:39
  Yep, same names. And because they're Evergreen
• 42:42
  now do something. Shift and change, of course.
• 42:45
  But I have the benefit of helping people cultivate
• 42:49
  relationships with other people so that they can get referrals.
• 42:54
  And that doesn't change. I'm not, I don't have to worry
• 42:57
  about an algorithm because I'm not worried about an algorithm.
• 42:59
  I'm, I am worried about how we take care of other people.
• 43:03
  And how you do that doesn't really change when you think
• 43:06
  about the basic human nature and the basic human psychology and
• 43:09
  basic human needs. And so that's the cool thing.
• 43:12
  Like when I name something like 13 years ago, I guess 12 years
• 43:16
  ago now I'll be thirteen closer to the end of this year.
• 43:19
  I was like, I still call it that.
• 43:20
  Like it's still the same thing. They're still the same tactics.
• 43:23
  Some things I have massaged and you know, and I've seen things
• 43:26
  now when I, when I started watching things work over and
• 43:28
  over again. Now, like if you learn one of my
• 43:30
  strategies, I'll say this is a must.
• 43:32
  There are no exceptions. I've seen this for over a decade
• 43:35
  work. You have to start this way and
• 43:37
  then there's creativity that you can bring to it.
• 43:39
  So now I'm a little bit more like, hey, there are things we
• 43:42
  have to do, and then there's things that you could do.
• 43:45
  But yeah, I mean, it informed everything.
• 43:47
  And it was really to survive, right?
• 43:50
  And make my second business successful.
• 43:52
  And then as clients started asking, OK, teach me the
• 43:55
  referrals piece. Remember, my second business
• 43:57
  lesson I learned from my business failure was you cannot
• 43:59
  scale while drowning. I was always looking for what
• 44:03
  can I scale? And I didn't want to scale the
• 44:05
  productivity coaching because I felt that would be rude to
• 44:09
  Carson, who had taught it to me. I was like, I'm not going to
• 44:11
  scale that. That's her thing, right?
• 44:14
  I am I, but I want to scale beyond.
• 44:16
  That was something different. And when the referral piece
• 44:18
  clicked, I was like, that's it. That's what I want to get more.
• 44:22
  That's what I want to dive in deeper to.
• 44:23
  That's what I want to scale. And eventually over a couple of
• 44:26
  years, I would shift from doing productivity and referrals to
• 44:29
  eventually just only referrals. And so there's several fun
• 44:33
  layers to your story here. This part that we just shared
• 44:36
  and the one that I really want to draw people's attention to is
• 44:38
  how you really listen to your clients to figure out where the
• 44:41
  business was going next. You you weren't thinking about
• 44:45
  developing the referral processes like another line of
• 44:48
  business. It was just a way to feed your
• 44:51
  productivity business until your client started saying I'd like
• 44:55
  to hear more about that. And that's when the light bulb
• 44:58
  goes off, I think. I think this is often times the
• 45:02
  best way for businesses to either make a pivot or to just
• 45:07
  grow their business is listening to what their clients are asking
• 45:10
  for. Yes, yeah.
• 45:13
  And I think that, you know, sometimes I hear what my clients
• 45:15
  say today and I'm like, you know, I feel like everyone's
• 45:18
  obsessed with a shortcut. Right.
• 45:21
  Yeah, give me the hack. What's the shortcut?
• 45:24
  Can AI teach that to me? No, it cannot.
• 45:27
  And so it's always, and I feel like that, I mean, I've been
• 45:29
  hearing this drum beat now for a couple of years, but it's it's
• 45:32
  intensified, I would say in the last year or two.
• 45:36
  And so part of me is like, I know I need to listen to that.
• 45:39
  But the truth is what I teach cannot be a hack or a shortcut.
• 45:43
  Like we're talking about somebody putting the reputation
• 45:45
  on the line when they make the decision to refer someone to
• 45:48
  you. And it that looks different, but
• 45:52
  it but it is informing. OK, maybe how I deliver things
• 45:55
  looks different, right? Like soon sometimes it doesn't
• 45:58
  have to inform what you teach or how you help your clients, but
• 46:02
  maybe the the mechanism in the delivery model of how you work
• 46:06
  with your clients. So yeah, I think it impacts lots
• 46:08
  of ways of how we run our businesses in terms of listening
• 46:11
  to your clients and what they need.
• 46:13
  And so, Stacy, you categorize your strategies into
• 46:16
  foundational, situational and next level.
• 46:20
  Can you briefly explain what those categories are?
• 46:23
  Yeah. So I think a lot of people will
• 46:24
  read my first book Generating Business Referrals without
• 46:26
  asking and they'll be like, OK, so I got it.
• 46:28
  And I'm like, Oh well, wait, no, not even close.
• 46:32
  That is 1 strategy of the 20 strategies right now that I
• 46:36
  teach and we are adding new strategies as we see things
• 46:40
  work. So and that book is on based on
• 46:45
  one of the foundational strategies.
• 46:47
  There are three foundational strategies that I believe every
• 46:51
  business should have in place. It doesn't mean you have to run
• 46:54
  all three of them all the time. Two of them should run all the
• 46:56
  time. 1 you can use it as you need it, but you need to know
• 46:58
  how to do all three of them and you need to have all three of
• 47:00
  them in place. And my first book is based on
• 47:03
  one of those strategies. My second book is based on
• 47:05
  another of one of those foundational strategies.
• 47:08
  And if and when I get around to writing a third book, I'm pretty
• 47:11
  sure it'll be based on the 3rd foundational strategy.
• 47:13
  But these are the mechanisms and these foundational strategies
• 47:17
  are the things are like the engine that runs the referral
• 47:20
  system and they are the things you have to have in place to be
• 47:24
  generating the referrals you want.
• 47:26
  Everything that follows in the situational bucket of strategies
• 47:29
  and tactics are usually based on situations you then find
• 47:33
  yourself in because referrals are happening.
• 47:37
  And so the majority of the strategies are actually
• 47:40
  situational. And so really there's like 14
• 47:45
  situational. You got 3 foundational.
• 47:47
  I think it's like 14 situational, right?
• 47:50
  And then we've got 3 next level. And so the majority of them are
• 47:54
  the situational. So when people come to me and
• 47:56
  they're like, I'm getting referrals, but it's not the
• 48:00
  right quality, or I'm not closing them or people tell me
• 48:03
  they've referred me, but I actually nobody ever shows up.
• 48:06
  I'm like, those are all like once you know how to solve them
• 48:09
  in that situation, you just know the tool in your toolbox.
• 48:13
  And so there's the three foundational, there is the
• 48:16
  situational, and then there's a couple of next level and the
• 48:18
  next levels are really based on once you follow my process,
• 48:22
  there's some things you need to be prepared to do as you move
• 48:24
  into your second year and then to sustain it every year after
• 48:27
  that. I tell folks I am not a one hit
• 48:29
  wonder. You do not come to work with me.
• 48:31
  I mean, that doesn't mean people don't, but you shouldn't look at
• 48:34
  working with me like I'm going to learn this and this is going
• 48:36
  to help me for 2026. You should be looking at this as
• 48:39
  an investment in your business. I'm going to learn these
• 48:41
  strategies and processes. I'm going to put these work
• 48:43
  flows in place. I'm going to teach my team how
• 48:45
  to do certain things. And in five years I'm going to
• 48:47
  be able to tell Stacy, this is all that we've kept going and
• 48:50
  look at how our referrals have grown and increased year over
• 48:53
  year over year. That doesn't mean you won't have
• 48:55
  some dips, right? Even referrals aren't immune to
• 48:57
  what's going on in the world of the economy or in industries,
• 49:00
  but that what you build is sustainable year over year over
• 49:05
  year in your business. It is not just help me get
• 49:07
  through 2026. It's not just help me figure out
• 49:10
  how to survive this algorithm change because we're talking
• 49:12
  about humans. We're not talking about
• 49:13
  algorithms. And so that's why it's so
• 49:16
  robust. Most people are like, I went
• 49:18
  through referral training and I learned how to ask and I'm like,
• 49:21
  so you learned that referrals are a nail and the only solution
• 49:24
  they're going to give you is a hammer.
• 49:27
  I'm never going to teach you to ask for referrals.
• 49:29
  That's the one tool I'm never going to give you.
• 49:30
  But I am going to give you a fully stocked toolbox that's
• 49:33
  going to help you see referrals as an ecosystem in your business
• 49:38
  because that's what it is. And it's they're hiding and
• 49:41
  living and could be in lots of places you're not paying
• 49:43
  attention to. But once you have the right
• 49:45
  strategies in place, the right plans, you know how to deal with
• 49:48
  situations when they happen. Language is a big piece of what
• 49:51
  we do. And you know how to prepare
• 49:52
  yourself to move forward, to keep doing this and keep
• 49:55
  implementing every year. That's when we've built some
• 49:58
  sustainable businesses. So how quickly can someone
• 50:02
  expect to start seeing results? I get that this is planting the
• 50:05
  seeds for future growth in years to come, but everybody listening
• 50:10
  is like, yeah, but I need sales today, Stacy.
• 50:12
  Yeah. So the one of the things if you
• 50:14
  go to our website and you start looking at case studies or you
• 50:16
  start reading testimonials, you're going to see things like
• 50:20
  anywhere from Stacy helped me double, triple or quadruple my
• 50:25
  referrals. And you'll see things as little
• 50:27
  as 90 days. And it's for some folks it took
• 50:29
  a year or maybe longer. Some of that has to do with the
• 50:32
  industry they're in and if they actually do what they're
• 50:35
  supposed to do, which is obviously a big part of success
• 50:40
  is the implementation. And so for some folks, you know,
• 50:44
  like I'll have someone that's like, I did this one thing and I
• 50:46
  got 8 referrals and I'm like great, like awesome.
• 50:49
  It's a tactic. It is not.
• 50:51
  If you just do that tactic and nothing else, 8 referrals at
• 50:53
  all, you're ever going to have to show for it, right?
• 50:55
  There's like more that we need to do.
• 50:57
  So I always think it's great when people can have that early
• 51:00
  fast success. I love it when people are like,
• 51:01
  wow, look at this success we had in 90 days, right?
• 51:04
  I think that's amazing. But I always tell folks what
• 51:08
  we're what I'm after is to double, triple or quadruple your
• 51:12
  referrals based on where you are, right.
• 51:14
  It looks different for everybody.
• 51:15
  We have a formula that we use to kind of predict what we would
• 51:17
  expect to be able to do with your referrals.
• 51:21
  And so we would love to double, triple, quadruple that 90 days.
• 51:25
  But we're going to ask for a year to do it.
• 51:27
  And we're going to ask for for us to actually see the
• 51:30
  opportunity for you to to learn it and implement it and then
• 51:33
  tweak it and then make sure you keep it going.
• 51:36
  But most people will see those results in less than a year.
• 51:39
  I have people who see those results in 1/4.
• 51:40
  I have people who see those results in a couple of quarters
• 51:43
  and then I have somebody who attended one of my in person
• 51:45
  events in 2025 and from going from like 1/4 to the next
• 51:49
  quarter, she had 132% growth from referrals.
• 51:52
  So it just really depends on kind of where you're starting
• 51:56
  from and that's how our formula is based.
• 51:58
  When somebody comes to me and they're like I want to get more
• 52:02
  referrals, I need 100 referrals a year.
• 52:04
  I'm going to dig into why that number and I'm going to
• 52:06
  understand like, do you really need 100, right?
• 52:09
  What's your capacity? And then we're going to look at,
• 52:11
  well, who's referring you now? Do you have people referring you
• 52:13
  now? Because if you do, we can move
• 52:14
  faster. If you don't, it's going to take
• 52:16
  longer like and I am really transparent in what it looks
• 52:20
  like from where you're starting from to what referral growth
• 52:23
  will look like and what strategies you'll have to put
• 52:25
  into place. Some of that's the benefit of
• 52:27
  just doing this for 12 years, but the other part is making
• 52:30
  sure people are really, really clear of not only what's
• 52:33
  possible, but what you're going to have to do to make the
• 52:36
  possible possible. Well, and that's my follow up
• 52:39
  question is what kind of time commitment should people expect?
• 52:43
  So we always tell folks we look at time commitment in two ways,
• 52:45
  and I think it's important that people break it down in this
• 52:48
  way. First is the time commitment
• 52:50
  it's going to take to learn the stuff, right?
• 52:52
  You got to learn the things to be able to build out your pieces
• 52:55
  and then put them into practice. And then you have to maintain
• 52:58
  them right, keep the execution going.
• 53:00
  So depending on how you work with me, how long it takes to
• 53:03
  learn something will vary. If you're in my coaching
• 53:06
  program, you're going to an online portal, you're logging
• 53:09
  into an online portal and you're going through trainings that are
• 53:13
  online in video form. So right, with videos and
• 53:15
  downloads and templates and checklist and things like that.
• 53:18
  I always tell folks, you got to give me a couple hours a month,
• 53:20
  right? I'm going to need a couple hours
• 53:22
  a month for you to get through. Like if you're going through one
• 53:23
  of our foundational strategies, probably going to need 3 to 4
• 53:26
  hours for you to learn it and build it and then get my
• 53:28
  approval on it. And we, and we really do call it
• 53:31
  like, did Stacy bless this? Don't do it if Stacy didn't
• 53:33
  bless it yet kind of a thing, but how does?
• 53:37
  And then you have to move into implementation.
• 53:38
  So the learning of it, like some folks are like, I'm not going to
• 53:42
  watch a video. So they'll come to a referral
• 53:44
  accelerator. Well, I need 2 days, two
• 53:46
  uninterrupted days. You're going to come to
• 53:47
  Charlotte, you're going to sit in a conference room at a
• 53:49
  Country Club and we are going to go through all the strategies
• 53:53
  and we're to put them in place. And I have a very unique way I
• 53:55
  teach it in that setting. So whether you're going to give
• 53:58
  me two days or a couple hours a month for maybe the first six
• 54:01
  months, you're going to have to learn it.
• 54:03
  Then an implementation. The majority of the strategies
• 54:07
  are situational, which means you know what to do and you know how
• 54:12
  to notice a situation needs something.
• 54:15
  Most of them are language based. So it's like, hey, when this
• 54:18
  happens you know how to respond. There are some that are process
• 54:22
  based, meaning you should set this as a workflow in your
• 54:24
  business and there should be some form of automation that is
• 54:27
  making it happen. Meaning like I got a new client
• 54:31
  that should trigger the first step of not asking for a
• 54:35
  referral, but whatever that process is of sort of warming
• 54:38
  them up to want to give the referral.
• 54:40
  Right. So all some of those things were
• 54:41
  like they're just process or like you get a referral, right?
• 54:44
  Once you write the thank you card, what happens after that?
• 54:47
  That should be a process that is automated, that's reminding you
• 54:50
  things that you need to do through that process like, and
• 54:53
  so some of them are language based, know what to say when the
• 54:56
  moment presents itself. That's not time, that's memory,
• 54:59
  right? The next thing is those
• 55:01
  processes are automated. You have to do the thing when
• 55:04
  the automation tells you. And sometimes it could be like
• 55:06
  an automation that does it on your behalf.
• 55:08
  So that's setting it up and then just making sure it's continuing
• 55:11
  to work. And when you get the task, you
• 55:13
  do the thing right when the task comes in that says, Hey, send
• 55:15
  the thank you card because you just got a referral, that you
• 55:17
  don't push it off for 90 days, that you do it right.
• 55:21
  And then some are actual plans that have what we call touch
• 55:24
  points. And that's the three big
• 55:26
  foundational strategies. They have individual plans and
• 55:29
  individual touch points. And some are just you do it when
• 55:33
  you need it and others are, hey, this plan has five touch points
• 55:37
  throughout the year. So five times throughout the
• 55:40
  year or six times throughout the year, you're going to have to
• 55:42
  take the time to do whatever the touch point is.
• 55:44
  And some touch points will take a couple hours, some touch
• 55:46
  points will take less than an hour, some touch points could
• 55:48
  take a day over a month, right? So it just depends on what you
• 55:53
  build. And that's really important when
• 55:55
  I tell clients the framework is rooted in the science of how
• 55:59
  referrals work. But everybody builds what's
• 56:02
  customized for themselves and also for what their referral
• 56:06
  sources or their clients need. So let's say I start your
• 56:10
  program today, whether and I want to hear more about the
• 56:13
  different offerings and I Start learning about some of these
• 56:16
  strategies and I'm like, I should have sent that card or
• 56:21
  that e-mail that she's recommending to this person six
• 56:24
  months ago. When you know this trigger
• 56:27
  happened. Should do you coach people to
• 56:30
  hey, no time like the present, even though it would have been
• 56:33
  better if you did it right away, still send that piece of
• 56:36
  communication? Or is it like the past is in the
• 56:38
  past? Just look forward.
• 56:40
  Yeah, we actually addressed that.
• 56:42
  So we actually have language specific for situations like
• 56:45
  that. And it's already a script.
• 56:47
  I tell folks like the scripts are usually written, they're
• 56:49
  very gender neutral and they're very.
• 56:52
  Everything I write that is language based is never based on
• 56:56
  how you're going to feel sending it.
• 56:58
  It's based on how the receiver is going to feel when they
• 57:00
  receive it. And clients will look at my
• 57:02
  language and they'll be like, that's how I sound.
• 57:04
  I'm like, yeah, because it's normal.
• 57:06
  Like we sound like a good human when we do this kind of work.
• 57:09
  And they're like, I don't even have to change your.
• 57:10
  That's exactly what I would say if I knew how to, if I had
• 57:13
  thought to say it myself. I'm like, that's why you hire me
• 57:15
  and I tell you what to say so. Doesn't sound like it was
• 57:18
  written by AI, huh? Yeah, none of it can be written
• 57:21
  by AI. And the thing about that is, is
• 57:22
  that, you know, people always say that they're like, can AI
• 57:25
  tell me how to say this? I'm like, I'm sure parts of it,
• 57:28
  yes, in today's age with AI, I'm sure AI can tell you how to
• 57:31
  write. You know, the thing you need to
• 57:33
  say the thing or write the thing you need to write.
• 57:35
  But what people don't understand is that there are rules that we
• 57:38
  follow. There's formulas for a lot of
• 57:40
  things that we follow that make what we do work.
• 57:42
  It's not just the thank you, it's the thank you and knowing
• 57:44
  how to plant the referral seed. But the number one thing that I
• 57:47
  always tell folks is, and my clients will say it, they'll see
• 57:50
  it all the time. I also know when to break my own
• 57:52
  rules because I work with my clients, right?
• 57:56
  I used to have the courses where people took a course and they
• 57:58
  never really talked to me. And I hated that model because I
• 58:01
  was bored and missed people. And so none of my programs run
• 58:04
  like that anymore. You get me when you work with
• 58:07
  me, right? And so you may watch a video
• 58:10
  online, and then you may create the plan that came out of that
• 58:14
  training you just watched online.
• 58:15
  And then I'm looking at it, but I know you.
• 58:18
  And so I'm like, hey, we're going to do this.
• 58:19
  And you're like, oh, you said don't do that.
• 58:20
  I'm like, yeah, but we're doing it differently for you because I
• 58:23
  know your situation and that does make it different, right?
• 58:26
  That does make it much more customized.
• 58:28
  But yes, there probably isn't a single thing a client could ask
• 58:31
  me that. I'm like, Yep, you're going to
• 58:33
  find that in this lesson Module 2, Lesson 3, right?
• 58:37
  Like we've like, there's so many things that anytime I teach
• 58:40
  something to a client that's new, I'm like, we grab it and we
• 58:43
  add it to the library of things. So yes, the I should have done
• 58:47
  that six months ago. What do I say?
• 58:48
  We've got you covered. OK.
• 58:50
  So describe the typical client that you work with, Industries,
• 58:55
  business models, size, who's a. Good fit.
• 58:58
  So for me, it's more about the relationship you have with your
• 59:03
  clients versus size. So I can work with a solopreneur
• 59:07
  and I can work with, you know, a larger business as well, but
• 59:11
  it's more about the relationship you have with your clients.
• 59:14
  So I mostly work in the professional services industry,
• 59:18
  in the creative industry. So I will work with like say
• 59:22
  attorneys, financial advisors, Cpas, bookkeepers, business
• 59:28
  marketing, leadership, change consultants, business coaches,
• 59:33
  life coaches, interior designers, real estate agents.
• 59:35
  And what while they all sound like a wow, that's a lot of
• 59:38
  different industries, right? What they all have in common is
• 59:42
  that when a client hires them, right, they're hiring them
• 59:46
  because they are the expert. So I worked mainly with expert
• 59:51
  based business owners, meaning people hire you for your
• 59:55
  knowledge, people hire you because of your expertise.
• 59:58
  They hire you because they need you to solve the problem and in
• 1:00:03
  how you're going to solve their problem.
• 1:00:04
  You're going to get to know your clients, right?
• 1:00:06
  This is not going to order something from Amazon and you
• 1:00:09
  never talk to anybody but a chat bot.
• 1:00:11
  I don't work with SAS based companies.
• 1:00:13
  I don't work with online course creators.
• 1:00:15
  I don't work in the hospitality or retail industries.
• 1:00:17
  I don't work in the medical field.
• 1:00:19
  And so it's understanding in the industries that I do work in.
• 1:00:24
  Your clients are coming to you because you're the expert.
• 1:00:27
  Which means on some level, right?
• 1:00:29
  Not like you know every one of your clients and like all their
• 1:00:32
  kids names all the time, right? But you know your clients, you
• 1:00:34
  have a relationship or you and your team have a relationship
• 1:00:37
  with your client, which means you're, you're uniquely
• 1:00:39
  positioned to be able to generate referrals.
• 1:00:42
  And the other marker is, is what you do is not cheap.
• 1:00:46
  So there is an investment to work with you, which means the
• 1:00:51
  client puts a lot on the line to make the decision to hire you,
• 1:00:55
  which means they're usually looking for someone to vouch for
• 1:00:58
  you, to say yes to working with you, which makes your prime for
• 1:01:03
  referrals to happen in that way. So most of the time when I work
• 1:01:06
  with someone and they're like, like when we're looking at like
• 1:01:10
  minimums, we always tell folks your clients at a minimum to
• 1:01:13
  make you a fit for what I do. And the time I'm going to ask
• 1:01:16
  you to put into it is at a minimum your client should be
• 1:01:19
  paying you in a first year revenue 2500.
• 1:01:23
  But most of my clients are higher than that.
• 1:01:25
  Most of my clients they're making maybe they're making 2500
• 1:01:29
  or 5 grand or 10 grand per client, but most of them are
• 1:01:31
  making more than that. And so, you know, it may be the
• 1:01:35
  estate planning attorney that charges 7500 or 5000 for what
• 1:01:38
  they do. But then I've got, you know, the
• 1:01:40
  consultant that when they sign a contract with someone, it's
• 1:01:43
  $100,000 to work with the company that they're they're
• 1:01:46
  going to go work with. So it's the return on investment
• 1:01:50
  is there very, very quickly because of the type of clients
• 1:01:54
  people work with. When people come to me and
• 1:01:55
  they're like, I make $400.00 every time I sign a client, I'm
• 1:01:59
  like that what I'm going to ask you to do is not going to meet
• 1:02:02
  the ROI fast enough for you. The.
• 1:02:04
  Time investment is too much to justify that kind of return.
• 1:02:08
  So what are the different ways that people can interact and
• 1:02:11
  work with you? Yeah.
• 1:02:12
  So I work with folks in three ways.
• 1:02:14
  So this is kind of like the work with Stacey ways.
• 1:02:17
  I do have a starter course. It's called Your Next 5
• 1:02:19
  Referrals. It's for folks who are like want
• 1:02:21
  to dip their toe in and kind of feel like what is it like to
• 1:02:24
  work with Stacey? What are some of the strategies
• 1:02:25
  look like? There's some basic strategies we
• 1:02:27
  go through. And Your Next 5 Referrals, it is
• 1:02:30
  online, right? We do a monthly Q&A for folks
• 1:02:33
  who are in that program for a year.
• 1:02:34
  But it's an online program. It's a starter course.
• 1:02:36
  So the way I talk about working with me is like beyond that.
• 1:02:40
  So working with me is three ways.
• 1:02:43
  It doesn't matter which way you choose.
• 1:02:46
  This is what makes me a little bit different.
• 1:02:47
  It doesn't matter which way you choose to work with me.
• 1:02:50
  Those 20 strategies I talked about, you're going to get all
• 1:02:53
  of them that you need regardless of how you work with me.
• 1:02:57
  How you choose to work with me is how you like to work and
• 1:03:00
  receive and consume information and knowledge to then put it
• 1:03:04
  into place. What does accountability look
• 1:03:06
  like that you need? How fast do you want to go?
• 1:03:08
  That has a lot to do with how you choose to work with me.
• 1:03:11
  The solutions are all the same. So I have the accelerator.
• 1:03:14
  We do it a couple of times a year.
• 1:03:16
  It's where we have a small group of business owners that will
• 1:03:18
  come to Charlotte and we will spend 2 days together in a room
• 1:03:23
  and I will teach them the strategies that they need to
• 1:03:28
  understand to start generating referrals.
• 1:03:31
  So there's 20 strategies we talked about.
• 1:03:32
  We break it down in those two days and we have a bucketed way
• 1:03:34
  that I teach things. So we group like items and then
• 1:03:37
  you learn it and then we break and you workshop on it so you
• 1:03:40
  don't leave with a huge To Do List.
• 1:03:42
  Nobody has time for that anymore, right?
• 1:03:43
  So you're doing it while you're there with me and you're leaving
• 1:03:46
  with it already ready to go and some of it already implemented.
• 1:03:49
  That's the accelerator for other folks who want to take more of a
• 1:03:52
  measured approach. They're like, that feels too
• 1:03:53
  much like drinking from a fire hose, right?
• 1:03:55
  People who come to the accelerator like to see the dots
• 1:03:58
  connect fast. And they're like, and then in
• 1:04:00
  two days you can see it all connect and they're like, got it
• 1:04:02
  right. Some people like to take a more
• 1:04:04
  of a measured approach. They join my coaching program.
• 1:04:06
  You're going to get the same strategies.
• 1:04:07
  You're just going to watch them through online trainings.
• 1:04:10
  You're going to watch videos and you're going to create the
• 1:04:12
  things and then you're going to send them to me for review.
• 1:04:14
  And we do like, you know, a couple times a month we do AQ
• 1:04:17
  and a session and so people can get their questions answered and
• 1:04:20
  they have one on ones with me. And it's like a whole coaching
• 1:04:22
  program for a full year, but that's video based.
• 1:04:25
  And then of course, for the client who's like, I'm not going
• 1:04:27
  to come to Charlotte and I'm not going to watch any videos, then
• 1:04:29
  we say, and Stacey just do it for me.
• 1:04:32
  And the answer is that yes, that's our VIP experience where
• 1:04:35
  you complete an assessment. I take that.
• 1:04:38
  And because I work in the same industries over and over again,
• 1:04:40
  I know a lot of what I'm walking into.
• 1:04:42
  But you complete an assessment, I build out your strategy.
• 1:04:45
  I then come to you and your team and I spend 2 days with you and
• 1:04:49
  your office and we deploy everything.
• 1:04:52
  We put things in place. And after those two days, I'm
• 1:04:55
  basically on call for you for an entire year as you're
• 1:04:59
  implementing. So we do check insurance and one
• 1:05:01
  on ones and phone calls if you need them or quick text messages
• 1:05:04
  or whatever it is. As you're in implementation mode
• 1:05:07
  after I'm there for those two days working with you and your
• 1:05:09
  team. To do the VIP level, you do have
• 1:05:12
  to have at least one other person in the business.
• 1:05:14
  I don't do that with solo business owners.
• 1:05:16
  It's too overwhelming. They can't handle it.
• 1:05:18
  They need to choose a different option.
• 1:05:20
  But we have the accelerator in person in Charlotte.
• 1:05:23
  We have the coaching program online for a year and then the
• 1:05:27
  VIP experience, which is I come to you, I build everything and I
• 1:05:30
  come to you and deploy it with you and your team.
• 1:05:32
  Lots of options for different types of personalities and
• 1:05:35
  different budgets. That's really cool.
• 1:05:38
  Yeah. Well, you know, I've just got
• 1:05:39
  one more question for you as we head into the wrap up here,
• 1:05:42
  Stacey. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:05:43
  do 3 quick things for the audience.
• 1:05:46
  The first is people are on the edge of their seat.
• 1:05:49
  Now I want to learn more. How do I work with Stacey?
• 1:05:51
  What's your website address? How do they find you?
• 1:05:54
  Yep, so it's just my full name. Stacey Brown randall.com.
• 1:05:57
  I'm sure you'll put the link in the show notes, but I always
• 1:05:59
  like to say Stacey is spelled with an E.
• 1:06:03
  Yeah, we will have that in the show notes for folks Stacey with
• 1:06:06
  An E Stacey Brown, randall.com Also as a reminder, if you want
• 1:06:10
  to get more employees access to doctors, therapists and
• 1:06:14
  prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it's seen,
• 1:06:17
  actually increases your company's net profits, reach out
• 1:06:20
  to us at Add Back benefits.com. Finally, if you'll take just a
• 1:06:24
  moment to leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast
• 1:06:28
  app, you will hold a special place in my heart forever.
• 1:06:30
  Thank you. So last question for you, Stacy.
• 1:06:33
  A year from now, what is something big, something
• 1:06:36
  specific that you hope to be celebrating?
• 1:06:40
  Well, I have two high school seniors, so maybe this question
• 1:06:45
  should be more of a business question, but for me, that is
• 1:06:47
  all I can think about right now. I will have two seniors that
• 1:06:51
  will graduate from high school and we'll both be starting
• 1:06:55
  College in the fall. And I think that is going to, I
• 1:07:00
  think this is going to be a very emotional year in the Randall
• 1:07:03
  household. But those are two big things we
• 1:07:06
  are excited to celebrate. We've got our college
• 1:07:08
  acceptances. Now.
• 1:07:08
  It's more deciding like who, like who's going where.
• 1:07:12
  So I know I talked about, or I just want to say this real
• 1:07:14
  quick, I know I talked about early in my story, like having
• 1:07:16
  my two kids. We also have a third child.
• 1:07:18
  It's actually our nephew we took custody of now I guess it was 10
• 1:07:22
  years ago. So he is a senior, as well as
• 1:07:25
  our biological son is also a senior.
• 1:07:27
  So they are headed off to college and that's going to be
• 1:07:31
  huge. And then, of course, our
• 1:07:32
  daughter turns 16 and we'll start driving, which is just
• 1:07:35
  another monumental moment after having both boys start driving
• 1:07:39
  as well. So for me, in my intention word
• 1:07:42
  for 2026 is to stay joyful just to find joy in the moment.
• 1:07:46
  It's a it's a word I would never usually choose.
• 1:07:49
  Usually I'm like, you know, fearless or, you know, growth or
• 1:07:53
  discipline. Those are using my intention
• 1:07:55
  words. And this year it's just to
• 1:07:56
  remind myself to stay joyful through the entire process.
• 1:08:00
  I'm excited to be an empty nester.
• 1:08:02
  I am one of those moms. I know it's, I don't think
• 1:08:04
  you're used to say that out loud.
• 1:08:05
  My kids know it. I'm very excited to be an empty
• 1:08:07
  nester. I know it won't last forever.
• 1:08:10
  I see all these kids coming home and living back with their
• 1:08:12
  parents because they can't afford a place on their own once
• 1:08:14
  they have jobs. So it'll be short lived, but I
• 1:08:16
  can't wait. But I think this year we're
• 1:08:19
  going to celebrate some huge milestones in our kids lives,
• 1:08:21
  and that's really exciting. For me and the big emotions for
• 1:08:24
  you, even though you're looking forward to being an empty nester
• 1:08:26
  is it's going to be an adjustment.
• 1:08:28
  The house gets quieter, right? Is that is that sort of like
• 1:08:30
  where the the conflict is? Yeah, some of it is over the
• 1:08:33
  next six months. It's like the ending of all.
• 1:08:36
  It's like all the last, right? So this is going to be my son's
• 1:08:39
  last varsity baseball season. We're going to go to our last
• 1:08:42
  baseball games, right? Like all that.
• 1:08:44
  I'm like getting emotional thinking about it.
• 1:08:45
  Like all that's emotional, right?
• 1:08:47
  We're going to have our last award ceremony, right?
• 1:08:49
  My daughter's a cheerleader, like, so for her, it's like
• 1:08:51
  we're, oh, we're starting new stuff with her.
• 1:08:53
  But like with my son, it's like the last things that we're
• 1:08:55
  doing. And it's the same thing with
• 1:08:58
  with our nephew. It's like I told him the other
• 1:08:59
  day, I was like, this is the last time you'll ever go to
• 1:09:01
  school, the first Monday in January in high school ever.
• 1:09:06
  You don't have another first Monday in January to go to high
• 1:09:08
  school. You're done.
• 1:09:09
  Like, so I think the emotional piece is right now, it's like
• 1:09:12
  it's the ending season. It's like this is the last time,
• 1:09:16
  right? And then there's graduation.
• 1:09:18
  And then, yes, there will become the adjustment this fall when
• 1:09:21
  it's just my husband, I and my daughter.
• 1:09:23
  And she's already said, I do not need all of your attention once
• 1:09:27
  Jacob and Davie go off to college.
• 1:09:29
  In fact, I don't want any of it. Yeah.
• 1:09:32
  She's like, no, no, thank you. She's like, I'll take more of
• 1:09:34
  your money, but I do not want more of your attention.
• 1:09:37
  And I'm like, yeah. So I I do think there will be a
• 1:09:40
  shift in the household. Not totally, because we'll still
• 1:09:43
  have her. And she's very, very busy.
• 1:09:45
  I mean, you know, she's in theater and she does
• 1:09:46
  cheerleading, varsity cheerleading, and she works.
• 1:09:48
  So we're going to stay busy with her.
• 1:09:50
  But it will be different. It'll be very, very different.
• 1:09:53
  But you know, you got to you got to embrace every season as it
• 1:09:56
  comes. And how nice that you were able
• 1:09:59
  to be in a position to open your home and take custody of your
• 1:10:02
  nephew. Is that something you want to
• 1:10:03
  say more about? Yeah.
• 1:10:05
  So we took custody of him when he was 7 1/2.
• 1:10:07
  So our son was turning 7. He was 7 1/2.
• 1:10:11
  So they're about 10 months apart, but in the same grade.
• 1:10:14
  And it's that that in and of itself has been a journey.
• 1:10:17
  Like you learn a lot about life and human nature and the fact
• 1:10:22
  that you thought you were a really good parent and the ways
• 1:10:25
  that you have to shift didn't change.
• 1:10:27
  There is something that I used to say like early on when we
• 1:10:32
  took custody of Danny, I used to say that I feel like God is like
• 1:10:35
  shattering me into a million pieces.
• 1:10:36
  Like just breaking me down into a million pieces For all the
• 1:10:39
  things that I needed to learn and to and to understand and to
• 1:10:42
  see differently than like this perfect little, you know, 2
• 1:10:45
  parents, two kids, healthy, happy, great family, household.
• 1:10:49
  And then you bring somebody else in.
• 1:10:51
  And I used to say it, I felt like God was like shattering me
• 1:10:53
  into a million pieces. It just took a while for me to
• 1:10:56
  realize it was to build back something better and greener.
• 1:10:59
  I'd like that Stacy Brown Randall from Building a
• 1:11:03
  Referable Business. I want to be the first to thank
• 1:11:05
  you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:11:08
  I really appreciate you. Thank you for having me, it was
• 1:11:10
  a pleasure. Folks, that's a wrap on another
• 1:11:13
  episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:11:15
  Thanks for learning with us today.