Breakthrough #1 that’s more recent than I’d care to admit publicly:

“Referrals are f***ing money!” (= RAF$)

-              Coaching I got from Matt Gray who made almost $14M last year.

It was a breakthrough because:

While my core livelihood has been helping high level service professionals build their book of business through referrals and ever higher-level relationships since 2002…

For 13+ years I’d been stuck down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how to help the 80-85% of people who said they wanted to get better at generating referral business but kept getting in their own way.

I felt badly that they wanted more for their lives but were inconsistent following through on a referral system that I knew worked (RAF$).

I wrote FOUR books on the subject of how to get out of your own way.

The first was over 400 pages long.

It was endorsed by three NYT bestselling authors

(including Marshall Goldsmith who has had more NYT bestselling non-fiction books than anyone else!)

and 12 top voices within financial services most of whom had known me for over a decade.

 I got so consumed by trying to solve this problem that I even changed my business name (about 4 times!)

Can you imagine what it did for my business?

That’s right: Sweet FA. Why? 

a)        Because most people still did not get results!

b)        While we love simple LinkedIn posts, our species can often be complex.

Getting out of your own way might require only one minor change, but it might require many years of trial and error (and I know this because that’s the minimum it took for me). 

So when Matt Gray reminded me to follow the money – to focus on referrals (RAF$)

- it was profound for me.

Focus on:

Who did get great results?

What exactly did they do right?

Then:

Share this formula with others.

Maniacally insist anyone who hires you to stick to this simple recipe =

a)        1 mindset shift

b)        2-3 consistent actions

If you take only one thing from this post, it would be to clarify:

What’s the PRIMARY benefit to working with you?

For me, referrals are f***ing money (RAF$)

As I joked in my one book that was a bestseller, Fearless Referrals, “When you get a good referral, sometimes you just have to show up sober to get the business.”

In the spirit of helping you make lots of F$, I’m happy to send you a NEW PDF that I just wrote called: What It Really Takes to Bring in Upmarket Clients. Proudly comment “RAF$” below and I’ll DM it over.

(Pictured with Matt Gray in Austin in April)