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I am not going to sit here and tell you not to aspire to have the Joe Rogan audience, the huge reach, the attention, but what I am preaching is that it should not be the top goal. Your priority should be to use your voice, your podcast, to build up your allies and meet amazing people that will become your referral partners. Let's do the math: a show with a huge audience makes money on advertising or charging guests to get them attention. That means the product is volume, and

Everybody wants attention. Almost nobody is willing to give it. This is essentially how I found myself giving my latest talk, this time for PodMatch community, about using podcasting to build a referral pipeline. And the questions afterward all pointed the same direction. How do I get started? How long does it take? What do I have to give? Good questions. Wrong first question. Here is what I have learned after fifteen years of building a business on referrals instead of ads:

Three seeds to plant this week, since we are in planting season. Monday, I told you that your September is being decided right now. Today I'm going to show you what planting actually looks like, because "build relationships" is useless advice without specifics. After fifteen years of referral marketing, I can tell you the best summer seeds aren't marketing activities at all, they're small human moments that most contractors, insurance agents, and real estate agents walk right

I know you are juggling a lot right now, you are trying to get summer sales, you are busy and the finances this time of year will keep your business strong. But a gentle reminder this week that your September is being decided right now. And I don't say this to stress you out, in fact, just the opposite; we can start doing little bits of planning now that will pay dividends in the Fall...instead of doing nothing now and then hustling hard in the Fall to keep your connections a

We spent this week on simplifying your message and cutting the noise by saying less and being more effective. And as we head into our Friday Call to Action, there is one last reason your content never makes it out of your head and onto the page. It is not writing, it is not even simplifying...It is planning. Most people sit down to create with a blank page and no map or just post at random what they are thinking and feeling that day. Or you tell yourself you need to think of

There is a reason nobody is reading a Charles Dickens novel at the beach. It is July, the sun is out, the kids are loud, having fun, and nobody has the patience for four hundred pages of setup before you get to the point. And yet so many of us write to our audience like we are getting paid by the word or worse, using AI to write mini novel newsletters. Your audience will see all the wording, especially in the time crunch of summer, and keep scrolling or delete your email. Her

I make a pretty solid cheeseburger; it helps that I have one of those grills that has been through all of the flavors, a little grease, a little character, which adds just a touch of flavor. And during the summer, I have been known to be seen flipping burgers on with one hand, dictating a reply email with the other. It happens, summer pulls us in many different directions as we are on a constant search for work - life balance. And I stood there in flip flops trying to be a d

I was never good at networking meetings, being on the introverted side when put into new settings, I rarely got value from meetups and was easily forgotten. However, when I was able to add two skills, it made networking events more effective for me and I actually started making solid connections. The networking lie goes like this: show up, join the group, pay the dues, shake the hands, give out the cards, and the business will come. And as you read this, you know this is not

Monday, I named the problem = not enough leads. Wednesday, I told you about the wall, the moment my warm circle ran dry and I realized I had a list, not a system. Today, we wrap up the week with our usual CTA: I want to tell you what I found on the other side of that wall, because it's the whole point of this week. The answer was community. I know that sounds almost too simple and a little cheesy. We spend thousands on ads and software looking for a clever trick, and the thin

On Monday, we talked about the relatable problem I had early in my career: Not enough leads and no more reliable way to meet new people. Let's fast forward to now, I want to tell you how I learned the solution, because it's the same wall a lot of contractors, insurance agents, and real estate agents are standing in front of every day. When I started in real estate, things took off fast. Fast enough that I won Rookie of the Year; however, my list of contacts ran out just as qu

Let's start with the thing every entrepreneur feels: there aren't enough leads and there is rarely just one way to get more. The pipeline looks thin, the phone isn't ringing the way it should, you've poured money into ads that brought you tire-kickers and silence. You've sent the cold messages that sit there unread, and somewhere in the back of your mind is the quiet math that keeps you up at night, the kind that asks where the next client is actually going to come from in ti

All week I've been talking about making The Connector Blueprint free and shifting Live Local toward consulting. Today I want to get specific about something: the fact that this isn't for everyone because as an entrepreneur, I know you are busy, shiny object syndrome is real, so I want to help you before I help you. So let me tell you exactly who I built this for and let you decide the Friday CTA. The Connector Blueprint is for the local service professional who wants to grow

On Monday, I told you I'm making Live Local a free model, so today I want to show you the thing I was holding behind the gate. It's called The Connector Blueprint, for the past year, it was the paid map, and before that, only people on my real estate and marketing team had access. The principles, the path, the whole system I'd watched work for my team, and now a select few salespeople who are committed to it. Now I'm handing it to you, no wallet required (which is a relief, i

For a while now, people I trust have been telling me the same thing. They'd say it kindly, but they'd say it directly. "Billy, give away the good stuff, you're leaving real opportunity on the table." I kept nodding and kept doing things my way. My way was a do-it-yourself model. Here are the principles, here's the path, go build it because I believe so wholeheartedly in the principles' work. I have watched them work for local service owners, people on my team, fellow marketer

All week, we've talked about must-do lists and the A-List versus B-List. Today we stop talking and you commit. So for our Friday CTA, I am going to skip action tracking, we aren't talking goal setting, those are topics from past blogs, and you can look back if you need to. Here's the challenge for this Friday: Plan an entire week around your top two activities. I know, you just broke into a light sweat reading that. Everything in you is screaming about all the things that won

So how do you build this list when everything on your plate feels important (and let's face it, if we are going with the plate analogy, then only the meat and broccoli need to be eaten to survive)? Here's the system I have my clients use. Two lists: an A-List and a B-List as we create the weekly schedule. The A-List gets done no matter what. These are the activities that, as you do them, your business will grow. Floods come, the week falls apart, a kid gets sick, and the A-

I skipped the blog last week. I didn't schedule it, didn't pre-write it, and I didn't feel guilty about it. I had other projects that needed finishing, so the blog waited. And here's the thing, I love writing the blog (trying to justify this fancy degree in English), but it's just not on my must-do list. That sentence trips up most people who run a local service business because they think loving something and needing to do something are the same. They're not. You have a list

I am going to skip the obvious stuff today for our call to action. Yes, add it to your calendar. Yes, identify someone outside your industry you want to connect with. You know that already, if you have been following along this week, you have the memo. What I actually want to talk about today is the thing that makes the whole partnership worth something once you show up. Your Give. Every strong referral relationship has someone who brings something consistent to the table. N

Wednesday, we get practical. Quick recap that on Monday, I made the case that your best referral partners are probably not in your industry. Today I want to talk about how you actually find them and what you say when you do. Because this is where most people get stuck, the idea sounds great until you are standing in front of someone who does something completely different, and you have no idea how to frame the conversation. So here is what has worked for me. Start with who yo

Too many of us think the only move is to build relationships with people who understand our world. That the only referral partners are in the same industry, speak the same language, and have the same problems. But you are Living Local, and one of my goals is a mindset shift. Eventually, you will hit a wall of same industry referral partners, common sense tells us that in order to grow your business, you need to grow your sphere. And in the same vein, the most generous referr