Three Things I Did That Week That Grew My Business, With No Phone And No Internet

Quick recap for those of you who skipped Monday: my internet went out and my phone hit the driveway on the same morning two weekends ago, and the week that followed ended up being one of my best pipeline weeks in months.

Here's exactly what I did, three things, none of them are clever and of course all of them after the panic went away and I regrouped. The thing I remembered quickly is that we used to do a lot of work before any of us had a smartphone, and all three of them must still work today.

The first thing I did was show up in person: This was my chance to make a few extra in-person connections; those people that were on my schedule for quick Zoom meetings now got in-person treatment. Stop and think about that impact, this one simple adjustment to how we have grown accustomed to doing business.

Showing up in person is the single most underused move in this entire business, and it's underused for one reason: it costs you time, and it doesn't feel efficient. You can text nine people in the time it takes to drive to one.

But the nine texts get you nine acknowledgments and the one visit gets you a relationship that produces for the next decade.

The second thing I did was write notes by hand: I sat at the kitchen table with a stack of cards and I wrote four of them. Not a marketing letter, not a newsletter, but four short handwritten notes to four people who had done something for me in the last year.

Two sentences each. Thank you for sending the Smith Family my way. Hope the summer treated your family well, that's it. No ask. Nothing in there about needing business.

A handwritten note is the only piece of mail somebody gets that took another human being actual time to make. Everything else in that mailbox came off a printer. When somebody holds a card that you sat down and wrote, they are holding proof that they crossed your mind while you were not asking them for anything. And that is the entire game: being remembered when there's nothing in it for you.

The third thing I did was introduce two people to each other: this one is the difference maker and it's one of the strategies I have the most fun with as well. 

I didn't get paid for that, there was no commission, and nobody owed me anything. That's what a connector is. Not somebody with a big list, byt somebody who moves people toward each other.

Now look at those three things again: Show up. Write the note. Make the introduction.

There is not one piece of technology required in any of that. No CRM. No automation. No scheduling software. My grandfather could have done all three of those things in 1962 and they would have worked exactly the same way they worked for me in a week where I had nothing but a car and a pen.

The tools we use today are good at one job, which is helping you remember to do these three things and keeping track of who you did them for. That's a real job and I'm not knocking it, but the tools cannot do the three things for you, and they never could.

So here's what I want to know in the comments. Which of those three do you do the least? Be honest. For most people, it's the third one, and Friday I'm going to tell you why that's costing you more than you think.

If you want the framework behind all of this, it's all free at www.ReferralBlueprint.com