William Sammons

Monday you counted from memory and most of you got five. Wednesday you went and found the real number and a lot of you came back with forty or fifty, sorted into an A-List and a B-List with a note next to every name. Good. That's more referral work than most people in your industry did all summer, and you did it in three days. Now here's the last score, and I'll tell you up front that almost everybody fails this one including me, for a long time. Look at your list: of all those people, how...

When I ask most people what referral marketing is, and you get some version of the same answer: you finish a job, the customer is happy, you ask if they know anybody else who needs the work. That's the whole definition for a lot of folks. And look, that's not wrong, but it's just the smallest and uncontrollable version of it. It's the version that only works when you're standing in front of somebody who just paid you. Here's the definition I've been using for fifteen years: referral marketing...

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 volume...