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Transcript
Glenn Mattson
Hey everybody, welcome back building blocks of success. We are in season four, on the last episode, which is 13. Today, we're going to be really taking a look at and focusing on something interesting. Let me see if I can talk a little bit, and see if you can find yourself in this conversation. At Mattson Enterprises, we do a fair amount of coaching and development for entrepreneurs. We've helped well over 15,000 entrepreneurs go from developing to emerging, up to the Rainmaker to becoming a CEO and then a mayor, and each has very distinct situations and characteristics, which we'll get into quite a bit in the near future.
What I'm talking about today is an individual, normally, the ones that I talked to in the last couple of weeks all fit the same picture. They are moderately and, or successful, so they're not necessarily struggling. They also all have been doing what they've been doing for about eight to nine years. Seems to be a good number of where they are. So they have tenure. They have success. As a matter of fact, all of them right now, let’s just call it for what it is. It's about asking for referrals. It's about hunting. It's about going out and shaking the tree. They know they need to do it. As a matter of fact, everyone I've talked to does it. They don't like it. They didn't want to do it, but they had to do it, or they wouldn't be successful.
So here's an individual see if you can find yourself there. Maybe it was eight years ago. Maybe it's 25 years ago, and you're asking for referrals and getting them and growing your business, and then all of a sudden, at some point, you say to yourself, Why am I doing this? I mean, aren’t I above this now?
Let's talk about this journey, talking about hunting. Okay, most people in the beginning don't like to hunt. As a matter of fact, most people think it's the ugliest, worst, most unfulfilled, least fun part of the entire sales process. They need to do it to fill their calendars. They need to do it so they can see enough people. They know how to do it, and they did it. So, taking a look at these individuals or people that know what they should be doing, didn't want to do it, but did it anyways. Now clearly what they're doing is working, and what they're doing has gotten them to a certain level of success. So it's not as if they have to, you know, twist their arm every single time that they have to do it. They realize pretty quickly if I don't get these, I won't make it. So, therefore I will do it. So I make it. Part of the issue is when they finally get to that position in life, of what making it means, they start to have what I call a very interesting conversation with their old self.
Now, all of us listening in, we have a new you and an old you, the Black Wolf, White Wolf, the old you is the individual. The characteristics mindset that you used to have that wasn't proactively going to help you succeed. These are things that fears and anxieties, most of that is around hunting. Most of that is around prospecting. Yet because you have these anxieties and fears, just like everybody else, you had to overcome them or you wouldn't eat. You had to overcome them or you wouldn't be successful. So you didn't have a choice. For many, they actually get pretty good at it - asking for referrals. They are good at the center of influence. They can shake the tree. But something's funny that we need to realize. In the beginning of the career, you had to do this at the beginning of your career. For most of us, it wasn't an option. If I didn't, I'd fail out. So when we look at this, we say, okay, you got to do this, and they say, Okay, I'm going to do it and actually get pretty good at it.
The main thing right now I want you to realize is, in the beginning, you do it because you have to. You do it because it's for you. I need to ask for referrals or I'm not going to eat. Then what happens is you become successful. Whatever the hell success means to you, you become successful. Typically, for most people, that success equals either the number of years in the business tenure or the size of income, i.e., how much you're earning. I hear things like, and again, it's the old scripts. That's the funny thing about the Black Wolf. The Black Wolf, you don't necessarily get rid of those self-defeating, self-limiting belief systems. For many people that don't do it right, they don't get rid of it. What they really do is they just hide it. They put it away for a little while, and trust me, that black wolf is waiting to pop its head back out to see if any of these things I'm about to share with you would pop into your head, or if you've said it, and by no means is this all-inclusive.
So please, when I'm talking to you, you're probably shaking your head saying, Yeah, I got a couple more I can add to that. But are these the ones I heard just this week? Now, Glenn, I'm too good for this, really. Another one is that, at this point in my career, I shouldn't be needing to ask. Another person would say, based on where I am right now, I shouldn't need to do this. Other ones will say, Hey, I'm a professional. They should be coming to me, or I love this one. Hey, I'm a professional. Why do I need to ask other professionals? My dentist doesn't ask me for referrals. So, when they originally were asking for them, then it gets to the point financially that they may not need to do this anymore. They’ve got good enough reoccurring revenue, and have new clients coming in that are low entry cost. Maybe it was through a product. Maybe it was through something going on, but you have a lot of good flow. When you have that good flow coming in and you're out there prospecting and getting referrals, etc., things like, I'm a professional, why do I have to ask? It really starts to speak loudly.
So, I want to talk to those people listening in right now who are shaking their heads saying, Wow, that's great. Yep, didn't want to do it in the beginning, but I did it. I got pretty good at it. Now that I'm successful, I don't want to do it. I'm specifically talking about asking for referrals, shaking the tree, center, influences, etc. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on how to ask for it. That was another podcast. But I find it interesting that whatever you didn't like to do when you first got started, for many they choose to stop doing it once they get success. So, referrals are one, for instance.
How about holding people accountable? I hear that all the time. I'll come back to that one in a second. So, when we look at just referrals for a moment and you hear yourself saying, oh, man, I should be past this by now, or, you know, I've been doing this for so long. I mean, I just think it's beneath me to ask. Part of the issue is you can't necessarily shut off what the wolf will say. You have to make sure you write that down somewhere. You're not going to change. Change necessarily what's said in your head. What you can change is if you decide to listen to it. So in the beginning, you got referrals because it was I based. I based means I need it. I need to see people. I need to get in front of more people. I need to have a full calendar. Everything that you were doing around the purpose of asking was solely based on your needs. Now, what I'd like you to do is change the pronoun. It goes from I to either you or I to we. Let me tell you what I mean by we because it doesn't include you.
In the beginning, maybe you're doing LinkedIn. Maybe you're going into LinkedIn and grabbing feed lists and pulling out your nearest neighbor and sitting down in front of someone and having the chat about what you've done and how they feel about what you've done. Then, hey, by the way, you know how we grow is here are some people that I pulled off a LinkedIn that you have first connections with that would probably be good people for me to talk to. Do you mind sharing with me who on this list is someone that you know? Right? Okay, I got it. Want to do the LinkedIn move? Okay, fine. But what I want you to think about is now you're asking for referrals again, for you, you're asking for referrals on people that they may be aware of or affiliated with, but not may be part of their story. I would highly suggest that in the beginning, if you are going after a referral that breathes so that you can get in front of people so that you can learn how to sell and create your infrastructure.
But really, where you should be is referrals aren't for you. If you're asking people, telling people, Hey, you know, we're always open. We're looking to grow. That's your problem, not their problem. If it's working for you, keep doing what you've been doing. But I would have you think about the way to dissipate the wolf, not that you need to do this necessarily, although you probably do. What I want you to do is do it for them. Do it for them, meaning your client and or your client's inner circle. What you really want to take a look at is, that with every client you have, most individuals will have between eight and ten, in what we call the inner circle. Eight or ten people in their inner circle. It could be family, friends, etc., but their inner circle, to each of your clients, they're at a different level of relationship with their friends and family, etc. So, instead of asking for people they're aware of, instead of asking for people that they're friendly with or familiar with, really, why wouldn't you start with those people in their inner circle, the people that are part of their stories, part of their life, the ones they actually care for, more than anybody else.
So, when you go from I need a referral so you can eat to who in your inner circle can you help? If your desire is to help as many people as humanly possible really get to that level of financial security or get to that next level, whatever your product and service may be. If your product or services impact a lot of people at very different levels, it's really about your inner circle. So, friends, family, peers at work, mentors, and mentees. We all have about 10 to 11, depending on how big your family is, 10 to 11 inner circle individuals, and those are the ones I'm going to suggest that you should go after and have a conversation with about referrals.
I had a feeder list. See, it was interesting. Just got off the phone with a client of mine, and he's at a financial planning company, and he is smack dab in the middle of the country, does a lot of fishing and a lot of hunting. As I was talking to him, he was explaining to his son a few things. He said, Son, you can fish and you can hunt. Now, both of these individuals are deer hunters and they fish. So, the analogy fits their world.
So, when you fish, we throw out a lure and we troll and we wait for bottom fish. We'll throw it out there, let it sink to the bottom, or a bottle, depending on what they're doing, definitely not lures or flies. Throw it out there and it just sits there, waiting for the fish to come to the bait. Now, hunting, but tracking, finding environments or situations, what you're looking for would reside in you kind of have to track it. You got to find it, to put it down, to clean it up, to process it. So hunting is very different than fishing, and a lot of people think fishing, heck even the lack of fishing, which is you're waiting for the phone to ring. You're waiting for people to give you a referral. We talk about that later in terms of relationship building, which we did in one of our first podcasts. But what are you doing from a mindset to go out and shake the tree? What are you doing from a mindset to hunt, and that's to find individuals that are not knocking at your doorstep to take care of them?
So as you move forward, as you take a look at this crazy thing called, you know, referrals. Hopefully, in the beginning, yes, you did it for yourself. Now you should be doing it for really, to impact other people's lives. Those that you want to impact are the ones that are in their inner circle. Everyone has about eight to ten inner circles. Heck, I even have an individual Lance, an amazing gentleman in New York City. A lot of his clients are executive business owners, but he also does a fair amount in the door divorce market. Now it's interesting. One of the things he will do is the expectation talk, then, typically by the third meeting, they do planning.
So the third meeting is usually within about six or seven months, he'll have some pretty large rocks that he's done, meaning that he's accomplished some pretty big things so far. He'll show up to a meeting and basically say, I'm really apologetic. I don't know what I did or didn't do, but I understand that I'm not the person that you trust and you feel comfortable with. So I have all your change paperwork with me today, and all of like, What are you talking about? In essence, in his own words, your words have to be there. He just says, Look, we talked about this previously. ie expectation talk. I know you have two sisters and a brother, and you're at work, and you've been there for a long time, and you have a pretty good position in our world. When we help people, and they start to understand the impact of that help, they want to make sure everyone in their inner circle, their family members, their sister, their brother, nieces, nephews, best friends, mentees, mentors are all taken care of because they love them. We haven't gotten any of the people that you would consider family as an introduction, to see if we can even help, or to see if even not to help. So I got a feeling that deep down inside, maybe we're not a good fit for you.
Now, that's a pretty bold move by Lance, because, in his mind, that's part of the requirement to be part of his firm as you need to be a referral giver. So, if he doesn't get him by six months, he will literally fire them, because that's his culture. That's his philosophy. I'll also tell you, that because he has such gumption to do what I just said at the six-month marker, he typically will get two or three introductions relatively quickly, and they never have to have a conversation again.
So, I know all of you listening in right now would love to have a practice where referrals just knock on your door and say, I'm here to buy and we'll talk about that in some future podcasts, which is developing relationships. But remember, in the beginning, you had a hunt to find it, and now, from where you sit, we have to make sure that that hunt isn't for yourself, but it's for others, or maybe you want to fish, but hopefully this gave you some tips on the mindset of consistency, the mindset that when that black wolf jumps in, man and says, I'm better than this, I don't need to do this anymore. Typically, you know what you're saying is wrong. You know the results of it are not going to be good, and they typically don't turn out well. But the key in that situation is you have to make the decision to just do something and just do it consistently.
So, even this week, the last four days, I've had six coaching clients where we've just come up with a number that they've made 100% commitment that they're going to do. I don’t care if that's asked once a day, it can be asked once a week. It doesn't make a difference to me. What does make a difference to me is you honor your word. You do it. So as you start to look at referrals, look at the Black Wolf in your head, just remember. Change the purpose of why you're doing it. Change the reason why it's being asked. Make sure that you listen to your new version of yourself, not the old version of yourself. The old version always pops up when you have doubt and anxiety. So moving forward, to build a great business on the strong building blocks is having clients that love you, having clients that want to help you, and that comes from you wanting to help everyone that's in their inner circle. I look forward to our next version of Building Blocks of Success. Thank you.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
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