Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild

[Audio Length: 0:36:44]

Stephen Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referable the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing and we’ve got sort of a special episode this time. Julie and I have been doing this for about five years and we both have significant things that are occupying more of our time. And so this will actually be our final episode and we will use that opportunity to reflect on all of the things that we’ve learned over the past five years in hosting all of the great people that we’ve had on the program. So, hi Julie.

Julie Littlechild:
Hey, this is a big one.

Stephen Wershing:
It is a big one. And it’s bittersweet, I love doing this with you and I’m going to miss it terribly.

Julie Littlechild:
I know, I think it’s been such a great process. I know I’ve learned a lot, just from our guests. I’ve learned a lot working with you, I’ve enjoyed it, but that’s not going to end because we’re friends as well as co-hosts so that’s not going anywhere-

Stephen Wershing:
I’ll just have to find other urgent things that will get you on the phone with me. And I’ll say I’ll take away the same thing that you did. One of the great things, and I’ve joked with you about this before, the best part of this whole experience is that I get an opportunity to talk to people who would never take my phone call. So, I’m just grateful for you and for this experience and also learned an awful lot with the people that we’ve spoken with.

Julie Littlechild:
Really have. And maybe just take a moment to thank everybody who’s joined us on this journey because it has been, I couldn’t believe when you told me it had been five years, first of all.

Stephen Wershing:
Right.

Julie Littlechild:
And I’m a huge believer in podcasts, and I’m a huge believer in everything that we’ve done, but it’s also an interesting reminder that sometimes, you’ve got to make some really tough choices because we’ve all got limited time and for now this is the choice. And thankfully there’s a lot of great podcasts, more than there was when we started.

Stephen Wershing:
That’s right.

Julie Littlechild:
That we can listen to.

Stephen Wershing:
And of course, all of those podcasts have to continually have us on as guests, so we can continue to talk about this stuff.

Julie Littlechild:
Exactly.

Stephen Wershing:
So, Julie what we want to do this time is just summarize and bring together a lot of the things that we’ve picked up. And there are a bunch of themes now, you and I did a research project a few years ago and found some foundational things that lead to referrals, and I was gratified to see that a lot of the people on the program reinforced that, but also brought a lot of new interesting things to it. And so we’re going to go through this program hitting on the major themes of what goes into an effective referral marketing program. And of course, where that starts is knowing who you want to attract, and Julie, I know that’s a big thing with you. So, tell us a little bit about finding the right target market and why that’s important.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, this was a theme that we heard from so many people, and I know you and I are big believers. And even as you say, that knowing who you want to attract, I hear it two different ways. There’s knowing who you want to attract, and then there’s really knowing who you want to attract.

Stephen Wershing:
Right, exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
Who’s your target, and then to what extent do you know them intimately so that you can truly target. I’ve often said not everybody’s going to have a niche or a target, we think it makes referrals so much easier, as do many of our guests, but the reality is if part of your goal is growth through referrals, this is going to be something that you really have to think about.

Julie Littlechild:
One of the guests that I really think of most often on this is… we talked to Alex and Joe at Summitry quite some time ago, and they talked about the client persona that they have in place. And that’s just one of those exercises of not only saying here’s the kind of person that we want to attract, but then they went into extreme detail on who they were and how they thought and what their challenges were. And that became a filter for a lot of the decision making within the organization and continues to be, I know them well, and I know this is still really important to them. So, just starting with who, to me it is absolutely critical.

Stephen Wershing:
Well, it is. And you make a really important point there, having a target market has to be more than saying who you work with, you need to understand them, so when you and I talk to advisors and we say, “so what’s your target?” and they will tell us what their target is, and one of the questions that we might ask in return is, “so what’s different about planning for those people than planning for anybody else?” And if you don’t dig into that, and understand really who they are, and a lot more detail about just their title or, their profession or even their stage of life, then you’re not going to have… there’s a theme that’s come up a bunch of times and, Bill Cate’s, his last book was Radical Relevance and relevance is a word that I keep hearing over and over again, you can’t be relevant to someone unless you really understand who they are beyond just the superficial kinds of things.

Stephen Wershing:
And one of the things I took away from that exercise that Summitry did, and that they actually poured a lot of attention and resources into the development of that client persona, which is a great way to make formal what your target is, the next four big clients that they identified were exactly that profile. And I think most of it is just because people are really attuned to them, and once you’re really sensitive, it’s like if you buy a red car, all you’re going to see on the road is red cars, because now you’re attuned to it. So, I think you need to save things that are relevant to the people you want to get, so therefore you have to know things that are deeper than that, and it also raises your consciousness about those folks.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, and the way I think this connects to referrals directly of course, is that once you know who they are, it tells you how you need to communicate, what kind of content is going to be of interest, what kind of events you should run, how you can communicate. I think of Heather Ettinger in working with women, and I think she’s nailed it in terms of the nuance and frankly, the difficulty of that particular target market. But when you do that, I think it makes you so much easier to refer. Right?

Stephen Wershing:
Exactly sure.

Julie Littlechild:
I know who you work with, and as soon as I come across that person, you’re the one.

Stephen Wershing:
Exactly. If one of your clients is talking to a friend of theirs, they have to remember to refer you, they have to have a reason to refer you. And if you can give them a really clear picture of the person that you can help the best, then when they see that person, it’s more likely that you will come to mind so that that introduction can happen in the first place.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. And this might get into another theme that we saw, but once you know who that target is, and now I’m thinking about what does the perspective client now see when they come to your website? So, I heard you worked with first generation business owners. Now, when I visit your website and I go to your social profile, I better see that reflected there as well. And so the imagery, I know one of our guests talked about how everything needs to align, every aspect of your business needs to align with that target, but that gets a little into brand as well. And that was another theme, right? How the extent to which you’ve created, not just a business, but a whole brand focused on that audience. Can you talk about that theme?

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah. Well, let me build on your last point, because it’s really important that when someone goes to your website, they need to be able to look at it and say, “hey, that’s me” or “hey, they have something for me.” And if I look at a website and there are three blog posts and one’s about putting away money for college and one is about social security and one is about tax deductions your business can get, I know that they have a communication problem, because you and I are big believers in podcasts and we’re believers in all kinds of content marketing, and you have to be communicating directly to what those particular people are concerned about. And that leads into that whole idea of brand, that becomes your brand.

Stephen Wershing:
And so not only the imagery on your website, but how you design your experience and what kinds of services you provide and how they’re provided, those are all components of brand. We’ve had a couple of folks who are brand experts on the show and in one form or another they said brand is everything. So it’s the whole experience, and that whole experience, if you can design that around the people that you want to attract, then they will be attracted to that experience.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, and as I think about this in this idea that you don’t want to create or misalignment with anything, how you speak, who your team is, what the experience is, what your social says, I guess that’s what you’re saying, all of that falls under that brand umbrella, right?

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah, and one of those aspects of branding is differentiation and you and I go on and on about differentiation and how important  it is, that’s right. So, sorry, dear listener you’re going to hear it again. But one of the things that really struck me was when we had Peterson on, the brand expert, and she said a couple of things that were really interesting to me, one is that you want to be optimally distinct. And that is that you have to be different, but you can’t be crazy wild different, you can’t be so different that nobody even understands what you do. So, finding that right balance is an important part of the brand.

Stephen Wershing:
And the other concept that she threw into the conversation was having the uncommon denominator. And this is really important to differentiation because so much of what advisors do is really kind of the same from advisor to advisor, there are all kinds of fundamentals that all advisors have to attend to. So there are things that you do well that your clients need and that other advisors do well too, and that’s important, but it will not distinguish you, and what you need to find out is what do you do that your target client needs, that other people don’t do that well. That’s the differentiator I want to find, and I really thought it was insightful of her to call that your uncommon denominator.

Julie Littlechild:
It is great. And I remember, and it may have been you and I talking at some point, this idea, when we talk about differentiation, it doesn’t mean that you’re different from every single other advisor. It means you’re exactly the right one for me. Which means you’ve understood something about me and it could be nuanced, it could be subtle, it could be the kind of conversations we have, but that’s what’s setting you apart because you understand me and my needs so well.

Stephen Wershing:
Right, exactly. I think you spoke to Bob Veres when he did that study about the perfect firm of the future. And so when I spoke to him, they asked me, “so Steve, what’s the perfect firm of the future look like?” And I said, “there is no perfect firm in the future, in the future, every client will be able to find a firm that’s perfect for them.” And that’s that whole differentiation thing, that if you can really stand out for a particular kind of person, or have an experience that attracts a particular set of people, which is your niche, then that’s how you will succeed, that’s how you will be heard in a very noisy marketplace.

Stephen Wershing:
Hey, it’s Steve, we’ll get back to the show in just a minute, but first I’d like to make you an offer. Every week I send out a tip or an idea to help you become more referable. It might be something I picked up during an advisory board meeting, it might be an idea from one of our amazing guests. Every other week I announce a new interview on the podcast, so never miss an episode, or maybe it’s something I picked up from a new research report and I deliver it right to your inbox. Would you like to become a little more referable each week? Then send an email to steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and I’ll even throw in my latest alert, Five Reasons You Need to Listen to Your Clients Now Before Someone Else Does. Just put five reasons in the subject line, that’s steve@theclientdrivenpractice.com and put five reasons in the subject line. And I’ll send you your free guide right away. And then a little tip about how to become more referable every week. Now, back to the show.

Stephen Wershing:
So we’re talking a little bit about experience, so let’s talk a little bit more about experience. One of those things that we’ve talked about a lot on this show is that Becoming Referable is reliant a lot on delivering an extraordinary experience. And so tell me a little bit about how the extraordinary experience fits into this.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s a funny one because I think we all talk about it, but it’s almost like we’re talking different languages sometimes because it means different things to different people. I talk to many advisors about experience and what really we’re talking about at the end is basically having a decent service matrix, right? Like delivering good service, driving satisfaction. When I think about client experience, that’s just a given, that’s table stakes. It’s how have I crafted? How have I taken good service and made it extraordinary in a way that drives deeper engagement and made it more targeted to my audience? So, I often think about it as almost like when you’re painting a wall, right? Your first coat’s like good service. So, I send a follow up to a meeting, that’s a key step in your process, it’s very vanilla.

Julie Littlechild:
And then the next coat is about driving deeper engagement. I sent a follow up, but I did a video instead of a written. And the third coat, which is the most vibrant when the color really comes to life is now when it’s targeted, I sent a follow up, it was video, and I talked about the specific needs of that target audience. Right? So, if we can build up the experience, a big part of it, I think, is designing and being very intentional, but it’s also about being able to repeat it, and I remember Chip Munn talked about having a repeatable experience, and I don’t think we can forget the critical importance of being able to deliver consistently as well.

Stephen Wershing:
Right, exactly. And if one of your clients refers a friend of theirs and they come, then it’s really exceedingly important that that friend have exactly the same experience as your client who refer them, because if not that client may not refer again, they’ll be disappointed at one level or another. So, that repeatable experience… of course the byproduct to that too, is that you get more efficient, if you have really good systems and processes and things that enable you to deliver a consistent experience, you can also do a lot more of it, and do a lot more of it profitably.

Stephen Wershing:
But if we drive down below that, one of the things that you talked about was having satisfied clients. And I know that a lot of your research has shown that satisfaction doesn’t really get you very much. It certainly doesn’t get you referrals, that’s the first step, but you really need to carry it above that. And I remember our conversation with Jim Asplund from Gallup, where he talked about moving from satisfaction to conviction, and I know you’re a big fan of his so, can you tell me a little bit more about some of that research, because I think that’s hugely relevant to what we’re talking about.

Julie Littlechild:
Well I think that when he talks about that others use different terms that he also talks about the rational versus the emotional, right? And typically that’s the shift, satisfaction is about delivering on what’s expected, even over delivering on what’s expected. Right? If I expect you to pick up the phone when I call, if you pick it up a little faster, it doesn’t make me deeply engaged right? It’s just nice. So, when he talks about conviction, or if we think about engagement in our world, it’s about being able to go deeper, being able to build an experience that it demonstrates leadership, this word we use a lot with experience and is really focused on solving some of the big challenges and concerns that your clients have. It’s qualitatively different than just delivering good service.

Stephen Wershing:
Right, and I think that carries us into our next idea, which is driving that relationship deeper and being more memorable by getting farther into that person’s personality. And we talked about that right at the very beginning about, not just knowing a description of your target client, but really getting to know who they are. And so many of our clients, along the way have talked about having deeper conversations, about communicating about things beyond the numeric goals, and those kinds of things, but really getting down into, and we had guests after guests talk about how either people that they were coaching or if they were practitioners, even what it did for their business to start getting into the more personal and to dig deeper and develop those deeper relationships and even share more of themselves. So, in some cases that actually means being more authentic and more vulnerable yourself as a way of driving that relationship deeper.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, those are some of the words we heard a lot and continue to hear, right? The idea of vulnerability or authenticity of connecting, and that fed through conversations, it came into communication, it was a theme that ran through so much and so many of our guests, and in fact, the whole idea of the quality or the depth of the client conversation being one of the most critical components of that client experience, right? I mean, it’s one thing to have a wonderfully systematized client experience where you’re meeting with people the right number of times per year, and your CRM is telling you who to meet with, but if that conversation isn’t going deep, if it isn’t memorable, and let’s face it again, just linking it back to referrals, that’s what people talk about, right?

Julie Littlechild:
If you can help me understand myself at a deeper level, if you can help me achieve something with my family and my child or whatever, that’s what I talk to my friends about, it’s not clearly the portfolio, which we all know, but I’m such a believer and it was only reinforced through our experience with the podcast that the skill we need to build is that skill of having a deeper conversation. And I think, we had Stephanie Bogan on it, she talked really powerfully to that as well, it just came up over and over again.

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah, and we had a lot of guests who are both practitioners and consultants who talked about that. And, I can remember hearing directly from clients, if there was some values based conversation at the beginning, if there was some kind of conversation as part of that onboarding process where they did go deeper and dig more into why is money important to you and the values around it, and why do you make decisions the way you do in regard to money. There were people who were on the verge of tears, because it was such a significant experience for them. And even just remembering it, brought up a lot of those things. And boy, if that can really not only make people much more deeply loyal to you, but also can significantly ramp up referrals at the same time.

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely. And… go ahead sorry.

Stephen Wershing:
No, go.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, it was just you mentioned being memorable, right? As the theme and the memorable piece is partly subtle and nuanced like a conversation. And sometimes it was bigger, but I’m also reminded of… pretty sure it was Jay Baer who talked about this, which was a fun interview. Often when people think about being memorable, they’re thinking about the one off thing, right? The moment of truth, the wow moment, where it was like, “I can’t believe they remembered this and they bought me this incredible gift” and all of that’s lovely, but that’s not your referral conversation, you’re probably not going to do that for somebody else.

Stephen Wershing:
Exactly. That’s right.

Julie Littlechild:
And that’s where the process comes in. The process comes in having deeper conversations, which you know you can do consistently, and it comes in the experience, which you’re delivering consistently, but is still incredibly memorable to people. And can you talk a bit more? We’ve talked about conversations, but what about the experience as a whole in making that memorable?

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah. Well I’m glad you brought up Jay. Jay was a fun interview and I love his stuff. And he makes that point exactly. That people keep talking about the Ritz Carlton experience and people keep talking about, “oh, well, my kid left a Teddy bear at the hotel and, they saved it for him and they took pictures of him having all kinds of adventures all over the grounds and that kind of stuff, and so they ship back the Teddy bear with all these pictures.” Well, that’s great. If your target market is people whose kids have Teddy bears and are forgetful, but that’s a really narrow target. You probably can’t build a business on that.

Julie Littlechild:
You better hope It happens next time.

Stephen Wershing:
That’s right, and you better have a whole lot of time to take all those pictures every time. So, what Jay’s point was, you need to do something that is memorable, that’s just part of your experience, that every time somebody comes and experiences you, they have that same memorable thing. It doesn’t relate specifically to our audience, but one of his favorite things is the DoubleTree hotels that always give you a warm cookie when you check in, and that’s really memorable, and it doesn’t necessarily speak to what many hotel customers are looking for, but it definitely sets it, it’s something that they welcome and it’s something that’s appreciated, it’s something that’s different, and it works for them. So, that has all kinds of ramifications across providing the kind of experience that you provide, that you want to be able to have those things that are different, but different in a meaningful way.

Stephen Wershing:
And we talked a little bit before about being different, but not being totally out of the ballpark so that people can understand it. But as part of that experience, when you design it, you need to design in those memorable things, but things that are relevant to your clients, things that, if this is your target client, and these are the things they care about, what is something that you can build into that experience that’s going to be meaningful to them that you can make sure happens every time you onboard somebody.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. That’s exactly right. I have to tell you really quickly. My son did lose his Teddy bear at a hotel and it was not that particular organization, it was panic because he was young, you know what it’s like right?

Stephen Wershing:
Oh sure.

Julie Littlechild:
It was terrible. And I called the hotel and they said, yes, we’ve got it. And they didn’t have any nice photos they shipped it up. And the poor thing was like bound and gagged in a plastic bag, I can’t even let my child see this, right?

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah. Right, exactly. It’s a horror movie.

Julie Littlechild:
What happened to the… Yeah I know, it can go all sorts of wrong if you can’t…

Stephen Wershing:
He’s in the building. Exactly. And that was true for our daughter is the same age as your son, and she had Monkey when she was really little. So, we knew that was a risk, so we had backup Monkey. So we thankfully never had to actually use it, and we brought out backup Monkey at some point and I think she named him Other Monkey because kids are creative but yes, that’s not how you would want to base your experience on. You want to base it on something that is consistent, doable, appreciated and it’s relevant to all of the folks that are in your target market.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely. And go ahead, sorry.

Stephen Wershing:
So you have to be different, you have to create memorable experiences then that also bleeds over into how you communicate, and we had a lot of guests that talked about different ways of communicating with clients. And what your communications program as part of your marketing plan, needs to include. And so there were a lot of those kinds of things that influenced what goes into that communication program. So, what were some of your biggest memories of how that applied to communications?

Julie Littlechild:
Well, I would sum it up with a get over it, you’ve just got to learn these things. In fact, I was listening to another podcast with one of our guests, which was Samantha Russell, and she was talking with Susan recently about new channels being one of the big trends for marketing this year. But that was a theme that came up over and over again, right? We’ve got to get comfortable with new mediums. So, whether that’s video and that came up in a couple of episodes and the idea being, it’s not a new channel, but the medium had to change to allow it to be more personal so that you could connect with your clients and with your prospective clients and then social media, obviously being the new channels and things, these are new muscles for a lot of different people, particularly if you’re my age and we just can’t pretend it’s not happening. So, I think just the mindset and just saying, “look, I’m going to give this a shot” and try it is so important.

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah, and I think it was only recently that I was going through marketing agencies for financial advisors. And it was the first time I’d heard TikTok mentioned. So we’ve got to keep up with that stuff. But one of the interesting thing is that a couple of our guests made the point that the paradox is that we’ve got all of these multiplying ways of communicating with clients and going direct to them, so not having to go through a gatekeeper like a newspaper or some other kind of media channel, but we can go direct to them through social media and stuff.

Stephen Wershing:
But that means that the importance of social interactions actually goes up. That we have to be really targeted with our messages, and we have to actually figure out how to use these new channels to actively engage with people back and forth. So, it’s not just communicating the same ad, but over a different channel. We have to talk about how we interact with those media in different ways, because they’re fundamentally different, they’re not just a new place to do it. They’re actually different.

Julie Littlechild:
And when it comes to referrals, I think some of these media are going to be even more important as well. The idea that I can click on a video and listen to someone is going to be such an influence on whether I contact that person or not. If they’re real, if they’re open, if I feel comfortable, all of that’s going to play in. So it feels scary, but it’s going to facilitate a way of connecting with prospective clients in a way that I think we haven’t seen before.

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah, no, I totally agree. And there are all kinds of aspects to that, that some different of our guests have brought up. You may remember one of the earliest guests that we had started GuideVine, and that was the reason that GuideVine was created was that people need to get a sense of who you are as a person before they will come in and want to work with you. Or, Matt Halloran talks about how to build a reputation of expertise, how to be an influencer in your area, on the particular things that your target market cares about. So, that there’s of you and more of your person and more of your expertise that we have to project through these new media, if we’re going to attract people and attract more referrals.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, I think, this is a little tangential to what you’re saying, but maybe important because it goes back to imagery as well. This idea of how vulnerability collide with different media, and I think also then the imagery on our site, because for whatever reason, I’m having this intensely negative reaction to a lot of the team photos I’m seeing lately, how odd that they’re all dressed the same. That’s interesting all 40 of them are standing outside the office in a great line in the same outfit, and this is how things were done, but viscerally, it doesn’t feel like there’s any connection at all. I want to see who people are in a different way.

Stephen Wershing:
And people who go to your website, they want to see you, they want to see your staff. They want to see people who look like your clients. I have to laugh about… you get the stock photos and please don’t do those on your website anymore. It looks like we have no diversity and inclusion issues at all in our business because everybody’s website has people of different races, people of different age, it’s like come on, cut that out. David Meerman Scott was on the program and he wrote that hilarious blog posts I think it was called Who the hell are these people? So, we need to be more authentic, we need to be more available, and like we’re thing, people want to go there and get to know who you are and who’s around your office and what the work setting is like. So, you want that to be more authentic.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, and it’s a good litmus test though, to your point, when you look at that photo, when it comes to diversity, right? And I know Angela D’Angelo talked about this as well, it takes you two seconds to see there’s nobody in there like me, or there-

Stephen Wershing:
Right, exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
So, you go have a look at it and it’ll affect the way you hire going forward.

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah. Now we’ve talked about a lot of different ideas. And one of the things that we’ve talked about on the show before and has been brought up by a number of our guests, is that it’s great to have all of these concepts, but one of the mistakes that advisors sometimes make is they just use a bunch of tactics. This is a good idea, that’s a good idea, this is a good idea, let’s do each of those. And a number of our guests have really emphasized the importance of it being a coordinated system. Can you remember some of those episodes?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah I can, and this came out in our research as well, right? That everything that we’re talking about, all of these themes fit together so that it’s intentional, it’s broad based, but the system and the process being just as important as ever. So here’s how we reach out, here’s how we follow up, here’s how we thank clients. And I know you talked about this really powerfully in one of our discussions, we need a referral system and we can’t just wing it when it comes to these things.

Stephen Wershing:
Right. And then I was even more impressed by Melissa Intazar from AssetMark, she talked about, the system for cultivating…

Julie Littlechild:
Pursuit COI’s, right?

Stephen Wershing:
Referrals from COI’s, and you need to evaluate a bunch of people that you might do work with and you need to have a conversation about mutual expectations, and you want to do joint work with them. And really it is a full process and it’s coordinated and that’s what consistently, if you do it, is what generates those kinds of referrals is true for call as well as COI’s.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, and that’s it. When you look across all of the advisors or firms that you know, who are really crushing it, when it comes to referrals, there is a process in place. They know what they’re doing, it’s not coincidental. Everybody’s going to get referrals to some extent, if you’re delivering good service, you’ll get a natural level of referrals, but you and I have always been way more interested in the unnatural level of referrals. Right?

Stephen Wershing:
Right, exactly.

Julie Littlechild:
What can we do that’s intentional? And that actually probably leads us into the final theme, which is that this all takes time, right? That there isn’t one thing that we do. One of our guests talked about sowing referral seeds. I know you’ve talked about that as well, right? This idea that we’re planting seeds over time and they will grow, but none of this happens overnight.

Stephen Wershing:
That’s right, this is not like a sale. This is not like I’m going to sit in front of this prospect that I’m going to do a transaction. The fact is that people, clients, COIs refer for their reasons and not your reasons, and that we don’t know when they’re going to need it, it’s not going to be on our schedule, it’s going to be when the need comes up. So, it’s the long game. If you really want to be successful at referrals, it’s the long game. And you’ve got to plant those seeds and not expect too much in the short run, you’ve got to build lists and keep in touch with those people as list, and you’ve got to consistently plant those seeds and consistently provide reminders about referrals. And you’ll build it up over time, but it’s just like investing, at the very beginning, you’re not going to crush it, right? But if you invest consistently and you get a consistent return, it’s off in the future when it starts really generating consistent returns.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, and that ties pretty well back and maybe a good segue way to wrap these up, because when we sat down five years ago and we thought about this podcast that we were going to do and what we were going to call it, we came up with the idea of Becoming Referable, it’s a verb, right? It’s not you aren’t and then you are, it doesn’t mean outcome. But this idea that you do become referable both through the experience you deliver, but not only that, that in addition to that you need to then leverage that incredible experience, facilitate more referrals, be intentional about it. So, in no world can we just talk about tactics to drive more referrals or just tactics for client experience, that’s the overarching theme of what I heard is that we need to think about both, if we’re going to become referable.

Stephen Wershing:
That’s right. And that’s an excellent point that this is a lifelong process, or it’s a career long process that you never stop becoming referable, it’s an unattainable goal. You can get consistent referrals, but as we said, there are different technologies, people’s needs change, people’s expectations change, target markets change, competition changes. So, we always need to be thinking about how we can continue to develop more and more that way. So I think that’s a great place to wrap it up.

Stephen Wershing:
And Julie, I cannot tell you how much fun it’s been to do this with you for all these years. It’s been a great way to get to be closer with you and better friends, and I’m very grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to do this.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh, thank you. You mean the world to me, thank you so much for this, and thanks to everyone for continuing to listening, appreciate it.

Stephen Wershing:
Yeah. Thank you for listening. And we’re going to miss you too. We do get feedback and emails and calls every once in a while, and we’ll miss that, and we hope that we will see you in the future at conferences and meetings and those kinds of things. So, good luck to all of you.

Julie Littlechild:
Take care.

Stephen Wershing:
Thanks, Julie.

Julie Littlechild:
Hi, it’s Julie. Again, it was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really does help. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths that Limit Your Growth. And connect with our blogs and other resources, thanks so much for joining us.