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Steve 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. On this episode, we talked with Jill Lublin, publicity strategist, successful speaker, who does over 200 dates per year, and bestselling author of the books, Profit of Kindness, and Get Noticed… Get Referrals.

We start our conversation, with the idea of kindness. How we all think of ourselves as kind, but don’t necessarily relate that to what role that can play in developing your business. We spent a little time talking about a number of quotes, including one from the book, a basic adjustment in attitude and approach, can substantially improve virtually every facet of your life. And in Jill’s world, that includes your business. We then turn our attention to how to get noticed more effectively, and how getting noticed will lead to more referrals. Jill talks about getting noticed as a full time job.

She talks about positioning yourself for referrals, by getting noticed more often, rather than asking for referrals. We talk about how creating unique original content, will help you be seen and heard as well as strategies that you can incorporate to get seen and noticed through organizations, through other clients, and through other contexts that you probably make all the time.

And listen through to the end, where Jill offers you access to a free interactive session, on how to utilize publicity tactics, that will help you get noticed, and help you build your business. It’s a great conversation with lots of practical ideas and useful tips. So here now is our conversation with Jill Lublin.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, Jill, welcome to the Becoming Referable Podcast.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, welcome, Jill.

Jill Lublin:
Well, I’m delighted to be here. Thank you both.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh, we’re excited to have this conversation. You’ve done some really interesting stuff and I know our listeners are going to learn a lot. But maybe before we jump into that work, do you mind just sharing a little bit about your background and the kind of work that you do?

Jill Lublin:
Sure. Well, for gosh, over 25 years, I’ve been helping entrepreneurs of all kinds of businesses, really get more visibility using publicity as a primary marketing strategy, and I teach virtual publicity courses, which are a lot of fun. And I also help people get real book deals without a word written. Because Hey, I’ve written four of my own books. And so, I’m helping people get deals with publishers and agents and then self-published authors get, frankly, foreign rights of all kinds. So that’s the main things I do.

Julie Littlechild:
Interesting. I’ll bet there’s a lot of our audience being financial advisors. I know a lot of them have a book in them somewhere. So, that might be a good place to start. Originally, when we were connecting with you, I wanted to talk to you very specifically about your book. Get Noticed… Get Referrals, because obviously that links directly to the podcast, but I thought it might be interesting just to start a little bit with the topic of your most current book, which is The Profit of Kindness. And I think the concepts are probably quite tightly linked. And I noticed there was a reference to the book and it really jumped out to me. And it was just this, “That a basic adjustment in attitude and approach, can substantially improve virtually every facet of your life.” Now that’s a big, bold statement. So, maybe you can tell us a little bit about The Profit of Kindness. About what you mean in that approach.

Jill Lublin:
Thank you. Absolutely. Profit of Kindness, let me just say, is excellent for financial advisors, because the truth is, and we all know it. The more kind you are, people will be drawn to you naturally. And if they’re choosing amongst people, people will choose the person they resonate most with. Which frankly, you can’t go wrong with kindness ever. So, that’s the thing about having an attitude adjustment. The question is what can you do that’s more kind.

Listen, we all are stretched at times or something occurs where a moment of stress will happen and like always you can choose what your reaction is. You can choose how to respond. And I think that’s really a good thing for everyone when it comes to, I’ll call it attitude adjustment. And by the way, with Profit of Kindness, I’m not saying roll over and be Pollyanna at everybody. Right? There are times you have to have boundaries and you don’t want your clients calling you at two in the morning or whatever. Right? But I think things can be said kindly. You can have compassion.

In Profit of Kindness, I actually have seven, what I call return on kindness principles. And they include things like flexibility and patience, all of that for anybody in any business, especially financial planning is important.

Julie Littlechild:
And can you actually just give us the highlights on those principles before we dig in? Are those seven?

Jill Lublin:
Yeah, absolutely. So generosity is one, flexibility is one, gratitude, patience, positivity, connection and compassion. Those are the seven return on kindness principles. Everyone’s always concerned about ROI, which you should be. My premise is, if you have those in place, that’s actually what’s going to get you profitable business.

And it’s interesting. Can I just share if I may?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Jill Lublin:
When I wrote Profit of Kindness, which is actually my fourth book, and I started at looking at Get Noticed… Get Referrals and Guerrilla Publicity and even Networking Magic. My other three. And I thought, well, how does this tie in with that?

What I realized is that kinder companies, get and make more money. Kind companies have happier employees and more satisfied customers. And that’s what I’ve really seen in terms for me, how they all tie together. But also for your audience, practicing all that, whether it’s referral marketing, whether it’s publicity marketing, and all of that. The truth is, it could do every one of it, from a kind position. You’re going to get more publicity. You’re going to get more clients. You’re going to get more referrals. It does tie all together.

Steve Wershing:
Now, one of the principles you mentioned was generosity, and there are a number of different ways that you can be generous. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that principle?

Jill Lublin:
Well, I think you have to choose something, right? So in my business, I teach a virtual publicity course, and I always give a scholarship to a nonprofit or somebody maybe who just can’t afford the class but really needs it. So I think that’s really important. That’s part of my giveback. Every single month I do this. And my publicity course is very well priced now. With the pandemic and everything that happened, I lowered the price. I made that more affordable. That was a generous move. So I think each one of us has different ways we’ll operate that. For me it’s basically giving a seat every single month. And that’s my give back. And I always ask people to look at what’s you give back and that’s generosity.

Steve Wershing:
Interesting. One of the things that jumped out at me from the book is, that you talked about being in an environment that’s more like Finding Nemo than Shark Tank. And I wonder if you could dig into that a little bit.

Jill Lublin:
Yeah. So, I have to laugh because on the front of Profit of Kindness, is actually an endorsement from Kevin Harrington, the first shark of Shark Tank.

Steve Wershing:
Oh, interesting.

Jill Lublin:
Yes. And Kevin’s a very kind person. You’ll find most of the sharks on Shark Tank are actually, their whole focus is they want people to have better business. So, what I mean is that you don’t have to be a shark in business. Do you need to be purposeful? Yes. Do you need to have, I think products and services that serve others? Absolutely. But I don’t think you need to be a shark in business. It was interesting to me because in the pandemic, by lowering my virtual publicity course to 197, by the way, it was more like, 1297 before. What’s fascinating is so many people said, “Oh, don’t lower your prices. You’ve got 25 years of the publicity business.” And you know what? I am serving far more people. The Nemos, right? I am able to serve far more generously and frankly, without hotel bills and all the travel, I can pass that savings along to all my clients now.

And so I don’t need to be a shark and charge what maybe I used to, because there was a whole different ball of wax. When I’m in front of people, and it’s a different kind of class now. Everything gone virtual, it’s so much easier and I can actually give even more content. So that’s called being a Nemo versus a Shark. Right?And I just think for all of us. There are ways that we can adjust our offerings, that really serve our clients. And I just ask your listeners to think about what are those ways, that you can be adjusting how you serve people. That really works.

Julie Littlechild:
You said something really interesting there, which was about kind companies. Because initially, I was thinking of kindness is very much an individual characteristic. How does that work for you? Is that a cultural characteristic or is it really from the top down? How do companies become kind?

Jill Lublin:
Yeah, well, interestingly enough, in the Bay Area, there’s this bus campaign going around from Dignity Health. Now, they’re a big healthcare company, right? And what’s their campaign? Humankindness campaign. I thought, well, that’s fascinating.

Honda did a huge kind… Honda cars, right? Did a huge kindness campaign. Kleenex did a kindness campaign. The Hyatt Hotels offered a spa treatment to different people on a random basis just assigned from their employees. You just got to give up spa treatments. That’s a kind campaign, right? I wish I would’ve gotten one of those.

Julie Littlechild:
Yes.

Steve Wershing:
Sure.

Jill Lublin:
But the point is, that that’s called kindness in companies. Right? That they do very specific tactics that create kindness in the marketplace, and then they become known for that. I noticed another campaign from the Marriott Hotels recently. Follow the golden rule, be kind. I mean, it’s really coming out in the culture, in commercialism, in commercials for other companies. And as we’ve gone through what we’ve all gone through, the word kindness comes up again and again, in a repetitive nature. How do you be more kind? Right? So what a wonderful thing. It’s really, I think, hit the mainstream conversation.

Steve Wershing:
Interesting. Julie, can we switch over to the other book?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, of course we can.

Steve Wershing:
Okay. So Jill, one of the other books that we are really interested in, is Get Noticed… Get Referrals. So we wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. What is the connection between getting noticed and generating more referrals?

Jill Lublin:
Okay. So here’s the thing. If people don’t know you, and that could be as simple as participating in your Chamber of Commerce Mixers, as an example. I remember one of the ways I found a financial planner, you’re going to love this. He served as a bartender, because they’re all volunteer at one of the Chamber of Commerce Mixers in my local community, right? So I got face recognition from him. And by the way, it doesn’t have to be, there are people who work with people, especially with Zoom now. You can see people everywhere, anywhere, anytime it doesn’t really matter where people are located. But I’m suggesting, that you might want to look at ways to get involved in nonprofits and volunteer work, so that you do generate that getting noticed part, right? And in this case, this was a gentleman who volunteered. And I noticed that. That he volunteered. So for me, that’s brownie points. Check. Right?

And I think each one of us has different priorities. What we’re looking for. Certainly, because I’ve been working with people in the area of getting noticed through publicity. I just know, that if you get noticed more, you will get more business. It’s just an automatic piece that happens. Automatic piece. Go ahead.

Julie Littlechild:
So yeah, I was just going to ask you about publicity. I know this is something that intuitively, people would understand the connection, but find it hard to figure out and think about if. For someone who’s a financial advisor looking to get noticed, are there some baseline steps that you would recommend?

Jill Lublin:
Yes. So, understanding that they’re also compliance issues because I’ve worked a lot with a number of financial advisors. They’ve been through my publicity course. I’ve worked with them privately as clients. I have one right now, who I’m working privately with. So a couple things that I know, dealing with compliance issues. There’s a few things that you can do. One in particular, I’ll give you right now. That’s really simple and completely free. What you can do is send out an announcement. This is an announcement through, if you look at your local newspapers and your local business journals, so that’s your daily paper in your market and your local business journal in your market, right? They have a section. It’s called the people section. Financial advisors are people. This strategy passes, compliance sniff test. And what you can do, is actually put something in announcement. Maybe you recently hired an assistant. Maybe you moved offices. Maybe you’re working virtually and have different programs you’re offering now.

So, I think those are all fabulous announcements and great ways that you can keep and create that visibility factor, that gets your name out there consistently. And so for me, part of referrals and part of getting noticed and part of creating that publicity recognition factor, is creating, I like to call it the, I’ve heard of you somewhere syndrome. Right?

That people have seen your name. Maybe they saw it in a business journal. Maybe they saw it in a newsletter of an association that you’re a member of. Maybe you wrote an article. Maybe you did this announcement strategy I just gave you that’s completely free. Right? And so you want to create that name recognition factor. The, I’ve heard of you somewhere syndrome and that ongoing consistency and persistency in the market.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Jill, when we were talking before this recording, you mentioned something to me that you referred to as the, who question, as part of the referral strategy. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Jill Lublin:
Yes. I love the who question and that’s not an owl. Although owls do go hoo.

Jill Lublin:
What I want you to do is, ask the who questions. So when you walk into a room and that could be a Zoom Room, it could be a physical meeting, it could be anywhere [inaudible 00:16:02]. It could be an airplane. It could be walking your dog, or out for coffee or wherever.

I want you to start getting in the habit of asking the who question. So what that is is, “Who do you know, who need some help with their finances?” Who do you know who, is in a point of problem right now? Who is financial situation might need some help?” Who do you know is a great question and what it stimulates, is somebody thinking about, “Well, let’s see. Who do I know.” Right?

Because I naturally believe, and I’ve seen this proved over my 25 years of business experience, that people actually do want to help. They do want to help. You just have to ask the right question. And I find that a lot of people don’t know the right question to ask. And especially when you’re business networking, especially when you’re in Zoom Rooms or wherever you are doing your networking. If you have the right questions, as opposed to here’s what I do. I don’t love here’s what I do anymore. I teach it as a problem solution formula, you be a problem solver and give people real solutions and then ask them the question. Who do you know who? Fill in the blank depending on what kind of service you offer. What kind of financial focus is your focus of how you work with your clients. As you’re listening to this, think about the right, who question for that?

Steve Wershing:
So, let me dig into that a little bit, Jill, because one of the things that we believe is that, it’s not a good idea to ask specifically for referrals, partly because it puts people on the spot. So, if you’re in a networking meeting, or if you’re in a meeting with a client and you ask that, who question, how do you work that so that people, if they can’t think of somebody or if they can think of somebody, but they don’t know if the other person would want to get referred to them. How do you work around that so that people don’t feel put upon?

Jill Lublin:
Yeah. So, and Steven, listen. I agree with you. And then there’s a point about, yes, Anne. Right? So here’s the truth. What I’ve seen, I see people not asking specific enough questions. So it’s nice to be nicey nice, and to create relationships. And I think that’s really important. Okay. It is. And it’s an, Anne. You can still be specific and ask a question. Who do you know is not a… “Listen, if you don’t give me three referrals, I’m going to ring your neck.” Right?

[inaudible 00:18:42] Who do you know? It’s actually a very innocent question. And then here’s the thing. If that person goes, “Well, I don’t know. Who do I know?” You can say, “Hey, would it be okay if I follow up with you?” Now, that person can say, “I’ll let you know when I have that.” And then great, [inaudible 00:19:01] on them. They come back to you when they have a referral. You say, “Great, thank you so much.”

If they say, “Yes, I’d love you to follow up.” Then you do. You ask when, and when’s a good time. And I just think that specificity, is powerful. And if you let people go into a world and it’s really a no pressure zone. Who do you know is, I think a very neutral question. They can say, “Well, gosh I know [inaudible 00:19:30].” “Oh, great. Do you, by chance have their contact information or would it be okay with you if I follow back up.” Is a continual relationship. In my many years of business, I have never personally found anyone. Well, maybe with one or two exceptions that have not been willing to say, “Yes, it’s really okay to follow up.”

And those people who have said, “I’ll get back to you when I have one.” Terrific. That’s fine. There’s no pressure. You know what I’m saying? Okay, that’s great. Do me a favor and let me know. Call me when it’s good. And if I never hear from them again, may you have a good life? I don’t say that to them, but there’s not any pressure. I look at it as a specific request. And with requests, people can answer it or they can choose not to. I just find people do want to help, but that if you don’t give them a way to help, then how can they help you? That’s just been my general approach. And it’s been very effective. I do get referrals consistently. And there’s no big pressure about, you have to give it to me right now on the spot.

Here’s what I’ve learned. In many years of being in different kinds of groups, which I am. If I don’t get it done then, for person who’s asking me for referral, then it may not get done. So I’m the kind of person, that when somebody says, “Hey, who do you know?” “Hey, Julie and Steve, I’ve got this amazing person right now. And you know what, I’m going to email them right now, or here’s their contact number. Or call me in 48 hours and I’ll get you their information.

Now, I’m the kind of person you want to do business with. If you know what I’m saying. Right?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Jill Lublin:
So part of that is a little bit, and this is just my opinion, and I’m sure you too have an amazing referral system too. And it’s always whatever works for that person. Right? But here’s my truth. If that person isn’t responsible, I also want to know that. And it’s okay. We’ll move on.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, yeah. I know that makes a lot of sense. There’s so many different approaches. Like you say. I think comfort is probably the number one. Some people use lines that I thought there’s no way I could ever hear anybody saying that, but the way they [inaudible 00:21:56], is so comfortable. That it does seem to work.

We’ve talked about getting noticed. We’ve talked about asking specific questions. Are there other particular strategies that you really believe are important for advisors to think about in order to drive more referrals?

Jill Lublin:
Absolutely. Connection is one. Connection. Where are you connecting with people? Whether it’s live, whether it’s virtual. What I’ve been excited about recently, is the opportunity to network in virtual ways, unlike I’ve ever been able to do before. I find that really powerful. So I would tell people to get real creative. How else could you be expanding your network and connecting to others, so that others know about you? Right? Because I do think referrals are based a lot on who knows who, going back to a little bit to the who’s question.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Jill Lublin:
In order to get to know people, showing up… And again, it can be on Zoom, it can be virtual, it can be any way showing up is an important part. And I think that trust factor of [inaudible 00:23:09] trust gets built. I’m a publicity woman, so I also love an article being written., 500 words. You don’t have to write it. There are people who can do this, who are good, who are excellent at this. And I think a 500 word informational, how to.

So one financial service provider I worked with, for instance, we did a piece about how people will be broke. It was like 67% of people will be broke by the time they reached 60. Here are three strategies to avoid that. Right? And so it’s a, how to article. It starts with this statistic that’s powerful. And then it gives people real things they can do. I like those kinds of things.

I think blogging, podcasting, the very things you’re doing is brilliant. So, you want to be looking for opportunities to be seen and heard.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I think you have a giveaway for listeners as well. Is that right? Can you tell us a bit about that?

Jill Lublin:
Absolutely. So one of the things I’m big on is, real world ways to get your publicity done and it’s a free, interactive publicity webinar with me. And live, I’m live. So go to jill lublin.com/publicity, and that’ll take you right in to come live with me and learn great publicity tactics that will help your business.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh, thank you. That’s terrific. And if they want to learn more about your books or the other work that you do, where’s the best place to find you?

Jill Lublin:
jilllublin.com is perfect.

Julie Littlechild:
Okay.

Jill Lublin:
And that’s my general website, which will help you with all kinds of possibilities.

Julie Littlechild:
That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the work that you’re doing. We really appreciate you being here today.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Thank you, Jill.

Jill Lublin:
Thank you for having me.

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@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.