Happy Sunday Everyone:
This has nothing to do with Sunday Thoughts but I did have to share and then Sunday Thoughts are below. We surprised my soon to be 101 year old Grammie yesterday by flying to San Diego for the day to visit (still lives in her house, alone). We announced Friday Night we were going to be coming to her house around 11:00. Here is how it went, she first asked if we could come at 11:30 because she had her weekly Jungian Psychology group over. We get there at 11:45, she shows us her new zero gravity chair, and how to use it. We then take her to lunch on the water where she orders a glass of pinot grigio, a French dip, and onion rings. We enjoy lunch, take her back to her house, play with the chair some more and listen to her avoid 3 phone calls from her 102 year old boyfriend. Life is good for Grammie.
Two different perspectives, same topic, which is referrals, both personal and business. Dear friend of mine needed some help, some big stuff, life stuff. I referred him to someone I trust and respect and announced and confirmed the referral was okay before making intro. I ran into my friend who needed the help last week and asked how it went with the other. I asked with the anticipated satisfaction of knowing this other guy delivered because that’s what he does. Instead my friend, who is someone who has helped me a ton, tells me he had two voicemails and an email into the guy and hadn’t heard back after 3 weeks. I was pissed, I was embarrassed, I was confused. Make matters worse, he asked me not to get involved, said he would handle it. I still don’t know what happened. What I know for certain is I’m disappointed, massively. I trusted someone to deliver and they pooped the bed. So my question to myself, and to all of you, is who has said the same thing about you? This was zero business, 100% personal, which to me is more important. I’ve seen the other guy around town, I know there was not some hardship that happened, he simply didn’t care about this situation as much as I did and his actions were a reflection of it. Can people count on you to deliver? Do people know you care by both your actions and your words? In business, as much as I believe in prospecting, and never stopping, we are also very much in the referral business, plain and simple. If you don’t get referrals you need to look in the mirror. Are you one and done? Do people come back to you? Do you treat the referrals your business partners provide you like they’re handing you their livelihood on a silver platter and it’s up to you to be a massive asset, to be a massively positive reflection of them? I do, but I do it most of the time. We need to do it all the time. My friend, who left me hugely disappointed does it “most” of the time, clearly not all the time. We need to do it because it’s the right way to operate, it’s how you create a reputation that hopefully has people talking about you, but it also makes sense financially. Thanks to Kevin Kennedy and Kyle Rorbaugh, I went through the exercise of dividing my income by my leads in 2017, would highly recommend you doing the same, each lead was worth $1277. You don’t think that changed my mindset when I didn’t really feel like taking that call at 5:15 on Friday Night? What I take away from it is the simple fact that I can never forget when someone is trusting me to deliver on “their” reputation I need to care about it more than my own reputation. If I do that, my own reputation will of course benefit from it as well.
Have a great week ahead.