Referral Party

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one-minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Now I'm trying to make it sound fun, like, yay, referral party, but we also call it a one-to-one house call. It's a meeting with somebody where you sit down and you say to them, Here's what's going on in my world. And here's what a good introduction looks like for me. Tell me what's going on in your world and what a good introduction makes for you.

And we don't get off the phone until we make at least one introduction for each other. You do that with five people every month. Who can I introduce you to that's meaningful? Now you might not always get a perfect qualified lead.

That's why you want to do five. You might say, Oh, well, my son or daughter is about to take their SATs to get into college. Oh, I know a great, you know, SAT tutor.

I'll make that introduction. All right. Well, I was hoping for someone that was going to buy 10 units, but I'll take the SAT tutor.

Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's just relationship building.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Talk to 24 People—Get One Referral pt.2

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

I don't know where the universe or the volcanic activity that regulates this is, but when I have 12, I get no leads. When I have 36 or 48, leads, the quality of them goes down. Somewhere in that bubble of 24, and here's what I think, I think it's because I stay in touch with them, their frequent dinner or networking people, I see them on a regular basis, we tend to talk a lot, we tend to have deep conversations, something pops.

So if you don't have 24 referrers, set that as a goal. If you could look and say, all right, so how many accountants, how many attorneys, how many realtors, how many business brokers, how many private equity funds?

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Talk to 24 People—Get One Referral

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

What can we bring in? What are other activities? So if you look at the second one right there, one of the things that I like to have is I like to have I found over the years, I don't know what the magic science is behind it.

I don't know how the planets rotate to make this work. After 35 years as an advisor and 40 years as an entrepreneur total, what I found is if I maintain a good stable of 24 people that will refer me once per year, that helps my deal flow stay pretty active. That means once a year, these 24 people are going to say, Hey Carl, you should meet so-and-so.

Hey Carl, here's an investor. Hey Carl, here's a landlord. Hey Carl, here's a realtor.

Hey Carl. You see what I mean? That gets me to a month, and I found that that's pretty consistent.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Bottom of the Funnel

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Things that I've noticed is bottom of that funnel results tend to match the top of the funnel activities.

In other words, if you're 10% ahead of your goal and you look to your top of the funnel activities, you might say, Oh yeah, you know what, I do. I've got, I've been to 10% more networking events than I normally do. I've had 10% more one-on-ones.

I've had 10% more, I went to that extra trade show I don't normally go to, or I stayed for that extra day. If you're behind, that tends to be the case too. We've seen a correlation between bottom of the funnel and, top of the funnel.

In other words, if you're looking at your year and saying, I'm 20% behind, and you say, all right, let me, how many leads did I generate? Boom, not as many as I thought. How many phone calls did I make? A little bit less than normal. How many days of networking did I do? Ooh, that's right, I skipped that whole week on vacation.

I didn't go to those three events. And we tend to find that you're, oh, I didn't make that many outbound calls, or I didn't do that many emails, or I didn't send as many check-in text messages with my existing client base as I normally do. They tend to correlate.

I'm down 10% on the bottom of the funnel. I tend to be down 10% top of the funnel.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Sometimes You Get Lucky

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

In sales, yes, there are times when you get the lucky, you get the lucky one, right? We have a franchisee who thought they were calling our competitor.

And they said, Oh, I remember the three calls we had, they were so good. Meanwhile, I'm going through my records, I'm like, does anyone have a record of this person? What did we miss? We didn't find out till later that they actually were talking to the competition. They mistakenly sent us an email for the fourth meeting, which they thought was the fourth meeting with the other people.

I just played along with it. I'm like, oh, well, how are we doing so far? We're like really close. And they said, I can't wait to come to the discovery day.

I'm emailing the team, when's the next discovery day? I get the note back, I'm like, put this person on the invite right away. And by the time they woke up and realized that we had them, all right, fine. Now and again, you step in a little dung, and you get a little bit lucky.

And maybe you make your luck by being out there and putting yourself out there and doing the work. For the most part though, we still gotta go out and get it. And the marketplace doesn't care what you did yesterday.

They like your resume, they like your business card, they like that you have the expertise that you had, but tomorrow someone's gonna beat you to it.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Don't Wait for Problems to Shrink

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

Clients that we have, whenever they complain about sales, I say, Oh, you don't like the sales? You try it.

It's the hardest job in any company. It's relentless. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

And I know you guys have this question. You wanna know what day it gets easier? I found it on the calendar, in case you were looking.

All right? Look up the day called never. It never gets easier. And you say to yourself, oh my gosh, I've been in business for 30 years.

Look at my resume. Don't I deserve some better leads? Don't I deserve good lead flow? Why aren't my referral partners coming back to me at a more regular pace? Don't I deserve it? Well, you do deserve it. It's just not the nature of the beast.

And it never gets easier. That problem will never shrink. That challenge will never shrink.

We need to grow. We need to be bigger than the problem. Don't hope your problems get smaller.

Hope you become bigger.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould, and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Action Every Day Moves You Forward

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

So we come to the middle of the year.

You're either out of inspiration, or motivation is struggling, or the activities have been up and down or not as consistent. I saw this great infographic recently, and it says, here's what people think consistency is. And it shows a bunch of glasses, cups, and they're filled right to the top with fluid.

And they said, but here's what consistency actually is. And they show the same dozen cups. One's full, one's half, one's got a drop in it.

One's three quarters, next one's full, next one's half. And basically the message is, if you're taking some action at each day, that's consistency. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be progress.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.

Discipline Kicks In When Motivation Runs Out Pt 2

Hi everyone, Carl Gould here with your #70secondCEO. Just a little over a one minute investment every day for a lifetime of results.

We need to put that same level of discipline into our daily activities so that when we do get an inspiration or we do get a motivation, that only fuels the fire.

You all probably follow some sport on some level and the top players in the world who do drills before every match or every game. You know, why does a hockey player before a match have to go and shoot the puck 100 times beforehand? They're the best in the world. Why do basketball players have to do 100 free throws before a game, and they won't stop until they hit at least 50 in a row? Why are they practicing layups? Why is a baseball player, why batting practice? What do you need that for? If you're a golfer, why are you taking all those extra swings at the driving range? What do you need them for? You're already great.

They're instilling that level of discipline, and along the way of coming into a tournament, coming into a game or a match, they're looking for anything that'll give them that emotional edge. Discipline instills that mechanical repetition, predictable, consistent activity, and then you add on inspiration and motivation for the mental part.

Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more. My name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.