The Power of Referrals

Welcome to Ladies Kicking Assets. Robin and I are so thrilled that you're here with us. And we have a very special guest today, the king of referrals himself. He wrote the referral masterpiece, Raving Referrals, and is the CEO of HOA.com the number one referral network for home service professionals. He's a serial entrepreneur, coach, speaker, and now guest on our show. And most importantly, he loves the Lord and gives all the glory to him. So, Brandon Barnum, thank you so, so much for taking time out of your day to join us and speak with our guests.

Oh, it's my absolute pleasure to be here. Courtney and Robin, thank you so much for having me.

Yes.

Well, I know we had. I had the pleasure and honor of meeting you. Gosh, I think it's been six or eight weeks. I'm not even sure how long it's been now. But I didn't know that I was going to get to meet you. And it just happened to be kind of a bonus for a trip that I had to Phoenix and, you know, kicked it off, hit it off. I got to come and join your mastermind group and meet yourself and Mark Victor Hansen and everybody else. That was a special part of your group. And it was such a powerful weekend. And from there, I actually managed to pick up the Raving Referrals book, which I know, which has been so, so powerful. And, you know, as I have navigated through that space, I mean, obviously referrals is something that everybody needs in their businesses. It doesn't matter if you have a mechanic repair shop for your car or if you're an entrepreneur, you know, whatever that is, Everybody needs referrals. And it's really funny because as I've kind of gone through this book, I feel like some of this should be just such common knowledge. I just kind of putting it all together and applying it is. Why is that so hard?

Well, I, you know, it's interesting. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to. I need to tell you this. And then you jump in here. I did that assessment in chapter one.

The referral score quiz.

Yes. Yes.

The referrals score.

A 36.5. I really did. And so that means that I have a gap of 73.5 and lots of things to some. Some areas were zeros and some areas were small numbers. And it was like, okay, the lens is off and I. I have some work. But I loved how you put that out there. And like Courtney was saying, that is applicable to any business. And so please jump in here and. And Tell our listeners how. How they can do the same thing. You know?

Absolutely. I'm so glad you did that, Robin, because you're absolutely right.

Embarrassed at myself.

It's eye opening, and you shouldn't be ashamed. The reality is most people score under 50. And guys, if you're listening, what we're talking about is the referral score quiz. You can go to referralscorequiz.com and it's a free assessment. It'll take you less than two minutes. And what you're going to do is you're going to score yourself one on the top 10 referral best practices. And there are some eye openers because there's some things, like you said, Courtney, that we should know and that we do naturally. And some of those things, you're going to score a 10, and others you're going to be like, oh, my gosh, I've totally missed this. And I scored a zero. And that's where I started before I started getting mentored. So I love the quote from Ivan Meisner, the founder of BNI. He says 98% of businesses rely on referrals, yet only 3% have a system for referrals. I think that's so true for most people.

Why do you think that is?

You know, it's interesting because when it comes to referrals, we all get them naturally. Like, it's just the way that we're wired as human beings. If we want help with somebody, we ask for help. Often, sometimes we don't. And that's something we should talk about is the power of asking for what you're wanting. And Courtney, I know you were with us at our mastermind. We spent the whole weekend talking about the power of asking for what you want because that's when you get what you want. But I think the reality is it just sort of happens. Nobody's ever taught us there's no class in college on referrals. And so those of us that get into business, we kind of figure it out along the way. But there really hasn't been a system in place, which is why I wrote the book Raving Referrals. And quite frankly, what we're doing@hoa.com.

Okay, so that. Okay, that's. I love that you just brought all of that up. That was going to be one of my questions is, okay, how do you get these referrals? And you're saying, just ask for them. And I have never done that myself. And. And it feels weird. I always feel weird asking for that kind of stuff is that. Does that seem normal or am I weird?

Totally normal. Most people feel uncomfortable asking for referrals until they learn the art of the ask.

And.

And I think this is so important. So let's just spend two minutes and I'll walk you through the art of the ask. There's really three steps, okay? So if you want to be more skilled at asking for referrals and feel confident, Confident and comfortable and have your people feel comfortable, then you do three things. Number one, you set the stage. So when you first have a new client that comes on board, you want to set the stage. And what that looks like is saying, thank you so much for meeting with me. As you may know, most of my business comes from referrals, and I'd like to ask you a favor. I'm so committed to wowing you with my service. And at the end of the service, once I've shown you what a difference we make, would it be okay if I ask you for referrals at a later date?

Okay.

And by doing that, you're setting the stage. You're not making them feel uncomfortable now, because you're not asking right now. Even though sometimes they're going to say, oh, you know, I have a sister, an aunt, a brother, a husband, a cousin that needs your services right now. So you're going to get referrals just by setting the stage. But what you're really saying is, I'm committed to wowing you with our service, with our product, with what we do, because it's going to make a difference and you're going to be blown away. That's step one, setting the stage. Step two is listening for the referral triggers. So now as you start to serve them, you want to keep your eye, your ears open. And as they start to say either, think thank you. Wow. Oh, my gosh, this is so cool. This is so amazing. You've helped me make so much money, look so great, feel so great, whatever it is that you deliver with your service, once you hear that wow moment, that step two, listen for the referral triggers. Now you want to ask to get. And it sounds something like this, Courtney, I'm so glad to hear you feel that way. We love helping people like you get these results, and we'd love to help your friends, your family, your clients, your co workers. So if you know other people that are facing this same challenge, we'd love to help them. And maybe you have a special offer. Depending on your business, you may say, we have a. We do free consultations, whatever that looks like. Your new client attraction process. But when you set the stage, you listen for the referral triggers and then you ask to get, you'll get more referrals. You'll feel comfortable, they'll feel comfortable because you're really serving them, not telling them.

Absolutely.

And you're asking permission, you know, you're asking them permission up in setting the stage so you, you diffuse whatever they're, you know, sitting.

Well, here's the thing too. In all the people that have asked me for a referral, I've never balked at that. I've never had a problem in giving that. So it's kind of funny. These, you know, weird little limiting beliefs that we have in our brains, I don't know where those come from. I've never had a bad experience with asking for a referral, so I don' know how that ever got set into my mind to be an odd thing to ask for, you know.

Well, and the other thing that we teach is automating the ask because people don't feel comfortable and confident. Now when you use that art of the ask, you should, but also integrate that into your, your client life cycle, right into your, your invoices, your emails, all the communication that you send to your client. That way you can say, you know, the greatest gift you can give us is a referral and you don't even have to feel uncomfortable because it automatic.

That is so smart. So do you have like a system that you like to use to, to track that? Because I can tell you that one of the. I am really great about, you know, going out and meeting people and building relationships and then my follow up is awful. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day and I'm busy doing this and I'm working on this and, and really building relationships is what I love doing. But I don't, I, I fail in that area and I need to do better. And that is something that is on my goal list of things to be and do better at. So do you have a database?

Yeah, referrals.

The fortune is in the follow up, right? We can go out there, we can go to networking events, conferences, meet amazing people. But unless we follow up and follow through, then that's like, you know, acres of diamonds where it's under our feet, but we're not mining that. And so I didn't find a good system, I had to build my own. So that's what we have. @hoa.com, we created our own CRM system called Engage that helps us Follow up. And it's got pipelines and stages, and we just make sure to keep you top of mind. And Courtney, you saw this. But one of the things that we've actually built@hoa.com is an automated co marketing engine to constantly keep you in front of the people that are in your database. Once you set it, you can forget it. Ours, because we serve. Serve professionals who serve homeowners is all about the valuation of the home. We call it a home safe report. And once people set that up, it automatically goes to all your clients and customers and contacts so that every month, you're giving value to your people. And what's really cool about it is it's not only promoting you, it also promotes your referral partners, your trusted team. And as you promote them, they promote you. Everyone wins more business together.

Okay, well, that is amazing.

Yes, yes.

And let's just. This is a perfect segue to kind of pop right into this hoa.com because I really wanted to talk to you about, you know, what you were building and what your goals, you know, what your mission, vision, and values, what that is. And so since I guess the. The how do you track all of this kind of moves right into that. And this seems like something that's very beneficial for. I mean, everybody either owns a home or lives in a home or it has a home and they need things regardless. So let's. Let's pop right into to HOA.com.

All right, cool. Well, I didn't plan to come here and give a commercial, but let's talk about what we're doing.

Yeah, okay. We need to. Yes, that's great.

Absolutely. No, really, what we're doing is we're building like Nextdoor meets Angie's List meets Zillow. So it's everything that the homeowner needs in one place. It all starts. And when you think of hoas, most people think of homeowner association. And we're really building this to support the homeowner associations that are out there, because there's 370,000 HOAs. In fact, 53% of all homeowners in America live in an HOA. But if I ask you what's the number one brand that you think of when it comes to HOAs, what comes to mind?

I don't know of any HOA brands. I can't even. I'm trying to think of what mine is.

You. You just got it. So the number one answer we get when we ask that question is, I don't know.

I'm sitting here Thinking about, yeah, we.

Get two answers, I don't know. And there isn't any. Right. So we're on a mission to transform the way that communities get connected. Because most homeowners don't love their hoa. They feel like it's the community cops when it should be the community connections. And so we're doing events in the local HOAs and communities and we basically create the platform and the event blueprints and then empower local professionals who serve those homeowners to really connect and build deeper relationships with them. So we're creating online community pages for every neighborhood in America. And then we select top trusted 5 star pros that serve those homeowners so that they can win more business and really build deeper relationships with the communities that they serve.

Okay, that is amazing. I think as you know, life has gone on. You know, people used to know their neighbors, they used to be involved in so many things and there's some few communities here and there that, that still do that. But I don't, I don't know any of my neighbors and I love that. Gosh, you know, when you do bring people together and you know, in different events and opportunities, you know, people I think are hungry for community and knowing again and, and looking for that well.

And they're, they're hungry for people that they can trust. You know, when you have, you open up your home, the sanctity of your home, and you've got different trades people in and out of your home, there's, you hear constantly, you know, about theft and robbery or people coming back, quality of work. You know, I'm sitting here thinking about my neighborhood. I live in a very tiny old neighborhood here in the Houston area. And everybody know is everybody. In fact, they send out emails about the suspicious car driving through the neighborhood and somebody's going door to door and shouldn't. And so they all use that nextdoor.com or whatever and it's, you get, you know, a bunch of unnecessary messages from neighborhoods around you and stuff. So I think about my own little neighborhood here where I've got folks who are in their 80s, new families. There's a spectrum, you know, of people needing something that's affordable, quality of work, dependability that are vetted. And so I love the concept. I think it can work in all kinds of different environments, you know, well.

It'S, it's funny that you just mentioned the looking up. So I, you know, I'd love to get the inside of my house painted. We had the inside painted a couple years ago. And I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the painter that we used. And so I'm gonna have to spend the next five years going through my bank statement so I can figure out what month we did that and what that name was, so I can try to go back through my text messages and figure out what their name was, because I cannot remember. Right?

Isn't that funny? And we see that all the time. You know, the reality is it shouldn't be Angie's list. It should be Courtney's list. You should have one place where all of your trusted pros are in an app. And quite frankly, that's what we're building here@hoa.com so that not only do you have your trusted team of the pros that you work with on an ongoing basis, but let's say, Courtney, you want to get your house painted, and you don't have a painter that you trust. What if you could look at your neighbors and your neighborhood and go, okay, out of the hundred homes here, 27 have used Paul's painting. And they love Paul, and my neighbor Janet used them. So let me talk to Janet and see how Paul did for Janet. That doesn't exist. And just like you're saying, we hear that all the time. Painters go, they come, they paint your house, and then they go in ghost mode. You never hear from them again. You want to talk about follow up failure? The blue collar trades people are horrible about following up. So that's why we're helping automate the process so they stay top of mind find with their clients, too.

That's a.

That's really great. Very beneficial.

It really is. Wow. It really is. And it. And not only that, but it just makes everything so much more convenient and so much easier. I am all about convenience and ease just like everybody else.

I'm hoping you have pull service on there.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Except I have a great. I have a great guy.

I have a great guy for a poll service. Okay.

Service over the last couple of years. Yes. But before that, it was like they would come and never come back, you know, and it's like, oh, my gosh, that would be such a niche to, you know, have somebody jump in and manage pool.

Yeah. Well, so you said. Okay. So in Engage is, I guess, the program that y' all created to kind of help manage and maintain all of this and that, you know, for the whole, you know, automated referral part. And that has become, I guess, a part of the hoa.com platform for the pros.

Yeah, we have our own portal. So we've created this back end technology system for the professionals so that they can stay top of mind with all their clients. Absolutely. And then one of the other things that. That we did, we. We started talking about events, and then we moved on, which is cool. But I want to talk about that just for a second, because we talked about knowing your neighbors. Courtney, you mentioned you don't know your neighbors, and what. One of the things that I tell my team all the time, people are going to fall in love with hoa.com not only because the service that we provide, but also because the event we facilitate. So we do things like we just had an ice cream social in a couple communities close to me, and I got to see the photos, and it was so cool because all these families came out and, you know, they just got to know each other. We had a barbecue recently in one of the communities around my home. So I got to go see that There are about 50 people there. Kids were playing basketball. Cornhole. They even had a kickball game. And the coolest thing was at one point, I looked around, and of the 50 people, not one person was on their cell phone phone. Everyone was just talking to their neighbors, which was the way it should be.

Right?

Right.

I love that. I was just sitting here thinking, you know, why can't I host a. A part, a neighborhood party and get to know some of my neighbors? That would be so much fun. Well, you can.

Well, you. You can. So we're creating what we call community connectors. We're looking for people that want to do this in their local neighborhoods. And so they literally sign up, we give them turnkey events. Everything is detailed out as far as how it works and what to do. So you've got a plan and a blueprint, and then you go to your HOA and you said, hey, guys, we're. We're going to do this on Saturday the 27th, or whatever the date is. And then you just bring everybody together. And there's nothing better than living in a connected community, especially if you have got kids.

Oh, definitely. And seniors. You know, I mean, I would just say, you know, you've kind of got those two ends of the spectrum there with the.

The.

The family, the generational spread, you know, so.

Absolutely. Gosh. Well, I don't know what the temperature is like in Arizona right now, but it feels like it's about a million degrees out. But I tell you what, I'm gonna watch that, and I'm gonna pick something and chat with a few people. I'm gonna go do that. I am. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put together a little neighborhood deal. We're gonna play cornhole and barbecue.

Good.

You should.

I have a question for you. The CRM that you've developed, is this something that could be rolled out to other businesses like real estate syndicators and such? Because, you know, we all have this platform, different platforms that everyone uses for different reasons to keep up with their database, send out newsletters, you know, you know, put information in about the intrinsic needs of the individual. So is that, do you have future plans for that or.

No, we're sorry, we're not planning on licensing it outside of what we're doing@hoa.com but real estate investors typically are homeowners, so you're part of the family, Robin, quite frankly, this applies to what you're doing. Most professionals that serve homeowners can find an application for what we're doing because ultimately, even if they serve business owners, those business owners are homeowners.

Yes.

So our platform really works for just about anybody.

Wow. Okay. I love that. I love that. And so how long have you been working on that? And you said it's going to be not so much that, but the hoa.com you'll be rolling that out on an app that will be user friendly for phones. Has that already?

We haven't built out the, the mobile app yet. There's something. Actually, I was just talking to our. We brought a new CTO on Courtney. You haven't met him yet, but he just came on board the last weeks. And so we're building out the mobile app right now. It's just a web app, but yeah, absolutely, it's, it's there like the home. You can go to homesafe.hoa.com right now and you can plug in any address you want and see your home valuation report. And it will include a list of home service professionals that service your area that are top rated. So that's all built and, and out there. We're about 90 days away. We're still in kind of pre launch Mode. We're about 90 days away from this out into every neighborhood in America. We're working on some massive partnerships with some major national companies and excited about what the future holds. So right now we've been in pilot mode and, and piloting this out, especially in Phoenix and in Denver and then other markets. It's really starting to spread.

So the last quarter of the year is going to be huge.

It's going to be a Lot of fun. It's already a lot of fun.

Love that. Well, you know, our time is, is somewhat nearing where we want to make sure we honor our guests. But there were a couple of other areas that Courtney and I wanted to make sure we had just touched on with you. I know you're a man of God, you're married, you've got a family and you know, your family is somewhat involved in your business. And what's that like working with adult kids?

Yeah. So my 30 year old son Sebastian works for us full time and it's amazing. I was just talking to him yesterday. I, my wife and I just went to Europe for almost two weeks to celebrate her 50th birthday and we got to see our 20 year old daughter Ella, who's over in Spain studying Spanish in Madrid. And so it was like got to have that experience and then come back and connect with my 30 year old son and you know, there's nothing better. I once started a company with my mom and that experience as a child working with your parent on a business is super cool. But I think it's even more enriching when you're a parent working with your child because I just hear amazing reports from my team all the time about my son and it just makes me such a proud papa to see, you know, the difference that he's making and he's committed because, you know, part of it is he just wants to do a good job and he doesn't like to be identified as the son of the CEO. But I keep telling him, I say, listen, I've got three kids and all this that we're creating, you're going to benefit from. So you know, he's got a motivation beyond just the paycheck.

That is a hard place for our adult kids to be in when you've had, you know, got a generational business, you know, because they have to really prove themselves at even a higher level to gain the respect of their peers. And when they, they step into that and you know, it's, it's, you're not managing them. It's a beautiful thing to hear others recognize that unsolicited, they'll tell you. And so that is one of the greatest things that we can do is that mentorship. And I know Courtney does that with, with her adult kids and, and Brett and I do the same thing with our kids and, and I just, I really, it's powerful. It's powerful, helpful.

That impact, it's so fun and rewarding and I don't manage him he's got other managers that he reports to, but I love to just touch base with him and, and oftentimes I just have to make sure that I, I keep it personal and not professional all the time because it's so easy to talk about business 24 7.

Right, I know, I know. And so oftentimes we find ourselves, when we're all together as a family, will say, we're not going to, to discuss business at all. And if one of you catches us kind of rambling down that track, because it's just natural, we're going to ask you to, to tell us to stop. You know, there you go.

You create a code word, right?

Yeah.

Or safe word.

Safe word.

There you go. Sometimes it's hard.

It is hard.

We use a term called redirect. Right. So we have some. If we start to go off our agenda, we say, okay, well, just to redirect us back. And that's a code word internally that tells the whole team, okay, we're going back to what's critical.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Love it, Love it. Well, I appreciate you so much coming on and sharing. Like I said when we started, you know, referrals and asking for referrals and the art of the ask, that's something that impacts everybody. I, I love that you are building a platform that can help everybody connect and do that. So I absolute think that everybody needs to run out and buy your book. Raving referrals. First of all, go out and get this because it is amazing. There's so much gold and so many amazing nuggets in here. So can you share how, how can people get a hold of you?

Yeah, well, obviously you can pick up the book at Amazon or@raving referrals.com there's also an online course. So if you want some training beyond the book, if you don't want to read and you just want to watch, I've literally created this course where every Single module is 1 and 4 minutes, so it's totally bite size. You can have your morning cup of coffee, listen to one golden nugget to start your day and go through it over time. But you can connect with me@brandonbarnham.com that's got all my links and my calendar appointment link as well. So all my data There is@brandonbarnam.com.

Perfect.

Wonderful.

Okay. And where was the, where was the, the little nuggets that you were just talking about? Is that it, ra. Is that it? Brandon Barnabas?

Raving. Raving referrals.com.

Oh, raving referrals.com got it. You might have said that and I might have missed it.

All good. Yeah, that's the raving referrals course. So there's an online course with videos and it really goes hand in hand with the book. And I often teach like I'm actually coming down to Dallas Courtney in September. I'm teaching the second book is Raving Referrals for Dentists. So I'm teaching Raving referrals to a group of dentists. This in September 8th, I think. So.

Okay.

Join.

Perfect. Well, that's, yes, I do remember you bringing that up. So we will definitely connect while you are here. Yes.

Good. Look forward to it.

So all right.

There's just so much here. I mean we could talk so much about so many other facets here. But I just like, Courtney, just want to thank you for your time and just the, the pearls of wisdom that you've shed in all the various aspects of your life. Your walk hoa.com and you know, the one last thing I do want to make sure we mention and didn't and I'm going to take 20 seconds to ask you to go over this, we discussed it before we got on the call is you have another project that you're working on with your Christian He.

Didn't Come alliance getting ready to launch the Christian Business Alliance. By the time this is recorded and produced, the website will be live. But it's the cba.org thecba.org and the Christian Business alliance really is going to be like a Christian bni, a Christian Chamber of Commerce. What we find is that what's really fascinating, quite frankly is that in the Muslim community, a dollar gets circulated 14 to 16 times. Within that community and within the Jewish community community, it's 10 to 12 times. But within the Christian community, it's 0 to 1 time, meaning that Christians aren't doing more business with each other. So we're on a mission to change that. We're on a mission to really fund missions and missionaries and then also help business owners feel connected and supported with each other because oftentimes like when I go to church, there's no small groups for, for business owners and that's a gap that we plan to start solve.

Amazing. That's amazing. Such impact. I can't wait to, to hear more and learn more about that. Well, our time is.

Yeah, I know. And that sparks a whole other like realm of discussion points. I know we don't have time for it, but you know what? We'll do this Again.

Yes, yes. Brandon, thank you so much for your time. You've shared with us how to our listeners can get in touch with you@brandon barnum.com. they can also reference your book at raving referrals.com and you can look us up, ladies.

Check out hoa.com Check out hoa.com there's.

So many dot coms to look at here with what we've talked about, but there's so much information and just thank you so much and I look forward to all the inquiries that are going to come your way from our listeners. And so thank you again so much for your time.

My pleasure. Thank you ladies for what you're doing and, and for helping ladies kick assets. I love that.

Somebody'S got to, you.

Know, and it's so important. And one last thing, if I can, is as you're building your wealth, make sure that you're not only just creating income, but it's impact. Right. Make a difference with the money that you make. And so we're passionate about helping people be charity champions. Integrate that into your business. One of the things that I love in the book is the chapter about being a charity champion and really integrating call cause related marketing into everything that you do. So don't keep that quiet. Tell that story of the charities, the, the causes that you're supporting with your company. And what's interesting is 93% of consumers want to know the impact that you're making with your business. So don't keep that a secret. Share what you're doing. Invite your clients, your customers, your, your contractors or your employees out to make a difference. And what you'll see is your business will grow even faster because people will fall in love with the impact that you make.

Yes, I love that. Okay. Impact is one of the things that I have on my, my goal list is, you know, making an impact. And you know, I'm always asking God, you know, who am I serving today? You know, who, who am I serving and how am I helping?

So amen. What a great way to end. Thank you ladies. Appreciate you.

Thank you so much.