Los Silva - Part 3/3: Building Your Business With Remarkable Referrals

All right, welcome back to episode Number Trace with Los Silva. This is Brad Costanzo. You're listening to Bacon Wrap Business. And I'm mentioning that this is episode three because I have, I'm picking up where we left off on the prior two episodes, episode one and two, with one of my very closest friends and amazing entrepreneur, Lo Silva, co founder of buildgrowscale.com and the Black Label Society. And if you haven't listened to the other episodes, I encourage you to go back and listen to them. They're great and they'll set the context for one of the things we're going to talk about today. In the first episode, we talked about the, some of the entrepreneurial frustrations and mindset fears that we all deal with. And we got really, you know, pretty vulnerable on the way we feel on a day to day basis and you may resonate with that too. In episode two, we talked about building really authentic connections with people. Mastermind dinners. We talked about putting together groups of entrepreneurs to create experiences and how we go about doing that. And today we're going to talk about a strategy that LOS is using in order to build his, his network and his mastermind. We're going to talk about something that a lot of people want but very few people know how to really do well and that's how to get referrals. So, Los, welcome back to episode three, bud.

What's up, man?

Cool. So I was just asking you offline, let's share some cool stuff that people can use. And you're like, yeah, I don't know, I do a lot of stuff. But what's really working and one of the things you're really focusing on right now is growing the membership of Black Label Society. And you said that referrals, he goes, you said it sounds so simple, but it's working, is how to get referrals. So people who are professionals, everybody from real estate agents to business owners to financial advisors to really, anybody who's listening to this can benefit from getting referrals. I don't think there's many people out there who don't like those. Let's talk about referrals.

Your thoughts? So I never had a referral strategy. Right. We were big into building funnels and crazy campaigns and retargeting and all that. And then one of our really good friends, you and I's really good friends, Jason Medley, he has a mastermind called the Collective Genius. It's for real estate agents. He's got over 90 people there. He's expanding it to about 180, 150.

Jason's my hero.

Yeah. And we spent the weekend together and he was like, dude, how are you doing our referrals? And I was like, yeah, that stuff doesn't work. He's like, you're an idiot, dude. And so I've been focusing on doing referrals. So the biggest way that I've done that is, you know, it's basically $20,000 to join Black Label now. It used to be 18, we upped it. And it's very specific group of people. You know, you have to be, you have to have a million dollar business. You have to be a certain kind of entrepreneur in building a media property or in direct response.

So there's a lot of parameters, right. So we could go out and we do go out and build funnels for this and stuff like that. But Jason always said, focus on these people and then ask them for their best introduction because that's who they hang out with too. And I did it to a degree, but I started putting it together. What I mean with that is so we just onboarded a few new guys. The first thing I did after the onboarding session is read our profile sheet that they have. We asked them what their breakthrough is, what they're doing right now, where they're stuck, where they need help, how we can help them expand, and just really took time to implement things with them for their business.

So immediately I have a good friend of mine who joined, his name is Justin Sardi and he wanted to build a higher ticket recurring revenue program for his video marketing business. So I helped set the whole thing up. Email sequences the whole system together and in his first week he did over $16,000. Now we're implementing it and helping it get to another point and kind of like streamlining it and you know, it'll easily be something that will be worth 50k to plus a month now for him. And so he's starting to, you know, he gave us an amazing referral. I use that referral to send to people, but also like he sends that referral out to people and introductions that he knows, which brings people in for us. Another thing I did for this other guy that has a SEO business and kind of like a software business, Ryan McKenney is connect them with people inside of there that inside of our mastermind that could be great fits for him to build more subscribers and make more money on his offers.

They just did a webinar together and with that he made five figures and he's been bringing in people on as well. So I'm effectively letting.

Our referral strategy grow through the strategic use of delivering value to the people in our group and having them champion us and sell. Not just us, Tanner and I as the black label, but sell the group, the collective. So you're not joining like a coaching thing for me and Tanner. You're joining a group of the highest level entrepreneurs in this category.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And it's been, it's been successful. I know from experience. You've also. Is there anything else that you suggest people do when asking for referrals? I mean, I know that I used to have. I used to be a financial advisor. I built most of my business via referrals. And it's, you know, because I hated cold marketing, actually, I didn't hate it. I didn't know how to do it at the time. And then I did other types of service and sales businesses where I had that as well. I think one of the first things, you know, during the onboarding process or even the networking process, but especially onboarding is letting people know that, listen, referrals are gonna be expected. They're a part of this. It's. It's how we grow. And I like how you make it part of the, you know, it's not, it's not a focus on los. Yeah, no, it's a focus on the group.

It is. And that's, that's given us a lot of success recently. And I realize now that also taking care of your group, which in essence is taking care of your people tribe, however you, you know, anybody in your space.

Because they are their own little family. Like, I don't even, I don't even have a huge social media presence myself, but I have people champion, championing our brand and our business and our mastermind without me even doing anything and hashtagging it. And people meeting up in different parts of the city just to get together, just to do business, just to connect, just to be friends. And people starting to see that on social media, we get increased being like, dude, I feel like you built a fraternity of just high level entrepreneurs. And I'm like, I'm trying to, you know, that's, that's just focusing on the people. And then the. You give so much value to those guys that they can't wait to bring on other good people into the group. Right. Because a lot of times with this kind of stuff, I even feared. So I was like, well, everyone kind of knows each other. Why would you just send somebody here to essentially pay 20k but it's not that, right? You're getting your money back, you're meeting new people, you're connecting. And as entrepreneurs, just because I know you, I mean, we're like best friends. So I will go out of my way to see you, but just if I have a good friend, that doesn't mean I'm gonna go fly to his city and we're gonna hang out, we're gonna see each other when we see each other. But if we're in the same mastermind, we know we will see each other. XYZ times. Right? Like I was in a mastermind with a good friend who's a mentor of mine and yours, Vinnie Fisher. And now Vinnie and I are really good friends through that. Right. Like we don't need the mastermind now, but we were in one together for two and a half years. So those things happen. Right. And so I've been focused on facilitating success for people in ways that they haven't thought of or have just been too close to looking at it, and then asking for a reciprocal favor, being like, hey, if you know people that we could help succeed and that the whole collective can help, you know, grow, bring them in. And that's, that's done a lot for us.

Yeah, that's awesome. You know, the, the key also to a mastermind, you kind of touched on this about making it, you know, we kind of, we come back to the idea of the mastermind. It's something both of us run, something both of us are real familiar with and other folks, you know, if you're in professional services, this won't resonate as much. However, it still should. The.

The fact that in a mastermind, you build quickly a relationship with people and most of the time people will invest in a mastermind, especially paid one for access to other big time people. Well, once you're in there for a little while, you've got the relationship. Oftentimes people are like, alright, I'm here, I don't need this anymore, I'm out. So it's so key to create that experience, to create something that people will pay for, even when they know, even when they're best friends with all of the people in there. I know you've done a good job at that. I've tried to do a good job at that, where you really focus on that experience. Plus when you do that, when you create something really remarkable, people want to give you the referrals. I don't care if you're the best hairdresser in town or you're the best financial advisor, CPA or whatever. Create that experience that people have and they will talk about it. I'm currently rereading a book. I don't know if you ever read Seth Godin's book Purple Cow. Have you ever read that?

I have not. Is it on audible?

It probably is. I just, I read on Kindle because I'm. I'm literate, unlike you.

Yeah. I listen to words.

So what's. What's awesome about this book? And I, you know the, the title, Purple Cow. I forget what the subtitle is. It's probably good, but it's why you need the purple cow. It's, you know, he uses the, the metaphor that if you're driving through a field, like if you've never seen a cow, the first time you see a cow, like, wow, look, that's a cow. That's amazing. And then pretty soon you've seen cows and you see a pasture full of cows, and they're not amazing anymore because they're what you expect. But if you saw a purple cow, you'd be like, wow, look, there's a purple cow. It's amazing because it's something new. It's novel and it's remarkable. And he is. The point Seth is making in this book is that in order to stand out in today's world, where attention spans are low, bl blindness to advertising is no longer working nearly as much as word of mouth and social, that you have to stand out. You have to be a purple cow, meaning you have to be remarkable in some way. There's another book I recommended the other day to Dan Martell called Microscript Rules. And this kind of has to do with. It's not what people.

It's not what people. What does it say? It's not what people.

Remember. It's what they repeat about you. So if they repeat something like, oh, Black Label is awesome because of this, Boardroom is awesome because of that. And whatever they repeat is what they. They pass on. And that helps grow referrals. But highly recommend. Purple Cow Head is really, really good. I've read it once. I'm rereading it again because I love Seth Godin.

I'll definitely check it out.

So referrals are awesome. You also do. I know you also do some cold advertising to get people and you're a pretty accomplished media buyer and you know what you're doing with that. But it's. Is your favorite way to do this, obviously, is hand picking and curating people and referrals.

Right? 100% yeah, we do buy traffic and things like that. But we have noticed that the quality of people that we get are coming from social posts, case studies from within our group and referrals. Right. And I mean we, you know, we have the blessing I guess that we're pretty connected guys. So you know, I can reach out to my network and go, hey, you know, I'm building the top mastermind in the world for media entrepreneurs. Building big media brands, apparel companies and direct response. Who do you know in that, in that area that, that is looking to grow and be with like minded guys.

And most of my friends can send me one or two people. Right. So it's gotten to the point where we don't know what to do because we're like, well should we, should we take it up to 100 and we don't want to. So maybe do two groups of 50 or just focus smaller level group of people that haven't reached there. But my passion is on people that have because I connect with them better. So it's, you know, the growing, the good and bad, I guess growing pains of, you know, building this. But most of our stuff is pretty referral based and we're not going out of our way to.

Bring people in. We are going out of our way to doing. We do smaller workshops now. Like I said on the second one. Our first workshop is going to be on September 21st in San Diego. But you won't be there because you're going to be in Greece.

Yeah.

So you're a baller.

Hopefully it doesn't. Hopefully it doesn't. I'm just hoping that it's not like crazy over there and that everything's just super cheap.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You'll have fun. But yeah, it'll be at the Grand Marquis Marriott and we're just going to be having about 25, 30 people in there and just focusing on people's businesses, helping them build, grow and scale them. And then if it's a good fit, we will invite them to potentially join Black Label. And if they are just not there with their business, we have a small, I don't want to say lower level but just a thing that suits them better to help them get to that point.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So are there any, are there any tools you use? I, I love that. I want people to go check that out. First of all, go to baconratbusiness.com black label. But I wanted to take just a moment to ask you if there's because building relationships and managing those, it Takes a lot of work. Do you use any tools or there. Is there any. Whether it's software tools, organization systems to keeping. Keep track of.

Yeah, so I use.

I use Trello to build personal profiles on people, what they like, what they don't like, how they work, blah, blah, blah. I use Wunderlist for my action tasks and things like that.

Just. Just for things I need to do, to do lists, things like that. And you know, I may have a list of hey, I need to contact so and so and stuff like that. And then I use this thing called toutapp. T O U T A p dot com.

Mm.

Right. So I can, you know, send you an email and I know that you opened it or you didn't open it, and then I can kind of put you in a. It's technically a business development funnel, but I just use it for relationships and I have. I have all my stuff in there. I also. I'm getting away from this because I'm putting more time into tout. But there's also another one called Streak that some guys that used to work at Google made. And it was nice, but it was kind of. It was cluttering my inbox a little bit too much because it's too much of a. It just, just. I didn't like the way it looked and there's not too many pieces of a, you know, biz dev funnel that go into building relationships. It's just kind of like, did I send it? What do I need to send next? They open the email. Sorry, I really need to do. So I just, I just use Tout. You can use yesware to kind of do something similar, mostly just to see if people are opening their emails and things like that.

And those are the three things that I. That I use. I'm obsessed with Trello. Most people.

I love Trello, which I use it, but it just keeps my. I love the Kanban system of looking at things in a particular pattern, so I know what needs to happen. So that. That in my wunder list are two tools that I cannot live without.

And I use something from Dan Sullivan. It's an app and it's just more. I don't use it so much for myself anymore. But it's called Win Streak. I will have three wins that I want to achieve that day.

I haven't heard of that. Is this a tool?

It's an app. It's free, easy. It just says what are your wins? And you post however many you want something cool. I'm using it for now, which is just Amazing. And it's teaching my daughter how to be awesome is I do it with Sienna, so we have a win streak together. So I'll put mine, and then I'll be like, what are your wins? And she's like, I have to eat healthy. I gotta brush my teeth. And we're gonna go. We have to go to the movies today. And those are her wins for today. I love it. And so every day, she's coming up to me and be like, daddy, what are our wins today? And I'm like, well, we don't have any wins for. We already did our wins. We have to focus on our wins for tomorrow. Cause it's. We do it at night. And so every day, we're just, like, pumping out, like, what our. What our wins are together. And it's awesome because she looks forward to it.

That's awesome. Yeah. I just bought this thing called five Minute Journal, and I think if you go to. I think it's the number five minute journal.

I used to have it, but I like this one better.

Yeah, no, I like that. And I also like the tactile book feeling. So Kenya and I both every morning and every evening. It's really cool. It's like one page per day. And it just asks you, what are three things you're grateful for? What are three things that would make today awesome? You know, amazing? What. Like, what are those three wins you're looking for? And then a simple affirmation like, I am. Fill in the blank. And then after that, it says, you know, what are three amazing things that happened today? And then, how could I have made today better? You do that before bed. And I love it. I also. I love the concept of having it on the app and the. You know, just keeping those streaks going. I've used the Coach Me app, which used to be called Lyft. But Speaking of the 5 Minute Journal, that's been part of a new daily ritual system that I've been doing called the Miracle morning. And I've told you about it, and I know. I've told several other My friends doing it. Kenya's doing it. I'm on, I believe day. Wait, 14. 15. I think I'm on day 17.

I think you're 17. That's what I. That's what you said on the Slack group.

Yeah. And I am. My goal is to do 32 days in a row. Hal Elrod, the author of the. Of the book, we tweeted a couple times when I first started, and he loved the fact that I announced what I was doing and I said look, I'd love to have you on my show after I complete my 30 day or 32 day in my case streak. And he said yes. So hopefully you guys will hear from the best selling author Hal Elrod on the show about how to create a morning ritual that really works for you. I'm not gonna lie, it hasn't. It's been somewhat challenging but it's been fun and my life is definitely getting more productive. I love the tools that you shared. I'm definitely gonna download Winstreak, one of the ones that I started using. I told you about this offline the other day but I' liking it so far. I'm still in my 30 day free trial version but I'm going to keep it is called contactually. So that's like contact U A L L Y. If you go to bacon wrapped business.com contactually you'll go to that, to that site and you'll see it. What I really like about it is it's like a personal CRM that interacts with your own email. So it's not like an autoresponder. So if I put you on a list and I mass mail 50 people at a time, then it's not going to have the unsubscribe button under there because these are my personal contacts. It'll send it through my Gmail or my Outlook or whatever I use. But what I think is really neat is not only does it keep track of all the things that all the people that you've, that you've been emailing, it'll tell you how long it's been. It'll give you like red, green or yellow like it's red saying hey, you said that you want to keep in contact with Stephen Key, one of my former guests on the show, every 90 days and it's been 95 days or it's close to, you know, follow up with this person. And you can put people I love this in buckets. So you can say that certain people are in my mastermind active members or their prospects or they're. These are people who are my inner circle or my advocates and these are people who are just in different buckets and every bucket has a different follow up time. I can say I want to make sure that if you're in this bucket you're important enough to me. Where I want to at least send you an email or phone call every week, 45 days. If you are a relationship person like myself, then something like this may really work for you. Once More. You can go to baconritebusiness.com contactually and check that out. I'm using it.

Los. This is awesome. I love sharing tools and tricks, and I think this is some of your insights on the referrals have been really amazing. Is there anything else you want to share before we wrap this one up?

I also have.

Another app that I'm using that I like. It's called Balanced. It's an iPhone app. If you don't have iPhone. Sorry about that. I don't know if they have it for Android, but it's called Balanced. And basically, I write my activities that I'm doing for myself from fitness, things that I appreciate, anything creative. This is where I post pictures of my family and stuff like that. Anything for confidence. Because sometimes I feel like shit and sometimes I feel happy because I'm an entrepreneur.

It makes you do things. It can remind you to talk to a stranger. Leave your comfort zone. Be adventurous. Set new goals. If I go to set new goals, I create an icon and I say, I should try this 15 times a year. So it'll just send me reminders of things I need to do. I like to do those kinds of things because I feel a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we get in our own way and we start doing things like not appreciating ourselves, not appreciating our lives. We kind of have awesome lives. So sometimes it's good to create, even if you have to kind of like force balance. And that's kind of.

So that's Balance. The app is called Balance.

Yeah, it's just Balance app.

What? Balance or Balance Ed with a Ed.

It is just Balanced with Ed.

Okay. Yeah, Cool. So I see that. I'm gonna. I'm gonna get that. I love that kind of stuff.

Man, this has been. This has been really cool. So if. If folks want to hear more from Los. He's not on Facebook. I don't know if he wants to share that story. And that's okay, 100%.

Now.

However, you are on Twitter at los underscoresilva and@baconrapbusiness.com forward slash black label.

And we are launching. We're actually launching BGS TV, which is going to be our YouTube channel, and BGS FM, which is going to be our podcast.

Oh, awesome.

So, yeah, stay. Stay tuned for that. You'll be able to find information that@buildgrowscale.com yeah, that's awesome.

I love that. So, guys, listen to that. I don't know if we're going to do another episode after this. We've been talking for like an hour and a half or feels like it. However, I know we can do this more. If you like the this format. By the way, the shorter episodes, especially if you like this ones with Los Angeles, send me an email and let me know. And if we get enough hate mail, I might just stop calling LOS back.

If you like him, I'll make Los a co host on the show because I know he likes to talk and I like to talk with you, buddy.

Also, leave a review on itunes. And if you do like this stuff, you can subscribe in a couple places because I don't want you to miss a show. And I like to share stuff with you that goes through my mind and whenever I get a great idea, I give it away to you so that you might think that I'm super special and cool and you'll come to me and maybe give me money to help you make your business or your life grow. See how I do that? But one of the things that I want to leave you with is a. An opportunity to potentially grow your own business. And this is what I mean. I mentioned this on the last show. So I had this idea the other day to utilize all of my awesome listeners. And I got a lot of them, a lot of you folks. I may be getting drowned in resources, but I want to know who you are and what you do. And I want you to subscribe to my newsletter, but at the same time, I want you to share with me what you do like as a resource because I like to build my resources up from anybody who offers. You know, it can be digital marketing services, it can be professional services, it can be whatever. But I want resources to call upon when somebody asks me for a referral or when I need this stuff myself. Currently, I have to go looking at Craigslist and Upwork and Elance and all these other places and referrals. Hey, who do you know that is a good web designer? Who do you know that's a good copywriter? Who do you know that's a good attorney, whatever. And I thought this would be a great idea for you, my listeners, who we already have something in common, which is how awesome you think I am to share with me.

Who you are, what you do, what value you bring and your contact information. That way I can go through and take a look at these and I might just be like, hey, I really liked what this guy had to say. I really like his website or her website, etc. And I may a want to interview you for the show. But I also may either be able to bring you my own business or bring you some referral based business. You never know. And I just had this idea that maybe you would like to share what you do with me so you can do this in a couple ways. Send an email to ask bradaconrappedbusiness.com and tell me a little bit about who you are, who you serve, what you do, and maybe why I should consider you as either a referral out or even potentially to hire and maybe like who your ideal client is, etc. But share that with me and I'll also subscribe you to my newsletter so you'll know when the new shows come out, when the extra special resources come out. I'm working on one of those for you right now. But you can also go to baconratbusiness.com who are you? And fill out the form there and make it really easily done. So once more, I think this is a cool idea to help myself by helping you. If you also just want to ask me any questions, if you're interested in working with me, either coaching or consulting, you can also email me@askbradakenratbusiness.com and just let me know. And if you just want to tell me how great Los and I are, leave a review on itunes. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. But just go over there, click the review button, click subscribe, and more importantly than anything, tell your friends about it. Hopefully I've created a purple cow in the podcast podcast world, which is something that's remarkable, something that's fun and different. I'm not afraid to try new things and bring you guys a ton of value. So reward me by telling people about it. Los, my brother from another mother, thank you very much for being on the show today, buddy.

Thanks for having me, bro. I appreciate you taking the time and bringing me on to share things with everybody.

No, it's always fun. I mean, we talk all the time anyway and we. How many times have we said we should be recording these conversations?

Yesterday you pretty much.

So here we are today doing that three episodes in the can. I think I'm done talking to you though. I don't think we're gonna do a fourth right this minute.

No, I gotta bounce. Yep. To do too.

I gotta go make the bacon.

Yeah.

All right, brother. Hey everybody else, as I said, let me know how I can help you use that email address. Ask bradakenrightbusiness.com and I will see you on the next episode. Take care, guys.

See you guys.