The Secret to More Referrals and Higher Client Loyalty with Dean Jackson and Joe Polish

You know, when we talk about the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, it's a metric that most people don't measure. It's amazing, but Alex hit it on the head that most people don't even pay attention to it. Then the level, the metric that we use in the after unit to see how your referral situation is going is what we call return on relationship. And we measure that by not the percentage of your business that's coming from referral, but the percentage of your members, clients, people who become referents. And we are designed to refer as long as we've been playing the cooperation game for centuries, thousands of years. And as soon as we started playing the cooperation game, where we were banding together and realizing that we can be better if everybody's doing their part, that became wired into us genetically, that we're constantly looking for ways to prove our value to the tribe or to the herd or to your group of 150 people that we would band together. Together with. The last thing that you want when you're playing the cooperation game in your world with the people who you interact with all the time, the last thing we want to be recognized as is a taker or somebody who doesn't contribute or someone who's not adding value to the ecosystem. And, you know, you trace that all the way back that if we were all, you know, this whole room, if we were in a truck, tribe banding together, and I'm out hunting, you know, gathering, and I find a big patch of blueberries. And I come back and on my way, I see Alex. And Alex runs into me and I say to Alex, hey, Alex, there's a big patch of blueberries over there. Go, go gather them up and we'll have some blueberries tonight. Now, in that moment, I'm higher status than Alex because I gave him information that's valuable to him and that he didn't know until I told him that.

How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish show. Any problem in the world can be solved at the right genius network. How many of you ever heard of the real estate coaching group by referral only Joe Stump. Okay, so Dean created all the marketing for buy referral only. I mean, he's the one that designed all this stuff. And the reason it was called by referral only was because of the marketing setting it up. And so, Dean, those of you that. How many of you don't know who Dean Jackson is? Okay, so Dean Jackson, they call him the marketing Buddha. I've been doing the I love marketing podcast with him since 2010. I've known Dean for close as long as I've known Alex. So we've known since the 90s, mid-90s. And so Dean, how many of you have an Opt in page on your website? So Dean is the person who invented the squeeze page where you put in your name and you go to the next page, which then became the modern day version of the Opt in. So he's the inventor of that. And he was doing that with an ebook called Stop youp Divorce back in the 90s where he had an E book and he would ask people to give it. You know, how many of you know Eben Pagan? Okay, Eben, you know, sold, you know, well over $100 million worth of advice on dating. Basically built the largest dating advice. David d' Angelo for men and then Christian Carter was it for. Yeah, for women. So it was double your dating for men and catch him and keep him for women. See the two differences with that. But Dean taught Evan the model that ended up making Evan very wealthy. And then what's really funny, just to show the domino effect of knowledge. So I was talking to Craig Clemons day before yesterday. Craig Clemons used to come to our events when he was broke and sit in the back and take notes. Evan taught him how to do marketing with what he learned from Dean. Craig is now got over a thousand employees and his business is doing over a billion a year. That all started from these guys learning stuff and different people at different levels. So Dean, Dean is extraordinarily sharp. You heard all this stuff that Alex said. What are your thoughts on that?

I love it. Masterclass level. Thank you, Alex. That was fantastic. You know the thing that we talk about in the after unit, you know, when we talk about the before unit, the during unit and the after unit, it's a metric that most people don't measure. It's amazing what Alex hit it on the head that most people don't even pay attention to it. The level, the metric that we use in the after unit to see how your referral situation is going is what we call return on relationship. And we measure that by not the percentage of your business that's coming from referral, but the percentage of your members, clients, people who become reference. And what we look for is that we should be able to strive for a 20% annual yield from your relationship portfolio, we call it. And it's, it's pretty amazing. Some of the things that Alex said, there's some deep psychology that's going on there. And, you know, when we started really looking, I mean, the name of the company we built was by referral only. So the referrals are so near and dear to me. But in looking at them, one of the biggest things that we had to overcome is people's aversion to, as Alex said, asking for referrals or presenting that in a place where it may feel like you're showing weakness by asking or begging for business, that it feels like maybe you don't know how to get business on your own and you've gotta ask for it. So our egos are very, you know, attached to this kind of thing. So I really started digging into this and realizing that we have to get through the psychology of why people refer, and we are designed to refer. As long as we've been playing the cooperation game for centuries, thousands of years. As soon as we started playing the cooperation game, where we were banding together and. And realizing that we can be better if everybody's doing their. Their part, that became wired into us genetically, that we're constantly looking for ways to prove our value to the tribe or to the herd or to your group of 150 people that we would band together with. So when you realize that the real reason that people refer anything is because it increases, it raises our status in the herd. And the last thing that you want when you're playing the cooperation game in your world with the people who you interact with all the time, the last thing we want to be recognized as is a taker or somebody who doesn't contribute or someone who's not adding value to the ecosystem. And, you know, you trace that all the way back that if we were all, you know, this whole room, if we were in a tribe banding together, and I'm out hunting, you know, gathering, and I find a big patch of blueberries. And I come back, and on my way, I see Alex. And Alex runs into me, and I say to Alex, hey, Alex, there's a big patch of blueberries over there. Go, go gather them up, and we'll have some blueberries tonight. Now, in that moment, I'm higher status than Alex because I gave him information that's valuable to him that he didn't know until I told him that. Now he immediately feels the need to balance that book. So he might tell me, well, watch out behind those rocks, because I saw a lion on the way over here, so. Or even he added value to me in exchange for me adding value to him, not in a transactional way, but in a relational way. Just like Alex was saying, because protecting me with the blueberries on my way back to the tribe is going to benefit him selfishly. That we're all going to benefit by me not getting eaten by a tiger and I'm going to benefit by Alex going and bringing more blueberries back. Right. So when we understand that that's really what's happening in any interaction that we're having as long as we've been playing the cooperation game and you see that we're wired to do it, we're constantly referring things, let's lower the stakes of, you know, we take out money of it, but we're constantly recommending books, restaurants, movies, service providers, everything. Were constantly, when in conversation, contributing and adding value. You know, the greatest example of this happened at Genius Network. Michael Burnoff, I saw him in the back there. We were sitting out at lunch and outside when you had the. The big tree outside the thing, everybody's sitting under the tree. And there were a group that were here from out of town and they asked Michael, hey, Michael, do you know any good, you like doing good restaurants? Where should we go for dinner tonight? There's a group of eight of them. And Michael said, do you like sushi? And they said, yeah. He goes, I got you. And he gets right there and he gets on his phone and he types out a message or dictates a voiced memoir to Sushi Roku. I still remember the name of the. The place. And he's telling them, hey, do you have room for a party of eight tonight? And they said, yes. And he said, perfect. They're going to come at 7 o' clock and give him the double royal treatment. And I still remember those words because that's exactly what he said. Now, if you deconstruct what happened there, Alex is getting squirts of dopamine and serotonin because he, he looks like a big shot. Now that he looks like he's connected at Sushiroku, he's raising his status in the group that he's the insider and not only did he tell us a great restaurant, but he's going to get us the double royal treatment. Everybody was giddy with excitement about this experience. Now the guy who owns Sushiroku is thinking he's getting the double squirts of dopamine because next time Michael goes in to Sushi Roku, the guy's going to say, hey, thank you so much. They came, they had a great time. You can't believe the tip they left me or whatever. He's getting all These double squirts. And that's why we referred. Now imagine in that scenario, if they went to Sushi Roku and they sat in the dining room, but then up on the wall there's a big referral contest and Michael Bernoff's name is up at the top and he's in line to win a cruise. Does that change the whole dynamic of the experience? It changes it because they realize he was just a. They were just a bounty. There was a bounty on their heads, and that ruins that experience. Alex, you look like you're going to.

Say, well, I'm just going to just dovetail off of what you said. So I became Michael within seconds and then my height grew. He said Alex for just a little bit and went back to Michael. So thank you for that. Because, like, half a foot taller, all of a sudden, the one thing in chiropractic medicine, they're a little bit more aggressive with marketing. And the good ones, at least the ones that I've consulted, they'll have the reference on the wall. And many people go in there as a stick strategy to see their name on the wall. Okay, now the next thing I'm going to smuggle in, so pretend like you're not listening. What I really want to do is fractional CMO for him is when we have reference like you, the first time your person comes into the room, if they become a member, I want the reference to introduce the referral like it's their duckling and they're responsible for that person. That way, Joe's staff doesn't get taxed with people who don't know our culture. And it happens. If you do that with your events or with your community and you have those introductions made, I can't tell you what a stick strategy that is. I don't know if you'll go for it, but the team is hearing it right now and I'd rather apologize than ask for permission, but that's what I'd like to do because it's so powerful. Because now the chances of Adam staying for the three years, which we recognize as being foundation growth acceleration, is far more likely because he's a sponsor. And if it works in 12 step and recovery, it's going to work here too. It's in our veins. So think about that for your own business.

I've previously received the advice that it's useful to instead of asking for a referral, look at who somebody is connected to and say, wow, that looks like somebody I would love to work with, love to meet. And then Say, hey, I noticed that you have a connection with this person. Could you please make an introduction for me? Because that requires significantly less brain power on their part to do it. They can just say, oh, sure, no problem, versus asking them to think about who might be a good referral. I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that.

So quick answer from me, Dean. So it's just languaging for that. I would say that's a great idea because you're doing most of the work for them. They don't have to think of the person. Rather than saying, would you be willing to ask now you've just given them a burden. I would first ask, hey, why do you think we're so great? And I'm just truncating it. Okay, tell me. I want you to release dopamine and oxytocin on why we're so great. Then we can hug it out. Then you say, well, I noticed that you have such and such. Would you be willing to introduce us to them if they have the same reasons you do? So start with that bridge. Sometimes you can't ask for marriage on the first date. It doesn't work right. And so if you just court them a little bit, can take less than 300 seconds, then you'll have more luck. And I think that's a. That's a great way if you know what she's doing.

Thank you, Mike. Unless Dean had something he wanted to add to that.

Yeah, I mean, the. The whole thing, it's a great thing of selecting, you know, once you know why people refer, you can start to look for the mechanics of how those referrals actually happen and then orchestrate situations so that they happen more often. So if we buy into this idea that people refer for their own reasons, that they're referring because of their. They want to be a contributor and that they get the reward is that feeling that raising that status, that social equity of. Of doing it. Now we look at how the referrals actually happen, and they all happen in conversation. So in order for a referral to take place, three things have to happen. They have to notice the conversation is about whatever it is. They have to think about you, and then they have to introduce you to the person that they're having the conversation with. And that's. You can program people for that. I had one of the funniest things that happened is we have a real estate community. And in the forum, somebody said somebody typed in one of the threads, does anybody know where I could get carpet installed quickly? I've Got a closing tomorrow. And the painter just spilled paint all over the carpet. It's ruined. And what happened really kind of shook me that in that moment, without even consciously thinking about it, my brain started singing 850 882-300-IME. And I realized in that moment that that message had been smuggled into my brain against my will. It had been living there rent free for over 20 years, just waiting to get triggered by somebody saying, same day carpet. Same day carpet. 800-588-and I even knew number. And I realized there's something powerful happening here. And I realized that we could program people for referrals. And the outcome that we're looking for is that we plant the seed of the high probability conversations that we want people to notice. So if we think about it that if somebody is in conversation with another entrepreneur and they're saying, I really want to go for it next year, I really want to grow our business by 10 times or whatever it is that that conversation, if we get somebody to notice that if we think about sending messages to all genus network members and saying, hey, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about and insert the high probability conversation there. Say, if you hear someone talking about that, give me a call or text me and I'll get you a copy of Joe's book or I'll get you a copy of the Joe Sugarman book or I'll get you a copy of 10 times is easier than two times or who, not how or whatever the book that would be most impactful in that conversation. And as soon as they call to ask for that, we're setting up an opportunity for them to be the hero that now they've had a conversation, they said I really wanted to go for it. And we know that 10 times time, you know, 10 times easier than two times is a great book. And we can give somebody a copy of the book to give to their friend. But the point is that they're going to call to ask for that because you're giving them dopamine opportunities, right? You're giving them serotonin opportunities to feel good and add value for people. And now you're in conversation with somebody who's had a conversation with someone who wants to ten times their business.

Perfect fit or first off, this is absolutely spectacular. Let me say this also, Dean, because I was going to try to have wrapped up in nine minutes.

I'm sorry, I get excited about referral.

Yeah, here's.

Here's what, what if you want to just say anything quickly to this, Dean, so in 2025, I've been talking with Dean about this that I want to actually, every month, I want to do a training on marketing with Dean for all of you. And I want to cover every one of the eight profit activators. The before, during, and after unit elf versus half irresistible offers. What is it that you are going to offer? What's going to be the signature result that you all want to receive in your business? So that we can help build marketing around it, and we offer that to all Genius Network members. This will be optional. If you don't want marketing help, you don't have to participate in this. So it's. None of this is. It's totally optional and there's no extra charge for it. It'll just be part of genius network for 100k members. We'll make this optional. Also, I would like to do a breakthrough blueprint because I've been through many breakthrough blueprints. How many of you ever been to one of Dean's breakthrough blueprints? Elko and Nels? George, did you ever go. You've been through one, Donis? Yeah. George, did you ever go through one? No. Okay, so what I want to do, like, breakthrough blueprints are cool because you go through. But doing it in a room of, like, badasses. Like we have, like with Tommy Mello and with Tim Schmidt and Dan Sullivan and everyone, you, you know, everyone that's in the group, I think it'll be exceptional. And so that's one of the things I want to do in the 100k group is have, like a breakthrough blueprint specifically with those members. So that's the thing that I'm going to be working on with Dean. So let's do a few more questions, you guys. Okay. If we go a little bit over four, because to get the questions, let's try to wrap up in about 20 minutes if we could. So let's go ahead. Mike.

Yeah.

Mike Foltz, gentlemen, thank you so much. This is absolute gold. A side note, if you haven't seen Alex's stick strategy videos on the website, they are amazing. So definitely find those and review those. I get the, you know, not having an affiliate program that makes a lot of sense, but what about ways to recognize your top reference, like tracking? Obviously we're tracking those, and maybe there's like a gifting mechanism you have inside your business. Is that something you guys do? Do you have strategies around that?

Yes, we do it to a degree and we are definitely improving that because there's a lot of it's been, hey, let's decide to do this. We've over the. We've done things where we've offered, you know, different Amazon gift cards too, sometimes. I wouldn't say don't ever. Like, I think whatever you reward and reinforce, you get more. So I'm a big believer in gifts. I'm a big believer in, you know, sending out, you know, thank yous. Like in my carpet cleaning business, we would send $10 in the form of five $2 bills. And people weren't referring so they can make 10 bucks.

They weren't.

We were just doing it just as a way of saying thank you. And we were doing it with $2 bills because they would rarely spend the $2. And what I wanted was when they would open up their wallet, I wanted them constantly thinking about my carpet cleaning business. Right. So. And what I realized is that if you make a reward conditional, where they have, like 10% off your next cleaning, well, they have to spend more money with you to get rewarded. Where I would say, if you just do something simple. But I would have carpet cleaners because the majority of refers to in a carpet cleaning business would be women. And so they would do joint ventures with hair and nail salons with where, you know, you can get a pedicure. Every referral you give us, you get a free pedicure. And it was working like crazy. But we have, you know, the real answer. You may have come up with something with my team that I'm oblivious to while I was. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Because when I was gone, they, like, created all this stuff that I'm like.

They'Re saving me so much time at meetings. So I'm so grateful to all of you because we meet every week. So you've heard. I'm sure all of you heard Napoleon's quote, men and women are willing to die for the color of ribbons. What is that status? If you have a PhD, that certificate costs you, your parents, friends, spouse, nearly half a million dollars, depending on what type of PhD it is. And it's on the wall. It's status. So what I believe is the best, because stat, nothing, nothing comes close to status. Nothing in my experience. So all I would do, look at American Express. They charge you for status for a different color of a card, $5,000 a year for a card, and if you don't renew, you'll never come back again. They're genius, right? So in this case, the best status play would be, in his case, the Giver of the year award. So at the annual event I'd love to carve out half an hour and let. This is for 20, 25, because we have to have a full year right now. We know who would win, right? But put it out there as the giver of the year, because, you know, we're givers, obviously, what's in it for them? And so I would definitely do honorable mention for the ones and the twos. But that way you can reward through status on stage who the reference are. People don't know what referent even is. And you'll have number one, number two, number three, maybe an honorable mention. The more people who win, the better. If you have an annual event, virtual or physical, if you can have an award like that. And who did I learn this from? Thanks to him and Bill Phillips is Joe. Because I did better. Your best, which goes back 20 years. I did it more virtually than any other human being. When I was doing teleseminars and people would stick into a course. 2,500 bucks just on teleseminars. I was ridiculed, you know, and made fun of like, they'll never pay that much. They did, you know, and $14 million later, in five years, it was because of the teleseminar. I call them teleseminarians. The teleseminarian of the year, right? People who made money, those are professionals. And then amateurs who never made a dollar. To teleseminars. You can do the same thing. Having an award at one of your annual events for masterminds, that's an excellent thing. I'd like to do it in 2025. And that's a good way to engage people and have a little score sheet, you know, with such and such, like the chiropractor does in the office with the names up there. So that's what I would do not only as a stick strategy. Remember, reference stay with you longer. I can. I can correlate and Dean, you can. You have more experience with this. Lifetime value goes up. If you have people giving referrals, right? Because they're bringing people in. They own the business. They have equity. They have. They have relationship equity in the business. So that's my answer.

You gotta kind of. It's not about somebody like referring something that you're turning somebody into a sales person. What you're doing is you want to give people the opportunity to give something to people. Give a friend is much better than refer a friend, right? In a way, but it's the same thing. What you really want is you want to know that one of your, you know, reference one of your, your people was in a conversation with somebody who was just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Now, do you think that the person who had multiple sclerosis and shot the video and talked about how miraculous it was that if they were in conversation with somebody and they said, my cousin has just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis or whatever, the thing is that they would be, it would be valuable if you had some kind of a resource for them to give somebody. Not to get them to sell on coming to see you or to going the next level of participating in it, but the awareness of it. You know, we have, we, we talk in, in marketing and especially we talk about referrals. This idea of know you, like you, trust you. You've heard people say that people have to know you, like you, trust you in order to refer, but that when they're normally referring to it, they're normally talking about it in as one thing, know you like you, trust you as one destination without properly revering the giant leap from not knowing you to knowing you. And so it's a great way that if you can, instead of having them make a leap of liking you and trusting you enough to come and see you, is just that they have an awareness that you even exist and that the work that you do helps people or you're just educating them about the seed. You're just getting that little seed of hope in somebody that maybe this is worth looking into. You know, that's really a, that's what we're really looking for.

There's a place in, I've been there in years called Optimal Health Institute, where there's one in San Diego, another one, I believe in Texas, if they're still around. And they, you know, people would go there with stage four cancer. I mean, they would juice, fasts, coffee, enemas. I mean, the whole world is. And I went there for like a week. And it's funny because I was with former mayor Marion Barry. He was like, they're always. Guy was an interesting guy. And basically they said no matter what you have, you're not allowed to call. Like you have a problem with cancer. You have a problem, you have to refer to it as an opportunity. Like you have a cancer opportunity. You have a, you know, you have this disease opportunity because we're not going to solve it. If you're thinking that this is going to kill you if you, if you feel that's the case, it will. And so try to frame this as an opportunity and this will be for more discussion just because of where we're at with time. But this is something that I taught for many years called the happy client experience. And you know, there's 8 billion people on the planet and every person wakes up, even if they're homeless, even if they're, you know, wherever they're at in their life and they have an expectation. You either, if you have, you have this expectation of what's going to happen throughout the day and if it was, and if you exceeded those expectations, you had a good day. If it was just an okay day, you had an okay day. And if it was like all kinds of bad shit happened, you had a bad day, right? So the same thing with customers, clients, prospects, etc. So there's three experiences here to simplify it. Whenever you are selling something to somebody and you want these clients to, or customers or patients to refer someone, to introduce someone, well, if they got less than what they expected from you, that's not going to happen. If they got exactly what they expected may happen, but probably not unless you're the only person in town that does what you do. So the closest we're ever going to get to loyalty with a relationship is to put people into the box of getting more than what they expected. As an example, hopefully you don't do this, but how many of you ever like eat at McDonald's or have ever gone to McDonald's in the past and you order a burger, right? Quarter Pounder, whatever. Now if they don't even say thank you when they hand you the bag of toxic food and charge you whatever they charge you, you're not even going to think about it because you go to McDonald's, you're not expecting some world class service. But if you go to the Four Seasons and you buy a $47 hamburger and they don't even say thank you, you immediately got less than what you expected because of how you framed it. It's not the burger, it's the environment, it's all that stuff. So the thing is, you want to make sure that you put people as much as you can into giving more. Because where the majority of introductions, reference, referrals, loyalty, repeat business are from people that are getting more than what they expected. So what I would say is if you have someone in your world that you're exceeding their expectations. To Dean's point, it's very hard for them not to tell other people about it. You know, Walt Disney had this great line where he said, when people come to Disneyland, I want them to have such a great experience that they cannot not tell other people about it. And if you do that to where something happens, where they have to tell somebody about it, even if the culture is going to keep it all quiet, that's what I would think about. And if you did a little bit of thinking time and brainstorming on that, I believe you can break through that sort of barrier. And I don't even know if you can get this book anymore because it's out of print, but you can probably buy it used. Patty Lung's book, Dean Jackson has done it, too. He was a dentist in Australia and he wrote the Happy Client Experience. And from what I can remember, Patty Lung had, I think, a gun to his head or in his mouth as a dentist and was going to commit suicide. And the gun, when he pulled the trigger, misfired and set it down. And it made him reflect. And this was like back in the 90s that, what the hell has happened in my business that I wanted to take my life? So he shut his practice down and he sent a letter to everyone saying, I'm not going to be able to serve you, but you can go to this dentist, but I'm remodeling my whole business. And when we're ready, I will let you know. And so what he did is he thought about the whole experience of going to a dentist where there's like this glass and people come in and it's very clinical, and they sit in a waiting room and it's just nothing. No one's looking forward to going to a dentist. And so he wanted to create this happy experience. And I might be butchering this story, Dean, so if you know the better version. But basically, I think the way he did it was he so many years ago that I read that book, he sent a letter to everyone when he was ready to open up his practice that said, I will continue to be your dentist. But he doubled his prices. He sent everyone that would agree to be a client a key to the office. And there was no sign for the dental clinic. All the signs said was by referral only. And in order to continue to be a patient of his, they had to refer two people a year into his dental practice. And then they were able. And, and. And he totally transformed his business. And I think he became one of the most successful dental practices in Australia. And so he wrote a whole book about it called the Happy Client Experience. So it's a fantastic book. Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulish Show. Subscribe today at the joe paulish show.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please please visit thejopolishow.com 19.