When Should You Ask For Referrals? Buy-in BEFORE the Sales Call & How Much Content Is Too Much?

If someone leaves your program, don't make it mean anything about you. This is really common for startup entrepreneurs. I used to be guilty of it. I think that it doesn't help you because, honestly, 99.99999% of the time, it's got nothing to do with you.

How many people are out there that never start something because they're scared of how they're going to look when they first start? Like, start the podcast. Ask a girl on the day, hit the gym session, record the YouTube video, pitch the client, make the offer. Foreign. Welcome to the Success School Podcast. We are on episode 71. Damn, we're in the 70s. Today we have our schooling episode where we are talking through listener questions, which is super exciting. We're talking about making content. Is there too much content? Getting referrals and making sales. Steph, how you feeling?

I'm excited. We have our coffee conspirator, our co pilot, our co host with us today.

Co conspirator means, like, conspiracist.

Yeah.

She's definitely double murderer.

I feel like she's in on it. I feel like she is in on it. Luna is here with us today. If you're watching on YouTube, you will see her. She is beautiful and magic. And if you're not into rottweilers, then get into them. Get into them. They are literally the best dogs in the whole world. We're so obsessed. Hi, baby girl.

Get out of here.

Look at her.

All right, I'll kick off on my personal update. So we reached a thousand downloads a week on audio, which is super exciting. And it made me think. I remember when I first started. I thought I first started, Steph hijacked the Success School podcast, But I was kind of like, oh, no one's gonna listen. I think I had, like, 20 downloads in the first week. Like, it wasn't many.

Yeah.

And I kind of thought, oh, well, people are gonna think of me. This is so pathetic. This is so lame. I've got no listeners. I've got no eyeballs. Obviously, I got no eyeballs. It's audio. But you kind of get the point here. And I kind of thought, if I never would have started that, we never would have had this now.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, grown into something so cool, and we help a lot of people, and people love it, man. Like, people message us every single week saying how much they love the podcast, but if I never would have started, we would never have this now. And I kind of think of how many people are out there that Never start something because they're scared of how they're going to look when they first start, like, start the podcast, ask the girl, and they hit the gym session, record the YouTube video, pitch the client, make the offer, do the fucking thing. Because that is going to change your life. Just making that first step. But people don't make the first step out of fear. And, like, I would just say to you guys, don't be fucking scared. Take the first step. Do it.

Oh, I feel so inspired.

Thank you, Joe Rogan. Let's get it.

Yeah, I felt very end of a seller, except with less swearing and less aggression.

Fuck, yeah. What's yours? So talking about flutes.

So my lesson is don't believe everything you say on TikTok.

Okay?

So speaking of hitting the gym, I have very much been hitting the gym lately. I identify now as gym girly. If you haven't heard me speak about this, it's. It's very serious. I got it off TikTok. I'm just trying to keep up with the Gen Zs, you know? And what I realized was that TikTok has a lot of people who are not personal trainers pretending to be personal trainers and giving you, like, advice on how to grow the booty, which is obviously the thing that all girls are trying to grow in the gym. That's pretty much all they do in the gym is just booty work. So I was like, all right, well, I think it's time to kind of, you know, grow this booty. And one thing that came up along the way. This is your business coach speaking. Yeah. No, one thing that came up a long way is like, I got scared. I got scared to do some of the movements because that I didn't know how to do them. I've never done them before. And I was watching a lot of this stuff on TikTok, and I realized that there's only actually one thing that you need or, like, one set of movements that you really need to grow a bum. And I learned that you have the gluteus maximus, the gluteus medius, and the gluteus minus minimus. And the only one you really need to focus on is the gluteus maximus, because it actually takes up 80, 20%. 80%. 80, 20 rule. 80%. Yeah. 80% of your butt is made up of that muscle. And so I was spending a lot of time doing exercises on the meatiest ones, which just didn't matter that much. And so, look, I am starting to see a dramatic change. And it's very Exciting little shelf is full forming in the back there and it's very sore all of the time. But yeah, but stuff. Don't believe everything you see on tick tock and 8020 rule. Focus on the 80.

Focus on 80. So yeah, Steph didn't also mention we recently joined a strip club.

Yes.

Let me explain. What I mean by that is I feel there is no such thing as a commercial gym anymore. It's a commercial strip club.

Yes.

Where you don't actually pay the strippers.

Yes.

Because what people wear in commercial gyms these days is astounding.

Outrageous.

It is outrageous.

Outrageous.

I walk in there and I'm like, if I were a dad, I would be telling people to put some clothes on.

Cuz dude, I actually saw a guy the other day.

I see more in the gym than I've seen at a strip club. I'm not kidding, dude, it is crazy.

I literally saw a guy the other day who his teenage daughters were in the gym.

Yeah.

And he was like trying to pretend like he was on a machine, but he was just watching his daughters who were just in the most incredible outfits of just real visibility. Like you could just really see it all, you know. And he was just watching like a hawk. He was watching everyone who was watching them. And I was like, dude, just tell him to put on more clothes. Just tell him to put on more clothes. And you just wouldn't have this problem. Meant my dad wouldn't let me leave the house if I had a skirt that was like above my knee.

Fucking go, Bob.

Yeah, Bob was very protective. Bob was very protective.

How do you like the strip club look?

It's funny. Like. Yeah, it's so funny. The dudes just don't give. Like literally we saw a dude yesterday that had pajama pants and Birkenstocks on. Just lifting. And the chicks, it's like a catwalk.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah, it's wild. The difference between genders.

Yeah. You can definitely see the people who are over 30 and under 30. They wear wildly different clothing.

So we'll get into our first question. Says from Alice. My clients are writing about my program three days in. Is it too early to ask for referrals? Obviously, Steph and I have different opinions on all this stuff. We'll see if these are different. I'll let you kick off.

Like, I do think it's a bit early, to be honest. I think like, oh, it's. So this is a nuanced question. I don't think that's a right. Or a Wrong. I think maybe if you've had rapport with this person for years prior, if you know them well, if you've had a rapport for years, if you've been kind of talking to them on and off for a long time, they've joined the program. The three days in, they're like, oh, I should have joined ages ago. I'd be like, look, if you have any friends, let them know the same thing. I think that makes sense. If they're new to your world and they've just joined your program and you really don't have a lot of rapport with them from beforehand, if they start raving about how good your program is three days in, hey, could you just send your friends my way? It may feel a little soon. You may want to just put friends.

How she says it.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think you could probably make a joke out of it and it could be really, really effortless. Or like, we do have a referral program, in case you're wondering. Like, I think you could do something like that effortlessly and kind of maybe drop the penny. But I think that my advice would be probably deposit a few more, like, wins before, like, taking it out. You know what I mean? Like, I would add a bit more before I was asking to take it out.

Yeah. So when would be the right time to ask for a referral?

Yeah, look, I actually saw your response to this question and so I know the answer that you're going to give, and I think I probably would give a similar answer. I think around 21 days is a better time to ask. I think that they've had more experience. I actually asked someone recently for a referral a little bit earlier and basically had said, look, I've sent someone your way in Instagram, you know, I'd love to get your feedback on the process. And she said, oh, yeah, more than happy to. I'm just going to give it another month and just make sure before I do it. Yeah. Which is fine. Now, she's. She's a Raven fan. She's one of our, like, definitely one of our ravers. And she just said, like, can you just give me another month or so before I.

Testing us?

Yeah. Which I love, like, and I. And mad respect. Because, you know, anyone can be good for a month. Can they be good for three? Can they be good for six? Can they keep delivering? Is the front end stack smoke and mirrors? Yeah. Is it smoking? Mirrors are the front end stack to make you love them and then they just piece out. Obviously that's not what we do, but I do think that sometimes maybe giving a little bit more time to deposit, but I think the 21 day mark. What was your answer to this?

Yeah, I think about 21 days. But I like to think anyone that's kind of referred us has been with us for ages usually. So they've been with us.

Well, they've known us for a long.

Six months or like three years or like more something like that. This is like super off tangent here and Steph has no idea this is coming, so this could be pretty fun. But speaking of referrals, we have heard some crazy in the coaching industry and I really want to talk about one of them right now. Steph looks really worried at this moment, but we heard about this program that if you leave, you get blocked by everyone on social media in the inner circle. And I thought like people say to us, like, oh, it's really nice to be in a program where the, you know, people aren't psychotic and it's not crazy and you guys are like about morals and values and these type of things. But anyway, basically like you sign up to this program, it's super expensive, and then you're like kind of in and you get to start hanging out with people and you're in the community and you can only be in their circles if you're in the program. So it's kind of like pay to have friends, which is really weird. But if you leave, the person who runs the program tells everyone in the program to block you and you're immediately evicted from the circle. And like, I don't know about you guys, but I think that's pretty crazy in the coaching industry.

Like, it's like you're in or you're out mentality.

You're in or you're out.

Wow.

Imagine how bad that would be for referrals. Like imagine you're in and it's epic and then you're booted and they block.

We're talking about six figure investments as well. This is not a cheap program. These are people who are playing at the top. These are people who are spending a lot of money to be in this inner circle. Like literally a six figure investment for a 12 month period. And yeah, when you're out, you're out. Like cut and dry, baby. Like, and I just thought, wow, I.

Send out ex clients. Clients.

Yeah, Right now I tag our ex clients in Facebook groups. Yeah, totally.

Like, I think that is so outrageous.

It's. Well, because people also come back. Like people might just be dropping out for a season. Like the amount of people who have come back.

Yeah, yeah.

The amount of people who have come back from programs that we both run in the past. You know, Charlie, like, literally there are like 100 of them that have come back from previous programs we've run. Like, why would you not keep that door open? It seems crazy to me to not keep that door open.

Yeah, that's how to not do business. And I think it is related to referrals because if you do shit like that, you're not gonna have a business for long like this. Just classic biz babe shit.

And also on top of that, if someone leaves your program, don't make it mean anything about you. Yeah, like, I think this is, this is really common for startup entrepreneurs. And like, and I used to be guilty of it, and you definitely were guilty of it when we were younger at Helix. And I think that it doesn't help you because honestly, 99.99999 of the time, it's got nothing to do with you. Like, we've had clients that have, you know, lost weight, got, you know, had their biggest, highest cash months, but it's just been the next right thing for them, wasn't our program. But then in six months, 12 months time, they come back and they're like, hey, I'm ready again. But if you close that door, if you make that mean something about you that they left and you, you know, I've heard stuff where they like, make people feel bad for leaving, like you've made a mistake and you know you're gonna go waste your money and you're not gonna go anywhere without this program and all this nonsense stuff. Just say, wishing you all the best. Sending you so much love.

Let me know if you need me.

Always here to support you when you're ready, like to circle back. If you ever need help, just reach out. Like just, I don't know, be a human. Yeah, like just be a human being. And you will have people referring, coming back time after time. We have ex clients that refer all the time. Like, guys, it's crazy.

Don't burn your bridges.

Don't burn your bridges. Yeah. So 21 days. Question number two is from Laura, Tim and Steph. How do I get more people showing up to my sales calls? At the moment they're filling in a 15 question form before booking the call, but still a lot aren't showing up. So they've got up. So what she's saying is like, there's a high level of commitment to book the call, but then within a week they're still not showing up to the call. So what would you do?

Great question and I would love to answer this question. So this is epic. There are so many things that it could be, but I'm probably going to hit a few on the head. They don't really have an investment in you and your brand. They're not like super excited to get on the call. So this is why we always talk about brand and long form and having YouTube and podcasts and these type of things. Like a lot of the times when people get on a call for success call, they're like, they're pumped to speak with us because they know like and trust us and they've been in our world, in our orbit for such a long time. So like they're essentially pumped to get on a call. So I think you need that pillar where you have a personal connection with people so they actually want to get on the call. The second thing is, have they been exposed to testimonials? Have they been exposed to case studies? Have they watched a vsl? Have they watched any of those things? It all comes back to the 741 rule. Like, have they consumed seven hours of content on four different platforms? Otherwise you wouldn't be having these issues. The other thing is, you know, do you have text reminders? Do you have email reminders? Do you have all those types of things that are happening before a call? Because someone can just book in a sales call and then you know, two weeks later you send them a text message 30 minutes before and you're like, hey, we're jumping on a call. And they're just like, oh, completely forgot about it. So other reminders there. So reminders, consuming long form testimonials, vsl, those types of things. All those things are going to go to improving the shop percentage on a call. Anything I missed?

Yeah, I'm going to add a few things. So one thing I know, just to give you guys a little bit of background, we do know Laura. I know that a lot of her calls are being booked through sell by chat, so through dm, which means that seven for one rule, they're probably not getting anywhere near enough touch points or content to be really bought into the brand because they're just not consuming enough of her content. So, you know, she's basically starting conversations with them, you know, guiding to book a call. We have an incredible process for that, which is why she's doing so well with it. But they haven't got a lot of buy in, so definitely having some bits throughout that, so once they book a call, maybe they get a video from you. Obviously this would be automated and set up just to really welcome them and let them know what's going to be in the call and let them know how exciting that's going to be and create a little bit more of that deep connection with who you are. The second thing I would say is that when it comes to the topic of the call, I think it's going to be very different for each person. What Laura does is in the world of money and people can have very adverse reactions to money stuff. So you know, most people, if they're having a bad money month, like most people won't even be honest with their accountants about what's actually happening with their money, let alone like getting on a call to talk about money. Like it can be very scary. And so I think that in the case of Laura, and especially if you work in anywhere where there's a lot of shame or fear attached, what I would recommend is really letting them know as soon as they book the call, like this is such a safe place and, and whatever is going on is going to be totally fine. Because I think that they can, you know, I literally know people who lie to their accounts about their money because they're just too scared of their accountant finding out that they're shit. And it's like literally that's the person who's going to help you to fix it. You know, people have money stuff and so if you're in an industry where there's stuff, there's stigma attached to it, you've got to create safety. Like this is a really safe place. It doesn't matter how you jump on. She works specifically with majority female led businesses about money. It's going to be a shame thing. I think people are going to be scared to shop to calls and so I think creating some more safety nets throughout that process and it's going to be different for every person.

How you do that, 100% I agree. Question number three from Angela. How much content is too much content? I brought on a VA and I want to start posting two a days, but I'm not sure if it's too much. What are your thoughts on this?

I feel like we've covered this off in the last few episodes really well. But if you haven't been listening, then I will more than happily go through this again. I think that there's never too much. I think that more is good. More is really good. Especially in the case of this, you know, beautiful human. I think that we're moving to a place where if you really want to, you know, stand out from your competitors, yes, you are the nation. Interesting topic that we talked about today, but yes, you are the nation. Yes, you can stand out because you're different, but ultimately people have to see you a lot to be top of mind. And so I think the more content you make, the easier that is to grow your business.

Yeah, I fully agree. I think two days is good. Depends on the platform. I think three days is too much, especially on Instagram. I think two a day is probably the upper limit of where I would go on all the other platforms. I would just start experimenting, taking one of those twos and putting on the other platform. So I would be suggesting cross pollinating this across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, threads, whatever else. What did I miss?

Yeah, to schedule or not to schedule? Talk me through your thoughts here.

Yeah, to schedule. Not to schedule. Yeah. So my thoughts are in this current moment, me as the entrepreneur, I have more money than I do time. So the way I can overcome the time I'm losing is obviously to pay someone to schedule for me or I can boost. So there are my two options there if I want to maximize for time. So for us, we're scheduling at the moment just because we don't have the person yet on the team that can schedule, like on the day and publish the content. So we schedule because we would rather lose 20% of reach and then obviously get that back with paid ads. Our reach numbers are like, you know, 500,000 people a month. So it's not a detriment for us. But if you've got more time, I would recommend posting manually. If you don't have time, I would schedule. If you are scheduling, the best place to schedule is in the app. You're going to lose less reach that way. But if you want to do like a really simple posting on all platforms, I would recommend later. That's a really good one to go on. So you can basically upload seven different social media channels on there. We don't do Pinterest, but Pinterest is one that they do as well. And we basically press publish on all platforms at the same time.

I think what could work and what we will probably eventually move to is this model where you do schedule it all on later. However, instead of it, you know, manually auto posting, you would just have a VA go in and copy and paste it into the platform natively at the correct times and manually post it. And I think that probably in the next month or so we'll probably experiment with that just to see if Reach is affected at all as a test, so that we can tell you guys, because, you know, a lot of people, most creators will say that you do need to pay natively. For us right now, it's been just getting the system working of actually just creating the volume of content we need to create and getting it on to all the platforms initially. And I think now we can kind of take it to another level and really test that out. But, like, guys just got to start somewhere. Like, like, again, we're not starting to be perfect. We're starting to start, then we're optimizing over time to see if it gets, you know, better or worse. And obviously, we teach you guys everything along the way.

So a couple of bonus questions here. Steph, I'm going to ask you, and you're going to ask me as well, what's the number one piece of advice you wish someone told you sooner on your entrepreneurial journey? So what's the one thing that's swirling around which you were like, fuck, I wish I did that two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago. That's really kind of unlocked, or it's something recent that you think is going to unlock that you're kind of hedging your bets on.

I wish I've had a podcast for a long time. You know, between this podcast and the Steph Gordon show, which, you know, I think I got up to 80 episodes potentially, of that podcast before I jumped over here and stole the limelight from you.

Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I wish I'd made all of those as YouTube videos.

Yeah.

Like, I wish that I'd started YouTube earlier. And it's annoying because we knew. Yeah, we also knew.

Yeah, we did.

It's not like YouTube is new, like people were telling us years ago. Yeah, we knew everyone that was doing it was doing it well. We optimized for fast and easy instead of, I guess, like, quality. And what I mean by that is we use the excuse that so many of you will be using right now of it just takes so long to grow an audience on YouTube, and it's just too hard because we need instant results.

Yeah.

But if we just started three years ago. Yeah, like, we would have probably hundreds of thousands of subscribers. It's, like, so annoying. Like, I'm super frustrated with myself. Like, very frustrated for that. The second thing, I wish I'd used more paid ads sooner.

Yeah.

I wish I'd upped the budget earlier. Like, we've had the financial means to do it for a long time.

Yeah.

To really, to really go hard and just.

It's just money.

It's just money. It's just numbers on a screen. Like so just send it. Like I wish that we'd spent more money on ads earlier. Like I, I'm frustrated that we, there was a, there's a season of ads. It's still good out there right now that we just missed out on a really opportune time. Like it's always hindsight, right? Like yeah, the best time to be posting on organic, on social media, on Instagram was a couple of years ago and now it's harder. You know, it's like, oh, I should have done earlier. Like I, I really wish we'd spent more on paid ads earlier. What about you?

Yeah, this one probably shout out to Cass Emerson here. She's probably been saying this for ages and it really pains me to actually admit this, but I wish I did invest more time, energy and effort into my brand. Like, and that's just not colors, like it's not the orange chairs I'm sitting on right now or the black or whatever it is, but it's like the overall perception, look, feel what I'm about, values, mission belief, all that type of stuff and getting really solid on that probably like two, three, four years ago would have been much better for me. Just it would have been so much easier to make better content, make more high quality content to stand out online, all the type of things. I feel like, you know, I'm going to speak very candidly here and I don't mean this with like hey, look at me. But you know, we have a lot of money in the bank.

Yeah.

And I wish I spent some of it on getting better cameras like right now, better lenses, better audio, higher quality, hiring better people. Like I wish I just did spend some of that because it's just like, like you said just before it's on a screen, it doesn't actually mean anything but like our mission is to help a thousand people build a seven figure business. And the more high quality stuff, the more high quality our brand, the faster we're going to do that and complete the mission. Like I really don't give a about the numbers in the bank. Like at the end of the day.

Just sits there, it's just there.

So yeah, it's just invest in the brand and if you're listening and you're like at a point in your business where it's not growing and maybe you think it is the Quality of what you're putting out there. I would suggest investing in your brand. You could speak to someone like Cass, or you can speak to us about it as well. Yeah, we'd love to help you with it.

The thing with, like, brand was it was hilarious, actually. When we built success school, we built it in quite a rush because we knew that we were closing down the other program. I said, we built it in a rush. We have a lot of skills, so we knew how to build fast. But, you know, we went to cast because we were like, we need some colors and fonts.

Yeah, we need colors.

And she came back, and that was not what she gave us. And I. That was really our first foray into truly understanding what brand meant.

Yeah.

And I think that. I think you did an incredible job with Helix brand.

Yeah.

But I think it was accidental. I don't. It wasn't intentional. You know how to build incredible brands. What we have is, like, an unconscious competence that you were, like, really good at it. You didn't know about it or how or why. And so when we built the successful brand and Cass actually gave us the framework for it, it was like. We were like, wow. Damn. Like, this is so much. We have it, and we were in a rush, so we were like, shit. Like, we were.

But what a plug. Cass is probably freaking out.

Ye. Yeah. Cass is phenomenal, guys. Like, it's so much less about your colors and your fonts, and she'll also match that too. So, like, you wanted red, I wanted yellow. Yeah, we compromised on orange because of what orange actually means as a color and the way people perceive it. But there's so much more to it than you think about. Like, so much more to it than you know. But, yeah, we help our clients with it every day. But shout out to Kashi is phenomenal.

So takeaways, guys. More content works. Creating more touch points prior to a call. Works for getting people on calls and then strategically asking people for referrals.

Work. Yeah. Like, start the thing now. Like, start the YouTube channel. Like, if you have the money sitting there for ads, just freaking do it. If you're struggling with ads, please hit us up. Like, this is literally Tim's jam. Like, everyone who runs ads in our program is crushing. So you don't have to go and, you know, outsource that for $10,000 a month. Like, Tim will show you how to do it. And, you know, People are getting 200 to 300 email addresses a week.

A week?

A week. Yeah. For as little as 200. So guys, like, we know how to run ads. We'll teach you how to run ad that are cheap, affordable, easy, you don't have to outsource it. Autopilot leads it into your funnel and money into your bank account. And, yeah, get onto it sooner rather than later.

All right, guys, that was epic. We're here to take over the small business world with this podcast, so we would appreciate the support. If you got something out of this episode, subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify. Wherever you're at, hit the subscribe button. As always, guys, send us a DM on Instagram. That's our main channel of communication. Let us know you got some value from the show. And then, obviously, Cass Emerson sent us a big thank you. We probably just made you 100 grand. Until next week, guys. That was epic. See ya.