Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Referral Partnerships: Growing & Monetizing Your Podcast and Business Through Relationships

Starting point is 00:00:01 Welcome to podcasting step by step, where you will learn how to create a podcast that's irresistible. I'm Sarah Maigatel, a podcast launch consultant and an American who has been permanently based in Europe for more than 10 years. I especially love helping fellow expats and location independent entrepreneurs build their online brands and businesses through the magic of podcasting. Looking for one-on-one support, visit sarahmicatel.com to book a podcast launch BIP day with me or to check out one of my online courses. And while you're there, take the quiz to discover what kind of podcast you should create based on your celebrity podcast persona. Go to sarahmicatel.com slash quiz. How do I grow my podcast?

Starting point is 00:00:44 How do I make money with my podcast? Those are the two most popular subjects when it comes to podcasting about podcasting. You've heard me say many times that creating a product or service of your own is the best way to monetize. And on a recent episode, you heard my guest, Jeremy Ens and I talking, about nurturing your audience and building relationships. And Jeremy built his business this way. And today I want to dive deeper into how you can build your business and podcasts through referral partnerships. In this episode, I am diving deep into that topic with my guest, Zoe Linda Pollard. Zoe is an English expat living in Sweden. And she specializes in teaching other

Starting point is 00:01:23 people how to grow their online businesses through referrals. And one of the things that she teaches is to invite potential partners for virtual coffee chats so you can get to know each other. You can also invite potential partners to be guests on your podcast, which is what I did with Zoe. So what better way to build a relationship with somebody than to have an awesome one-hour conversation with them? As you've heard me say before, when you are inviting people to be a guest on your podcast, think of other ways that you can collaborate with them. Zoe is actually hosting a free event called the magical meetup on April 7th, and you can find out more about that by going to sarahygotele.com slash Zoe. That's ZOE, and the link will be in the show notes. And if you hear this podcast episode

Starting point is 00:02:09 after that, then I will just link to another one of Zoe's useful resources. But this one-hour meetup was created to help you connect to other service-based business owners around the world who can help you spread the word about your business. And it's also a place where you can find podcast guests. I will also be there come say hi. It's going to be so much fun. All right, now into the episode. Welcome, Zoe, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really excited. So you help business owners reach their ideal audience through strategic word of mouth and clever collaborations. I would love to dig into referrals. So a few episodes ago, I talked with somebody about like location independence for beginners. And he was talking about one of the ways that he grew his

Starting point is 00:02:57 business was through client referrals, but we didn't, or just referrals in general, but we didn't like dig into that topic. And so that's what I wanted to do with you today. So just to start off, what is a client referral program? Essentially it's word of mouth. I like to say it's word of mouth with a finder's fee. So basically you encourage your past call. or connections to recommend potential clients to you. And if they book your services or, you know, by your offer through that recommendation, then you reward the original person with a commission or it could be, you know, as an incentive of some kind.

Starting point is 00:03:41 It doesn't necessarily have to be a cash payment. But there's some kind of reward that incentivizes them to actually refer people to you. So I know that you. one year increased your income by 139% through referral. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. So when I first started my business, I was like very like I'm quite introverted. And especially when I first started my business, I had a lot of social anxiety. And I was fine showing up online, you know, behind the screen. But I would always like someone would invite me to have like a Zoom call or a coffee chat. And I would just, I would say yes. And then on the day I'd be like,

Starting point is 00:04:20 I'm ill. I can't go because I'd be like so nervous. But then I think it was like beginning of 2018 or 2017, I think. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I'm going to show up. I'm going to book like loads of coffee chats and try and get myself out there. So I spent pretty much like all of January like on calls of people and trying to, yeah, like expand my horizons, cast the net out. And from that I ended up with like a load of refurb. And I even had, I think it was the next year or the year after, no, it was 2018. I didn't have my services page, like, live on my website the whole year because I was sort of restructuring some things. And it was the year that I really got into affiliate marketing and or affiliate programs and I was kind of repacketing some things. But I was booked out like the whole year because I just had clients referring new clients to me and then those clients referring clients. And I just didn't need to spend any time marketing. And I still, actually don't really spend much time marketing my business because my business is just like referral

Starting point is 00:05:27 based. I get so many sales and clients from referrals. Yeah, I think this is a dream for especially for introverts and new business owners who are like, oh my gosh, how do I, how does this even work? So can we talk a little bit more about like where to even begin? We often hear about starting with like friends and family. Would you recommend that? There's usually going to be at least one person who knows somebody who is going to benefit from what you offer. I think especially if you have a pool of like if we're talking complete beginners, like you haven't even started your business yet or you're just getting started, then yeah, like your friends and family, just even looking at your like Facebook profile,

Starting point is 00:06:11 your Facebook friends, just kind of getting the word out there, having some like DMs or something with people. But if you have at least one client who you've already worked with and you did a good job with and you know that they're happy, just sending them an email that's like, hey, you know, I would love it if you referred new clients my way and I can give you X amount per booking in return or X percentage commission or I'll give you a Starbucks gift card or something, some kind of incentive. But usually, yeah, like your, the best referral partners are people who are right underneath your nose, past clients, current clients, people in your mastermind, people in memberships that you're in, people who you've maybe collaborated with in the past. Even just like scrolling down your Instagram DMs, there's probably people in there who know people who would benefit from what you have to offer. Yeah, in previous, like people we've worked with in regular jobs, like, you know, any kind of job, really. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:07:14 It could be a good place to start. When we're moving beyond that sort of immediate friend's family, former colleague or even former client circle, what are some factors we should consider when we're trying to find new referral partners? Who should we be looking out for? So I think the most important thing, like people who have the same audience as you or the same ideal, I guess, like avatar or, you know, profile as you. because you could partner with people who can reach a lot of, reach a lot of maybe like potential people, but they might not be like ready for what you have to offer or it might be a bit of a harder sell.

Starting point is 00:07:52 So that's the main thing is making sure that your audiences are aligned. I also think making sure your values are aligned is really important. There have been times when maybe I have like gone to invite someone to be an affiliate or referral partner of mine. And then I've seen, like certain things that they have posted. And it's like, I don't like that for me personally, like in my brand, that is really important. So I'm deciding, you know, I'm not going to invite them. And that I think is some kind of that your values is kind of like a guiding, your values

Starting point is 00:08:26 and your audience being like a guiding like a North Star when it comes to reaching out to potential referral partners. Yeah. I like what you said about values because I think that's not generally the first thing that we think about when it comes to this type of stuff, but it's important, number one, because your value is already important to you, but also, like, they would be representing your brand, as you said, and you wouldn't want to be working with people who are not aligned with how you view the world and how we should be interacting with the world. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And then just going back to what you were saying about people with, like, a similar audience. So let's say I'm a copywriter. A good idea could be, like, partnering with, like, a web designer or something, because we'll be having,

Starting point is 00:09:09 like similar clients presumably, like people who are starting businesses and need a website and also a copywriter. So making alliances like that. I also think there's a value in reaching out to people, as scary as it may seem, like reaching out to direct competitors, because there are a few instances where people will be turning down clients. Like maybe they're booked out or the client isn't a good fit for them or maybe they don't do exactly what that client is looking for. Like, you know, for example, in copywriting, like maybe they do email copy, but they don't do sales page copy. And they might get reached out to for that. And another copywriter might be able to reach out and say, like, hey, I just wanted to see, you know, like if you had any clients that weren't a good fit,

Starting point is 00:09:58 instead of just sending them off into, you know, like the internet abyss, you can send them to me and you'll get commission. So you're still kind of earning from that, the time that you're you spent talking to them and generating that lead. So it's not just like, it's not just shoulder industries. It's like people that are also offering what you have to offer, but you do it in a different way and you can kind of position that benefit to them. I really like that idea. And it's similar to podcasting or what I've done with podcasting is, yeah, that whole collaboration over competition thing and going on to shows who like they have quite similar shows, but it's been really fun to build up relationships that way.

Starting point is 00:10:37 And I think this kind of thing, like, I know we haven't really spoken much about affiliates, so I don't really want to confuse things. But I think that this kind of thing works well with client services less than it does with promoting products of some kind. Because I think there is more of like a competitive situation there sometimes. Whilst with client services, it's such a, it's such a, like there's such a, like there's such a, personal kind of side of it. So in terms of, you know, collaborating with your quote unquote, like competition, it works well for client referral programs, but it's, yeah, I don't, I don't know if I would like recommend it for, for affiliates. While we're on the subject, what's the difference

Starting point is 00:11:22 between a referral partner and an affiliate partner? So, yeah, the main difference, I would say, like, for a simplicity sake is that a client referral program has like no tax. And, you know, and it's just manual tracking of referrals and word of mouth. And an affiliate program has affiliate links and affiliate tracking platforms involved. So it sounds like referral partners are great to help promote services, like maybe one-on-one services that are more expensive. You're working with fewer clients, whereas affiliate partnerships are more like when you're selling online courses

Starting point is 00:12:00 or there's a way to like track that purchase back to that specific person. Yeah. And it's much more, it's much more scalable because you could have like, it doesn't matter if you have like 10 affiliates or like a thousand affiliates in terms of the tech. Like it's all going to work. It's all automated. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. I think when you're like on the earlier side of your business, the referral partners is a much easier way to get started.

Starting point is 00:12:26 It sounds like. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So you mentioned that. You're an introvert and, you know, originally you were just too scared to do the coffee chats. I would love to talk a little bit more about personality and growing your business. And like what ways do you suggest reaching out based on personality? That's a really good question. So yeah, I think that there are a few ways that you can kind of reach out and make that connection. There is much more of like a passive way of doing it, which is kind of what I originally used to.

Starting point is 00:13:00 to suggest, but I don't really do this myself anymore because of how my personality has changed. But there is that kind of way of just kind of following somebody, subscribing to their newsletter, liking some of their posts, commenting on a few things, just kind of being there. And it's like, yeah, I exist here in your space. And then maybe at some point, emailing them or DMing them or something and trying to keep that conversation in text format if you don't really want to get on a call or you don't want to have that, you know, I guess if you're nervous about it, like I used to be in really avoid any kind of calls or anything, you can still connect with people just through emails or through texts.

Starting point is 00:13:45 If you are a bit more, you know, wanting to, I guess, make that connection and make more of an impact straight away. Something I suggest is, and I've been doing this myself recently, is when I find people on Instagram, I just go straight into their DMs with a voice message. It's like, you know, hey, I'm here. I exist. This is, I think what you do is amazing. And I think our audiences align really well, like, let's get on a call, see where we can collaborate or, you know, kind of just like gauge interest from them and then get on a call. And it's, when you get on a call with them, it's so, it opens up so many ideas that you might not have thought of otherwise. because they have their own strengths and they have their own personality types, right?

Starting point is 00:14:27 And so it's kind of like about, it's about leaning into, like, it's like meeting them where they are at in your own way. And obviously, like, you know what works for you and you know what you're good at. So if you know you're particularly good with, you know, lives versus writing emails, you might be able to collaborate with them in some way of like being live in their group or doing something in their membership or going on their Instagram stories or something versus being able to be like, oh, okay, I can write, you know, like custom promotional emails for you around my service and I can provide those to you like free of charge and you'll still get commission on anyone that books. Like these kinds of showing up like where, in a way that works for you, but on a platform that is their strength. I love this idea because it just, it takes the pressure off in a certain way where you're building a relationship rather than stressing out about.

Starting point is 00:15:23 Yeah, I don't know. It just, it seems to me that it's a more friendly and organic way to grow your business by building real relationships. Yeah. And it's like it doesn't necessarily matter like the platform or the format of something. Like as long as you are spreading your message, I like to see it as like it's like a win, win, win. Because it's a win for you because you get to show up in front of people that you wouldn't have shown up in front of before. It's a win. It's a win. win for the referral partner because they're going to help serve their audience with an area that they aren't the expert in or they aren't the go-to person in and they're going to earn some money or some kind of reward. And it's a win for the people who literally like probably wouldn't have heard of you if it weren't for this person and you get to serve them and help them with what you want to help them with. I love that. So win, win, win and a way to grow your audience. So I know that You've worked on things like JV webinars, Zoe.

Starting point is 00:16:25 Can you explain what that is? JV webinars are essentially you have a go-to, like, talk, some kind of workshop or something that you can deliver for free. But instead of promoting it and delivering it to your own audience, you basically like host it in front of somebody else's audience. And that would be the JV partner. And the JV partner would do kind of all the promotion around that webinar, but you would show up and, well, they would host it, but you would show up and do your training, do your workshop. And then at the end, you would pitch something. And then whoever buys during that webinar or in the following days that the offer is available, you and the JV partners split the sales. And typically for JV webinars, it's a 50-50 split. And then, at the end of the offer period, you sort of say like, hey, here's the amount that was made. I'll pay you, you know, after the refund period has finished or, you know, ongoing if there was a payment plan of the product or the service and then you go about your merry ways. But it is actually a common

Starting point is 00:17:39 misconception that people think JV webinars only work for products, but they do work for services. Like, I've been on a few JV webinars actually where someone pitches a service at the end. It doesn't have to just be like a course or a high ticket group program or something like it can work for a service especially a productized service where they can basically like check out straight away instead of completing an application or something even though an application is is also like having some kind of call to action at the end of the webinar but it's not just great for sales I mean like you said it it's great for audience building like it's really great for list growth because typically you would they would the jv partner will like promote

Starting point is 00:18:20 the webinar, but the registrant would sign up via your landing page and go onto your list. So it's great for list building. And it's great for just like building rapport with new audiences. Like the, I mean, I'm no expert in video, but I know the power of video. And I know like showing up in that way in front of people that haven't heard of you before, haven't seen you. Like it just, it just saves a lot of time. It's kind of like a shortcut to the to like the no like and trust because they really get to know you and your personality can shine through. And I know there will probably be people listening that's like, oh, but I don't want to be on camera. You don't have to be on camera. I've done JV webinars where I am not on camera or the person who, you know, I'm hosting it and the

Starting point is 00:19:07 other person is not on camera. You don't have to be on camera. But I think just showing up live in some way and providing value in your training, like actually helping move the potential customers along the journey in some way and giving them either like a mindset shift they can walk away with or food for thought or an actionable step of some kind, whether they buy your thing or not, that's going to make an impact. And if they're not using video, I imagine they're using slides or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually with a JV webinar, you have some kind of presentation or something, you know, like to keep the information on the screen and keep people engaged. I mean, especially in terms of like accessibility like I think having having slides on there with most of like what you're saying

Starting point is 00:19:51 on the on the screen is recommended. There's all sorts of things that you could do with a referral partner. They could be interviewing you in like their Facebook live or on Instagram or there's like so many different things that you can do. I think I've heard you mentioned freebie swaps before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have a freebie and like a lead magnet or opting freebie or whatever, the buzzword is nowadays and your referral partner also has a freebie and you know that they I mean they should work well for both of your audiences because technically you know like you should both have audiences that are similar if your referral partners otherwise who are you referring each other to if it's not a good fit but essentially you say like hey I have this freebie I think would be great

Starting point is 00:20:40 for your people I saw that you have this freebie or let me know if you have another one that you think would be good for my people. How about in a couple of weeks, we just send out an email each on the same day. I send people to your freebie and you send people to mine and it's just like a one email thing. And I've done that a couple of times myself and it works really well. It's just like kind of a nice bump of like people that, again, wouldn't have heard of you otherwise. It's not a huge amount of effort aside from maybe repurposing some promotional copy you already have written for your freebie and sending that to them. But when I did it before, actually, the partners, I worked with just wrote their own copy to promote their thing. And I wrote my own emails to promote their thing in my

Starting point is 00:21:24 tone of voice. And yeah, it worked really nicely. So I'm sure people are wondering, like, how much should you pay referral partners? That's a really hard one to answer because I think it is really dependent on a few things. Firstly, what you're comfortable with. Because I think everyone has different, everyone has different money mindset. Though I would say one thing about mindset, and that's to remember that most of the time you wouldn't have made that sale otherwise, if not for the referral partner. And you have to kind of see it as like not giving money away. And this is a really big like roadblock that I see people hit of like wanting affiliates or wanting referral partners, but they don't want to give money away. And I always say it's not

Starting point is 00:22:07 that you are giving money away because you wouldn't have made that money if not for that person. So it's like it's not like you're giving, you know, it's not like with a 10% commission, you know, on a $1,000 offer. It's not like you're giving $100 away. It's like you're getting $900 essentially for free because you didn't really spend any time marketing or selling. And then the $100 is due for the person who referred them. So I think, yeah, it is a bit based around, you know, what you're comfortable with. Also your overheads, like things that. you have to pay for a monthly to sell your service if there are certain things in place,

Starting point is 00:22:48 kind of considering, you know, what actually goes into your service and what can you, what is left over after you kind of take that out. And also considering the, the kind of like lifetime value of a client, like if you have an introductory offer that typically like cascades into something else, then it's not just that original kind of offer. I actually was a client of somebody who had a referral partnership where they would give the, it was like a three months minimum retainer for their services. And if you referred someone there away, they would give you the entire first month's payment as a referral fee because they knew that these clients would stay on for much longer than three months. So it was like a, you know, you get the first month and then I'll take it from here kind of thing. Because I know that I'm going to make that money back from like future months.

Starting point is 00:23:43 So considering that is something that I know isn't a first thought because you're trying to think of like profitability of that one client and that one sale. But you, I mean, we all know, you know, your customers, especially if you do a good job, like your customers and your clients are going to come back to you. So yeah, if you have other offers kind of just bearing them in mind when you do come up with a fee. So if I had to, and I know that there's a ton of different. like factors that go into all this like you just mentioned. But if we had to just do like a quick and dirty like rule of thumb, could you say like 10% for services that are generally more expensive? And then if you were doing like online products like 30 or 40% or something like that. Yeah. So very, very, yeah, like very standard. And again, like this is not one size fits all

Starting point is 00:24:30 advice. But 10% for services is a really nice kind of starting point. See how good that feels. obviously the more you offer and the more incentivized people are, then the better. And then for digital products or courses or anything like that, I think I usually suggest between 20 and 40%. So again, just kind of playing around with the numbers, like seeing what that actually means to you, you know, if you have a recurring membership or something that might feel a little bit different, like maybe you want to go on the lower side of that, or maybe you just want to give like a one-off fee or something. It's just like, it's how long is a piece of string kind of thing. I think like you said, yeah, 10% for services, 20 to 40% for for product, a digital products in some way.

Starting point is 00:25:14 So you have something called the client referral toolkit. Can you tell us what that is? Yeah, so the client referral toolkit is essentially like it's everything you need to get started with your client referral program. It's very like action oriented. So everything, every like template you could need. systems, SOPs, this kind of thing to actually like just get started and get the ball rolling with it. I've had people who have like started their client referral program in like an hour or less from like using all the templates and actually like just get started reaching out to people.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Like no more excuses. Actually just get out there because you have everything done. I love that you just kept it simple and like really easy to move forward. So as you said, you can like start in two hours. There's not like this 20 hour course that you have to. do. Oh, yeah, no. I'm like nothing, nothing against courses with like modules and lessons and all of that. And I try to avoid using the word course with my with my tool kits because I have like the client referral toolkit and I have some other tool kits. And it is very much like I want people to

Starting point is 00:26:25 spend less time sitting around learning and more time actually like taking action because I think there's so much you can learn from taking action. Well, this has been great, Zoe. Where can we learn more about you and your programs? So you can find me at zoelinda.com.uk. And also I'm on Instagram like all the time at Zoe Linda with an underscore at the end. All right. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. As you heard in this episode, word of mouth and relationship building are great ways to build your business and your podcast. So who do you want to interview? How else can you collaborate? And would they make a good referral partner for you? Would you make a good referral partner for them. If you want to jumpstart creating your referral circle,

Starting point is 00:27:11 then join me at Zoe's magical meet up where you will meet other online business owners who can turn into referral or affiliate partners or podcast guests. Visit sarahmicatel.com slash Zoe to find out more. And that's April 7th. And if you miss it, then I will link to another one of Zoe's great resources. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening. And have a beautiful a week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarah micotel.com slash blank no more.

Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Referral Partnerships: Growing & Monetizing Your Podcast and Business Through Relationships

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