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Notes
The oldest and most reliable business building method isn’t dead – it’s just in disrepair. Bill Cates, The Referral Coach, teaches you how to rebuild and maintain a solid referral engine for constant growth without the endless chase.
Bill Cates is the undisputed industry expert on how to get more and better referral business as a financial advisor or insurance agent. He’s been featured on many prestigious outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, has published 3 widely loved and transformative books on building referral business, and has worked with top players in this sector, including Capital One and All State. Bill’s methods produce staggering growth results, as high as 60% in a single year, all without chasing down new, cold leads.
In this episode Bill will share the secrets you need to know if you want to stop chasing and start multiplying your best clients as well as your bottom line. You’ll discover:
- The oldest business growth strategy and why it continues to THRIVE and drive success
- How to ensure you’re building your business on the ONLY bedrock that guarantees referral success
- One word you should use to REPLACE “referral” for more success in your client conversations
- The email “handshake” technique for better, more genuine introductions
- How to overcome the fear holding you back near EFFORTLESSLY
- The one “W” you need to answer in all your client interactions for limitless referral opportunities with ease
- A simple hack to supercharge your referral efforts using ONE, specific social media
- The best business mantra for making the right decisions: O___ F____ H_____ B_____
- The SINGLE thing you need to focus on to reset and accelerate your business growth
Transcript
Note: This Advisorist Podcast transcript was created in part by computers – Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors…or sentences that just downright don’t seem to make sense! Please compare to corresponding audio if clarity is needed.
Jeremiah: Hi, it’s Jeremiah Desmarais. Welcome to today’s Advisorist podcast. I have somebody very special with me today and that is Bill Cates. Before I bring him on, I just want to let you know something about Bill that he is somebody that I have personally admired and watched in this industry for years. I can remember the very first time I met Bill in person. I found him to be one of the most charming and down to earth and disarming experts in our field today and that was after he had just delivered this amazing keynote at a conference where we were both speaking. If you haven’t heard of Bill Cates before, you definitely have not been boning up on your referral skills because Bill is undisputedly hands down, in my opinion, the master of how to get more insurance and financial services clients through referrals and introductions. He’s worked with Capital One, All State, Ameriprise, Mass Mutual, and dozens of other companies. He’s written 3 books on the subject, which I definitely recommend you go out and buy ‘Don’t Keep Me a Secret!’, ‘Get More Referrals Now!’ and ‘Beyond Referrals’. He’s been on ABC Business Report and the Wall Street Journal live. I mean, if you google referrals and Bill, Bill Cates will come up. This is the man that is the undisputed authority. Bill, my friend, it is such a great honor to have you on the Advisorist podcast. Welcome.
Bill: Thanks, Jeremiah. I hope I can live up to that, those remarks. Thank you.
Jeremiah: You certainly will. Bill, one of our core values here at Advisorist is gratitude. So we love to ask our guests when we get started, what are you most grateful for today?
Bill: Wow, that’s a great question. I’ll tell you just in a small way. I’m very grateful for my health because I just recovered from about a 44 day bout less sinusitis. Boy, it was a mess and my assistant says, “I know you’re back to health, good health, because you’re running around everywhere.” It was a drag. So I’m definitely grateful for that. I’m always grateful for this great country I live in and the opportunity to do what we do and the big scope of things. I think people live in smaller countries and the market’s not as big, the opportunities aren’t always as big. I’m thankful for my daughter who really opened up my heart when she came into my life. So lots of things.
Jeremiah: Outstanding. We’re so glad that you are back on. We don’t have to do this interview with you having sinusitis, very good. Speaking of health, one of the other core values we hold dear here is strong mind and strong body. I’m wondering if you could share what’s a mind or a body hack that you’ve been using these days to be your best self?
Bill: Well, I guess it’s kind of a mind hack. It’s not to dwell on things that just aren’t worth dwelling on. We can’t necessarily control the thoughts that come into our brain because we all have these bizarre thoughts like, “Where’d that come from?” Right? But we can decide what to do with them and do we dwell on them or not? I don’t know, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I just started developing the habit of being mindful of when I start getting into some sort of a negative space in terms of thought, if I’m getting resentful about something, someone, whatever, and I just catch myself as quickly as possible and say, “No, change the state.” I might sing a song or just think about something I really like and it just gets me off of that space. Related to that, I do a lot of travel when I do and sometimes I’m traveling home late at night and starts to get negative and my thought patterns and I remember a quote from Vince Lombardi. He says, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” So when we’re tired, our brain just allows that negative stuff sometimes to come in. If we’re human, we experience it and then we decide what do we do with it, right? So when I start to think about negative on a flight coming home, “Yeah, you’re just tired. Move off of it, think something else.” That’s really done really good things for me over the years. I just don’t dwell on the negative stuff. I mean, I face reality, like, we all need to face reality and deal with stuff but not that stuff that just sucks our time and energy.
Jeremiah: Well said. One question I use when I find myself allowing that voice to speak a little louder than it should is, “Who can I serve right now?” I found that going to a place of abundance where I actually have something to give changes my mood entirely. So I really appreciate you talking about that and I think it just helps all of us to realize that this happens to all of us. By having a few little techniques, we can really make that shift. Brilliant. Absolutely love it, Bill. So Bill, let’s dive into the fun stuff. You are called upon by major organizations to come in and help advisors, whether their financial advisors, insurance agents, to grow their business exponentially using referrals. Bill, referrals have been around for decades, right? It’s pretty much been the go to strategy to grow insurance and financial practices. I’m curious from your perspective, we’re in the middle of such exciting times right now yet you’re still beating that referral drum. What is something that’s working right now in your domain to help advisors get appointments and retain clients? If you could just go a little bit into detail in that tactically, what’s working for them that would be awesome.
Bill: Sure. You said it’s been around for decades, it’s been around forever. You think about before there was telephone, internet, before there was telegraph. Someone would go from one town to the next trying to do business here. I would say he or she, but back then it was probably a he would bring a letter of introduction, right? The way the world is meeting people through other people, we leverage that borrowed trust that comes from referral, from a letter of introduction, from whatever it may be. That’s why its age old. Another reason why its age old is because how would someone prefer to learn about you? Right? How would someone prefer to learn about a financial professional? Well, through a recommendation from someone they already trust. The fastest path to being relevant in somebody else’s life is through a good introduction. So to bring it today’s world, I used to get asked to teach people how to ask for referrals without begging, without pushing, and I still get asked that a lot. But it used to be a time where you could call somebody up and say, “Hey, my friend, George recommended I give you a call.” But now we know that doesn’t work very well so lately we’ve been focusing on really good quality productions, really getting connected. Whether it’s an email handshake, sometimes I call that an electronic handshake, or whether we meet in person, whether it’s over a meal, or we do some client event marketing and things like that but really focusing on the introduction. So I want to encourage everybody listening. If you’re talking with a client or a prospect, a center of influence anybody about this, use the word introduction because that’s what you want, right? The word ‘referral’ kind of has a weird connotation for some people, but we want to get introduced, right? So when we’re talking about this focus on getting introduced, getting connected, otherwise, a lot of this stuff, the willingness of a client to refer us, to talk about us to others, it falls through the cracks sometimes. Sometimes we have to teach clients who want to be advocates for us, how to actually introduce us to others so it has some meaning, and some results get created.
Jeremiah: That’s interesting distinction between the two words ‘referral’ and ‘introduction’, and you mentioned email introductions. Our students here and our members are huge fans of email. What’s an email introduction strategy or script that you recommend that you’ve seen work really well?
Bill: Yeah, sure. So everybody’s probably experienced this. There’s kind of two levels of an email introduction. One might be, “Jeremiah’s been working with this guy, Bill Cates or Laura Smith. She’s done a great job for me da da da. I’ve CC’d her on this. I’m sure she’ll reach out to you. I recommend you take her call. It’ll be worth a few minutes of your time.” Now, that’s not bad. That’s a pretty nice introduction but I like to step it up just a little bit long, a little bit more called like a handshake. It’s Jeremiah meet Laura. This is what Laura has done for me, Laura, meet Jeremiah. This is how I know him. Right? Two great people should know each other. I hope you guys can connect and see what’s possible. So actually creating a real handshake in an email that can’t go on too long, still has to be pretty short. But creating a real introduction, a real handshake, as opposed to just I’ve cc’d her and she’ll follow up. So that’s it, that’s a tweak but I found that it really makes a big difference. It’s made a difference for me in my own business, and everybody I’ve been teaching as well.
Jeremiah: I like that. What do you recommend to advisors who might be a little bit inside their heads about asking for referrals? Because I think that 80% of the referral asking game happens in your head, right? It’s getting over yourself that you don’t want to be seen as icky or weird or the guy begging for referrals. I know you talk a lot about the psychology of that. What would you suggest to an advisor that maybe having that type of conversation in their head right now?
Bill: Yeah. The fears, the resistance that I see comes in the form of don’t want to look needy, unsuccessful, they don’t want to look pushy but the biggest one, interestingly enough, when I’m delivering live workshops, and speeches, and I’ll say, “You know, why do people not ask for referrals?” It’s not a rhetorical question. I want people in the audience to answer and I almost always hear the word fear first and then I say, “Well, a fear of what?” and then the primary one is fear of rejection. Now, occasionally, I hear fear of needy, a fear of pushing and all that, and I know that’s part of it. But here we are. People, first of all, if you’re afraid of rejection, you’re in the wrong business. But, what I found is once you have a relationship with someone, they’re either a client or a prospect with whom you’ve had a meeting or two. All of a sudden that the fear that maybe they don’t want to do this. Sometimes it’s just not knowing what to do, how to handle it so it really boils down to a lack of confidence. None of this is rocket science, it’s really just about confidence and having the right methodology in place can create confidence and practicing and getting good at it. Here’s one little shift of the mind, maybe the heart too that can make a difference. We want to make this about the value that we’re bringing to other people, right? The old methodology was I’m trying to build my business, I can use your help or let me tell you how I get paid, and one of those ways is referrals. Well, that is about you. Let’s make it about the value, let’s make it about them helping other people. They’ve experienced your value, you’ve helped them make an educated decision that’s in their best interest, let’s pay it forward, let’s bring this value to other people. Now, we do have clients that like us and want to help us too. So I found you want to make all of this about 70% or so about bringing your value for other people. Let’s see who else we can help. Let’s see who else should know about this important message and then maybe 30% about people wanting to help us because in financial services, you become a confidant of your prospects and clients. They tell you things they don’t tell other people, and then in that, they like you, they trust you, they want to help you as well. So I like to capture both. I like to capture the desire to help other folks and pay it forward and also desire to help us a little bit. When we realize that we really believe in the value and we really want to bring it to other people, when they come and become a Muslim missionary about what we do, why we do it, why we believe in the value then it gets much easier to be proactive than if we always just see it about all about us and about us needing. We feel like we’re asking them to do us a favor. No. Help me help others. We’re asking for help, yeah, but it’s to help others.
Jeremiah: Can you give us an example of how you would say that if you’re positioning yourself in such a way where you’ve provided value you to the prospect and it’s 70% about them? Can you kind of guide us through that?
Bill: Absolutely. So one of the things I’ve been teaching forever is what I call a ‘Client focused why’. There’s been a lot of talk about the different levels of why and why we get up in the morning, why we exist, and all this, but I’m talking about the why we believe in the value that we bring. So we really want to get in touch with that and that’s something we want to teach prospects, not even to their client, just a prospect’s very first appointment. Say, “Jeremiah, that’s a little bit about what I do and how I do it. I’d like to shift gears for a second, and tell you a little bit about why I do this, what drives me every day.” Then we talk a little bit about the value, it could be something that happened to you before you got into the business, it could be something you helped a particular client with when you really got in touch with your value. So you share that early and then later could be at the end of the appointment, could be the next appointment, could be a year later. You have what we call a value discussion. We check in, how’s it going? How’s our communication? Is it working the way you want it? Are we meeting your expectations? Yes, you’re doing that little check in and then I like to treat this request with importance. One way to treat it with importance is to bring back the ‘why’. It goes a little something like this, “Jeremiah, I’m glad to see the value in what we’re doing. It’s great having you as a client. I shared this with you last time we were together. I’m on a mission to bring this important information to people. I want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to make an educated decision that it’s in their best interest. So I was hoping we could put our heads together, brainstorm a little, see if we could identify a few folks that you think at least should be aware of what I do. I have a couple ideas. I’d like to run by a couple folks, you mentioned actually last time we were together, would you be open to that?” There’s a lot from what I just said there, we can unpack it but it’s the value discussion, checking in to make sure we have people seeing the value in the meeting, the process. It’s the treating with importance and bringing that value. Let’s bring this value to other people. You know I’m on a mission. So that’s my part a little bit. I’m on a mission to bring this important work to other people. I love to meet people and do what we do and help them make educated decisions but then also I’ll throw in real quick is the coming prepared and letting our clients know we’ve come prepared. It creates interest, it creates confidence on our part and we’re going to have a much more successful conversation.
Jeremiah: I love how you structured that ask because it really does focus on value. One of the things that you and I discussed when we were in person was LinkedIn. How has LinkedIn made the process of getting introductions, or referrals even more powerful?
Bill: Sure, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways LinkedIn plays a part. The most obvious is the fact that you can now identify people who your client know and you those could be some of those people you bring to this conversation. Now, there’s a little challenge there in the sense that we don’t always know our client’s relationship to the people with whom they’re connected. I found that LinkedIn tends to work the best in this area when we’re in a vertical market, when we’re in a target market. So for instance, one agent in Nashville, her market is Vanderbilt University. The professors know each other, the administrators know each other so the fact that someone’s written a recommendation on the page are also in the target market, there’s a pretty good chance that that’s a good relationship. That’s how you can kind of narrow down your ability to focus with that a little bit and creating a reputation within a niche in general. LinkedIn will help you do that as well. We know it’s much easier to get referrals, much easier to create a reputation for yourself when you’re not using a shotgun approach to marketing, when you’re narrowing your focus. You can have one or more than one target but it could be employees in a large company, could be or university, could be business owners in a specific industry but LinkedIn will help you put those two together, and will allow you to establish that reputation amongst those people because using content marketing on LinkedIn now gives you that exposure in that niche that you want. If you get recommended, you get referred. People have already heard of you, they seen you, they know of you. So that’s why you can actually make introductions in LinkedIn. I’m not a super fan of the mechanism of making introductions in LinkedIn although I know a lot of people do it and like it, it’s fine. I personally tend to establish some conversation on LinkedIn, and then usually will take it off of LinkedIn in terms of requesting referrals. I’m not a big fan of asking for referrals with LinkedIn unless you really know that person well. If you know them well, they’re a client, they’re a friend, and they’re a colleague asking for an introduction digitally like that can work. Generally speaking, I think it’s something you want to do more over the phone or in person. So LinkedIn is definitely enhanced. It hasn’t really changed the dynamics. We still need to be referral. We still need people to see and understand and get our value before they introduce us to others and a big mistake I see people making digitally and analog is sometimes asking a little too soon because they haven’t really earned the right yet. That’s where that value discussion I teach comes in where we can get a feel for how people are seeing our value and holding our value before we take the next step.
Jeremiah: I like that. It is something we definitely have to do is earn the right to get a referral. Can you share a quick story of perhaps one of your students that use referrals in a way that perhaps they were blown away with the results or maybe even the results even surprised you at how well it went or introductions as well?
Bill: Jeremiah, I was coaching one of my clients. I’ll give you two actually. One, this guy was having a meeting with his clients, they were coming in, and it was the why is my investments down kind of meeting, why is my portfolio losing money at this moment. He was in a little trepidation about this meeting. He went into the meeting and he explained everything and very logical about how their position still doing better than most people, etc, etc. Then he had this value discussion that I teach. All of a sudden, like the energy in the room changed and they were just saying all these great things about him and now that they always felt better after they talked to him. Even though they were a little upset, they always feel better after they talked to him. The woman, it was a couple, the woman introduced him to her sister who for whatever reason was unhappy with whoever she was working with. Within about a week’s time, he brought in a little more than $500,000 of investable assets from that introduction just from doing the value discussion. So here he was afraid to even talk to his clients and it turned into an introduction to a $500,000 plus client.
Jeremiah: Wow.
Bill: So that was one. Another one, this guy Robin. I’ve been coaching him up in British Columbia, Canada for a long time. When we first got started, again, this is around the value discussion. For the first couple weeks I said, “Robin, just check in with your clients. Just make sure everything’s working the way it’s supposed to work.” He said he started doing it and it’s like the floodgates open. It’s like he was sitting on a treasure chest of goodwill and opportunity that he didn’t even realize it was there. They started saying, “Oh, yeah, Robin, you know we love you. Actually we feel like we’re part of a club working with you and the way you have these events and bring us together.” I said to Rob, “What did you tell him? That the club needs new members?” They were saying, “How do we introduce you to others?” So just that checking in with people, it’s an amazing thing. I’ve seen so many people acquire new clients and assets and big case size just from checking in more often.
Jeremiah: Wow, I love the distinction of sitting on a treasure chest and I bet if our dear listener who’s listening to this right now would just take time to write down the names of their top clients and realize that they’re really sitting on a treasure chest, it would just open up so many possibilities for them. Brilliant. You know, switching gears a little bit here, Bill. I know that you’re a very well-traveled guy and I think you and I are kindred spirits in that. I know you travel the world. What has been one of your favorite places that you visited?
Bill: Oh gosh, there’s so many. Not too long ago I just got back from India. In fact that’s where I caught a cold coming back that was gave me that respiratory problem. I’m in India three times. My fiancé had never been there so we went this past November. I love India. I mean, it’s different, yes. Is it dusty and dirty in some parts? Yes. But you know, the people are wonderful and I just had a great time. India is a big place. I’ve backpacked through the country. I’ll tell you one thing I want to do again is I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro a few years ago and I told my nephew that when he’s ready to go we’ll do it again. I may end up being the oldest guy to ever climb the mountain by the time we do it, but I’m up for it. I like to take adventure travel. In fact, here’s my goal every year, Jeremiah. I want to take three vacations at least and one’s going to be just sightsee a little bit to see some part of the world I hadn’t seen before. My fiancé and I got engaged in Egypt, and we’ve been to Peru and all kinds of neat places. I want to lay on the beach for a week or 10 days. I want to do nothing. I want to nap. I want to read nonsense material. I want to take an adventure. I want to go on some sort of an adventure so whether it’s climbing Kilimanjaro, I’ve camped in the New Arctic Circle. A friend of mine and I were planning a trip to go meshing, dog sledding in Finland. We’re working on that. I also am planning another trip with my friend Jay to do horseback riding in Mongolia. We’ve got a few adventures planned coming up as well.
Jeremiah: Love it. Absolutely love it. If your life was a book, what would the title be?
Bill: Oh, Lord. That’s a good question. I don’t know. It pulls in a lot of different things when you say that, but I’ll tell you something that I’ve also… Another credo, he asked me at the outset of a life hack. Another one of my credos is only fight honorable battles. That’s what came to me when you said that. If you could write a book about your life, what would the title be? Only Fight Honorable Battles. Don’t get mired in stuff that just isn’t worth it. There are battles that are worth fighting, protect a relationship, save a relationship. There are battles worth fighting, but most of them aren’t and being right is a boogie prize. If we’re right, we may win the battle, but we’re going to lose the overall wall war. That’s another one. Then the other title, I’ve always wanted to write a book entitled ‘Eat Dessert First’. That was really just like go for the good stuff. Go for the fun. I’m a very playful guy. So I’m always having fun and playing. Sometimes I have to be careful because I don’t want to take a serious conversation and be flippant about it and use my sarcasm cause it hasn’t always served me. Just fun and play in everything we do. It just makes everything much more fun. Even in referrals, asking for referrals. Right? I know one advisor agent, Art in Baltimore, he says to his clients, “Hey, we’re just brainstorming here. I’m looking for about 100 people.” They go, “Art, 100 people? We don’t know 100 people. We only had 60 at our wedding. All right, too many, too many, too many.” How about three or four? Right? I know an advisor out on the west coast. He says, “Hey, we’re just brainstorming here. First of all, do you know any lottery winners?” Clients laughed, right? So when you can add fun to all of this stuff that we take so seriously, everything gets easier, and everything just goes much smoother.
Jeremiah: Today’s marketing hack is about email. Would you agree that most of the emails, insurance agents and financial advisors right today are not only filled with terms that are difficult to understand, but are written way too long? Nobody wants to sit through and read an entire sales page. They want to just grab little pieces of content here and there. They want you to get to the point. So my suggestion to you is whenever appropriate, use short emails. Now in my Number 1 best-selling book, I featured a 9 word email template that to date has probably generated millions of dollars of commissions. In fact, I get people emailing me all the time of how well it works. Here’s what I want you to do. If you’ve got somebody on your list that came through your office or went through a virtual demonstration, or somehow knows what you do, but didn’t decide to buy from you for whatever reason and this is important, you must only send this to people who know what you do, do not buy an email list and send this. This will fail and it will be called spam. We do not want that to happen to you. Here’s what you’re going to do. Subject line, you’re going to put the person’s first name, and then inside, all you’re gonna write is, “Do you still need help with your policy, your retirement plan, your investments, your insurance?” whatever it is you sell is what you’re going to put. John, do you still need help with your insurance? Question mark, and then your name. That’s it. I will let you put your signature line in there but that’s about it. Go ahead. Give it a try to everybody in your database that hasn’t responded to you in the last 90 days, send that out and see what happens. That is your 9 word email. Awesome. So you’ve traveled a lot. Curiosity. What’s your go to order at your favorite hometown restaurant?
Bill: Go to order at my favorite? Well, I’ll tell you. I like a good steak. People who know me find that a little funny because I was a vegetarian for 15 years. I mean, 15 years. I never saw myself eating meat again. I wouldn’t need sea food. I mean, I was a vegetarian. Then for about a year I was craving shrimp for some reason. I have no idea why. I walked into my mom’s house and she offered me a tuna fish salad sandwich on wonder bread and anybody old enough knows wonder bread as white bread. She made killer tuna fish salad and I surprised the heck out of her. I said, “Okay”, and like her eyes lit up and she made this tuna fish salad for me and it was great. Always great. Then I ate fish for a while, then I start eating chicken again. I was having dinner, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and I had a steak for the first time in forever. I go, “Man, this is what I’ve been missing for all these years?” I’ve gone full circle, and I eat a balanced diet, some junk food, some healthy food.
Jeremiah: Great. I remember, I just started becoming a vegetarian. I think was just a couple of years. I went back to Montreal to hang out with my family and part of my extended family I have all these Jamaican Auntie’s. They are amazing at making curry goat. A curry goat is probably my favorite dish of all time. I have so many memories, positive warm memories attached to West Indian food. And so especially sitting there and watching them make it for me in the kitchen with roti and plantain and all that stuff. I remember eating the curry goat. I went back to visit and I hadn’t eaten any curry goat in years, and they’re like, “Come in. Pick me, I’ll make it for you.” Like, come on I’m gonna make something for you. So of course, I can’t say no to Auntie. So we sat down, she made it for me. I could feel the goat going through my gut for three days because my body was like, “What did you just put inside of me?” But it was totally worth it. It was totally worth it. You talked a little earlier about songs, right? You like to hum a song. What would you say is your favorite 90’s jam?
Bill: Well, Jeremiah, you gotta understand and I’m a little older than you are.
Jeremiah: Just a little bit though. Just a tad. Well, you can pick a different decade, it’s fine.
Bill: More than a tad and I think even going to 80’s is still pushing it a little bit.
Jeremiah: Let’s go to the 70’s man, 60’s if you want.
Bill: Yeah. I’m in music of the 70’s. The Who, Stones, and I like Rush, which is maybe came along a little bit later, Neil Peart, the drummer. I’m a drummer. So any bands got a great drummer, I definitely appreciate. One of my favorite groups of all time is Tower Power, and they’re still around. It’s a horn band. Yes, it’s funky, jazz soul. Just love it. As a drummer, I used to love the Plan Horn Band, The Chicago, and Tower power, Earth Wind and Fire and that sort of stuff. So that’s where I’m stuck with my musical tastes. I mean, I do like some of the newer music. As a musician, I can always appreciate good musicianship and a good melody and a good rhythm section, but my musical taste is mostly stuck back there.
Jeremiah: That’s awesome. So what’s your favorite song out of all of those or a song that if you heard that, man that just kicks it up for you?
Bill: Well, I’ll tell you a song actually that we’re talking about when you get stuck in a negative mindset. Sometimes playing music really makes a difference. A song that I that always kicks me out is a song called Let it Roll by Little Feet. It is just a kick in move in song that you can’t listen to that song and be in a bad mood. It’s impossible. In fact, there’s a lot of songs that are like that. That’s why I always advocate for folks if you get stuck in a bad mindset or whatever. Just musical, take you out of that because it’s a different part of the brain. So Let it Roll by Little Feet is definitely one of my all-time favorite.
Jeremiah: That’s awesome. Now we all we’ve all got smartphones, what’s the app on your phone you can’t live without? Now this could be for pleasure or business.
Bill: Whoo. Well, I’m picking up my phone just looking what’s there. I love AccuWeather. I know that sounds kind of boring. It’s got this part, it’s got a thing called a minute cast. You can see what’s going to go on for the next two hours. I play golf and I put on AccuWeather and I can see what’s happening on the golf course for the next two hours. I know if it’s going to rain, I know if we’re going to get the round in it etc. Another app. It’s Tabata app which is really just Japanese for interval training. I use that in my cardio training to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, which gives you a better cardio workout. There’s a lot of different Tabata apps out there. I’ll tell you one that a lot of folks might not know about is called Tunity. This is great because you can take the app, you can point it at a television like in a bar where you can hear there’s a game on, you’d like to know what’s going on, and you can’t hear it. You point at the TV, it’ll recognize the actual broadcast and it’ll start streaming the audio part of that broadcast. Even if you leave the bar, the restaurant, the streaming will continue. You can listen to whatever was going on. I do that for news sometimes in the car if I there’s a story going on, I don’t want to miss it. I just put up Tunity, I get the audio going and it stays with me for as long as I needed to. So that’s a cool app.
Jeremiah: Wow, those are great. Actually, I actually have a few Tabata apps myself because for the days that I do cardio, I do interval training, both cardio and running. So that’s awesome. I’m glad we have that in common, Bill. So as we’re wrapping up here. One question we love to ask people is if you lost everything, you had no more mailing list, you had nothing more than your insurance license, or in your case your ability to teach, a laptop and $500 with a Wi Fi connection, what would you focus on for the next 30 days to reboot your entire business?
Bill: That’s actually pretty easy. I just focus on every relationship that I have. Right? Whether I’m asking for help, whether I’m asking for referrals, whether I’m groveling for business with whatever it may be, it really comes down to the relationships. That’s what I’d do. If I didn’t have a list in front of me anymore, I just recreated my head as best I could and that’s how I would jumpstart the business again, it’s clearly the relationships. It’s not just clients, and not just centers of influence, although both of those will be very important but it’s also colleagues. It’s other people in my business who would pick me up, who would give me ideas, who would commiserate, who would help me figure out other things because we’re so close to our own stuff we don’t always see the idea. You can’t see the picture if you’re in the frame. What’s been so helpful for me and would continue in that situation are the people that can see things about me and about my life and my business that I can’t see. That’s why I have a couple of masterminds I meet with because of that. Every now and then we need somebody who we trust and who cares about us to give us a metaphorical slap upside the head and say, “You can look at this a different way.” That’s an insight and awareness that we might not find ourselves.
Jeremiah: That’s brilliant. Finally, Bill, if people want to learn more about you, where can they do that?
Bill: Well, I appreciate it. First of all, for everybody listening, I have a report that I put together to help you multiply your best clients. We’d all like the multiplier best clients. So just go to www.multiplyyourbestclients.com. Pick up that free report, you’ll learn something hopefully, maybe have something reinforced. Our general website is www.referralcoach.com. A lot there got a blog, got a lot of things for you to take advantage of without spending a nickel.
Jeremiah: That’s outstanding. For those members of the private advisors community. We also have a full one hour long training with Bill called ‘3 strategies to a perpetual flow of high level clients that got rave reviews’. In fact, I’m looking at one right now that Benjamin posted. He said, “Love this yet another awesome coach.” So that is available to in the private member’s area for all you members. Well, let’s do a quick recap of what we got today. We’re here with Bill. Bill, you were so generous, you shared what you were grateful for, you shared a helpful mind hack in the event that we let that in the Zig Ziglar Stinking Thinking set in, you talked about what’s working right now. I think we went over probably two or three different scripted processes that people can go through. We talked about mindset shifts from what do I need to let’s make it a conversation of value. We’ve learned about a few other places too that we can put on our bucket list. For those of us who love to travel, we can follow Bill’s adventures here. I know personally, I’ve had a dog mushing on my list for a long time being from Canada. It’s like how am I not already done this? But actually doing it in Finland sounds even cooler. So I’m going to put that on my list, Bill. We learned about your vegetarian adventures as well as your favorite song and your 3 favorite apps. I mean, man, we have just covered so much Bill. I’m so grateful for you coming here today. For you dear listeners. If you want to have a transcript of today’s episode, just go to www.advisorist.com. We’re going to have a full transcript. So if bill went a little quickly or you want to swipe those great emails that he shared and those scripts, you’ll be able to do that we have a transcript just click on the podcast link on www.advisorist.com. Of course the full execution sheet behind this podcast is exclusively for a members. Bill, thanks so much my fan for being part of the Advisorist family, we really appreciate you keep up the amazing work.
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