A Story About Referrals and the Law of the Harvest

This is the story of a teen in pain receiving support from a great coach. By itself, this is wonderful. This episode explains how a chain of relationships introduced the teen to the coach, even though some of the people in the chain didn't know the teen, and others didn't know the coach. Mutual trust and relationships built over time brought these coach and client together. This is the magic that matters.

Announcement: On May 1 I'm holding my first "Office Hours with Mark". Office Hours creates space and time for my fellow coaches to connect with me and get support. Go to https://mrkbtlr.com/office-hours to opt in for details. 

What is A Podcast for Coaches?

A Podcast for Coaches shines a light on one of the most elegant, underrated business models in the world: one-on-one coaching. Mark Butler hosts the show, and he's been a coach and advisor to every kind of online business you can think of, having helped businesses earning everything from $0 to $25,000,000+. Although Mark believes every online business model has merit, he worries one-on-one coaching is viewed as a stepping-stone business for people who aren't ready or able to scale. But it's not true, and A Podcast for Coaches sets out to show people--through clear teaching and rich, current stories of successful coaches who love their business--that one-on-one coaching is one of the most gratifying and lowest "hassle-per-dollar" businesses in the world.

Hey, it's Mark Butler.

And you are listening to
a podcast for coaches.

I just threw away a 23 minute rough
draft of this episode because it took

me those 23 minutes to realize there
is one story that I want to tell you.

And I think I make the best use of your
time by just telling you this story.

And I trust you.

You're smart.

I trust you to take this one
story and make it meaningful and

useful in your life because it has
changed my life actually forever.

Here's the story.

Maybe 18 months ago, a coach
friend of mine sent me a text.

She texted a couple of her
coach friends actually.

And she said, I've got
a teenager who's struggling.

And of course,

When you get a message from
someone that you care about and

hear that someone they care about
so deeply is having a hard time.

You want to do what you can.

I have teenagers.

Many of you have teenagers or
have had teenagers or have littles

who will someday be teenagers.

Or you love teenagers that are
nieces, nephews, friends, students.

And when you see one of these
perfect, messy people who are between

childhood and adulthood, and you see
how hard it is to be them, frankly,

in 2024, and you just want to help.

And of course we know coaching
can be a powerful resource for

people at all stages of life.

But the idea that we could
give that kind of support.

Two kids who are in that stage.

That's amazing.

So my friend sends a couple
of us this text and says, I've

got a teen who's struggling.

Do you know anybody who could help?

Do you know any coaches or therapists
that you think are especially well

suited to give my kids some support?

Now here's an important
point in this story.

It did not occur to me in that moment.

To offer, to help
directly, to be the coach.

I consider myself a very confident coach
and a very competent coach, but it did not

cross my mind to say, Oh, I could do it.

Let me talk to him.

Well, why not?

Yes.

I think I could have been of some
service, but I don't spend time in

coaching conversations with people
in that specific circumstance.

Teenagers.

I don't have the language of those
interactions on the tip of my tongue.

So even though we as coaches
might have the idea, Oh,

these tools can help anybody.

I can help anybody.

And there's some truth to it in
that moment when you know that

someone you care about is worried
about someone they care about.

You just want them to receive the
highest and best service that they can.

And in that moment.

I don't need the validation or
the money that could come from

saying, Oh no, no, I can help.

I can help anybody with these tools
or with my way of being and that's

important to this entire conversation.

So my friend says, do you know anybody?

And the truth is in that moment, when
it comes to specifically a person

who works with teens, and I will.

I didn't throw out an apology to any of
my friends whose names should have popped

into my head at the time, but didn't.

But I believe there was inspiration
in the fact that a name popped into

my head, and it was a friend of
mine who I knew to be well connected

in the world of struggling teens.

So I sent her a text.

I've got a friend who's got a
teenager who's having a hard time.

Do you know anyone?

Now, my friend has coached teens,

but she, with her self awareness and with
her desire to give people the highest

and best service possible, she knows that
it is not her strong preference or her

best competence or genius to coach teens.

So she didn't volunteer herself either.

She gave me five names.

And after giving me five names,
she said, by the way, the last one.

is my favorite.

He is amazing.

I said, thank you so much.

I went to my friend and said, I got
these five names from someone that I

trust and her favorite is the last one.

My friend thanked me.

After a year or so we reconnect and
I said, by the way, how's your kid?

And I was so relieved and
thrilled and grateful to hear.

The kids thriving relative to the last
time we had talked so much better.

She tells me, and I said, Oh,
well, did you end up ever finding

a good practitioner, somebody
to, to give some support?

And she said, yeah, it was
the one that you recommended.

It was the, it was the favorite one.

Okay.

Well, you know, at that point then I
just have this surge of amazing emotion.

And I tell her how
thrilled I am to hear that.

And then I go and text the referrer,
the original referrer, and say, Hey,

I just want you to know that your
referrals panned out to the benefit

of this kid that was struggling.

This kid that neither she nor I
will probably ever know personally.

But now we've both been able to
be part of a chain of support that

helped get this kid some relief.

And of course she thanked me for letting
her know for closing the loop for her.

She wasn't surprised because she
knew she'd given good referrals.

She was confident to say, here are some
great people, but this one's my favorite.

And it felt amazing to her, of course,
to have that loop closed as well.

This whole story, this experience
captures the essence of how a coaching

practice can grow and can thrive.

I may never meet the practitioner
whose name was passed through all of

our hands to this young person, but
I have no doubt that that person's

practice is full or close to it.

And it wouldn't surprise me if there
were a waiting list because in this

one experience, this practitioner's
name was introduced and infused

with trust across multiple people.

And then the people at the end of that
chain who actually received the direct

relief, they will be referring people.

And then if I'm ever in that situation
again, I will be able to say, I don't

know this practitioner directly,
but a person I trust recommended

him and another person that I trust
had an amazing experience with him.

Therefore, I'm confident to say, you
should probably reach out to him.

By the way, don't bother using my
name because he has no idea who I am.

I'm just some nameless faceless person
out there who's in his relationship web

that he doesn't even know trusts him.

This is how the world works.

Is it the only way the world works?

No.

We can take a more transactional
approach to growing our practices.

We can do advertising.

We can even do referrals in
a more transactional way.

We can do reciprocal
referral arrangements.

We can do paid referral arrangements.

None of those may be my choice
or my preference, but I'm

also not saying they're wrong.

What I'm saying is there's beauty
and magic and reliability in the

fact if we imagine our relationships
as a web of people, the trust that

exists between individual nodes on
that web ends up benefiting everyone

in the web because person a trusts
person B and person C trust person B.

And now we're all benefiting
from the trust in the system.

And that is so.

Cool.

And it's reliable.

I talked about reciprocity in the
episode on launch based selling.

I want to talk about
reciprocity again today.

We can treat reciprocity as a
reliable, trustworthy principle.

We don't have to treat it
as a transactional tactic.

So we don't have to give in order to get.

We can give trusting that giving
always results in receiving.

It's a universal law.

It's the law of the harvest.

Where we sow, we will reap.

We may not be able to predict exactly
when we reap, but seeds planted and

nurtured have to bear their fruit.

They can't not.

It's the law of the harvest.

So what you have in a relationship web,
like the one I'm describing is a bunch

of people or two people who are planting
relationship seeds, planting little

trust seeds with each other, nurturing
those, and then having them bear fruit.

And they have to bear fruit.

And it just happens that in the
case where those people are coaches

or where they're interacting with
coaches, some of the fruit that they

bear is formal coaching relationships.

And thank goodness, because that's where
people get relief and help and growth.

So, today's message, today's thesis
is , if I acknowledge my connection

to people, to individuals, and then
I acknowledge their connection to

other individuals and how all of those
connections end up interlinked, then it

helps me see that I'm happily investing.

in any of those relationships is a way of
investing in all of those relationships.

And as I develop my character, like
we talked about in the last episode,

if I can develop my character and my
skill, and if I can confidently occupy

my space within this network, that my
only job within that network is to give.

And then to trust that the goodness
will come back because it has to.

So when you think about
referrals, I'm not mad at all.

If you think about referrals on a
transactional way, I'm not mad about

blog posts, books, and podcasts that
have titles that sound like how to get

a steady stream of referrals or, you
know, Whatever, how to ask for referrals.

I'm not mad about it.

I think there's, there's benefit there.

I also want to shine a consistent light
on the fact that a less transactional

approach also works beautifully.

And in my opinion is the better approach,
the approach where you don't know when

the connections will bear their fruit, but
you know that they will bear their fruit.

There's just an inevitability to it.

So I hope that we will develop
ourselves to become more

valuable parts of our network.

And also that we will invest
in our network in whatever

way we're best suited to do.

And that we'll trust that as we do
that consistently over a period of

months and years and maybe decades,
that the fruit harvested will be

sweet and it will be reliable.

It'll be consistent.

And we'll end up with something of course,
that's much more important than the money.

It'll be the relationships built
and maintained over those years.

And it'll be the knowledge that people
in pain got relief because of the way

we all invested in our relationships.

And I'll talk to you next time.