Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
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I created the Coaching Revolution podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
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so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
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This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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Welcome back to the podcast.
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I’m so glad that you’re here today because we are diving into one of the most effective, powerful, and often overlooked ways to grow your coaching or transformational business.
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We’re going to be looking today at referral generation.
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And let me start by saying this.
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Of course, we all know that there are lots of different ways to grow and to sustain your business.
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But so much of the marketing that’s being taught out there right now is usually really complicated.
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It’s about complicated strategies, expensive strategies, difficult ways to generate leads.
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And for a lot of coaches and leaders, you can get so caught up in all of those other strategies that working on a referral strategy often gets lost in the shuffle.
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Now, I’m going to tell you something that I not only believe with my whole heart, but I also know this from years of being in business and also from helping my clients grow their businesses.
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Referrals along with client renewals are the 1st place to be putting your time and energy when it comes to lead generation and income generation.
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And I’m going to tell you why.
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It’s because.
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Things like ads or figuring out how to go viral on social media or funnels with tripwires, all of that kind of stuff.
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It’s not that you shouldn’t do them.
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For some people, those strategies are absolutely aligned and I definitely use some of those things in my own business.
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But that being said, those types of strategies, they take a ton of effort.
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They have a lot of steps to them.
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They need a lot of complicated technology and they take a lot of time.
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And the dialing in process for those strategies isn’t easy.
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What I mean by that is you have to kind of have lots of different iterations and
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tweaks in order to get them to work well.
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Once you do get them working, then you still have to continue perfecting those strategies for engaging total strangers from the internet who land into your world with zero contacts about you or who you are.
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Also, ads, tripwires, funnels, they all cost a lot of money.
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But referrals are different.
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Referrals are really the most effective, cheapest, least energy and time consuming way to bring on more clients and build consistent income.
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And I want to give you some data on this because I love me some good data.
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Here’s one piece.
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People are four times more likely to buy when they’re referred by a friend.
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That’s from Nielsen.
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Here’s another piece of data from Nielsen.
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81% of US online consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by their friends’ social media posts.
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In other words, someone posts about a product or an offering on social media.
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81% of decisions are influenced by that.
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I’ll give you a few other pieces of data.
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This one is from finances online.
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Referrals get 30% higher conversion rates to becoming clients than non-referrals.
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So if you’re talking to a referral, a prospect that has come in by referral, they’re 30% more likely to end up saying yes to you and to buying what you’ve got.
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And then here’s one more piece of data.
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I think this is my favorite one of all of these.
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One single happy customer can yield 9 referrals.
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Nine from one happy client.
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And I want you to know this.
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Even if you aren’t working with clients right now, you can still generate referrals inside of your business.
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You can use referrals as a launchpad for your business.
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Referrals don’t only come from clients, from people who are working with you.
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And I want to also tell you all of those data points that I shared,
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They’re not just research to me.
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This is my actual business.
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So easily, 45% of my annual income comes from referrals, mostly from very satisfied clients.
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For my Sacred Depths Mastery program, a good half of participants
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in Sacred Depths come from other Sacred Depths graduates who have referred their friends and their colleagues.
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And many of my smaller programs also fill up with referrals.
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I cannot say enough how important referrals are for a thriving business.
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And just so you know, this isn’t just a strategy that I use now 25 years into my business.
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Referrals are a strategy that I’ve used since day one of my business.
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It’s what allowed me to launch my business in powerful ways and it’s a strategy that I’ve used consistently ever since.
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Referrals are much, much warmer than cold leads.
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They also carry a sense of trust in you before a prospect even hops on a call with you.
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And referrals are much more cost effective than ads, social media content, or hours spent chasing down new leads.
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You don’t need a big e-mail list or a big social media following or complicated tech and funnels in order to generate referral leads.
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And there are so many people that you can activate referrals from.
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friends, colleagues, people from all corners of your life.
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And of course, one of the best sources of referrals are happy clients.
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And on top of all of this, there’s a really beautiful ripple effect that I really want to point out.
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When you activate referrals, especially from happy clients who sing your praises,
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guess what it does in addition to bringing you more clients?
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It boosts your confidence.
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And when your confidence is boosted, guess what happens next?
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You’re much more likely to do outreach, to market more boldly, to make yourself more visible, to speak more from your heart, to raise your rates,
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to finally put out that program that you’ve really been wanting to offer.
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In other words, you naturally become more magnetic and more poised to grow your business when you get referrals, when you see referrals are coming to you, when you see people trust you enough to tell their people about you.
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Now, especially now,
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in 2026, going into 2027, when people are craving more personal experiences, more values aligned experiences, and also right now when there’s less general trust out there more than ever, referrals matter more than they ever have before.
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People don’t just want another expert with some polished branding or fancy headshots.
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They want someone who gets them, someone whose friend or colleague says, you have got to work with her.
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So if you’ve been wondering how to bring in more leads and more clients without burning out, without having to be on Instagram every minute of the day, without pouring more money into complicated funnels,
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then you’re in the right place listening to this episode today because I am going to share some of the most common mistakes that people make when they try to generate referrals and what to do instead.
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And heads up, this episode is also a bit of a teaser for something I’ve got coming up that is incredibly high value and it doesn’t happen very often.
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It’s called Referral Magnet, and it’s a five-day referral marketing bootcamp.
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It’s five days live with me where I teach you step by step by step how to activate more referrals in a way that is totally authentic and personal to you, in a way that is aligned with your values, in a way that is ethical and not slimy.
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What I teach inside of Referral Magnet is going to work for you whether you have current clients or not, whether you work one-on-one with clients or with groups.
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Referral Magnet will also work for you if you’ve been holding back from asking for referrals or from putting yourself out there.
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And it will also work if right now you think you have nobody to ask for referrals, because I promise you, I hear this all the time, I have nobody to ask.
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But once I look further with clients on this, we see that you absolutely do have people to ask for referrals.
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And inside of the referral magnet boot camp, you’re going to identify who those folks are as we work through those five days.
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I am obsessed with telling as many people as I can about generating referrals because the information on this is solid gold for your business.
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It is rooted in everything that we know about human behavior and it uses transformational principles to help you magnetize new business your way, in your voice.
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ethically.
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And I can say for certain, if you participate in all five days of Referral Magnet, it will poise you to grow your business.
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We’ve offered this the last two years and our participants have started activating new leads before we were even done with the five days.
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So I will link to Referral Magnet in the show notes.
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And for now, let’s jump in to the referral mistakes that are blocking you and what to do them.
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I want to talk about some of these mistakes because they are very common and there’s something that you can do about them.
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And I want you to do something about it so that you can generate more referrals.
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So here’s the first mistake.
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Let’s just start with the big one.
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So many incredible coaches
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don’t ask for referrals.
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So that first mistake is not asking for referrals out of fear of being pushy.
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So many coaches just don’t ask because they’re afraid that it’s going to make them seem salesy or pushy or like one of those markety people.
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And
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I get it.
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None of us want to feel icky or markety or like we’re imposing on people.
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This is a big one for me personally.
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I really get it.
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And the truth is, if you don’t ask for referrals in the right ways, it can sound pushy or imposing or markety.
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But
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That being said, when you’ve got effective language that sounds like you, and when you shift your energy to be magnetic, referrals then become about connection.
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So instead of feeling like pressure for you and for who you’re asking for referrals, they can become
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about giving people a beautiful opportunity to help somebody they care about by sharing about you.
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An incredible resource, right?
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Also, here’s the thing.
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When you start to shift on the inside, when you start to become less afraid of being pushy, when you shift your energetics around asking,
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Then when you do make the invitation, there’s something else that happens.
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The people that you ask, they get to help you out.
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And guess what?
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Most people actually love to be helpful in that way.
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When you shift your energy around asking for referrals, you’re going to see that people are often grateful that you asked.
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They’re going to be happy that you asked them.
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Inside of Referral Magnet, we’re going to go deep into this, the fear of being too pushy, the holding yourself back from asking.
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Inside of Referral Magnet, in addition to learning how to language your referral outreach, we’re going to walk through a powerful inner process to shift your fear of being pushy.
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Because I guarantee
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If it’s showing up, that fear, if it’s showing up around referrals and blocking you from doing referral outreach, it is also showing up in other areas of your marketing and business too.
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So by working this fear of being pushy when it comes to referrals, we’re also gonna work the fear for all of your marketing and sales in general.
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Okay, so that’s mistake number one, not asking, just simply not asking because of fear.
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Here’s a second very common mistake that happens when people try to generate referrals.
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And this one is kind of a subtle, sneaky one.
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It’s the assumption that you don’t have anyone to ask.
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The assumption that the people that aren’t going to know anyone who is an ideal client for you.
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You might think, oh, well, my cousin works in finance and my old college friend is a mom of three.
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I doubt that they know anyone who wants relationship coaching or who’s open to doing somatic work, right?
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And then you just don’t ask.
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But here’s what you forget.
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People know people.
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And sometimes the connections that bring you your next amazing client
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aren’t maybe even direct.
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They’re one or two degrees removed.
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It is such a trap to end up thinking, oh, everyone I know, they just don’t know anyone who could refer to me, so I’m just not gonna ask.
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And I’ll give you an example of this.
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So when I first started my business,
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and this was many years ago, 25 years ago, coaching work, somatic work, ritual work, all the work that I was doing, it was woo.
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It was way out there in a way that it’s not as woo these days.
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And I never thought that my old college friends in a million years
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would get what I was doing, would understand it, or would have anyone to refer to me or would want to refer to me because my college friends were not woo at all.
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They were just of a different ilk than my ideal client.
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But guess what?
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I asked them anyway.
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I asked them for referrals because
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I was pretty desperate when I first started my business.
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I really needed to bring on clients and I knew I needed to start with the people that I knew, right, with my network.
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So I asked my old college friends and my old college roommate, Tammy, introduced me to a colleague of hers, a woman named Kendra.
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who was looking to be able to kind of handle her new job.
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She had just been promoted, she was in publishing, and she was really having trouble with confidence and settling in and boundaries and all the things.
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Kendra and I hit it off right away.
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So basically, even though someone like Tammy would have never been my client, she knew a woman, Kendra, who was my ideal client.
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And Kendra ended up working with me for quite a number of years.
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She renewed and she renewed.
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And she also referred other people to me who then became my clients.
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So I want you to stop making assumptions about who knows who and trying to control that by just not asking because you’re making those assumptions.
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And instead
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I want you to find the courage to ask for referrals anyway.
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I want to invite you to plant thoughtful, clear referral seeds or requests.
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Because you may end up opening entire new networks that you didn’t even realize were available to you.
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And by the way,
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All of what I’m sharing right now is also true of the assumption that the people don’t know anyone who can afford your services.
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Please, don’t make that assumption.
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And by the way, I have made that assumption before in the past.
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So if you have, you’re in good company, but I really wanted to dispel that, right?
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So yeah, it might be true sometimes that the people you know
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Don’t know other people who have the money to invest.
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But guess what?
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I can guarantee it is not true across the board.
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It’s just not.
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And don’t underestimate the pull that a potential prospect has to invest with you if they already trust you and want what you have to offer.
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Sometimes when somebody says it’s too expensive, what it actually means is I absolutely don’t have money in the bank.
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And that’s not an ideal client.
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But other times when somebody says it’s not too expensive, what it actually means is I’m not sure that your service is worth the investment yet.
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And then for you,
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It’s a matter of having really good ethical sales skills to help your prospect get clear about the value of your service and if it’s right for them.
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So when you ask for referrals in the right ways, you will see that the people that you know do know some people that are ideal prospects for you.
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And inside of Referral Magnet, we’re going to learn exactly how to identify those people.
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We’re going to learn exactly how to ask for the referrals.
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And we’re also going to learn how to speak to resistances that might come up when you ask people for referrals.
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Okay, let’s move on to the next mistake that can often be made when people go to generate referrals.
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It’s the thinking or the belief that you need to sound glossy or slick or formal when you ask for referrals.
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So very often people try to sound professional, whatever that means.
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I’m putting in an air quote, sound professional when they do referral outreach.
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And then because they feel like they have to sound really professional,
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they end up writing emails or leaving messages that feel stiff or inauthentic or just plain weird, right?
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Or when you believe that you have to sound professional, maybe then you just don’t write, you just end up not writing anything at all or doing the outreach at all because you end up getting completely creatively blocked by the idea that you need to sound a certain way.
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If this is you, I want you to really hear me.
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Your warmth and your realness, being you, authentic you, are some of your greatest marketing tools.
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Your warmth, your realness, your authenticity, some of your greatest marketing tools.
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not a polished elevator pitch, not a sleek sales page, you.
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This is the heart of true referral marketing, and it’s the heart of, I think, all effective ethical marketing.
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The more authentic that you are, the more you sound like yourself,
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the more magnetic your marketing becomes.
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And then the less you sound like other people, which is good because when you sound like other people, you don’t stand out.
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People don’t really listen.
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They don’t really pay attention.
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So I want you to not try to be glossy or slick or formal or professional sounding.
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I want you to work on sounding like you.
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And inside of Referral Magnet, inside of our five days, I’ll teach you how to prepare referral outreach that is natural, that is heartfelt, that sounds exactly like you, that holds your values,
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And that is persuasive without ever, ever, ever being pushy.
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I’m also inside of Referral Magnet going to give you templates and examples of all of this in addition to instruction so that you’re not staring at a blank screen wasting time by not knowing how to prepare your outreach.
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Okay, so that brings us to mistake number four with referrals.
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And this mistake is not knowing how to articulate what your work is and who it’s for.
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The perennial problem of most entrepreneurs, right?
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Not knowing how to describe our work and who it’s for.
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It’s something that we’re all working on.
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By the way, myself included, I’m always working on this one.
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And here’s what I want you to know.
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If people don’t understand what you do or who you help, they can’t refer you.
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Even if they love you, even if they think you’re the bee’s knees, if they don’t know what you do or who you help or what you help with, they can’t refer you or they can’t refer you well.
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And this is where so many brilliant coaches get tripped up.
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They’re good at the work that they do.
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But when it comes time to explain it, you go totally blank or you start rambling or you start to sound general and vague.
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So by the way, if you are recognizing yourself in what I’m sharing, no shame, no self-judgment, please, I have been there.
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And
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not just in the distant past.
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Even after years of being in business and marketing, even though I teach all of this, like I said, this is ongoing work for me to get more and more targeted and dialed in my messaging.
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And to keep shifting it as my work grows and evolves.
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Articulating what your work is and who it’s for
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is work that you’re going to be doing for the lifetime of your business.
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That might be good news to you, that might be bad news to you, but I’m just telling you that’s how it is.
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It’s work for the lifetime of your business.
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It’s not a once and done.
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Now inside of Referral Magnet, inside of those five days, we’re going to get clear on the messaging that you need in order to be able to effectively ask for referrals.
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Inside of the boot camp, you’re going to articulate your work in language that clicks.
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And this is the part that makes my little nerd heart happy.
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I’ll also be giving you feedback on your writing, on what you’re preparing.
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OK, mistake number five.
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This is a biggie.
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This is a tough one, I’m going to be honest.
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When you ask for referrals out of the blue from people that you’ve lost touch with.
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This is kind of a no-no.
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I want to be clear on this.
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Now, we’ve all probably done it, right?
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Suddenly remembering someone you meant to stay in contact with, but
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What you don’t want to do is to reach out if you’ve lost touch or to reach out only when you need something.
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It generally doesn’t work if you reach out cold or only when you want something.
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And it’s not because they don’t like you, but it’s just because the relationship feels cold.
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So this is why having a keep in touch system for referrals is so essential because life is busy, right?
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It’s hard to just remember to keep up with people.
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There’s not enough time.
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It feels like a lot.
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So having a system really helps.
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You want to nurture relationships throughout the year.
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not just when you’re launching or looking for clients.
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And you want the people that you’re reaching out to for referrals to feel that you really care about them, their lives, what they’re up to.
00:30:32 Joanna Lindenbaum
One of the things I always say is at the heart of effective marketing is heartfelt relationships, plain and simple.
00:30:44 Joanna Lindenbaum
Now, keeping in touch regularly, like I said, is not easy, right?
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How do you stay organized and on top of it when life is so busy?
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How do you remember to be consistent in keeping in touch?
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What do you even say to people as you’re keeping in touch?
00:31:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
We’re going to cover all of that inside of Referral Magnet.
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I’m going to give you an easy, doable system
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to stay connected with the folks inside of your network without needing to be on social media all day long.
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The system is simple, it’s repeatable, and it actually feels really good because you get to stay in touch and in connection with people that you adore.
00:31:30 Joanna Lindenbaum
All right, let’s talk about the next mistake.
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This one is also, you know, it’s a tender one.
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And I’m going to say it straight up.
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I hope it doesn’t sound harsh.
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I say it with a lot of love.
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The best way to get referrals is to be referral worthy.
00:32:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
The best way to get referrals is to be referral worthy.
00:32:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
When your work is
00:32:08 Joanna Lindenbaum
deeply transformational.
00:32:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
When clients walk away feeling seen, feeling empowered, feeling changed, they want to tell other people about you.
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They become your biggest fans, sometimes without you even needing to ask.
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When clients are obsessed with their work with you, they’re just going to be so much more likely to refer to you or to jump on your invitation or request to refer.
00:32:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
So if you’re not seeing a lot of referrals from current clients, one of the places that it’s worth looking at honestly
00:32:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
is how can you deepen your mastery?
00:32:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
How can you deepen your presence when you’re with clients?
00:33:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
How can you improve your client experience?
00:33:10 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if you’ve been hanging around me for a while, you know that mastery becoming extraordinary at working with clients
00:33:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
This is something I love talking about.
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It’s what so many of my trainings are actually about, helping you become such an extraordinary coach and practitioner that you 10x your ability to support your clients through every goal and situation and fear and shadow that shows up.
00:33:43 Joanna Lindenbaum
So not to sound dramatic, but it is true.
00:33:48 Joanna Lindenbaum
Your skill and capacity in your client work are kind of make or break when it comes to referrals.
00:33:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
And we’re going to talk about this inside of Referral Magnet because great marketing is always first and foremost built on great delivery and the results that you’re actually able
00:34:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
to co-create with clients.
00:34:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
You cannot have effective marketing if you cannot produce results or co-create results, I should say, with clients because it’s really about a co-creation.
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You’re not producing it for your clients.
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Okay, we’ve got one mistake left when it comes to referrals.
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This is probably the, I don’t know, the least obvious one.
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And it’s one that gets me really excited.
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So the mistake is thinking that you don’t know enough people to create a referral event.
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So let me tell you what I mean by this.
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I love, love, love.
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If you know me, and especially for those of you that have been my clients, you have probably participated in this.
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I love
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creating what I call referral events.
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If you’re not doing referral events in your business, you are missing out, my friend, I promise you.
00:35:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
In short, a referral event is when you host a workshop or a class or any kind of meeting in person or online
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where your inner circle can come and bring their friends.
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So in other words, it’s a workshop or a class where you invite the people that and you ask them to refer people in as well to invite friends.
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This is an incredible, incredible marketing tool that really poises you to activate even more leads through referrals.
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Now, as I’m sharing this, you might be thinking, well, wow, that sounds really great, but I don’t have a big audience.
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I don’t have a lot of people in front of me.
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I’m not sure anyone would come to a referral event that I am hosting.
00:36:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
Let me tell you, the beauty of all referral marketing is that you don’t need a massive list or community or social following in order to activate referrals.
00:36:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
What you do need is a well designed, intimate event that gives people a really meaningful experience of your work
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And then inside of that, you also need an effective invitation to share it with someone who would benefit.
00:36:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
For a really good referral event that helps activate leads and eventually clients, guess what, and I love this, you don’t need a million people at that event.
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You don’t need a million people in that room.
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You just need a few of the right people.
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I have held some referral events where there’s only been five people that have come to the workshop, but all five of those people have become clients.
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And those five people have gone on to refer other clients to me.
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So it’s like one event where it could feel like, oh my God, this is a failure.
00:37:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
Only five people actually has brought in so much business over the short term and the long term.
00:37:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
Creating referral events that your people are excited to come to and also invite their people to.
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Creating events that convert these referral leads into clients.
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It is an art for sure.
00:37:55 Joanna Lindenbaum
You can’t just throw something together.
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There are specific ways to put it together, you know, all learnable ways.
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And inside of Referral Magnet, we’re going to look at how to create these kinds of referral events.
00:38:13 Joanna Lindenbaum
These are low pressure, high value previews of your work that naturally lead to enrollments.
00:38:24 Joanna Lindenbaum
So with all of this, here’s what I want you to know.
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Yes, of course,
00:38:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
Referrals are about bringing in more leads and more clients.
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But truly referral marketing, it’s about so much more than that.
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It’s about building your business on relationships and community and integrity and authenticity.
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and really good work transformation.
00:39:07 Joanna Lindenbaum
Referrals are about having a community of folks that you adore who also adore you.
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When you use referrals as a strategy, this is what you create.
00:39:22 Joanna Lindenbaum
It’s also about allowing the people who already love your work to help you.
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to help you grow, to do you favors and refer people.
00:39:36 Joanna Lindenbaum
Referral marketing is also about feeling more intimacy in your business and getting to be in relationship with more amazing people.
00:39:49 Joanna Lindenbaum
So if any of
00:39:52 Joanna Lindenbaum
the pieces or the mistakes that I shared today made you think, oof, I’ve definitely done that.
00:40:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
Again, you’re not alone.
00:40:03 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the good news is referral marketing is a totally learnable set of skills.
00:40:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if anything that I’ve shared with you today has also made you think, my gosh, I want to activate referrals in my business.
00:40:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
I don’t want to be spending so much time and energy and money and stress chasing funnels and ads and I want to more easily bring in leads, then I’d love for you to join me for Referral Magnet.
00:40:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
It again, it is a referral marketing bootcamp.
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It’s happening in September.
00:40:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
I would love to have you there.
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It’s an intensive training.
00:40:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
You get 5 live 75 minute training calls with me where we go deep on everything that I walked you through today and so much more.
00:41:00 Joanna Lindenbaum
The trainings are practical and detailed and really give you everything that you need to start asking for referrals before our five days is done.
00:41:11 Joanna Lindenbaum
And the trainings are all live.
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So you can ask me any questions that you have.
00:41:17 Joanna Lindenbaum
Plus we also do inner work on some of those calls so that you feel ready and open and excited to do the outreach and to magnetize referrals.
00:41:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
With the bootcamp, you also get a full workbook with different kinds of referral marketing templates and resource sheets so that you’re never starting from a completely blank page because I know it is hard to start from a blank page.
00:41:47 Joanna Lindenbaum
So
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What else can I tell you about it?
00:41:51 Joanna Lindenbaum
Oh, you also get a private Facebook group for the week so that you get my support, not just on our calls, but in between calls.
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I’m in that Facebook group every day interacting, looking at your marketing copy, answering questions.
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And if you can’t make a session live, not to worry.
00:42:12 Joanna Lindenbaum
The recordings are available for a period of time so that you don’t miss anything so that you can review, et cetera, et cetera.
00:42:20 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m going to drop the links for Referral Magnet in the show notes.
00:42:27 Joanna Lindenbaum
There are special rates for the next few weeks.
00:42:31 Joanna Lindenbaum
And I would love to see you there.
00:42:34 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, thank you so much for tuning in today.
00:42:39 Joanna Lindenbaum
I hope that it was helpful for you more than anything.
00:42:42 Joanna Lindenbaum
I hope it was inspiring for you.
00:42:46 Joanna Lindenbaum
If you have loved this episode, please give us five stars, leave a good review.
00:42:54 Joanna Lindenbaum
If there’s anything in particular that resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you.
00:42:59 Joanna Lindenbaum
Write in, let me know.
00:43:01 Joanna Lindenbaum
And if you know a fellow coach or practitioner who’s been struggling with lead generation or client attraction or who wants to build their business more relationally this year,
00:43:15 Joanna Lindenbaum
Please send them this episode.
00:43:19 Joanna Lindenbaum
As always, I’m sending lots of love and I will see you next time.
