How to Increase Referrals by Fixing These 7 Referral Killers

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Creative Podcast, Episode 394

Welcome to the Six Figure Creative Podcast, where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're in audio, video, design, photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place. Every freelancer I've ever met relies on referrals. That is a fact. But why is it that two freelancers can both rely on referrals, once fully booked, completely solid, with a waiting list, and the other is barely scraping by? In this episode, I'll show you exactly what separates those high-performing referral engines from the ones that barely get work, and what you can do to actually get more high-quality referrals sent your way consistently. And at the end, I'm going to share one move that triggers more referrals using something that 99% of freelancers ignore to their own detriment. If you're new here, hi, I'm Brian Hood. This is the Six Figure Creative Podcast. If you listened when this came out, it's on Christmas Eve Eve, so Merry Christmas Eve Eve. I don't know why you're listening to this podcast. You should be driving somewhere or hanging out with family or starting to eat too much food. If you're listening after Christmas, especially way after Christmas, sup, glad to see you in time traveler mode. This podcast is for creative freelancers who are trying to earn more money without selling their souls. I bring a lot of influences from a lot of different industries, from a lot of different businesses that I've run in my background, and from all of the experience from my team of 11 people from all around the world at this point. And I bring it on to this podcast to still it down for you, the freelancer, so that you can earn more money. Again, without selling yourself. That sounds like something you're interested in. You're at the right place. Let's get into referrals. Referrals, again, are the lifeblood of many freelancers. And chances are, you're listening to this podcast, referrals are probably all of, or at least a lot of, your sources of clients. And the first thing I want to break down in this episode is some of the factors that go into how many referrals you get, because there are a lot of different factors that go into this, and it creates something that I call the referral spectrum. It's essentially a spectrum, a rating, a scale of how referrable you are to other people in the world. And the more referrable you are, the more referrals you're going to get. In most cases, the less referrable you are, the less referrals you're going to get. The hardest is going to be to run your business. And this is one of, not all, but one of the factors when it comes to getting more referrals for yourself is becoming more referrable. It's increasing yourself up, sliding up that referrability scale. And the first factor that I want to cover is just results.

Can you do the thing that you sell well? It's the skill level, it's the outcome, it's the results. It's the thing that your clients hire you to do. How good are you? That's basically the answer to this question. And the better you are, the more referrals you're going to get. I'm not going to spend much time here because you know this inherently. That's why most freelancers obsess over their craft, usually to their own detriment, because this is rarely the thing that's holding you back. In a lot of cases, sometimes it is. Don't get me wrong. Some cases, you're just bad at what you do. You gotta get better. You can't get your client results. You gotta get better. But many of you, you're amazing at what you do already. So this isn't the issue. So what else is there? The second factor that goes into the referability spectrum is your own likeability. Do your clients want to work with you? Do they want to refer people to you? Do they want to be around you? Do they want their friends to be around you? And it comes down to your own personality. Are you outgoing? Are you fun? Are you boisterous? It comes down to not just that, but also your reliability. Some people have very reserved personalities. They're not outgoing or crazy or fun to be around, but they're just rock solid, reliable people that you can depend on time and time again, not just for the freelance services, but for all aspects of life. I know a few people like that in my life. They're very likable. They're not the life of the party, but they're extremely reliable. Those people, excellent. You can be either one. You can be both, preferably. Another factor that goes into likability is your own communication skills. Some people are just bad at communicating, and because of that, people don't like you. You're the person who never texts people when you're on the way to their house, so they have no idea when to expect you. It's the little things like that. When you're going to be late, letting somebody know that you're going to be late. When the project's going to be late, letting them know. When the project's going to be delivered early, letting them know. Communication goes into a lot of different areas, and when it comes to referrals, I'm talking not just within the context of a project, I mean in every interaction you have with a person. How likable are you? There's an episode way back in the day I want to refer you to on this podcast. It's episode 13 of this podcast, and the episode is titled How Social Skills Helped Billy Decker Dominate the Nashville Mixing Scene. This goes way back when we were called the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, episode 13 The way you get to that episode is by going to thesixfigurehomestudio.com/13, instead of Six Figure Creative. We rebranded years and years ago, but this is like a 2018 episode, February 2018 Good Lord. But that episode illustrates a really good demonstration of how likable somebody can be. And I said Billy Decker's superpower, yes, he's great at mixing, yes, he's a big part of the country scene here as far as mixing music, but he's just a likable guy.