Zero Ad Spend, Massive Impact: Building a Relational Business

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop.

0:47 And in episode 30, we are going to dive into something that we believe every single business owner needs to master if you want to build a lasting, impactful business, and that is relationship-based growth. In this episode, we are going to break down how to shift from a transactional approach, which is what most people are doing, to one that's rooted in trust and truly genuine connection. You're going to learn why this mindset not only makes business more fulfilling, but this is going to be the fuel for sustainable growth in your business, with zero ad spend. That's the beauty of this.

1:27 You can do it anytime and it does not require dollars. So if you're ready to make a bigger impact and build a business that truly lasts, this is going to be an amazing episode for you. Let's buckle up and get into it. This is episode 30 of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. Yo, dude. What up? It's game time. And yeah, listen, this episode is really going to be a fun one and one that I think is going to be a real eye-opener for a lot of people for a number of different reasons and probably a breath of fresh air, quite frankly. So, you know, we obviously, for good reason, talk a lot about sales on this podcast.

2:10 And One of the things that we've talked about in the past on other episodes, but maybe not broken down as fully as we're going to do today, is the difference between building a relational business versus a transactional business. And the reason that we really want to dig in on this today, if you are somebody who really wants to make sure that you've got a foundation and a bedrock from a lead flow standpoint in your business that you can rely on, you're really going to want to hear this. Because so often we're looking for the next thing that's going to bring cold traffic into our ecosystem. And it's more paid ads or it's another, you know, marketing tactic and that kind of thing. Look, this is foundational.

2:51 It's something that we've talked about actually with guest experts, you know, more than once. Joe Blackburn, we talked a lot about relationships and referrals. Our good friend who we're going to do a podcast episode with here pretty soon, Barb Betts, did a fantastic training for our members on relationships. and referrals. So let's kind of start for anybody. Maybe you've listened to those podcasts. Maybe you haven't. I'm going to assume that you haven't. And so, Brooke, when we're talking about the difference between a relational business versus a transactional business, what exactly are we talking about? How do we define those two? No, it's huge. And I'm stoked that this is our topic for today. Because I mean, obviously, I know you know this, but for our Profitable Coach Collective members, like this is literally the theme for the entire month for our crew, because it's such a critical cornerstone of a business.

3:37 So what we mean between the two, the mass majority of people got into business because they want to make money, right? Like in the coaching world, there's a lot of people that if they were financially independent, they would still coach because they're so committed to helping other people. But as it relates to how we run a business, there's two different paths. And ideally, you want a blend of the two. But you can go one route, which is all through your relationships. It's all through your connections. It's all through really the people that you know and the people that they know. That becomes how you run the business. The other side is, and there's a lot of people that go this route, and it's very tough in the coaching world to go this route, by the way, but they go completely transactional. Completely transactional is how much am I spending on ads? How many leads did I get?

4:18 How many enrollments did I get? What is my margin? What's my churn rate? And it becomes very mathematical, right? It becomes this thing of just numerics versus the heart and soul of the people we're working with. I love this. And I think that there's also kind of... There's a focus behind each one of these as well that I think is really important. And I think that when we get transactional, we can get so focused on the KPIs and the conversion percentages and the revenue that we're bringing in and all of those things. And by the way, it's not that we don't want to pay attention to those things. It's not that they're not important. But when we put people first in our business... things change.

4:59 And they change for the better. And they change rapidly. And all of a sudden, you begin to be able to separate yourselves from your competition because of the relationships that you've built inside of your business. All of the other things are wonderful and they have their place. But this is foundational. And we're going to show you and tell you exactly why. In what I really want to walk us through today is to give tangible real world examples on how we've created business success through relationships. And I want to start here. You know, really, you learned this at a foundational level when you were working for Buffini. And there's a really great story there that I think is insanely powerful, especially considering how large the company was and what a big player they were in the coaching space.

5:45 So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, it was fascinating because one of my earliest wasn't the first coaching company I worked with, but one of the first coaching companies I got a chance to work with. So Brian Buffini. So if anyone doesn't know who he is in the real estate space, he's huge. Outside of the real estate, people can be like, who? Who's this guy? So he was an Irishman that emigrated from Ireland, hence being an Irishman. Apparently, that's how it works. When he came over... Clever lads, we are. Lord. His entire business model was running business by referral. And he worked for a gentleman named Joe Stumpf. So that's where he learned the whole referral marketing side of things. Fascinating little story. Joe Stumpf never worked in real estate.

6:27 However, he really understood that dynamic of referral-based marketing. So he created this niche for the world of real estate. Brian Buffini went through as one of his disciples, I guess you could say. And he realized, holy cow, I'm really good at this. And I'm actually even better at teaching other people how to do this. And that's when he launched Buffini & Company. So fast forward in time, I go to work for Brian. At that point in history, this was early 2000s. They had the largest coaching company on the planet. So they had over 300 coaches on their staff. They each had somewhere between 70 and 120 coaching clients that they were working with. Wow. So we're talking massive. Now, here's the craziest part of this thing. Their ad spend, their marketing budget was $0.

7:08 Okay. So I'm going to say this again, because this is wild, freaking huge. In that marketplace, it's also very competitive for real estate trainers. It's super, super competitive. So they're all vying for every real estate office and every agency they can get their hands on because it's so hard to get clients. So for Brian's world, they taught six different strategies of how to get referrals and they coached against it. And guess what? They taught their agents that they were coaching how to do a referral based business, a relational driven business without any ad spend. So the six things, and I'll hit these really high because I know we could open Pandora's box on this. But the first was that they would send an item of value out every single month to their database. They would do calls behind that.

7:50 They would go physically, it's kind of hard to do this one in the coaching world, but they would physically go knock on the doors of their clients and just say hello. They would set up luncheons on the regular and they would do client parties every either month or quarter or once a year or whatever the cadence would be. That was it. So by being in proximity to their core people on the regular, it just opened Pandora's box for them to get and receive and give referrals. This is so cool. And what I love about it, first of all, I mean, I'm not sure that I've ever heard you throw out the stat. Maybe you have before and I just missed it. Possible. But you throwing out the stat that they had zero ad budget is eye-opening. It's really eye-opening. And I love really just the intentionality behind cultivating, creating, cultivating, and continuing to kind of build and grow those relationships.

8:41 So this is something that I'd love to kind of look at in the context here. I'm going to put you on the spot. But if we look at this, if we look at like... A couple of those strategies that Buffini used to do back in the day. And we look at a business that's virtual, where we've got clients kind of all over the country, and in some cases like us internationally. What are ways that we could go about doing some of those things in the state of business that we find ourselves in today in this kind of an industry? Brilliant question though. Right now, so when this episode is going to land, we're going to be in the last quarter of the year. So the first thing is you need to draw a line in the sand and say, I'm going to work my referral business by this moment in time and have a system that's simple.

9:27 Okay, really key word here. You've got to have a simple system that you can execute because what I will tell you, more than anything else, as it relates to building a relational business, you have to be consistent. If you're inconsistent, it is not going to play well. So what consistency looks like is you have to have consistent connection, consistent outreach, consistently being in front of your people. Because if you stop being in front of your people, then you're going to be forgotten. It's like the only simple way to describe it. Yep. Yep. So for coaches who perhaps work from home or perhaps you don't have a huge database that's localized, it's really simple. Start text messaging, start DMing, start calling, set up Zoom luncheons. It's one of my favorite things to do is when I go, hey, what are you doing this week on Thursday?

10:10 Any chance you can do lunch on Zoom? Like, let's sync up. Let's make the time work for us. The easiest language thing is, hey, I was just thinking about you wanted to check in. How are you doing? How's the family? This doesn't have to be some like massively orchestrated deal. When you run a relational business, it's the same as your existing relationships, your friendships. I love that. And I think also we've got the benefit now, too, of I mean, first of all, the core of all of this is really just relationships. It's genuinely reaching out to somebody, asking how you're doing. When can we jump on and catch up? Just want to see what's happening in your life and truly just holding some space and listening and being there for somebody is at the core of this.

10:52 But additionally, we now have got all kinds of different ways that we can surprise and delight people as well. You know, as we get into this time of the year, we were just having a conversation with our clients the other day about, like, reach out to the people that you do business with right now and just do something nice for them. You know, reach out to the people that haven't done business with you yet and do something nice for them. You know, and today we've got a lot of really cool services to like one that comes to mind for me that I've used in the past. And there are just a bazillion others at this point. Lots of different ways you can do this. But I've used one in the past called Eva Bot. Yeah. And Eva bot is really cool because the receiver gets an email or a text message that basically says, hey, you know, Brooke sent you a gift, you know, click here to open up and they open up.

11:40 And what it does is it takes them instead of them just getting a gift that you picked out for them. They go through an interactive process that says, hey, Brooke, you know, would you prefer to have something salty like, you know, really awesome can of fancy mixed nuts or, you know, would you damn it? God dang it. Ah, it's just a smile. Cracked smile. Yes, I said it. Okay. Salty nuts. I said it. God dang it. This just turned into an SNL skit. Yeah, here we go. Yeah. Yeah. We're not quite to sweaty balls yet. Okay. Back to what I was saying. Do you prefer salty or savory? I could have let the nuts out, I guess.

12:23 But all right, here we are. Do you prefer salty or do you prefer sweet? And you're like, sweet. Okay, great. Would you rather have, you know, do you enjoy wine and alcohol? Or do you prefer to have things like mocktails or iced tea? And you go through this series of questions. And then at the end of all of these questions that it asks you, it basically ties it up. And it's like, okay, awesome. So listen, we've taken in all of your feedback. And you should receive something in the mail within a certain period of time. You have no idea. And then eventually your awesome thing shows up and they've sent you stuff based on the preferences that you've indicated. And it's so fun. People just absolutely love it. What was that called again?

13:05 That was Evabot? Evabot. Yeah. E-V-A-B-O-T. I think it's .io. I think. Sounds super cool. Yeah. So that's a neat service. And there are tons of other ones too. But the point is, start with the foundation of the relationship itself. Look for different ways that you can surprise and delight and just do something nice for somebody. And by the way, do it with no expectation of anything in return. And it's going to be a game changer for you. And you can utilize systems and technology. Now, You then took this too into the work that you did with Tony Robbins. And I want to hear a little bit about the relationships because this was, I think, a pretty big game changer for you from a sales perspective versus some of the other folks on the team.

13:52 Yeah, it was a wild time, man. And I don't know if many of our viewers know this, but our Close Everyone sales framework that we have here came from one of the most challenging economic climates in the history of our country, which was in 2008 to 2010. And a huge piece of that window of time, because I know all the skills that you developed, you're in a very different industry at that time that you had to cultivate. And I was obviously working with Tony at that time. Yep. Right. So we had to crack the code. I was gonna say crack the nut. And I'm like, but we had to crack the code. You did. I did. I did it anyways. So as it related to that window of time, what a lot of people didn't know is Tony's company almost buckled. So we didn't have ad spend for leads.

14:34 Like we had a database of leads that had been generated prior to that window of time, but we had to get really creative as to like, I was in a commission only sales role. Like, how the heck do you go drum up business for something that was perceived as a luxury thing? Yeah. And then stack on top of it, it was an intangible. Like, there's nothing physical that came with coaching. And then go even bigger than that. Most people didn't even know what coaching was at that point in time, right? Like, it was still very, very new in the world of business. Yeah. So I had to get really creative with the database that I had, the people that were there. And I had to ask different questions because one of the big questions that came up, as I said, am I properly leveraging the relationships with our existing clients?

15:16 And dude, it was crazy asking that one question opened up Pandora's box because I'm like, well, what about the people that go to the events? Immediately it was like, nope, we weren't leveraging those properly. What about the people who are already in our coaching program? Yeah. Are we leveraging those properly? Nope. Weren't leveraging those properly. Then I looked at Tony's A++ clientele, which was called Platinum Partnership. And at that point in time, there's only maybe 30 members in Platinum Partnership. To put contrast around that, I think they have close to like 2,000 members right now. But back then, I'm like, these are his 30 A++ members. And from a relational referral base, there was no true ownership of that.

15:57 So that's where I poured my energy into those three buckets of clients that we had. And I had my own little lead flow that didn't depend on ad spend at a time when we couldn't spend money on ads. Now, here's the other kick. My conversion rate skyrocketed because they were all referrals. Right. So it killed two birds with one stone. That's a terrible metaphor for this, but it brought in really good quality of leads. And I had an abundance where none of my peers were working those relationships. So I just cultivated and cultivated and cultivated. And I got to know these people and I got to find out what they cared about. And I reached out to them regularly, not asking them for the referrals all the dang time. But guess what? We were impacting their life. So they wanted to refer. I then became the de facto relationship that they wanted to steer those leads to.

16:42 I love that. I want to ask, when you were in the middle of doing that, you know, one of the things that I think we hear a lot and certainly that we've been through and experienced as well is that there are times where sales really feels like a grind. And this is especially true in the context of running your own business because you're responsible for all the things. You got to figure out the leads. You got to create the relationships. You got to maintain the relationships. You got to have the conversations. You're it to begin with. So... How much easier... I mean, how did that lighten your load with regard to sales? Because I think that oftentimes when that's not present, I know I've certainly felt the burn of just feeling like I'm constantly in the grind and there are no easy at-bats here.

17:31 Really, really intelligent question. And so this is the blend of relational and transactional. So I had to get really clear with the math of things. And so here's how to justify this, because if you go all the way back to the world of Buffini, his recommendation was that you would be reaching out two hours a day, managing and engaging and reaching out and cultivating your relationships. So I had that muscle in my head of like, I'm just in my head, but in my physical body, I had the muscle of outbounding for two hours a day. Right. So fast forward into the land of Robbins. I went, OK, if I work for two hours a day drumming up referrals, well, yeah, I could have been on a call with a lead that marketing might have provided for me. But guess what?

18:11 If I can enroll at 40 percent on a referral versus at 20 percent on a cold lead. I can justify half of my time to cultivating relationships versus taking cold leads. Right. So that alone was like, well, shoot, that's a way higher, better usage of my time to do two hours a day of referral generation versus taking that gave me four hours a day of cold call type stuff. That was how I justified it. It was a math equation where I went, well, would I rather spend two hours a day getting high quality leads, people I really like working with that want to talk to me versus depending on marketing where I had no control. That was the other thing. I had no controls over what marketing could or couldn't do for me. This is a really important point because it puts you in the driver's seat and really allows you to be the owner of your desk.

18:59 And when you're working a sales job for somebody else, that's one of the things that we really do in our work with sales teams is to really give each person autonomy over their desk. It's like you own the results. I don't want to hear the bull crap about marketing. I don't want to hear the bull crap about the lead suck. You know, all of that stuff. We got to find ways to own our own desk. I love that you did that. And that's especially powerful as a business owner as well. To put yourself in that position where you don't feel like you're at the mercy of anything or anyone else. And here's the other thing too. This gets scary good later on down the road when you have a relational business that also becomes very proficient at running paid ads.

19:39 Holy crap. Does it get good at that point? When you put the two of those things together, it's an explosion of awesome leads coming into your business frequently. One of the things that I want to mention about this as well is that this is also, as we talk about sales teams, first of all, if you are a business owner or sales, or a salesperson, one of the fastest ways that you can improve your conversion percentage is through a more relational business, having a book of business, generating, cultivating more referrals. That's a great way to positively impact your stat sheet, not to mention it feels good. And those enrollments are like shooting fish in a barrel when you're doing this the right way. And it's one of the things that if you're a business owner and you have a sales team, or you're a business owner and you'd like to build a sales team, one of the things that's going to be really important as you do that is to create and cultivate a relational business and to be able to incentivize your people to go out and operate that way.

20:37 Because in the absence of that, as the business owner, you're always going to be sitting there fielding discussion from a team who's going, yeah, but the leads. Yeah, but this with marketing. Yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but. When you've got a book of business and you've got people that you can reach out to that know, like, trust you, all the things that we know, it changes the game completely. Yeah. It absolutely does. And you know, you and I talked about this last week, right? Like we had a very busy week last week. So I had one day that I was able to do like my outreach of connection. And here's the crazy part. I didn't even actually get to talk to anybody voice to voice for that two hours of outreach. But what I did get to do is in, I think I reached out to 15 people in that two hour window.

21:21 And I had 10 people that got on my calendar for this week. So it stacked my calendar. Now here's the crazy part. I talked to two people yesterday. Today. I had five referrals that have already come through. And these are people that I didn't even have a chance to talk to yet this week. They just know that we're going to be talking. So guess what? I'm back in their awareness. And they're like, hey, I know we're talking on Thursday. But oh, by the way, I've got this person I think that you should chat with. Like, I just want to let you know in advance. So they're so used to that engagement now. And they know that we're going to be chatting and they're used to me adding so much value to their world on a regular that there's that reciprocity there. They want to make sure they don't show up empty handed because they know that I'm going to add value to their world when we chat this week. So like it's just a cool machine that starts to happen. But again, it kind of goes back to that original sentiment, which is you got to be consistent.

22:02 Yep. You know, we've given out a couple of really good examples so far with, you know, Buffini, Tony Robbins, and you referenced it at the top. But this is something that was really fundamental for me and my previous business as well. And, you know, when we started Xterra, my previous business in the oil and gas industry, it was founded on relationships. We started because of relationships that my dad and our business partner had cultivated 20-30 years before we got started. And what was so fascinating about it to me was that these relationships... When I was growing up, my dad was in the oil business and got out of the oil business and started a new business of his own with a partner around 1985.

22:47 And he had lots of good relationships in the oil business. And the crazy part about it was that a lot of those people were still in the business when we came back around nearly 20 years later. That's crazy. Yeah. He still had a reputation. And our business partner, David, you know, it stayed in the business, kept his hands in that. So, you know, he knew people and had a great reputation. But a lot of our early business, we didn't do advertising. We didn't. There was no cold traffic. It was all relationships. And that's what started our business. And in the context of getting clients in our business, which, you know, without going into a really long backstory, essentially, we were a service firm.

23:30 And so we were providing white glove services on the front side of oil and gas projects primarily. And so our clients were the oil companies. And our relationships and our contacts were the people that were working inside of those companies at various levels, depending on the size of the company. And so as we went on, I saw this. And as I got into more of a leadership position in the company, that is exactly what I did. I walked into an area where I knew no one. I knew absolutely no one. And eventually, you know, created a leg of our business that did recurring seven figures for like nine years.

24:12 Yeah. because of the relationships that I built and cultivated over time. The other thing is that in that business, when I first started, before I knew anything about what I was doing, I was really out there in the field. And part of our job as a brokerage company was to go out and buy oil and gas leases from landowners. Now, for those of you that have no idea what this is, The CliffsNotes version of the story essentially is that as we look at mineral rights, we have rights to surface land, which is what most of us think about. I have a parcel of land. I'm going to stick a house on it. It's the surface of the land, right? Well, we also have the subsurface of the land where, you know, those are the mineral rights and any exploration has to be, you know, done by permission of whomever owns those subsurface rights.

25:02 So I would go out and in a lot of cases, cold call, by the way, like show up at somebody's doorstep in the middle of flipping nowhere, unannounced. Surprise. Uh-huh. Surprise. And it was really hard. But I got really good at it. I mean, really good at it. And one of the reasons that I got really good at it is I learned the idea of what we used to call a bell cow. I learned the idea of the bell cow. which was in every area that you were leasing, there was somebody that knew everybody. If you were in a lot of these areas are rural, you're in smaller towns and stuff like that. And there's that one dude who's at the coffee shop every single morning at 6am.

25:44 And he knows everybody that walks in there. And if you got that guy and he liked you, you'd figure out a way to get just about everybody else. And it was unbelievable how it worked. It would literally look like we would, you know, we had maps kind of like, well, right now, a good example, because the election is upon us. Kind of like you look at maps and it's like this state is this color, you know, whatever. Yeah. Right. So we'd have maps and the big area that we'd look at. And on these maps, we'd have highlighted the areas that we had leased and the ones that were open. And oftentimes, we'd have this big, huge chunk of area that hadn't been leased yet or that we hadn't been able to get or go by and never be able to catch these people at home or you'd leave messages and they wouldn't get back to you.

26:33 And then all of a sudden, you get that bell cow and you're literally snapping up all of these deals that you couldn't get all the way along because you just found the right person. And it was unbelievable how well it worked. And you know what was cool about it too? This is something I look back on really, really fondly because I came into this... I was good at making friends with people, but I didn't fully understand the relationship game. And once I did, it was something that I really enjoyed because I really got to know these people. It wasn't just transactional. I was very fortunate to be in a lot of situations where I was working for companies that were treating their landowners very well.

27:13 And I made great relationships with these people. I still have people call me out of the blue today. just wondering what's going on. And hey, do I know anything about what's happening in their area? Blah, blah, blah. I have had dinners and drinks with people. People have bought me things. I bought things for people. I know their families. I know their wives. I've driven people's tractors, which is scary because I had no freaking idea what the hell I was doing on a tractor. Yeah. I've milked cows. I mean, all kinds of stuff. But the point is, I made really good, clear, genuine relationships that stood the test of time. And it made business, honestly, it made business very, very easy.

27:55 When you went into an area that you had no knowledge of and people had no knowledge of you and you had no relationships, good luck. It was really hard. And if you had competition and they got there first and they made the relationships first, you were screwed. It's so fascinating because when you work a job that you have to do that, because when I think of that industry, it's not like you're going to go put Facebook ads out there for like, hey, like... That's not going to work. You're not going to put it in a magazine. Like, hey, it's just... Your only opportunity is through shaking hands, meeting people, connecting, adding value to their world. Dude, it's so wild. So I'm grateful. So I got to oversee the division for Tony, but I didn't actually have to work in this role.

28:38 But he had a division called the FSRs. So they were the field sales reps. Very similar to what you had to do. But every 4 months, we would move them to a new territory. And it was like... Good luck. Straight commission. They got a rental car. That was what we gave them. And they would just go walk into car dealerships and go shake hands. Hey, is the manager here? And they would try and get in to add value and build these relationships. And the thing that was crazy is you got to see this dynamic that when they'd go back the second year, their job was a heck of a lot easier. When they went back the third year, it was a hell of a lot easier. By the fourth year, if they were in those cycles, they would just let everybody know, hey, I'm going to be in town. Their calendars would get filled up. Their sales would be huge numbers. And there's a compounding effect to what you just talked about, which I think is really critical that I don't think people often process.

29:24 The more you get... What do you call them? Bell cows? Bell cows. Yeah. The more you get into your world, the easier life becomes because it's a compounding effect. When you have 10 to 20 to 30 of those types of people in your orbit, that's why... So this morning, that's why I got five referrals. I didn't even ask for them. It was, hey, can you help this person? Yep. Hey, I've got this friend. Yep. And they're all natural promoters. I don't want to call our people bell cows. They might take offense to it, but that's what they become, right? Like they're these people who become zealots because you've added so much value and they trust you. That's the real key piece there. The difference between relational and transactional, you become a trusted advisor. They know that you're a fiduciary.

30:05 They know that you're going to take care of their people the way you take care of them. They know you're not going to go transactional on the referral where you could negatively affect their relationships. That's that big difference that comes into play. But it takes time. It takes energy. And it takes a genuine like, you got to like people. If you don't like people, by the way, get the heck out of coaching. Yeah, this ain't it for you. So I'd love for you to bring us home, brother, just because I know that this is such a critical piece of the business. And you as our CEO, for you to give just some words of advice to other people who are running a business, how important is this as it relates to running and owning your own business? You know what? I would say that, again, it's foundational.

30:46 It's the difference between a business that can go on literally forever. When you cultivate the right relationships, as long as you don't suck at what you do. If you have good relationships and you suck at what you do, you're in trouble. But if you have good relationships and you can deliver on something, you will be in business long beyond your competitors. And here's the other piece of the puzzle that I think very few people know, actually. We founded Empire on Relationships. And quite frankly, the first 20 months of our business, we did not run a single paid ad... With the exception of a couple of tests, just to understand what our market was responding to, we didn't run paid ads for acquisition purposes until 20 months into our business.

31:32 And that's really something. The interesting piece about it was that we walked into a business... I actually... I'm really glad for this. We were doing so much consulting at the beginning of the business. Consulting is not like coaching... If you're doing it at a boutique level, it's very much like what I used to do in the oil and gas industry. And that, you know, at a boutique level of consulting, like you're probably not running a lot of ads and things like that. You've got to make relationships. And we walked into a situation where we had some relationships with folks that needed help. And that was the inception of our business. And then as we, you know, got some good results, and we found other people that needed help, again, through relationships, and people found out what we were doing.

32:20 And once again, in the sense of like, you know, maybe you're not going to do business with me, but you know what I'm doing, and you trust me, and you know, I'll deliver if you bring somebody to my doorstep. It was all of that over the course of time that got us to where, you know, to where we are now. And I can tell you that the power of being able to stand on that platform and then make the decision to run some paid ads, which we started doing very recently, because we're in a place where we're ready to kind of crank up the acquisition a little bit. That is unbelievably powerful because you and I have had these conversations as business owners. You have the conversations and the days where you just go, holy crap, we kind of need to get some leads in the door.

33:02 Okay. How much have we been talking to people? That's literally the conversation. And then it's like, well, holy shit. I haven't been having very many conversations lately. Well, fuck. I guess we know why. You know, so this is really, really, really powerful. And it's something you can take into your own hands. And it feels really good for you. It feels really good for the people that you do business with. And especially in a world where everything is like, give it to me now. And I want an instant result. And I don't want to take the time to build a relationship. This is something that has been around since the dawn of time that still matters. It's not whiz bang. It's not hard to figure out. You just got to do it and you got to commit to it. And that is going to be my mission to you today is do it, commit to it.

33:45 And I promise you, you will lap your competition, even if you don't do it in the short term. Absolutely love that. Dude, that's a great way to put a bow on today's episode, brother. Yeah. To anybody who's out there, if you're not doing referrals, what the heck? Wake up. Go back and listen to this whole episode. Build your relationships. Go find yourself some bell cows. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. We had a blast bringing it to you as always. As we go into this holiday season, make sure to keep your wits about you. Make sure to listen to you. the episodes on being intentional around this time of the year, cultivate your relationships, build those, you'll have a foundational business. And until next time, Brooke, thank you, buddy.

34:27 And we'll see you guys on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.