When the referrals stop, make a list
Friday’s call turned into a working session on getting clients. Here’s that part in case you don’t get to the replay.
A new member joined. She’s run her studio for two years, and every client has come by referral. For the first time, she had nothing lined up.
Two members went first. One said his business partner had always been the relationship person, and when that source dried up, he learned skills that apply to more businesses. The other said to keep in touch with past clients, even once every six months, so you don’t disappear after the engagement, and then ask them directly for referrals.
My version was the most boring one. Put everyone you know on a list: how you know them, their status, and when you last talked. Start with current and past clients, because they won’t ignore your email. Check in like a normal person, and once you’re actually in a conversation, make a specific ask. Then set a reminder to reach out again in two weeks. A client told me her trick for that: BCC yourself on the email and snooze it in Gmail for a week.
Then block off 30 minutes to an hour every day for it. She said it’s super boring. It is, until it starts working.
I wrote the longer version up here: How to get clients when referrals dry up.
A few other things that came up:
- How do you manage AI agents more like a team, so they move work forward without you pushing every step?
- How do you add a post-purchase survey to a Shopify thank-you page? (There’s a customer survey block on the page itself.)
- Should you block AI from crawling your site? (I got a lead last week who found me through ChatGPT, so I’m leaning no.)
- Where do you actually build a website with Claude Code or Codex if you’ve only used a page builder?
This is what the Friday calls are. Practical, collaborative, no bells and whistles.
If you can’t make it, every session gets recorded and added to a private library that’s chapter-marked and summarized, so you can find the bit that matches whatever you’re stuck on.
Talk soon,
Brad