166. How To Use Referral Based Marketing To Grow Your Business – With Robert Gerrish

 

Books Mentioned:

• Flying Solo: How to Go It Alone in Business by Robert Gerrish
• The 1 Minute Commute

Related Episodes:

• 038. Rand Fishkin – How To Create Great SEO-Friendly Content Plus Key Trends In Search
• 107. Sonia Simone CopyBlogger Co-Founder on How To Be A Prolific Content Marketer (Part 1 of 2)
• 108. Sonia Simone CopyBlogger Co-Founder on How To Be A Prolific Content Marketer (Part 2 of 2)
• 148. How Julie Cairns Used Self -Awareness and Mindset to Drive a $6 Million Turnaround (and How You Can Too) – Part 1 of 2
• 149. The 3 Steps To A 6 Million Dollar Mindset With Julie Cairns — Part 2 of 2

Key Points and Insights:

4.17 – What inspired the title “The One Minute Commute”
7.27 – The story behind the title of the book: The original title revealed (and why it was changed to “The One Minute Commute”)
8.44 – Word of mouth advertising or referral based advertising explained
17.29 – The importance of consistency and what that means as a content creator
18.16 – A tool which most businesses rarely use (and why you should consider using it)
26.22 – The power of content marketing explained in the context of referral marketing
29.09 – Reaching out to your raving fans and making it easy for them to promote your brand
32.42 – It’s our job as business owners to make sure our fans know how to help us
33.09 – “Don’t count the people you reach, reach the people who count” – David Oglivy
35.14 – Key Actions Steps you can take
37.32 – How to learn more about Robert and his book The 1 Minute Commute

Transcript

Machine transcript, lightly edited for reading. Speakers aren't marked. The intro and sign-off are left out.

Welcome to the Productive Insights Podcast, and thank you for tuning in. Today I have a very special guest, and his name is Robert Gerrish. After a career in marketing and design in London, culminating the sale of his business to Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, Robert began the search for more meaningful work and a less stressful lifestyle. He relocated to Sydney in the mid-1990s and authored the book Flying Solo and a small online business community of the same name, which he grew to over 110,000 members and then later sold.

He recently published another book called The One Minute Commute, which he was kind enough to send me a hard copy of recently. And I flicked through it, and it's a wonderful little manual, very simple to read, very valuable for somebody who's looking to start their business or looking to grow their business online and do so authentically. Two days ago, I noticed the same book on the top shelf of the Dymocks bookstore in Sydney, George Street, which is one of the major bookstore outlets in Sydney. I was pretty chuffed to say that, and I'd love to welcome today's guest, who's the author of the book, The One Minute Commute, Robert Gerrish.

Welcome, Robert. Great to have you on the show. Thank you, Ash. That's such a lovely introduction. I don't think it was me, but any bookshop I go in at the moment, if my book is not on the top shelf, by the time I leave the bookshop, it is on the top shelf. I haven't been arrested for doing that yet, but I'm expecting it any day. They say that the first step towards entrepreneurship and success is really taking things into your own hands. So all the best, and I really hope for your sake and the sake of my podcast that you don't end up in prison.

No, I think I should be fine. Robert, I'd like to delve into one particular aspect that you talk about in this book, and that is word of mouth advertising or referrals. Before I do that, I'd like to ask you one question, and that is what inspired the title, The One Minute Commute? Okay, great question. Well, look, obviously what that will, hopefully, obviously, that refers to the notion of kind of working from your home, where the commute is often from your kitchen to a spare bedroom or something.

Really, there's a few things that inspired it. Certainly, we know from a fair bit of research that's been done that one of the key kind of sources of misery for people who work, whether they work for themselves or work for others, is time that's wasted sitting in traffic commuting. One of the many, many joys of working for yourself from a home office is that you can do away with the commute. That's the key thing. Obviously, what we also did there was we quite cheekily did a bit of a play on the title with One Minute in there, because if you remember, there's the One Minute Manager, a classic book from, well, I think the '70s now.

We've gone for a title, and in fact, it was the publisher that came up with that title. It's not my wonderful title. It's their wonderful title. I'm very pleased with that. I went to them with a slightly woeful title that I thought was quite fun, but they didn't think we'd sell so many books. They said, "Hey, we need something better than that." They came up with that. I just think it's a great title because there's a sense of familiarity with it, because it's got One Minute in there, but I think then when you pick it up and have a look at it, which hopefully people do, they'll get, "Aha, okay, this is all about running a business from home."

As you know, I'm based, as you are, in Australia, and in Australia, over 70% of very small businesses are run from a home base. That's also true in the UK and across most of Europe, so many, many, many of us are choosing to work from a home base where the commute is that short. Yes, and as corporations, as we know it, start to morph into maybe different structures, which I believe will happen with artificial intelligence and automation and offshoring of a lot of manufacturing. I think that there's 70% of small business owners is going to only increase.

Now, what I really like about this title, The One Minute Commute, is that it addresses a specific pain point. I've always believed, I was talking to Sonia Simone in, I think, episode 108 or something, and I was saying to her, a good headline to me either calls out the target audience or talks about the problem that you're trying to solve with the product you're offering, but The One Minute Commute actually, in some ways, goes one step further. It calls out a problem, commuting, and solves a problem in the same title, so I'm pretty impressed and intrigued by the title, and it certainly jumped out at me because I actually walk into my studio here from across the corridor over there, which is where my bedroom is.

My commute is about six seconds, I think, so it might be a little bit less than one minute. Yes, okay. Okay, so Robert, The One Minute Commute is a great title. I'm curious to know, if you're comfortable sharing this, what was the original title you went to the publisher with? Okay, well, I'm very happy to share that. My original title was called Soul Trading, S-O-U-L, so Soul Trading, and I think I had a byline which was something like building a one-person business with heart or something, which I quite like that title.

It's a nice name, but what I learned is, and as a marketing man yourself, you will totally get this, is my skill in this scenario is writing a book. I then was very fortunate to find a publisher, which is Pan Macmillan, a big publisher. Now, their skill, apart from choosing books and editing books, is selling books, so that's their skill. They sell books, so when the people that are actually going to sell your book come to you and say, "Your title's quite smart, but we've got a different title that we think is going to sell a lot more books,"

I tend to pay a lot of attention to that. I'm not going to die in a ditch over my name. These are the guys that sell books, so I think, "You know what? If you want to call it a silly little book, then call it what you like. Just sell the book." I was very happy with their title. Let's talk about word-of-mouth advertising or referral-based advertising. Now, word-of-mouth advertising, while it might have changed in terms of the mediums or media through which it happens, in other words, people are referring to other people through Facebook or Twitter or the social media channels, it essentially is still the same thing.

That is, one trusted person who usually has consumed your product or interacted with you or your brand in some way is giving the second person their personal recommendation and is vouching for you and/or your brand and product. I think there are several important aspects that are encapsulated in that word-of-mouth or referral-based advertising that are part of a successful sales transaction, and that is you've got the social proof, you've got the know, like, and trust factor because the referring person is saying, "I know, like, and I trust this person.

I'm giving you my word." I think there's someone you can bet on, and it often is very targeted because you often have a person who has actually consumed the product, used your product to solve one of their own problems, and is then recommending that product to somebody else who's trying to solve the same problem. So there's lots of aspects to referral-based advertising which are very powerful. I'd like to hear your take on the word-of-mouth process, and is there any other things that you think make it so compelling?

Yeah, okay, look, I've always felt very strongly about the power of word-of-mouth, and it's interesting. When I was, as you said at the intro there, I started a business called Flying Solo. It's a business that I've now exited at the end of last year, but I still do work with them, and we at Flying Solo ran some very big sort of research programs every couple of years. And one of the key questions to do with marketing is where are you finding most of your business comes from?

And every single year, we run this research every year since 2008, every year at the top, and leading by far is word-of-mouth. And I'm talking about an audience that are single business owners, many of them in the professional services space, that is people that are selling their expertise for a fee. So coaches, consultants, financial planners, mortgage brokers, lawyers, designers, writers, architects, that kind of group. That's primarily who make up the Flying Solo audience, and by far the single largest cause of new business is word-of-mouth. Now, the thing with word-of-mouth, and I'm just going to pull you up actually on one point that you made, is that often when people think of word-of-mouth, there is an assumption that for someone to talk about as to somebody else, they have to have tried our services.

You also mentioned tried our services or kind of come into contact with your brand. I think the mistake that some people make is that they assume it's only people that have tried your services, and that just isn't the case. That is an important group, but there's a much, much wider group. And bearing in mind, my focus are people that work primarily by themselves, where the kind of the name above the door is the name of the person in most cases. Now, when word-of-mouth really worked for that group, it's not just people that have worked with them, but it's people that, yes, have interacted with you, but in many cases have interacted with you on a personal basis.

They've actually met you, or they've heard you, or they've listened to your podcasts, or they've watched your video, or they've read something. Or in a lot of cases, it can be the person that you meet at the school drop-off when you drop your child off to school. It can be the barista at your local cafe. After all of these kind of contacts, people are drawing some kind of opinion about us. Their intuition is kind of switching on, and they're going, "I get a feel for this guy.

You and I, we've known each other, what, for 27 minutes?" Now, I've already drawn some opinions from you because of how you've structured this podcast, how you've communicated with me, how you've set up, how gracious you've been with me about asking questions, how organized you've been about asking for images and background, so I've not spent a dollar with you, I've not worked with you, I've known you for 27 minutes. I'm 62 years of age, and I've known you for 27 minutes, and yet, would I refer you after 27 minutes?

Yes, I would, and the reason I would is because of the signals I've already picked up from you. Now, typically, what happens in business, if somebody were to get in touch with me this afternoon and say, "Hey, I'm really looking for somebody who can help me set up and grow and build a podcast. Do you know anyone?" Well, I would say, "Do you know what? I've met a guy this morning. I've only had a brief conversation with him, but he impresses me. I like him. Why don't you have a chat with him and let me know how you go?"

Now, that's typically how word of mouth goes, so I haven't used your services. I've had a small interaction with you, but enough that I feel confident saying to somebody else, "Give this guy a go and let me know how you get on." That's often what people will say, "Let me know how you get on," because they want to then know, "Is this guy, is Ash a good guy? Did he deliver? Did he give them the same sort of..." You know what I mean? What a lot of people in small businesses do, though, is A, we focus too much on thinking it's just past customers, and that leaves a massive audience of potential referrers that are not being worked with, if you like.

Also, what a lot of businesses do is they mistake things like networking, face-to-face networking as a place to find clients. Now, let's imagine you're a business coach and you go to a networking event that's got 50 people in it, and you might be hungry for clients. A lot of people are hungry for clients. If you go into a networking room of 50 people hungry for clients, I can pretty well guarantee you, you're going to be disappointed. You're not going to come away, probably, finding clients. However, if you view it as, "Here are 50 people that I'm going to try to get to know, to get to talk to, to build some rapport with,"

that means what you're doing is you're sowing a seed for word of mouth. If you can talk to 20 people in that room and go, "Hey, guess what I do? I help people that are starting podcasts to grow and market their business." That's the kind of work that I do. "Gosh, it's such fun. What do you do?" Now, you have that conversation with 20 people. You're not going to get clients, necessarily, but you've got 20 people that are going out into the world that know who you are, what you do, and who you do it for.

That's where word of mouth really works, but too often, what happens, people will storm into a networking event trying to find the clients. They rung around being pushy and overt and basically putting people off. Anyway, I'm on a bit of a roll, but I'm not sure what your question was. I hope I answered it. You did. You did. In fact, it very nicely segues into the next question, which I was going to ask you, which is how does one go about developing a successful business that lends itself to word of mouth referrals?

Before I actually dive into that bit, I just want to deconstruct a couple of things you said, because some things you said really resonated with me. Thank you for the kind words you said about the impressions you had from your 27 minutes of having known me. I think it comes down to consistency between what you say and what you do. That's one thing that people tend to look for. Another important factor might be systems. I have a certain specific system that I use to invite guests onto my show.

If I'm going to invite a guest onto my show, I'm going to do it right. I'm going to try and make the guests comfortable. I'll send them a list of questions prior to the interview. I'm trying to make the guests comfortable so they have a nice experience. That is the key word, isn't it? Experience, because I think what you're saying to me is you don't have to have consumed my product to necessarily refer me, but you do have to have had some kind of a good experience or interaction with me and all my brand for you to recommend me.

Is that fair? Yep. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. Yeah. Okay, so that's a good point. Thank you for pointing that out. The other thing I would just say there is that, you know, everything you're saying is absolutely right. And you're very spot on when you talk about kind of consistency and regularity. You know, if we're going to talk to someone, refer someone, we want to know that the person we're referring is going to deliver. You know, now there's a joy in referring people. It's a lovely thing to say to somebody else, hey, yes, I've got the answer to your problems.

It's what friends do to each other, you know, they help them. So the fact that you can be a conduit and help somebody get a solution to a problem, it's a very satisfying thing. So referrals work on so many levels because you're helping the person at the other end and you're helping the person that you refer. This human nature is quite lovely. What some businesses do is there's a little kind of tool that I can share with you. It's an image that I'll give you that you're very welcome to use.

But it's a little tool that I'll kind of, I can talk through if you'd like me to that just will maybe help listeners kind of really get the head around. Okay. So just imagine that you've got, I won't try and draw one because I'm not a terribly brilliant artist. My wife is the artist. But if you imagine an archery bull's eye, okay, so a series of concentric circles. And I'll just talk through, this is a tool that I use a great deal in my work. It's with me all the time.

Now, what this little bull's eye does, there are words that I'm going to share with you to go in each of the rings. And in the center of the bull's eye are the people that refer for us. And there's a work, you know, you can either call them raving fans, you can call them advocates, you can call them champions. You know, we've got so many words in the English language, but let's go with raving fans. So raving fans are the people that talk about you. So Ash, while I'm talking to you right now, the chances are one of your raving fans somewhere is talking about you to somebody else, whether they're saying something on Facebook or on LinkedIn or wherever.

And the same for me. I've got some raving fans and with a bit of luck, you know, hopefully, whilst I'm speaking with you, somebody is sowing a seed for me, right? So raving fans, they're the people that we really want. Now, typically, a small business may have six or eight or 10 genuine raving fans, people that are always creating opportunities for you, opening doors for you. So the key thing in our business is we need to be clear, who are those people? Who are your raving fans?

Who are the people that open doors for you? Now, often I will talk to a small business and I'll say, "Who are your raving fans?" And they don't know. You know, they go, "Oh, well, actually, that guy did something for us." But we need to. These are the people that are out there selling our business whilst we're doing whatever we're doing. So they're so valuable to us. So let's just park that for a minute. So those are the raving fans in the middle. Now, the outside rings are the kind of, the words I'm going to use are the words that will move the relationship closer, I'll explain.

So in the outside ring are strangers. These are people we haven't met yet, so obviously, that's an awful lot of people. So let's not worry too much about them, but strangers is where it all starts. The next ring in are acquaintances. So acquaintances are people that we kind of have a little bit of knowledge of. They might know a little bit about us, but the relationship is not, you know, it's in its very early stages. It might be somebody who linked in with you this morning.

You know, you might call them an acquaintance. You don't really know them. You probably wouldn't recognize them if you bumped into them in the street. The very little relationship there. So strangers, acquaintances. The next one's a friend. So friends, and I'm talking about kind of business friends, friends of people where you've got a little bit of an idea, like, yes, I know Ash, he does work with, he consults and he coaches and he does podcasts, I know a little bit about you, Ash knows Robert, so I'm a friend of yours.

You know a little bit about me, but there's not a lot, you know, we've never met, we've never spent time together, we've just had a brief conversation. So those are the friends. So strangers, acquaintances, friends. The next ones are fans. So fans are people that are supportive of our work. We get a good warm feeling whenever we meet them. If we go to a networking event and one of our fans is there, we'll probably go and sit next to them. You know, the people that we have good rapport with, you understand what they do, they understand what you do, but then for whatever reason they're not referring for you and you're not referring people for them.

So that's the distinction between fans and raving fans. Now if as a business owner, if we start to think of all the people around us and put them into each of those categories, then we can start to develop a strategy to move people closer because our challenge is to have more people in the raving fans section. The more raving fans you've got, the less marketing you need to do because other people are doing it for you. It's beautiful. I've never spent a dollar on advertising nor do I intend to because I'm lucky I nurture my raving fans and my fans and my phone keeps ringing or my inbox keeps pinging.

So I'm happy with what I've got. But the way I do that is I think where people are and I tailor my messages. Now what a lot of people do is they dump all their people into one kind of basket and then spam the crap out of them. That's typically what people do. These days what people do is they link in with you the minute you're on LinkedIn, they strip your email out and stick you on an email list. That's absolutely shoddy, horrible behavior, doesn't work, shouldn't be doing it.

It totally is spamming but it doesn't stop a lot of people doing it. I join up or I connect with quite a few people on LinkedIn every week and I would say probably one in ten seems to think that because I've connected with them they can add me to an email list. It's what people do unfortunately because it's just what they do. We shouldn't be doing that clearly. What we need to do as businesses is think where are these people and what's the right sort of messaging to give them, acquaintances, people that you rarely know.

A good action there might be to say, "Hey, why don't we have a cup of coffee next time you're in town that's made up and have a chat?" That's how you can develop a friendship and you don't sell, you talk, you understand each other. What are your biggest challenges in your business? Here are the challenges in mine. Who do you work with? This is who I work with. It's sharing information to turn them into friends. This might sound a bit orchestrated but it's planned and that's the thing we need to do.

Now, I'll just move on a bit here onto fans. If we've got six or eight raving fans, the chances are we've got 10 or 20 or 30 fans. That is people that like us, we like them, they understand what we're doing but they're not referring for us. Now, why aren't they referring for us? Well, the chances are because they've got no idea that we'd like them to. Really what we do with fans is a fan will say, "How are you going today, Robert?" I'll go, "Oh, I'm great, thanks.

Really busy." That's the typical phrase these days, "Oh, great, everything's good, really busy." What we can say to a fan is, "I'm great, thanks. I'm busy and I really would love to work with two more people in a small creative business that are really looking to grow their business in the next six months. If you know anyone, can you let me know?" Because fans, are they wanting to help us but we don't know that we want help? A lot of businesses do is they will start asking for referrals when the relationship is right out in the acquaintance or friend category and that's just messy, it doesn't work.

It ends badly. Anyway, I'm rambling on a bit but does that all make sense? I've actually drawn a thing over here, I don't know if you can see it but I really like it so I'm just going to reiterate what you said. You've got five concentric circles that I've drawn here, strangers on the outside, these are people you don't know very well at all. Then you've got in the next level in, you've got your acquaintances who you kind of know a little bit, maybe just connected with on LinkedIn.

Then you've got your friends who are kind of a little bit more than acquaintances. Next level in is you've got your fans who like what you do, they probably follow what you do. They might mention your business to other people and then you've got your raving fans who are your champions. I really like the fact that you said between six and ten fans, you can actually think right now of six or ten people who I know consistently share or like or promote my content which brings me to another really interesting point and that is the power of content marketing and how that can play a role here.

So I've always been a big fan of content marketing. When somebody says I'm facing this challenge at the moment, as long as your content actually solves a problem, that can possibly move them from the stranger to the friends and then from the friends to the fans circle. Would you agree? Totally. 100% agree. But the other thing as well there, an important point I think, Ash, is that we don't have to do all this from a business perspective. If I meet someone at a networking event or meet them anywhere and they say, "Oh, so sorry I'm late.

I had such a job getting my young child to daycare." It really has a problem leaving me in the morning and it's very difficult. So if I hear that from somebody, if I know that they've got a problem in their life which is separation from their young child going to daycare, then an exercise we can do there is come by and go, "Okay, I wonder if I can find something that can help this person?" And that's a very common problem as it happens. So there would doubtless be articles and content.

So a good follow up there would go, "It was lovely to meet you this morning. Sorry you had such a frantic start to the day. Here's an article I wrote which I thought might be helpful to you." So it's not your content but it's you showing, "I heard you, I listened to what you said. This might help you." The important thing to remember is generally people do business with people they like. It's called human nature. We spend time with people we like. Now if it's products and that's different but when it comes to services is if we find someone we like then we want to work with them or we want to support them.

So a way to get to show people who we are is to show that we listen, that we care, that we're not happily it doesn't happen as much as it did but a few years ago I'd go to a networking event. I come back, somebody would have, I would have swapped business cards with somebody. I come back and there's a 4-megabyte PDF in my inbox telling me what they do. What's that all about? I don't want that. I mean that's ridiculous but if somebody said show that they paid attention to something that I said or some issue that I was talking about that was a challenge in my business and followed up on that, that's when you start to really build meaningful friendships and business relationships and I'm really encouraged that you've thought, "Okay, there are six or eight people that you can think of that are your raving fans and I hope that most people listening will maybe be going through the same sort of thought processes."

So my challenge is great. So when's the last time you spoke to them? When's the last time you thanked them for what you did? When's the last time you took them out to lunch or bought them a coffee? When's the last time you bought them, you know, next time you're in a bookshop, buy a book, not necessarily my book, any old book, you know, a book for somebody, one of your raving fans. If you've got a raving fan that loves sport, buy them a book on sport, cost you $20.

Hey, it's been a long time since we spoke, here's a book I was thinking of you, you know, these are the kind of things raving fans are so important but what often happens again in business is we get a referral and we go, "Oh, that's nice, I've got a referral," but what we don't do is stop and go, "Where did that referral come from? Who was it that spoke about me and, you know, what am I now going to do to thank that person?" We need to really make a fuss of the people that are helping us and we don't.

You're absolutely right, sharing a piece of content that might help that person solve their problem and it could be completely unrelated to your business, acknowledging the fact that they've been facing a challenge, saying that you heard them and then trying to help them just makes you more likeable and I guess it comes back to the fact that we all evolved from tribes and as tribal creatures, we needed each other to survive and that is very much hardwired into us and that's where all the reciprocity comes from.

As you can tell, I'm somewhat old-school in the way that I work. I might have built a sort of an online business but I still put an awful lot of focus on personal relationships and on face-to-face communication and, you know, another example of something old-school, I'll just show you these, so these are some postcards that I had designed and printed that, you know, kind of used my colors and whenever somebody refers to me, I'll hand-write a postcard and on the back, I don't know if you can see that, it says you're a star, it's probably coming out the wrong way around, you know, so and I'll pop it in a very brightly colored envelope and mail it to people and it's a small gesture but that's the important thing is when people do nice things for us, do favors for us, we should acknowledge it whereas what we tend to do is we just kind of carry on with our day and there's nothing worse than referring somebody and then being ignored because it makes you not want to do it again.

If somebody refers me and even if it doesn't eventuate in a sale, doesn't matter, if I have a conversation with a person to whom I was referred, I will go back to the referring person and say, hey listen, thank you for referring me to this person, I spoke to them today and this was the outcome of the conversation and that's just a small little thing you can do. Well, that's a very, very good point and the other thing is, yes, we should definitely do that. It's also a good time to, because our businesses change and evolve.

So the client that was maybe ideal for you two years ago may not be ideal today. So what's important is particularly with your fans and your raving fans is updating them and letting them know. So the conversation might be, thank you very much for referring that person to me, it didn't work out and here's why. I don't work with that sort of person now, I now do this. It's far easier to reprogram someone that's already supporting you than it is to try and find somebody new.

My dear mother, no longer alive unfortunately, but she would often refer people to me and I said, mum, I don't do that, I've never done that, that's not what I do. Family are a typical example of a group of people that want to help us. Our job is to make sure that they know how to help us. Yes, that's a very good point, they know how to help us. In one of your original emails to me, maybe it was the second email, you said something that really struck me and that really captured my attention, which made me want to reach out and respond.

That was, you quoted Ogilvy, don't count the people you reach, reach the people who count. And I think that really encapsulates it very nicely. So just for anyone that doesn't know, okay, so that quote, don't count the people you reach, reach the people who count, as you mentioned, was actually said by David Ogilvy in 1962. Now most people this team probably weren't born then. So 1962, David Ogilvy was one of the kind of grandfathers of advertising. If you've watched the Mad Men advertising series, that was his time, that was his period.

So he was talking, there was a comment about advertising, don't count the people you reach, reach the people who count. And I just think it's such an important thing to bear in mind. So much of our modern day business is focused on how many like us, how many followers, how many contacts, how many opens, how many clicks, it's all fairly meaningless if they're not the right people. And it's far better to be heard well by a small group of people than ignored by many thousands. And so yes, I built a business that had a large, has 110,000 members.

And that sounds fantastic. However, the most important thing is not that there's 110,000 members, but is how many people each day are benefiting, are engaging, are connecting, that's now obviously that figure is much, much smaller. But if you join the course of your day, if two or three or four people, depending on your business, are benefiting from the work that you do, that's a good business. It doesn't matter whether you've got 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 followers, it's meaningless. What's important is how many people are engaging with you, how many people are benefiting from what you do.

The underlying principles of growing a business and of marketing haven't changed. It's just the mediums or the media, whichever the right word is, have changed. So that actually segues nicely into the action section. So the key actions for me from this episode are to, first of all, understand where most of your business comes from, who your biggest fans are, and thank them, nurture them, reach out to them, find out how you can help them further. Now, this doesn't mean you clobber them over the head with your offers, but just make sure that they are aware of what kinds of problems you can solve and what your business is up to these days and so on.

It's probably a good practice to draw those five concentric circles that you talked about. As you're listening to this, if you're not driving, then I recommend you do that right now and that is you draw five circles, one inside the other, and on the outermost circle you have the word strangers. On the next circle in you have acquaintances and the next one in you have friends and the one after that you have fans and then you have raving fans in the innermost circle. Figure out strategies mainly that start with some form of giving to bring those people closer and closer to you and trying to solve their problems and it does not have to necessarily be a business transaction.

It just has to be a human interaction where you are being valuable to them and you're being kind. I remember talking to Rand Fishkin in one of my first conversations with him, he's been on three times, but in the first conversation we talked about kindness as a competitive advantage. I think that that is not emphasized enough. Kindness is a competitive advantage and it's very, very rarely used and it should be used more. Totally. Did you have any things you would like to add to that, Robert?

No, look, I think you've summarized it very nicely. I'll be very intrigued to see what your audience make of this and hopefully if people listening have got some little nugget out of this that they can use in their work, then my work here is done. So, no, I think that's a great summary, Ash. Well done. Well, I would ask if you are listening and you found this useful and you can think of someone else who would find this information useful, please do share it with them.

It will be accessible on productiveinsights.com/166. That's where this episode will be available. Now, Robert, how do people find out more about you? How do they get a copy of this lovely book, The One Minute Commute? Thank you. The book is distributed pretty widely across Australia now, so for Australian listeners, if you can find a bookshop, and they do still exist, they should have a copy of my book. If not, head along to robertgerrish.com, so that's G-E-R-R-I-S-H, robertgerrish.com. There you'll find all about me, the work that I do, you'll find links to this book and to my first book.

And anybody listening that wants to reach out and make contact, go ahead. And this is what I do, I help people design and grow small businesses, primarily creative businesses as a focus that I have. But if I can help, you get in touch and I'll do my best. So I will definitely put a link to your website, robertgerrish.com, in the show notes. But just in case you missed it the first time, it's robertgerrish.com. If you don't have a way to write that down, then just head over to productiveinsights.com/166.

You will be able to access the link there. So thank you very much for being on the show, Robert. I appreciate you sharing these really valuable insights. They are old school, but I still think they're probably the most important tenets of marketing and business growth. I know that your first book is called Flying Solo and I believe that's available on Kindle, is that right? That's available on Kindle and it's available also on my website, there's a link to that as well. But the other little piece I didn't mention, this is very remiss of me, but I love being on your podcast.

I look forward to getting you on one of my podcasts. So my Mellow Brick Road is my kind of creative business podcast. So I'd love for anybody listening who wants to check that one out. It's Mellow Brick Road, have a look and hopefully I'll get you Ash on the Flying Solo podcast in the near future. Sounds good. I look forward to it. All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Robert, and hopefully I'll talk to you again soon.