41: How to Create a Referral Worthy Business featuring Faith Burtamekh (The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast)

Are referrals a major component of your business’ marketing strategy? In this episode, I am chatting with Faith Burtamekh of Faith Marie Co about developing a referral-worthy business. Listen in as she shares some of the priorities you absolutely should consider when building your referral-worthy business and client experience, along with key tips for each of those considerations. Trust me, you’re going to want to take notes for this one!

The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast is brought to you by Dolly DeLong Education. This is a podcast for creative business owners who want to learn tangible steps to automate their business through workflows, systems, tools, and strategy in order to go from scattered to streamlined with purpose. Because even muggles can become automated wizards.

Review the Show Notes:

Get to know Faith (1:57)

The priorities of a referral-worthy business (6:12)

It all falls on communication (7:08)

Streamlining your client onboarding process (16:21) 

Show your appreciation for your current clients (22:20)

Stay connected with Faith (31:27)

Connect with Faith ⬇️

Instagram instagram.com/faithmarieco

Website faithmarieco.com

Access Faith’s FREE Client Resource HERE

Connect with Dolly ⬇️

instagram.com/dollydelongeducation

facebook.com/DollyDeLongEducation

pinterest.com/dollydelong

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Review the Transcript:

Dolly DeLong
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong, a wife, a mom and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automations and your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic.

Dolly DeLong
Hello, and welcome back to the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your host, Dolly DeLong. And, again, I am so excited to have you here if this is your first time listening in or if it’s your if you’ve been tuning in since the beginning, thank you so much for being here. I do want to say like a little caveat, I am a little under the weather as we’re recording this episode. So if I sound weird or stuffy, that’s why I’m sorry. But I’m still so excited about this episode, I know when this airs is going to be, I think we’re going into quarter four. So it’s around September when this airs. And so this is a topic that I know you are going to want to, you’re gonna want to re listen to this episode several times, because I have my friend here. And she’s gonna be talking about how to develop a referral worthy client experience. So I say that you’ll want to re listen to this because a lot of us creative business owners, we might be going into a busy season right now, or some of us might be winding down from the busy season of summer. Either way, something that runs our businesses, our referrals are the client experience. And so this is something that we should always be thinking at the forefront of our minds for our business, how to serve our clients, well, how to be genuine about it. And so face is the boss, you all and I’m so excited, just for you to meet her. This is my first time meeting her I feel like I’ve known her forever. Our mutual friend is Emily Conley and Emily writes, well, who’s been on the podcast several times. So I just had to have faith on because of how highly Emily spoke about her. So I will stop rambling, I’m going to have faith, introduce herself. And we are going to get into the topic of how to develop a referral worthy client experience. Hey, introduce yourself to the audience.

Faith Marie
Hi, Dolly, and everyone listening today. Thank you so much for being here today. I’m really really excited. My name is Faith for to MC and I am the founder and owner of Faith Marie Company, I always like to say my friends and clients like to refer to me as a former teacher, and principal turned serial entrepreneur, I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spark since I was, you know, a young child running a baby sitters club on our inner neighborhood. So just a little bit about myself. Before we get started, I wanted to share that my clients, though, really desire a lot of joy and ease in their small businesses. And oftentimes, these creative ambitious entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas but struggled to get them executed. And so that’s where I swoop in and help be their idea fairy and provide the coaching, leadership and support to help them bring their ideas to life. Together, we work to build a foundation and a business that can be sustained and profitable as they move and evolve and grow. For me. It’s always about, you know, teaching them how to do things that help build a strong foundation and set them up for success to grow and expand. But it’s always from a lens of it’s your business so you get to do it your way. So coaching is very customized and personalized experience no cookie cutter approach with my coaching. I live in Phoenix, Arizona and also known as the Valley of the Sun with my husband and daughter who is going to be 23 in just a matter of weeks. Also I think I’m obsessed with Joanna Gaines and all things shiplap and buffalo plaid. I’m a personal development junkie. And I love a good post it you know, office supplies are my jam, it’s the teacher in me.

Dolly DeLong
Have you lived in? This is like going off the cuff. Have you lived in Arizona your entire life?

Faith Marie
No, actually, I was born in California. I lived in California for most of my childhood until I was in high school, actually. And then we moved to Washington and then back to California after I graduated from San Francisco State University with my undergrad degree and we moved to Arizona. So that was in 1998. So I feel like I’ve lived here forever.

Dolly DeLong
Yeah, so you’re pretty much an Arizona. Oh, well. An interesting fact about Arizona. For me my tie is that my roommate from college is from Um, Arizona and she like, loved she loves Arizona so much. So made me love Arizona. So and then apparently the Statehood Day is February 14, there’s so. So I like it all in college, their Valentine’s Day party themes were always Arizona Statehood Day themed parties. And so that is my impression of Arizona balancing. All that. So awesome. Well, thank you, again, so much for being on the podcast for agreeing to be on the podcast. And like I said earlier, before you introduce yourself, that everybody is in for a treat to learn from you and to learn more about, like really how to gain a referral-worthy client experience. Because again, like even if we’re going into our busy seasons, the reason why we’re busy is that people most likely are referring to us, based on how we’ve made them feel or an experience. And so we want to continue that. And so I know faith, like you have a lot like we’ve been, we were going over your notes before we hit record, and you have so much to share. So let’s just dive on. And like, let’s start talking about how to develop a referral-worthy client experience.

Faith Marie
Okay, so there are three main ideas that I want to share today, it’s really about having clear communication, thinking about how you onboard your clients, and then how you then appreciate and show gratitude for your clients. So within each of those topics, I’m going to talk about some quick action tips that make all the difference, because you really want to, yes, bring in new clients. But once you have your clients how you develop a referral-worthy experience, and business is that you take care of and nurture the ones that do come into your community, because they will then be or your megaphone. And they will tell other people, and they’ll want to keep coming back for more. So let’s dig in. The first topic that I want to talk about is communication. So I cannot say it enough that your client experience plays a crucial role in the success of your business. And it all falls on communication. When you make it easy for your clients to talk with you to have access to you, but with boundaries, it’s it makes all of the difference. So the first tip, I have to create sort of this open door policy of communication that but also allows you to you know, set and keep boundaries that help you keep yourself balanced. It’s really just having a dedicated way for your clients to reach out to you. So when I started my business, I was like, oh, yeah, you can email me you can text me, you can DM me. And I was thinking, gosh, I have to look at all these different places to communicate with my, my clients, I was getting, you know, anxious, because it was like, Okay, I gotta check here, check here, check here. And then it wasn’t really communicating a clear message to them like, Okay, here’s where we communicate about our partnership. So I personally love using Slack, because it has so much capability other than just talking to each other. So I have all my clients, once we have that initial onboarding, we set up a private channel. And from then on anything related to our business partnership, we use Slack,

Dolly DeLong
I don’t use Slack. But for those of you the audience members who may be pretty new to client communication, is Slack, a free platform, or do you have to pay for it?

Faith Marie
You can, there is a free version, and there’s a paid version. And I particularly use the paid version where I get five guests that I can invite without actually even having to pay even though I have the paid plan. So you do get a lot for I guess your money. That’s really you’re not paying, if you go over the five guests, then that’s when they start charging you which is nice. So you only pay for what you use. That’s why I actually initially was attracted to it.

Dolly DeLong
Okay, I really like that a lot. Because I know that is something that many newer business owners listen to this podcast and they’re probably wondering, okay, well, what is the cost behind that, but I think a lot of us can get behind free 99. So that’s awesome. So slack is a good communication tool. I know early on you and mentioned early on in your business like you were communicating everywhere. So it’s great that you honed in on what was working for you, which was slack in what you recommend. I was just thinking this out loud. Would you recommend if a person is just starting out and they don’t like necessarily know where to start? Do you recommend them like just sticking with one area like and communicating, hey, like, this is how we can communicate together, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that.

Faith Marie
I do prefer that just because you know, you then you’re scattered looking at all the different places. And that’s where you will miss something, you know, there’s you’re opening up the door to say, Okay, I’m letting them communicate to me in five different ways. But what if you forget to check your Instagram DMS or what have you, you didn’t get to your emails, within 24 hours, you could miss an important message. Whereas if you, you know, you don’t necessarily have to start out with slack in your business right off the you know, the out of the gate, but maybe it say, Let’s communicate, you know, using only email, you know, or let’s communicate using another voice messaging app like Voxer. And so you just, you both always know that that’s where you go. And that’s the key is that if the more you communicate, the more clarity, and easy it is for clients to work with you. That’s what actually elevates their client experience with you, which then leads to those referrals that we’re talking about.

Dolly DeLong
Love it, love it. So just even if you’re brand new, just establishing early on, like, hey, this is how we’re going to communicate. And that, again, establishes you more as a professor, like they view you more professionally because of that. Okay, well, what’s your juicy tip number two.

Faith Marie
Tip number two under communication kind of goes along with what we’ve talked about. But I really tried to have a turnaround of 24 hours. So if a client reaches out to me, I really do make an effort to respond to them within 24 hours, you want your client to know that you’re there for them. And this is on your time. So that’s where you create that natural boundary of saying, you know, hey, I’m more than happy to respond to your messages within 24 hours, but between eight and five, or between, you know, 6pm and 10pm. Because that’s what works for me as the business owner, I never expect my clients to respond to me, if I get to their messages after hours, I always want them to know that that’s when it’s convenient for me to respond and keep my balance in my life. But always respond back when it’s convenient for you. And I try to keep that general rule of responding to them within 24 hours. You know, sometimes life happens, and you can’t make it happen. So you know, 24 to 48 is acceptable. Some people like to say, I’ll get back to you in 72 hours. But you know, in these days, we are really into instant gratification. You know, our attention spans only eight seconds. So I really am conscious about getting back to my clients quickly, because that’s again, what what elevates the experience that they’re having, they’re going to talk about, you’re like, oh my gosh, it was so easy to talk with her. I knew exactly where to go to talk with her. And she always responds to me within 24 hours.

Dolly DeLong
Awesome. Awesome. And I know you’re going to talk about because that just makes me think of boundaries like, okay, like with the like, especially with brand new business owners, or even I struggle with this. And I’ve been in business full time since 2018, like creating boundaries with communication, because you want to instantly gratify that client instantly answer the clients question. So you walk that line.

Faith Marie
At the beginning, I kind of set up the we have a kickoff call. So if I’m going to be taking on a new client outside of the coaching sessions that they will have with me, the first thing that we do is a kickoff session. And so that’s where we really dig into what are your goals for our coaching experience together? And then we always go through sort of expectations, roles, responsibilities and boundaries, and I share what my boundaries and expectations are for the relationship. And then they owe us give them an opportunity to say how does that work for you? Is there anything that we’ve missed or questions that you have? Or boundaries or expectations that you want to add to the partnership? And so that, you know, gives? Yes, you’ve got what you want to say to them. But you also communicate that it’s a partnership. And so we’re doing this together. So how do we make our relationship and communication work as a partnership?

Dolly DeLong
I like this a lot. So it sounds to me, you are highly recommending and I need to like comb through my client onboarding experience, especially my one on one experiences, just like setting up expectations on that kickoff call. Not just putting it in the contract, but also talking out loud.

Faith Marie
Yes, because I found you know, people don’t always read the contracts. And so really verbalizing I think it sets the stage for this is a professional relationship. And you’re valued as an important part of this, you know, duo. And so in order for us to work really well get what you want out of the experience. And then also, both of us feel really good about the boundaries that we’re keeping, you have to talk about boundaries. And I think that’s maybe we didn’t actually lay it out for today’s episode, you know, we talk about communication, onboarding, and client appreciation, but threaded through all of creating overflow, where the business is having boundaries, right, and allows you to serve your clients on such a high level when those are in place.

Dolly DeLong
Okay, awesome. So develop, first of all, developing a really good way of communication. So that is always a good foot to start off on, for sure. But as we need to be reminded about that, because like, as business owners, we just want to jump in, earn the money, or just like, do the work. But like, there should be a good foundation laid out of communication, because that does meet a lot like for the human experience as we have that sounds like it’s important to start establishing that early on, I will let you go on to your next amazing tip.

Faith Marie
So the next topic we wanted to talk about is the client onboarding process. So this is a really important touch point. Outsourcing can be a whirlwind of emotions, especially if your client is someone who is extremely hands on or took, you know, a risk in hiring, you know, coaching is a big investment, and so are other things in your business. And so you you know, as a new business owner, you are cautious about what you invest in. So it would be great to have something that’s absolutely streamline and personalized, so that she can feel your client can feel at ease. And you want to make her feel like she’s your number one client. And so you do that, I think through the onboarding process, because that’s the biggest touch point, I think, other than the one to one that they’re going to get with you that it’s like, how do I actually get into the business? You know, how does she bring me on and is that smooth, and easy for me. So I feel like if you have a messy and complicated onboarding process year, you might lose out on them referring you to other people. Anyway, I think it’s important to have all of this kind of mapped out. So I’m willing to share some more tips to help people get started because it is one of the most important touch touch points you have with the client. I feel like your onboarding process can literally make or break your business.

Dolly DeLong
I just wanted to insert myself and remind everyone since this, like is a systems and workflow strategy podcast, I bet Faye like would agree with me and saying you can do a hybrid of like, you can automate certain parts of this onboarding process, and will make it personalized for your client.

Faith Marie
So many of my clients come to me and they’ll say, you know, we’ll we’ll talk about their workflows. And you know, what, I discovered that they’re writing the same email over and over and over again, and their email is wonderful. It makes me feel when I read their emails that they’re talking exactly to me, but let’s just automate that. You’re absolutely right. So you’re not, you know, and you don’t have to invest in a CRM a, you know, customer relations management system, like Dubsado, HoneyBook, all those others. Right off the bat, what’s most important is, which is my first tip, is to take time to map out all of the steps in your process from beginning to end. It seems boring, but trust me, it is absolutely worth it. And you know, because you’re a Dubsado Pro and you’ve got to have those steps mapped out to a tee because if for many reasons. Number one, you’re going to streamline, right, it’s not going to be clunky. Number two is that you actually you actually take the time to map out your process, you understand your business so much more. You can see the gaps. And you don’t realize oftentimes all the steps because we just automatically do them. But also thinking about you know, as you maybe expand your own business and bring on team members, this helps to onboard new team members as well. So that was the first tip map out all the steps, just grab a piece of paper, nothing fancy, your favorite pen and just map it out from beginning to end. And you’ll see that that will help you in the long run.

Dolly DeLong
And if this is overwhelming to you, if you’re listening in and you’re like, Well, I am a service business owner and I offer five different services and just thinking about that overwhelms me I would encourage you to map out one service from beginning all the way to end and how I mapped this out with my Dubsado clients is gonna have to map it out from like, where their clients are finding you or where you are present all the way to when you finally like, either deliver that service, like if you’re a photographer, or if you are like a copywriter, you’re delivering the full copywriting services, I’m probably saying that wrong. So the whole client experience from beginning all the way to end to sending your request form.

Faith Marie
Absolutely start with one is the way to get started. And you don’t even have to have these all mapped out before you start your business or even in the first year. Like take it one step at a time, you know, and I get really good at one part. And then when you feel really good about that, add another part on. Alright, so second tip is to make sure that your clients feel important. And like I mentioned before, you want her to feel like she made the right decision in hiring you no questions asked. So you want to build in multiple touchpoints. And over communicate, the more she knows what to expect, the more she the more trust you build with your client. And so you that helps you, when you when you look at your onboarding process and map out your steps from that perspective, then you really are making sure that clarity is part of the ease in onboarding new clients. That’s another thing that I want to share in kind of our last tip here under onboarding is create the process from the clients perspective. A lot of times we think about, well, what is it that we do to onboard, but you really want to think about it from like you mentioned, you know, where’s my client coming into me. So it could be that your client is, you know, reaching out to you through Instagram, or maybe they came to you from your website, or maybe somebody referred you. So you have to think about if the if someone if this happens, then this. And that’s kind of my big thing here, when you’re mapping out your processes is just think about it as if then if XYZ happens, then XYZ happens. And then the bonus is, then what do I need content wise in order to make that happen?

Dolly DeLong
I’m thinking through this while you’re saying that, like, if somebody comes to me as a referral, then I usually have a like a question I like to ask is like who referred you to me. And that way, I’m taking the extra step to think through referral gift because I like I love not only client gifts, but I like referral gifts, because I want to make everybody really excited about working with me, even if the referral is not working with me, they’ve referred me so that that’s one of my scenarios I’ve written out like, if somebody comes for me from a referral, then this happens.

Faith Marie
I love that. And that’s a great segue into the third big topic that we wanted to talk about in helping you create a referral where the business was client appreciation. So it’s once they’re a client, how do we continue to nurture and thank them for their business, you know, so that they do become raving fans. And you know, talk about your business from the rooftops to other people. So it starts with taking time to reflect and just being really grateful for the most important people in your business. And those are your clients, you know, so at the end of the day, you don’t have a business if you don’t have clients. And so I love your approach to saying, Gosh, I am really thankful that you referred me to someone else. And now they’re going to be a client as well. So what some of just some fun things that I love doing that are sort of out of the box and not the norm is to write a quick text or DM and send it to them, like you mentioned, you know, thanking them just for supporting your business outside of the work that you do with them. Randomly just send them a message and say, hey, you know, I just wanted to say thank you for being you know, an ongoing clients even better, what I love to do is send them a video message. The video message is kind of like my signature thing that I love doing because then they get to see your face. They get to, you know, see your emotion and your excitement when you are truly expressing gratitude for them, you know, taking a chance on you and your business.

Dolly DeLong
Well, I love that so much. I actually do that too. And I don’t know how you record them, but I record them via loom. For those of you who are listening loom is you can either do a paid part or a free version up to five minutes per video. And so it’s really easy to send a 3 second loom video thanking your client, introducing yourself to the client and letting them know again who you are letting them see you. That’s big seeing face to face making eye contact with them. Even if it’s through a screen humans need that eye contact. So that touch point so yeah, I love love that you do that.

Faith Marie
I love that idea that you, you know, to share it, I was just thinking, as you were talking, I’m like, oh gosh, I have a discovery call today. And tomorrow, I should send them a video message and say I’m really looking forward to chatting with you, and how we might potentially partner together. That would be that’s those the things that you want to kind of like, oh, this will elevate, you know, how many people are actually doing this? I bet you you and I are probably in a small group that actually take that extra step to do things like that.

Dolly DeLong
People make excuses like, Oh, it didn’t do my hair, or Oh, like, weird, I am insecure about my eyelash. I don’t know, like, I’m weird excuses to be insecure about everything. And I get it. Like I’m, I’m a woman, I am a human, I’m just gonna say I’m a human and with insecurities, but we still need to make human connecting points, we still need to look a person in the face, and let them know, Hey, we’re so I’m excited. Even if, like, we don’t work together, this discovery call, we are still at talking, I’m really want to connect with you. And that makes an impression on a person. In so many ways. I was just thinking this like sometimes if it’s a so I serve also as a family photographer, in addition to Dubsado educator. And so if I am sending a video to another mom who just inquired for my family photography services, and of blazes around, he’ll sit on my lap, and he’ll talk. And so that way, she can see, oh, she gets it like she has a toddler crawling all over her. And I don’t do that to like, show them like, oh, I get like I don’t I just want to make a connection and show them like, hey, I am not all put together. But I’m going to, like still show up and show you that I’m excited about working with you. And this is my son and he’s just part of like, my life.

Faith Marie
Yeah, I think they’re more I think relatability is so powerful. And as I like you said, it’s not your strategy. It’s just real life, what happens, you know, in the middle of the call, and he climbs up on your lap and you just roll with it.

Dolly DeLong
I’m like, Okay, well, this is my son, this is real. And yeah, and there’s a banana peel in my hair now because he just yeah, just keep it real. And I love that you had mentioned, uh, not a lot of people utilize video in this way. Even though for the past, I don’t know, I’m gonna say two or three years we’ve been hearing the message like videos came videos king, but people do not take advantage of video of free video.

Faith Marie
Absolutely. So I know, video is king. But I think there’s also power and authenticity in going oh, with old school by writing a personal thank you note as well, you know, I think getting snail mail is, as we call it, and just seeing that, you know, gosh, my client reads this note, that’s, you know, I write and make it very personal about our experience together. And just out of the blue, it could be in the middle of a of a six month client and just randomly she gets a thank you card from me that goes so much further than anything. You know, I always remember when I was a principal, I would always do like teacher gifts for like the beginning of the year, the holidays. And one year I made these like notebooks I took like a composition book and Modge Podge that put a cool cover on it. Their name was some stickers just really personalized the notebook and thought very deeply about like, oh, this person is going to love this color. And this paper. And then when I did was inside the note book. On the first page, I wrote them a personalized note. Wishing them you know, happy holidays, and also like saying something really nice that I appreciated about them. And the teachers one by one came to me oh my gosh, we love the notebooks. But what really, you know, made it special is that you took time to write a special note to be your personalized note. So it wasn’t even about the notebook. Sure they loved it. But the fact that I took the time to write the message in my own handwriting, it made the world of difference. And so send a thank you note to or send a random, you know, note of gratitude to your clients and it will elevate their experience with you.

Dolly DeLong
I do want to remind everyone that you can put reminders to yourself in your CRM platform like Dubsado or like Honeybook, or if again, if you don’t yet use a CRM, like write it out in your process like Faith was saying like that one service and write out all the steps, even the steps that you have not yet done, but how you want it to look like like insert, send a note at this point, send a note at this point or like send a gift card to Starbucks at this point. You like are literally crafting this experience. So what would you like to do for your client?

Faith Marie
And along those lines, just to kind of sum up our whole conversation around client appreciation, the best thing you can do is lift your client up. And I find that if you give them a public shout out, thanking a client for, you know, them choosing me to be their coach, like, that’s the biggest thing, you know, support her in her business. You know, it could be sharing one of her posts on Instagram, it could be you know, how she helped you become a better person, you know, or better at your business, just public shout out and acknowledging her. And lifting her up in her success of her business, I think is one other way to really, you know, like I said, just that experience is going to be elevated. And they’ll that’s how you create a referral worthy client experience and business, that people will continue to refer you because you’ve set out clear communication, and that you have boundaries around the communication, but still serve at a high level, that you take time to really think through the details of your onboarding process, so that it’s easy to come into your business. And then once they’re there, you continue to nurture appreciate, and be grateful for them choosing you among a sea of others that offer the same services that you do. So that’s what I got for you today.

Dolly DeLong
I love it. Faith. Thank you so much. You shared so much information with us again, what before we hit record, I was telling faith like this is like a little mini masterclass. Like I hope you all are taking notes or will re listen to this and take notes and faith like before I let you go can you share with the audience how people can find you? And how people can work with you?

Faith Marie
Yes, absolutely. So I love hanging out on Instagram. That’s where I the social platform that I’m on the most. So my handle is at Faith Marie CO. So you can always find me there. And then my website is faith Marie co.com. So that’s a place where you can learn about my coaching services. So I offer one on one coaching. And throughout the year, I’ll host different workshops, masterclasses and group programs. But my love is working with clients one on one to take her from idea to reality and whatever it is that she wants to achieve. So that’s where you can find me.

Dolly DeLong
And thank you, I know you have a little gift for those of you who are listening may have something amazing for you.

Faith Marie
Yes. So I’m going to put together all of this information that I shared, in addition to a few other goodies that will help you, you know, elevate your client experience. So look out for that PDF as a resource in helping you develop your communication, onboarding and client appreciation.

Dolly DeLong
I will link that in the show notes. And you’re like, please, after this shoot faith and DM and let her know how much you love this and like what points were helpful for you. Honestly, all of them were very helpful for me. So thank you so much for being on the podcast and for sharing so much wisdom with us.

Faith Marie
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. And I can’t wait to hear how people have received the episode today.

Dolly DeLong
They will it’s gonna be awesome. So you all have a wonderful week, and I will see you all next week. Bye.

Dolly DeLong
Thank you so much for listening to The Systems and Workflow Magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at Dolly DeLong photography.com forward slash podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it to your stories and tag me at Dolly DeLong education over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic.