Referrals Aren’t Dead. But Most People Are Doing Them Completely Wrong.

This week I want to talk about something that lives at the very center of who I am and how I do business: I want to talk about beauty.

Beauty in business, beauty in marketing and I want to make an argument. One I will make at length and, I hope, convincingly, that for the right type of business and the right type of person, doing business by referral, business by relationship, can compete with and in many ways exceed the return on investment from any other form of marketing.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking.

You’ve seen the LinkedIn posts from the experts. You’ve read the articles proclaiming that referrals are dead, that they can’t scale, that they’re a relic of a bygone era. Here’s what those people are really talking about when they criticize referrals: they’re talking about passive strategies. They’re talking about sitting back and somehow hoping to earn referrals without asking, or worse, begging for them. That’s not what I’m talking about. Not even close.

I’m not here to argue that referrals are more effective. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that. What you’re striving for, what you’re after, is something deeper. You want to know: how can I have a truly blessed intersection between getting the business I want, getting the business I feel like I need, and being more human? That’s where referrals win. Unquestionably.

Here’s what nobody talks about in all those marketing webinars and growth-hack threads: the toll it takes on you. The toll of treating people like numbers. The toll of waking up every morning and opening a dashboard instead of opening your heart. I’ve watched people build massive businesses on the back of funnels and automation, and I’ve watched those same people wonder why they feel hollow inside. Why the success doesn’t taste like they thought it would. I think the answer is simple: they traded beauty for efficiency. They traded the human experience for a conversion rate.

The Soulless Alternative

Your email campaign. Your direct messages. Your website. Your funnels. All these things are doing nothing, and I mean nothing (and my voice is raised as I dictated this), they are doing nothing for your soul or for other people’s souls…and yet referrals do.

Referrals are the only form of marketing that you truly own, and also the only form of marketing that demands more of you. That’s because inherently, to scale business by relationship, you need to scale yourself. You need to scale who you are as a human being. You need to scale how you treat other people. And most of all, you need to scale your belief in beauty.

Referrals aren’t for everyone.

They’re only for people who believe other human beings are beautiful. When you get down to it, there is nothing better than knowing you have built a business around treating other people well and being rewarded by other people for it.

Think about success versus significance. Or better yet...success with significance. How do those two things interact? When you look at doing business by referral, when you look at the incredible relationships that develop, there’s a real beauty to it.

The beauty is this: executed correctly, executed with love for other human beings, referrals don’t force anything. They offer opportunities for deeper connection. They offer opportunities for discovery and most of all, they offer opportunities for love, for joy, for beauty.

Finding the People Who Believe in You

Because done well, referrals are about finding the people who care for you. The people who believe in you. And yes, in many cases, the people who love you and want to help you. This builds more than a business. It builds a life. It builds a way of living that propels you forward despite mortality, in spite of the dreadful, horrific uncertainty of whether this is your last moment or not.

Because at the end of the day, referrals are about giving.

The best referral results happen because people know you’re worth it. And it’s not because of what you do, even though that’s a prerequisite. It’s because of who you are and how you love and treat other people. No CRM, no technology platform, no automation sequence can replace another person knowing that you thought of them and then acted on their behalf. That you believed in them enough to pick up the phone instead of scheduling an automated email. That you cared enough to remember a detail about their life that had nothing to do with business. That’s what referrals are about.

And there’s a compounding effect here that I don’t think enough people understand. When you live this way, when you build your business around genuine care for other human beings, something shifts inside you. You start to become the person that people want to refer. Not because you asked. Not because you have a system. But because you are the kind of human being that other people are proud to associate with, proud to recommend, proud to connect with someone they love. You become referral-worthy not through technique, but through transformation.

The Moments That Change Everything

One of the most beautiful things about referrals is how they create opportunities for people to share deeply. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of several stories. Moments that live in my memory as some of the most meaningful experiences of my professional life.

I’m thinking about sitting down with people I was in referral-giving relationships with, people who were also helping me. Some of them wildly successful, far beyond me by an exponential amount. And just hearing something in their voice. Something of a loss. Something of fear. Something of sorrow. And asking, sometimes three or four times in a row: How are you doing? How are you doing? How are you really doing?

And then having a moment of exquisite beauty be shared because of my persistence in showing them that I was present. That I was more than just the transaction. That I was a human being who heard their soul calling out for something deeper.

Those moments are incredible. Moments where someone talks to you about great suffering they’re going through, or that someone they love is going through. Deep, deep challenges with their business that are threatening everything they hold dear. And not every time are you able to turn the tide of life and how brutally unfair it is. But many times, just being able to have that person share, maybe for the first time, what’s really going on can create new possibilities. Can create beauty from darkness.

And that is something I will never trade. Not for what most people use marketing for. This soulless, rampant disdain for human relationship where it’s just about a transaction. Where we’re going to leverage technology and tricks to somehow create enough meetings. And these meetings are going to be fraught with tension, fraught with this commission breath of needing to convert a “marketing qualified lead.” What an absolute joke. That very term. Marketing qualified lead. As if a human being can be reduced to a score in your CRM.

Versus taking the time to invest in people broadly through giving. Through strategic giving. Giving that is designed to help people you genuinely want to help. And then watching the business flow. Not forcing it. Not manipulating it. Not tricking it into existence. But watching it flow because you have become the kind of person that business flows toward. Because you’ve invested so deeply in people that they can’t help but think of you when someone they care about needs what you provide.

What Beauty Means in a Business Relationship

What an incredible question it is to define beauty within a business relationship. This isn’t going to have a precise definition. But from my perspective, beauty in a business relationship is doing things that make you and the other person feel more human. Things that validate at a deep soul level your meaning for existence. Things that perhaps bring meaning to your existence.

If you’ve been given the opportunity to be in a business like financial services/wealth management, or any business where the income and revenue and opportunity actually gives you the ability and license to go all in on human beings and the beauty of life...and to then turn around and use that in a soulless, transactional manner just to make as much money as possible through nonhuman types of marketing is really a terrible thing. A waste of something sacred.

And here’s what I’ve learned over thirty years and through multiple recessions and market corrections: when times are bad, technology is not there for you. Technology can change. Technology can be taken away. And so can people. People are taken away through the reality of life and death and through change. But everyone, it seems, always reverts to wanting to trust their network. To turning to people, they believe will help them when times are bad.

That is always going to be true. In every downturn, in every crisis, in every moment of uncertainty, human beings reach for other human beings. Not for algorithms. Not for chatbots. Not for automated drip sequences. For people. For someone they trust. And if you’ve been that person all along, if you’ve shown up consistently, not just when you needed something, but when they needed someone, you will be the first call they make.

The Ant, Not the Grasshopper

But here’s the thing: if you’ve spent the time with those people, if you’ve focused on them when times were good, if you’ve built your business around those relationships, you’re going to navigate the storm better. The storm will have far less effect on you. And you will be able to be the hero in those moments. You will have prepared based upon your values and you can act to save those you care about and others you meet in need.

You’re the ant, not the grasshopper.

And so many people network like a grasshopper. They show up when they need something. They reach out when the market drops. They remember your name when their pipeline dries up. But the beauty, the real beauty, is in being an ant. In preparing for the tough times. In living a life where you know that the enemy always has a vote. In living a life where you believe in other people and are prepared to be a provider and a hero if called upon.

That preparation doesn’t start when the storm hits. It starts in the sunshine. It starts with a phone call you didn’t have to make. A handwritten note for no reason. A referral you gave without expecting anything in return. A question you asked three times because you heard something in someone’s voice and you refused to let it go unanswered.

That’s the beauty of business by referral. It’s not a strategy. It’s not a tactic you can learn in a weekend seminar. It’s a way of living. It’s a declaration that you believe the world works better when people take care of each other. That business can be sacred. That marketing can be an act of love. And for those of us who believe that other human beings are beautiful, it’s the only way that makes sense.