#127 – How to Generate Consistent Referrals with Michelle Warner of Networking That Pays

Shannon Mattern (00:01.678)

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Michelle Warner, who helps business owners design businesses that they don't want to burn down. She's the host of the Sequence Over Strategy podcast, creator of Networking That Pays. She helps introverts create more leads, consistent referrals, meaningful connections.

She's so good at it that we connected some point years ago and we are like, know each other and we were trying to figure out like how, how we knew each other. So yeah, Michelle, welcome to the show.

Michelle Warner (00:42.248)

Well, thank you for having me. And yeah, the world here is small, isn't it? Everyone's connected in some way.

Shannon Mattern (00:45.518)

It sure is, but you are so good at creating intentional connections that kind of come back to you over time. So I'm so excited to dive into that over this episode. But first, I just want to hear more about you and your journey and how you got to this place where you're helping entrepreneurs build businesses that are there to serve them long-term.

Michelle Warner (01:15.122)

Yeah, it's a little bit of funny story. will go as fast as I can. Go back to about 2010, I was graduating with my MBA from the University of Chicago. And I had spent a lot of time while I was working in Chicago professionally building businesses on the South Side and doing a lot of business development work in terms of just stabilizing small businesses. When I graduated, I became a very traditional tech founder and had a social impact tech startup that was getting low cost internet into the inner cities in the United States.

Did that for about five or six years. It was a fantastic experience. I was also becoming that very typical tech founder where I was about to destroy everything I had built because I was so burned out and we had grown to a place where it wasn't really a mess. We needed HR handbooks and it was at that kind of adolescent stage and I'm not into the adolescent stage. So found someone to take that over there, still thriving and it just makes me so, so happy. But I stepped away and kind of combined all those experiences that I had had of a traditional MBA. So I know

the very formal structures that you should be thinking about when you're building a business. I've had that tech startup experience where you're just winging it day to day, figuring things out, and also worked a lot with very small business owners, small women business owners. In that tech startup, our customers ended up being a lot of single moms who were at home, and they became VAs as soon as we were able to get them internet into their hands. So I started to see this economy that was happening of small business owners online.

And I had so much admiration for them because they were just winging it and figuring it out and had to figure it out and had no background. And I looked at it and I thought, I've been fixing businesses and building businesses since day one. And what impact might I be able to have if I help these people who have so much courage and just are going for it. And if I help them think through some of the basics and just get on a little bit of a better guided path.

wow, what an impact that could be on all their lives and all their businesses. So I've been doing this since about 2015 now in terms of just trying to stabilize and keep people building in the best way that I know possible.

Shannon Mattern (03:20.994)

I wish I would have met you in 2015. Because as I'm hearing you say that, you know, I do not have a business background. You know, I have a marketing and communications background. I, you know, was like trained to be a corporate robot. And so, you know, I don't have that business background, but I had that.

Michelle Warner (03:24.054)

Right?

Shannon Mattern (03:48.184)

drive that like the courage, the desire to like to do something like to have freedom, flexibility and like autonomy, which then has evolved into like just wanting to have a bigger impact. I did not know what I did not know back then. I, I'm scrappy, I am persistent, but scrappiness and persistent takes a lot of energy and a lot of capacity.

Michelle Warner (04:15.016)

It sure does. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (04:18.08)

And a lot of, and like talk about like burning yourself out like several times and being like this, the way I'm doing this thing is not working. And so many times just like throwing out the baby with the bath water, starting over, like starting over, starting over when, and whatever I learned what I learned. But you know, I look back and I'm like,

What if I would have had a you there to just guide me?

Michelle Warner (04:49.83)

Yeah. Yep.

Michelle Warner (04:55.3)

Exactly, exactly. And that's what I want to be because honestly, there's a little bit of that throwing things against the wall and seeing if they're working. You kind of need to learn a few lessons because we're all going to go into this thinking it's doable and you can just Google and that's, think, a really natural process. So you need to kind of go through that, but people go through it for way too long than necessary. You know, maybe you need to go through that for three, six, 12 months, and then let's stop on the fourth, fifth iteration of that kind of frustration.

that's when we can start getting you on a really stable path. So I always want to encourage people, like experiment early on. You need to do a little bit of that and you need to have those experiences and frankly be burned a little bit. But we can stop that process way, way, way sooner than most people are able to stop it. And that's how we stop the burnout and that's how we get people on stable paths forward.

Shannon Mattern (05:45.452)

man, so I just want to know if I had met you back then, what would that have looked like for us?

Michelle Warner (05:54.534)

Yeah, one of the things that I do say and it's the name of my podcast and this isn't intended as a plug, but I think it's so critical is I talk a lot about sequence over strategy and I'm when I'm working with people, my deep, deep, deeply held belief is that it is more important to order in which you do things than how well you do them. And that is the opposite of how most people operate. And so that is one thing, especially when I'm talking to new business owners that maybe aren't ready for my one on one package.

I talk a lot about what order are we going to do things and what order are you going to tackle things because a lot of people are going to start grabbing any kind of popular marketing strategy or any this or any that. And listen, you could be the most brilliant podcast host on the face of the earth. Let's pick on podcasts for a minute. If it's not the right time to launch a podcast or you don't know what it's doing, maybe it gets you a little bit, but you're going to get 10 % of what you would get from it if you launched it at the right time.

So if I hang out people thinking in the correct order, that's already a huge win for me. And part of that is like screw up for six months and then we're getting through in the correct order of operations and that there's just, that is so boring, but there's so much power in it. And so that's what I talk about when I'm in front of newer business owners is what does that order look like?

Shannon Mattern (07:09.652)

One of the things that was coming up for me as you're saying this is, you know, our listeners are web designers and then they, they, they take a new, they get a new client who's a new business owner with like this grand plan and these big ideas and they start working on this project and then it stalls out and then, you know, the client wants to pause or the client's getting cold feet.

Michelle Warner (07:17.138)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (07:39.23)

or, you know, there's all this scope creeper, tons of revisions. And the designer doesn't, they take that like personally, like I'm not doing a good job or this person is a bad client or all of these things. And I'm so curious what your take on this is because usually my thought process is like, this person shouldn't even be building a website yet.

Michelle Warner (08:06.76)

100%. 100%. And I would even take it further. What I would advocate in that moment is as a web designer, you're the expert. And so you can recognize that. And people love stages or they love steps. And so I would be thinking about the stages of a business and what sophistication level of a website is required at that point. And I would have a little visual if I were a web designer. And if I were meeting with someone on day one of their business,

Shannon Mattern (08:16.866)

Yes.

Michelle Warner (08:35.592)

100 % I would tell them you do not need a website right now. But maybe if they're at year one, I would be presenting what does a year one website look like? Let's get them talked down from the grandiose ideas because they don't know any better. And if you can show them visually the difference between a year one website, simplifying it here, but if you can show them visually the difference between, year one website looks like this and includes this and a year five website includes this or year three website or whatever you want to call it, then they're going to accept that.

If you just look at them and say, don't need this, it's too much, they're probably gonna get a little defensive. But if you can show a visual of the stages and say, hey, you're a beginner business, but you're ready for a website, beginner plus, whatever we would call that, then here's the five pages we need to get up right now. Anything more than that will be a distraction. It's too much of an investment, you'll lose your investment, like whatever justification you wanna give. But hey, once you reach this milestone, then you're at medium website.

And that's when you should be thinking about that two years down the road. That's how I would be thinking about that and frankly taking a little bit of power back in that conversation and being able to direct your clients.

Shannon Mattern (09:42.52)

So good. back to like sequence over strategy and like the early stages being like, go out there and experiment and make some mistakes and don't worry about it and touch the stove and whatever, find all the, but like what are some of those like early stage steps, even for our listeners that are beyond that, but just thinking about, let me keep this in mind when I'm actually like.

Michelle Warner (09:55.975)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (10:10.222)

talking to potential clients.

Michelle Warner (10:12.76)

Yeah, well, I will tell you the biggest one and it may be a step before talking to a potential client and that's knowing what your marketing philosophy and strategy should be. And this again is something that you're probably going to have to screw up in the early days because what I'm about to say is again, not always a message people want to hear, but I think of marketing on a continuum and on the left side of that continuum is something I call relationship marketing. On the right side is something I call traffic marketing. Relationship marketing, the most extreme is going to be a referral.

Traffic marketing, the most extreme is gonna be emails pounding your inbox all day. I always make fun of like old Navy or whoever is pounding you with emails. And here's the deal, every business model is actually in alignment with someplace on that continuum. But we don't talk about the relationship side of marketing much. What tends to happen is people start their businesses, they talk to family and friends, or they get some referrals. So they're on the extreme side of relationship marketing. And then they say, I better quote unquote, start marketing.

And now what they actually define that as, because it's what's easily Googleable, is they go and do some extreme traffic marketing. All of sudden, I feel like I need to be dancing on TikTok or, you know, posting on Instagram all day long. And as a service provider, which your web designers are, they are actually in alignment with the relationship side of marketing. And so that content, that traffic marketing is not going to get them very far. It used to work, it's starting to work less and less. And you probably see this.

But when you're in a model where you need fewer leads and they're higher quality leads and higher paying leads, which is going to be web design, you know, when you compare it to like e-commerce or something, then you're on the relationship side of things. And so I see so many people wasting so much time with big traffic marketing pushes, which feels good, because you can make a list and you can say, great, I posted on LinkedIn 10 times today, so I've completed my marketing.

But nobody's gonna respond to that. The leads are so hard to find that way. Whereas over on relationship marketing, it is a little fuzzier because there are other people involved and you have to put yourself out there a little bit. But that's where people get results. And so when I talk about sequence over strategy, that's one of the first conversations we're having is before you start implementing any marketing, figure out where you live on that continuum and then pick strategies that are in agreement with where your model

Michelle Warner (12:31.56)

lands on that continuum, what's in alignment? Because your model is in alignment with a specific spot on that continuum and understanding that, then you can slide in the strategies that line up with where you sit on that continuum.

Shannon Mattern (12:45.646)

Can I just say, feel so validated right now that all we teach inside of the web designer Academy and on this podcast and, and is relationship marketing, one-to-one connection, outreach, et cetera. We teach lots of different like creative ways to do it. And you know, I don't like the, the, the issue that I see

Michelle Warner (12:59.752)

Hey. Yep.

Shannon Mattern (13:14.264)

There's a few things and I'd love to dig into these with you is it feels safer to me to write like for S try to write for SEO and quote unquote attract clients to me that way and wait to be discovered and wait to be found. Because I know if, if like someone is initiating with me, then

Michelle Warner (13:16.936)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (13:42.354)

that like makes me feel like safe to have a conversation. So I'm gonna do lots of things behind the screen to create quote unquote opportunities potentially to get people to initiate with me, to come to me. That's one thing. And then like the other thing is that being web designers,

and working with companies who have marketing strategies that fall somewhere else on the continuum, they think that they're a fraud if they are not then also marketing the same way that the clients that they want to work with are marketing their business. And so they're like, well, in order to be taken seriously, I need to be X, Y, Z because that's where my clients are.

They're like, that's where my clients are. So, I know I just opened a whole big old can of worms, pick one and let's dive in.

Michelle Warner (14:46.824)

know you didn't. I'm laughing as you say this because these are far and away the two top things I hear all the time. And you're right. You're right. They're both not the right way to think about it, as I would say. So let's start with the first one in terms of that idea that you need to be creating a lot of content or that it feels good and it feels safe. And that's 100 % true. And that's the biggest fight I have.

And I think it's also why I've landed that you're gonna have to fail for the first six months. Because traffic marketing, the truth is it is much easier to feel like you have completed your marketing tasks. It's good to feel good. You can create a checklist, you can complete your tasks, and at the end of the day you can say, have completed my marketing. And I have this conversation with people all the time who say, well, I'm doing all my marketing and it's working. And I say, you're getting leads from it? And they say, well, no.

Well, but how is it working then? They're like, well, because I posted stuff and I get it. Like there's a vulnerability moment there. So, but it actually feels like success if all you do is hit post and then you have no results from it. And so there's a little bit of cruelty there. It's safety, but it's also cruel cause you got like a false positive. And the way I think about it and I describe it is very similar to what you do. I break marketing into three stages, awareness, engagement, sales, and we'll talk about awareness. That's how people need to meet you.

When you're relationship marketing, you need to not meet anyone that awareness stage has to all happen away from your platform. So like right now, I call it borrowing audiences. We can call it a million different things. But right now I am borrowing your audience. I don't expect anyone to find me via my podcast. That for me falls in what I call the engagement stage. If I am trying to meet people, I am finding other people who already have my audience and we're collaborating in some way.

And so that is how I think about doing quality relationship marketing is getting off of your platform, not being passive about it being a little bit more proactive about it and meeting people away from your stuff. And, but that is a little bit of a mindset flip that folks have to go through because it does feel safe and frankly, it feels productive. Our brains play a trick on us that it feels productive to have just hit post or just, you know, hit, hit, hit that.

Michelle Warner (17:08.38)

and you feel like you've completed your marketing and then that conversation about, are you getting any leads? It's amazing to me, but it shouldn't be how kind of big eyes people get and they're like, well, what do you mean? No, like I'm not seeing any leads. Like, well then how is it working? And so that's how we flip that one.

Shannon Mattern (17:25.23)

Yeah, I love borrowing other people's audiences. I even, if someone doesn't have a podcast or any, or doesn't even want to go on people's podcasts, this was like an early accidental marketing tactic that I figured out by just doing lots, like I didn't know what I was doing. I'm just going to try lots of things. probably how we found our

Michelle Warner (17:44.648)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (17:54.314)

our way to each other back in, you know, 20 whatever is I did, I was wanting to get in front of women entrepreneurs because at the time I was teaching women how to DIY their websites, like women's side hustlers, right? And so I'm like, well, how do I do that? And I'm like, there's this.

Michelle Warner (17:58.248)

29, whatever.

Shannon Mattern (18:17.314)

There's all these like business coaches out there that are teaching women how to like build businesses like Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield and Becca Tracy. And so I reached out to them and I said, Hey, I'm starting this interview series called Women to Watch. And I just have a lot of questions about like how you started your business. did you DIY your website or hire someone, you know, all of these things. And then.

at the end, I packaged it, I made a really cute blog post, packaged it all up, and then would send it to them, and I would like make it so they looked amazing. Like it was all about them and their picture, and they're awesome, and here's their free thing, and I would like, I had no audience at the time. I had zero email lists, zero traffic, like no social media presence.

and I would package this up to them and I would send it to them and I'd be like, your interview is ready if you'd like to share this out to your audience. And lo and behold, they would send it out to their email list or whatever, because I made them look good. And that's how I got in front of, that's how I built a relationship with Becca Tracy from Uncaged Your Business, which we think is our connection because

then that led to like some collaborations and me doing a training for her audience. And you did a training and then like many years later we're meeting. And so I borrowed her audience in a very roundabout way. I didn't even know what I was really doing, but it's a tactic that I still use today because it's a give. It's like a gift. get to, I get to meet somebody new.

I get to have a really cool interaction. I'll share this with my audience. You'll share it with your audience. We both win. We create more together than we could have created on our own. if that's marketing, quote unquote, sign me up. I'll do it all day. It's fun.

Michelle Warner (20:30.682)

It is marketing and I would love to break down what you just described because we built that into a system and we put names around it so that it can feel like marketing and it can feel like the equivalent of posting on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever everyone's doing. So I'll tell you what you just did without knowing that you did it. Number one, you created something I call an ideal connection avatar. So the same way we have client avatars, you actually have connection avatars, probably about three of them.

And yours were business coaches. have identified where your audience is already hanging out, who already has their trust, who already has their ear. So you identified that business coaches. Fantastic. That's step one of our sequence over strategy. Figure out who your ideal connection avatars are. And then you figured out a way to get introduced to them. And that's another thing we talk about. We have like five different ways to get introduced. You picked one of my favorites, which is very non-creatively called Create a Project.

where you can hand them a platform. So if you happen to have a podcast, bring them on and that's a great way to get introduced. But we also like write white papers if you are trying to be out in the B2B world and corporate world. Or the way I figured this out was in my startup, I could not reach the people who my clients for a lot of reasons, they were nonprofits and local governments and I was in Denver and they didn't wanna speak with me. But I could book at the time, I had a lot of media buzz, I could book any keynote I wanted.

but these people would not give me the time of day to sell anything to them. So I started trading these very high profile keynotes I had for panels and I would invite all of them to come on a panel with me at a high profile event where they got to tell their story and nonprofits, local governments love to tell their story. And so that's how I built relationships with my first customers. So again, this is what we call creating a project, but how can you hand people a platform in some way?

And it can be as simple as a blog post and an interview. That's one of my favorites if you're just getting started. But it can also be if you have an asset that you can utilize and bring people on. That's a fantastic way to get introduced, start the relationship, and then you have the start of a relationship that you can build on. And then you can start building collaborations in. So you nailed the process. That's one of the ways that we teach it and break it down into a system so that it feels fun and it feels doable.

Shannon Mattern (22:45.07)

I love that I followed a actual real process because it really felt at the time that I was just like taking a lot of stabs in the dark. As people say, they're like, people will tell me it just feels like I'm taking a lot of stabs in the dark. It feels like I'm throwing spaghetti against the wall and I'm like, you're doing it right. Sorry to tell you. you want like what they want.

Michelle Warner (22:47.72)

Yeah.

Michelle Warner (23:06.054)

Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (23:10.836)

me to tell them is like, if you do this, then you will get client A within 10 days to pay you $10,000. Like that's what they that's like, if I'm going to get uncomfortable, and I'm going to do this thing, I want to know ahead of time that it's absolutely going to work. It's going to work in this timeframe. And it's going to result in this much money. And I'm like, I can't tell you that.

Michelle Warner (23:37.736)

Can't tell you that. But the reason we've broken it into a system like that is that a lot of people do have these instincts, but a lot of folks don't. And so then again, like there's a system to go post on Instagram. There's a top 10 checklist that you follow and that doesn't exist. So if you don't have that instinct on the relationship side, it's really hard to figure these things out. So spelling it out and saying, create your ideal connection avatars. Let's talk about who those folks are.

Shannon Mattern (23:55.575)

Yeah.

Michelle Warner (24:02.992)

And then let's very methodically look at five different strategies you can use to get yourself introduced to them. Pick one that makes sense to you and create that way to get introduced to them. Okay, we've accomplished that. Now here's how you build the relationship and kind of trying to make that feel the same as a traffic strategy that is again so clear cut because you're just in charge of it and other human being doesn't have to get involved. We're trying to make it that simple and that straightforward so that it just feels like you're

You're following a to-do list.

Shannon Mattern (24:33.804)

Yeah, and so what do you say to all those people? Like I used to be like this too, like very impatient and be like, well, that's not working. Cause I didn't get an instant immediate result and then just jump ship and go start something else. Like I, I didn't think I did about 10 of those interviews. I didn't think they were working. I stopped doing them. I went over onto shiny object land over who knows where.

Michelle Warner (24:54.408)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (25:02.658)

and did not realize for the longest time that the momentum that I was seeing was from that back in the day, because I was off all 5,000 places because I didn't have a Michelle telling me what to do. So what do you say to that person that's like, but how do I know if it's working?

Michelle Warner (25:12.498)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Warner (25:24.06)

Well, here's where we have maybe a little bit of a benefit of what the market looks like today because before I think we get a lot of false positives from kind of doing some traffic marketing and now that doesn't happen as much. And so the conversation I tend to have is, well, what's really happening over there? so what is, know, there's no easy button to hit anymore. And so what version of hard, I guess, are you looking for?

because you're staying busy all day long over here, but you're also not getting any results. And so it's not like chasing a shiny object. There's not a good reason to believe that it's going to go any better over here. And so if you continue doing this, we build in ways that they can see some momentum. Is the person responding? We can now kind of graph what that relationship and that timeline looks like so people know what to expect and they know that it's going to take a little bit longer, but they've also probably experienced

not having success with the other shiny objects as well. And I do think that a piece of that is important.

Shannon Mattern (26:26.934)

totally agree with that. And I think, you know, one of the things that I say is like any marketing strategy that you stick with consistently will eventually bear some fruit. But I think that what we're talking about now is like the lowest effort, highest return, fastest timeline for return, biggest opportunity.

of anything else out there right now for service providers.

Michelle Warner (26:59.858)

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. If you're looking at the ROI, you are 100 % correct. Like if you are consistently posting on Instagram or you are consistently posting on LinkedIn, something is going to happen. My argument is 98 % of the time, more will happen if you are using the strategies that are in alignment for what you're doing. So your ROI is just gonna be higher.

Shannon Mattern (27:23.618)

So good. Okay, so that other worm that I started to like pull out of the can was, but I'm a web designer and I should be marketing the way that I'll be helping my clients market their business.

Michelle Warner (27:35.112)

Yeah, just that's where I get out the visual. I'm a big proponent of visuals. And I say, listen, like they have this model, you have this model. You also have a portfolio that you can share and prove your work. mean, personally, I would question somebody who is not doing what's appropriate for their business, because they're trying to show off their business to my business. I want to see the portfolio. I want to see what you do for other clients. I don't really care what you're doing for yourself.

And if you get called on that and you're able to articulate the differences, then if somebody can't appreciate that, I'm not sure what to tell them because that's just basic business fundamentals. And I think if you can explain that, that's my answer is your portfolio is what speaks for you.

Shannon Mattern (28:19.936)

Yeah. And, and one of the strategies that we talk about, in the web designer Academy, like in lieu of a portfolio is just a paid discovery step. Like do a project, like do a discovery project and show them what you can do for them. And it's not about you. always say like marketing is not about you. You know, they're not buying you. They're not buying like your brand. They're not buying.

Michelle Warner (28:29.138)

Yeah.

Michelle Warner (28:34.172)

Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (28:48.682)

any of, they're not buying the way you market your business. They are wanting solutions to their problems. And I think that that's like a fundamental shift that like web designers, especially kind of go through in that first year or so of like, am I good enough? Do I know enough? Like all of that impostery stuff where it's like, this isn't, it's not about you. It's about what you can create for them.

So stop trying to sell yourself. Like stop trying to market yourself.

Michelle Warner (29:20.741)

percent.

Michelle Warner (29:24.71)

and start helping them understand where they're at. You know, I talked about those three steps of marketing that I break it down into. You have the awareness, how are you gonna meet them? And then that engagement step is that middle step to bridge them from meeting you to getting to the sale. And I think a lot of people in traffic for sure at that point, you're just pushing more information on them, right? You're marketing yourself. What I advocate in relationship marketing is sit down with folks and help them draw some sort of map or blueprint so they can understand their reality and where they're going.

And that's why I'm into the visuals for my customers. will get out that continuum and we'll plot. Hey, where, what is your business model and alignment? look, it's over on the relationship side. What are you doing right now? look, you're doing a bunch of traffic marketing. Okay. Now we can visually see what the issue is and what we need to close. So if you were a web designer, I would say maybe it's those stages. Okay. You're a beginner plus business. And so here's where you slot in with your website. Let's talk about what makes sense for a business at that stage.

and be able to have that conversation with them. That is gonna go so much further. You're defining their challenge for them, their problem. It's gonna go so much further than you showing off all the bells and whistles on your website, which may also set them up for a bad expectation based on where their business is.

Shannon Mattern (30:37.638)

So good. What are some of your favorite client transformation stories of people who have come to work with you and they're over here on the continuum doing whatever? Walk me through where they started with you and what you did together.

Michelle Warner (30:57.224)

Yeah, very, very often they're caught in a content trap. And the reason this happens a lot is I do work with some more advanced businesses. So a lot of them were around pre 2020 when this difference was a lot less of a big deal because the market wasn't as mature, there wasn't as much noise. So for a lot of my clients, they actually got away with traffic marketing for their service based businesses back in the day and they have been seeing it slowly.

not work or not work as well. So they're frustrated, they're stuck, they don't understand. And when I can sit down with them and explain, hey, you've always kind of been doing it wrong, but it didn't matter before. And now it's mattering more. And I see that light go off and they're like, that makes sense. And then we can get them into a relationship marketing system. And they start seeing results. Those are my favorite transformations.

for people who have been doing something and don't understand why they're getting diminishing returns. Those are really fulfilling, fulfilling for me because you just see the light bulbs go off and the other ones are for folks who have been really frustrated and feel like they should, right, the shoulds and my gosh, this doesn't feel natural, this doesn't feel good, I don't enjoy this, it's not my personality and then you can get them into a system that works for them.

And again, they start seeing the results because it's in alignment and those feel those are some of my my personal favorites.

Shannon Mattern (32:24.876)

dive into the shoulds more because I think that that is a big thing. know, your, your, your program, networking that pays, you said, like we talked about how it helps introverts create more leads. Like what are some of the. Like standard conventional things that people think they should be doing that make them feel.

Michelle Warner (32:26.407)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (32:53.55)

and make them want to do anything but marketing or rebrand, redesign, write a blog, put like whatever all of this stuff we go into and we're like, this, don't like this, but maybe if my brand is amazing, that'll get me more clients.

Michelle Warner (32:57.959)

Yeah.

Michelle Warner (33:10.554)

Yeah, yeah. Hands down, what I hear is social media. And they just don't want to be doing social media any longer, but feel like it's a requirement. And again, what I find there, the vast majority of the time, those are service providers who had really nice businesses, growing businesses based on referral or word of mouth. And then, but it wasn't quite big enough. And that's common, or they weren't in charge of what the leads looked like.

Shannon Mattern (33:15.534)

Ugh.

Michelle Warner (33:36.88)

And so now they're gonna start again, quote unquote marketing. They feel like they have to start marketing. So since nobody talks about relationship marketing, and this is one of the reasons I wanna talk about it so much, so people know this side of the continuum exists, they completely over-correct. And so they feel like they're letting their business down, letting their goals down. If they are not posting on LinkedIn, I literally had one client who was told to post 14 times a day with the advice to just watch her backyard and see what birds were there so she could talk about that.

And so they feel like they're failing their businesses and that breaks my heart because they hate the social media. It's not getting them anything, but they don't feel like they're chasing their goals if they're not posting on social media all day long. So when we can show them like, Hey, there are actually ways to engineer leads that act like referrals, but that you can be in charge of. That is a real eye opener. And that is, that's the difference maker of you don't, the choice is not between.

sitting around waiting for referrals to come in or posting on social media all day. The choices between sitting around waiting for referrals to come in all day or understand how a referral acts and how you can actually put a system in place that creates leads that act like referrals, which is a relationship marketing lead. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (34:49.472)

Okay, tell me more about that because that is fascinating how you just said that, like understanding how a referral acts and then putting a system in place to leverage that.

Michelle Warner (35:02.706)

So here's the way I think about it. Again, it's gonna go, we're gonna talk about behavior on both the relationship and the traffic side, because the behavior of a lead is opposite. And this is when we need to break out the system into awareness, engagement, sales, steps. And why that's important is that you have to try really hard at one of those steps. And I don't mean hustle there, just mean like, where are you gonna have the impact? And it's the opposite, because relationship marketing is in alignment with businesses who need the right amount of leads, and they're gonna convert it a high number.

So don't need a ton of leads, don't need hundreds of thousands of leads a year, you don't even need probably a hundred if you're a service-based business, but you need them to convert at a high rate. That's a referral. If you break a referral into awareness engagement sales, and I use an example because I tore out my driveway this summer and I needed to find a new concrete provider and I zero desire to figure that out. But if you think about that process, what happens? I called my neighbors because they had done their driveway five years prior, they told me the name of a concrete provider, I called them,

I already trusted them, they loved their driveway, everything had gone well. That concrete provider was gonna have to really, really screw up the bidding and sales process, AKA the engagement and sales process, for me to say no. So what happened there? What's the actual science behind what's happening in that situation? Huge impact at awareness, right? When I asked my neighbor, there was a lot of trust transferred, I was in. And then we create what I call a snowball running downhill momentum, where engagement and sales,

you basically have the sale, you are just trying to get them finalized. Traffic is the opposite. In a traffic funnel, you need tons of leads and it's gonna convert at like maybe 1 % if you're lucky, right? And so you can't have a ton of impact at awareness, because you don't have time. So you have to go to like lowest common denominator in awareness to just get as many bodies as possible. And this is where you see like PDF downloads or all those old school kind of traffic methodologies of just get bodies on your list.

But now instead of a snowball running downhill, you were trying to push a boulder up a mountain. And so you get them through engagement and then at sales, that's where you put the effort. So this is where you see all the high pressure sales, which is appropriate when it's a low dollar value, when it's a model that's aligned with traffic, that's appropriate. Like Old Navy pummeling me with coupons all day might be annoying, but it's appropriate for them.

Michelle Warner (37:24.796)

But when you're trying to sell a 5,000, 2,000, whatever it is web design package, it's very uncomfortable to have that much pressure. And so that's when we see people really, that's when we see customers very frustrated by a sales process and the service provider feeling really gross about their marketing process is when you're trying to put it through that traffic mountain and trying to have too much impact and pressure at sales, because that just feels bad. And so instead you want to be thinking about how do I

go have impact with folks when I meet them. If I'm not gonna get the referral from my neighbor, how can I have a really impactful, high-impact way of meeting people that is not generic? And one of the ways of doing that is borrowing an audience, because what happens when you borrow an audience, not only do we have time to chat here so people are gonna know me a lot more than if they ran into an ad and downloaded a PDF, but you are also probably going to say something that makes them trust me, right?

And so there's gonna be a little bit of a trust transfer too. I'm gonna get the benefit of the doubt. I don't need to earn the entire 100 % of trust. So there's a lot of things you can do when you're looking at how do I have impact at that awareness stage to kick it off so that they are acting like a referral and you get that snowball running downhill as opposed to have to push it up a mountain.

Shannon Mattern (38:41.902)

I was just like the transfer of trust piece is so powerful. So, so powerful. you know, like the relationship, like to back up, you know, when people are like, I have to go out and build relationships and meet new people and like get my elevator pitch ready for the networking event and all of the traditional ways that we're taught.

Michelle Warner (38:48.04)

huge. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (39:12.226)

to build relationships that don't feel good because they feel transactional. The way you talk about it turns it on its head completely where you're like, how can I just come over here and give and add value? And through that process by being generous or on the flip side, just being curious, you know.

and asking questions and freely sharing your knowledge, you're building so much trust with a person that can then transfer that trust to other people. So even if that person that you're talking to never becomes your client, when someone comes up and says, yeah, like I've just been, they're having coffee with someone else in their network and yet like, yeah, we got to redo our website in 2025. Like what we have isn't working out. That person's like,

I just met someone, let me connect you. And you didn't do anything but show up and give and be curious and open.

Michelle Warner (40:11.752)

Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Warner (40:19.62)

Exactly. And that's why we talk about like, let's identify these ideal connection avatars, because we also talk about you can only have a limited number of connections. I don't want you going to networking events. I want you proactively looking at who fits your ideal connection avatar and going out and building relationships. And this is the portion where this always gets a little meta because they see me doing it in real time. But the idea is then we build a relationship and maybe we stick around and maybe that's a relationship that sticks around for five, 10 years.

of my strongest are and we're just repeating and as they bring new folks in, I'm going and meeting their new folks and whatever the other side of that is, you know, it does go two ways but you're building stable relationships that you grow together over time and those just become multiplying effects of win-win-wins across the board and you're not trying to meet a new person every day and trying to force like, my gosh, how can, there's always that awkward moment at the end of a bad networking conversation when you're both like.

How can I help you? And you have no idea what to say because there's no connection. Whereas if you're clear on how you might be able to, why there is a sensical way to be connected, there's always some way to push the relationship forward and move towards something that's a win-win.

Shannon Mattern (41:31.758)

I love how, you know, I was just thinking about how earlier you said like, you're making this process that is very human to human and very authentic and very organic, but there's also a system and a structure and a checkbox behind it, which all of the people listening to this podcast love. It's like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Let me just check the box.

let me, but it's like you're finally checking the box on something that's actually going to have an impact and create a return for you at some point. You don't always get to control the timeline, but sometimes you do get to control the timeline if then you're, you know, making a request, like Michelle got connected to me through Josh Hall.

for this podcast, she didn't wait for me to follow up with her. She, as soon as that connection happened, she's in my inbox saying how we know each other and asking me if she can serve my audience and what her next steps are. She's moving the timeline forward. She's not passively sitting there waiting, hoping that like, Josh connected. I'm just gonna wait and see if.

she reaches out and then maybe possibly if, then, which is what we do when we feel like we're not allowed, like when we have thoughts about I'll be, she'll think I'm X, right?

Michelle Warner (43:13.318)

Yep, yep, yep. And that's the other thing, I mean, I keep harping on these ideal connection avatars, but they're also confidence builders. Because again, like if you understand why you're connecting with someone, which is shockingly uncommon, right? A lot of times you just meet a random person and you, let's get a virtual coffee. But if you're so clear on why you're meeting them, it is a lot less awkward to introduce yourself or to reach out or to just push that forward, like you say.

Shannon Mattern (43:35.16)

Yep.

Shannon Mattern (43:40.814)

Yeah?

Michelle Warner (43:41.286)

because in your mind you understand why you're connecting and where there's value. And that takes so much of the intimidation factor away from it.

Shannon Mattern (43:49.582)

So good. So I love to talk about mindset on this podcast. What are some of the key mindset shifts that you see your clients make or that you wish people would make in order to create a business that they're not going to want to burn down later?

Michelle Warner (44:16.232)

Well, I think there's two of them and we just alluded to them. The first one is that when I get pushback sometimes that, this is so systematized, you're turning it a little transactional. And I say, no, what we're actually doing is trying to center the human because I don't know about you, but I keep a checklist of birthdays of people I care about. Like I have systems in my life that actually respect the relationships that matter to me. And that's what we're trying to do here.

because we are trying to build relationships over the long term. So that would be one thing that I would say is that business relationships don't have to be transactional. And even if they live under some sort of system that doesn't take away the fact that you're going to be doing things with people for five, 10, you know, we talk about Becca Tracy, five, six years now, we've been doing really cool collaborations together. And the fact that she's in my reminders as an important member of my network doesn't take away the love that I have for Becca Tracy.

So that's one piece of it that those two things can coexist. The other piece of it I just started alluding to, when we get you in a system and there is a reason why things are happening and there's clarity, that is when I start to see like even introverts shine and funny enough, extroverts shine too. Because my introverts, you're given a job and you're given a reason and I'm an introvert with all of you. It is so much easier to reach out.

when you again, when you know why and you have a little system to hide behind. So that is important to me because it makes it doable for introverts. And I happen to think having a network is such an unfair advantage in business that I don't want them to feel like that's not a thing. For my extroverts, and this was a surprise to me because I'm not an extrovert, so I didn't know this was coming. They are so scattered and meeting everybody under the sun that when we get them into a system, like their energy is channeled in the right place. And so

That mindset shift, it's kind of through the system and kind of through working the system that I see it happen is just understanding that, again, systems can make this doable for you in a way that it might sound intimidating to try to have conversations with people and enter this human-to-human thing into your business. It can be intimidating, but if it's in a system, it either makes it doable if you're an introvert or it channels the energy that might feel like could go out of control if you're an extrovert.

Shannon Mattern (46:33.358)

I so, I so agree with that. And like, I'm, I think I'm an ambivert. It depends on when you catch me, if I'm feeling, but I would say I'm way on the more introverted side of the spectrum. I can turn on my extrovert when required, but that's not my default operating system. And I think as, as you were saying all of this, I'm like, you just debunked the biggest.

Michelle Warner (46:43.207)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (47:02.796)

Well, this whole conversation debunked the biggest myth or limiting belief or barrier that, that I hear for, you know, why, like I'm experiencing feast and famine in my business or whatever. It's like, I don't know anybody. Like, I don't, like, I don't have anybody to reach out to, to connect with and your ideal connection.

Avatar is so strategically designed to help you zero in on, you don't have to know them yet. The first step is getting to know them.

Michelle Warner (47:46.472)

There are doable strategies that don't have to be intimidating. Yeah, you can get to know them, but we're not going to tell you, good, just go cold, email them and good luck. We're going to come up with tricks similar to the blog post in the interviews. We will find good relationship building ways to meet.

Shannon Mattern (48:04.268)

And I just think about like, think about if you were sitting there and someone showed up in your inbox with something that was like a win, win, win for you, them and your client, you would say yes. That wouldn't get like deleted or archived immediately. That wouldn't get like ignored.

Michelle Warner (48:30.82)

Exactly. Exactly.

Shannon Mattern (48:31.99)

And so if you think about how you might react if that showed up for you.

That's how your ideal connections, they're gonna think of this as like, this is, what a gift. What a gift that this arrived.

Michelle Warner (48:51.176)

Exactly. Nailed it. You nailed it. When you put that again sequence over strategy, when you put that little bit of foundational work in before you go enter some sort of networking situation and you figure out why am I here? What might the asks be? What might we be working towards? All of a sudden that conversation goes from crazy awkward into really productive and beautiful in the start of a relationship.

Shannon Mattern (49:14.574)

could geek out with you about this for like two more hours. Obviously we're coming up on end of the time for this podcast. But I just have a couple more questions for you before we wrap up. The first one is like, what belief did you have to change about yourself to get to where you are today?

Michelle Warner (49:27.336)

Please.

Michelle Warner (49:40.764)

You know what, mine was getting my face out there because I shared that I had a little bit of an entrepreneurial journey. I was always able to hide behind a brand name and was really successful building those businesses. And so I didn't really think much about putting my own business out there. And then all of sudden, the freak out that it was my name and my face and not a brand to hide behind. That was a journey for me. And frankly, an unexpected one that I've come to realize is very normal.

Shannon Mattern (50:06.274)

That is...

Shannon Mattern (50:10.55)

Yeah, think like visibility, literally visibility for people can be like a really, like a barrier, like a, not a barrier, but just like an obstacle to navigate and overcome. And yeah, I appreciate that because I see that a lot where people are like, let me...

And it's a personal choice, right? How you want to present your brand and your company. But if you know you're hiding, I think it's an opportunity to dig into like what's underneath and why, because for anybody listening, like you can have such an impact if you're willing to deal with those things.

Michelle Warner (51:04.764)

Yep, yep. And I try to share that one, not to be arrogant, but I came into this space having already done the work for 10 years. Like I was confident, I knew what I was doing. I didn't have a lot of doubt. And so for that to slam me in the face, think, well, again, like some people who maybe do have a little bit of doubt or what, you know, I just try to share that just to normalize it. It's something we all work through.

Shannon Mattern (51:13.751)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (51:28.984)

So good. Where can everyone go to connect with you, learn about your podcast, learn about working with you, learn about networking that pays, just all of the ways that you can support them with creating referrals and connecting with their ICA and all of the things.

Michelle Warner (51:51.432)

Yeah, absolutely. So my website is one of the best places that is the michellewarner.com. Somebody is holding michellewarner.com hostage. So there's the the in the front of it. But from there, you can jump on my newsletter, there will be links to the podcast. There are also links to Networking That Pays, which is a networking evergreen course, you can jump in at any time. I also run boot camps about how to design a relationship funnel, and there would be information there. And of course, you can send me a message.

I am also on LinkedIn and Instagram. You're not gonna see me posting publicly much there, but I do hang out in the DMs, because I center relationships. So I spend a lot of time in the DMs there. So if you send me a message and say hello, it is very likely that I will see it and will love to hang out there as well.

Shannon Mattern (52:38.592)

Amazing. I'll link up all of that in the show notes and just thank you so much for reaching out and connecting with me and offering to talk about this on the podcast. I got a ton out of it. I know my listeners will too and I just really appreciate you being here.

Michelle Warner (52:56.818)

Well, I appreciate you being open to reconnecting as it were and as happened on today, this was really fun and I appreciate it.