927: Your Network is Your Net Worth with Steve Ramona

Robert Plank 0:00 Hi, I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast. We are here with Steve Ramona who's going to be telling us about in phone, he's going to be telling us about doing business with a servant's heart. He has an excellent podcast. And even though Steve has as a humble guy, he needs us to promote him and talk him up. So I'm going to talk about his podcast, which is serving in business podcast dot bus route.com. So that way, you can follow along with the doing business with a servant's hearts podcast as you're listening. So C, glad to be talking to you.

Unknown Speaker 0:32 Thank you, Robert. Appreciate you having me on.

Robert Plank 0:35 Yeah, likewise. And so you're all about this whole idea of doing business with a servant's heart. And we're going to be talking today about what 100 new connections a month could do to grow someone's business. So can you tell us in your own words, what you're all about? What's the elevator pitch and why we should pay attention?

Speaker 2 0:51 Yeah, well, the problem with people when they meet with people, personally, or in person, or virtually is, where's your information go after you meet with them, you might email them, hey, here's my phone number. Reach out to me anytime. Here's my email, here's my website. But two days go by a week go by two weeks go by and they want to reach out to you, and they can't find you. It happens probably 40% of time over the last three years, I've learned talking to people, but we don't pay attention to it. Because we just move on with business. Hey, man you meet, we have this meeting, we send our information out. If we can't find it, we just move on. That's money lost, that's money going down the black hole. What we do within phone is put your business and everybody cell phone, what's in their hand every day, you go to a restaurant, here you go, our cell phones are next to us. A restaurant, if you go to a table, I do it all the time and count how many tables, most of them have their phone in their hand either tucked in tap into whatever they're doing. Imagine they're tapping and sliding. And seeing your business every day. We use your logo, your headshot with your name, and make an app out of it. It's called a web app, which means it's downloaded from a browser. It's not used by an app store. And why is that important? Well, I'm AppStore. If you have a device that's older, it eventually will not will the app will not work. They version it out Apple and Android, Apple more than Android I hate to say but it does happen. And for example, I have an iPad Mini I bought five years ago love it. All my apps don't work on there anymore. I could do watch YouTube. And I think I could check my email. What paid 500 bucks for that device, it's no longer works. But if you have a phone, I could download the info and put it on an iPad and be able to have access to any business. So we have something very cool. The reason I set 100 contacts a month last month alone, I tune in at new people see my business, were able to refer me active or engage with me and buy an insulin from me. Over the last two and a half years, I've had 30,000 people click on my phone link or scan my QR code, which you see in my background. It's working.

Robert Plank 3:05 And I wanted to bring that out too, because you do something that I haven't seen before, which is you have I mean, we've all seen like the Zoom backgrounds and like the you know, the chroma key, the green screen, but then you have an actual QR code there, which I've never seen. So if I go and take my phone, and I scan your QR code on, on what we have on on the Zoom recording, it takes me to your your info and pages. That's pretty dang cool. You're kind of online business card right there in your zoom background. And so you and I talk all the time about like, who knows where your podcast will end up right? In a social media clip on YouTube or something but someone could literally be watching the YouTube of you right now. And instead of being like, is this link in the description or what's what is it they could literally pause the YouTube and then scan the QR code and get right to your right to your kind of your hub here with your photo when all your links and everything amazing.

Speaker 2 3:59 It's and that's the goal, we need to give people many options. You can still send your link your in phone link or text it but make sure it's on their phone and I do that all the time. And when we get done I'm going to show you how to put it on your phone. It's a couple clicks of a button. But why not have more touches we know if they get 711 touches now before somebody buys well how about if they did that went in one day and then the next day clicked get your info and they bought an infant which has happened but here's the other thing I did 1000 referrals last year Robert for businesses, whether my clients for in phone or other because you know what had the ability to have access to their business. If you want to refer people and you're a connector in phone is so such a valuable tool because now you have all your business partners on your in phone. When you click my referral network you'll see 45 businesses that I work with that I refer to at the very bottom there

Robert Plank 5:00 Yeah, so there's a Referral Network button. And we're kind of follow along as you're saying this. So, yeah, and there's like credit repair coaching or Asians notary services, pet insurance. So it's like basically your little little directory here. Exactly. And then it says, like, I clicked on one here, it's had stamper signings, and then there's their, their website, their LinkedIn, it's because like you've seen the winner. They called like a link tree, right? And they say all here's like, you have your one page with like, maybe five links on it. But what's cool about this is, it's like multiple levels, right? You say, Let me click on this one menu for one of my referrals, and then all of their whole menu, it's like all of their contact information as well.

Speaker 2 5:44 Yeah, and the secret sauce, that's part of our secret sauce. The homescreen is big, because if you download a link tree, it's going to have their logo with your name. And that still may work. But that fav icon, which is the picture, that's the app that you see that I showed you, why didn't show you, but you'll see. That's it, because now it's your face. They see Robert every day, Robert, oh, I know, Robert does. He's a badass guy. I gotta refer Robert, click, click, here's a QR code. Now they've referred you, but not just the name and a phone number and email, they were for everything about your business. Talk about the book we talked about earlier on your podcast, which is really cool. Take your podcast, turn it into a book, people can learn all that without meeting you. And then when they meet you go, I got one question. Okay, I'm ready to purchase. That's the discovery time down. In allows, people have time, time is limited. And people want to refer us when they love us as clients and customers. They want to refer us if they're frustrated, they can't. It's not good. Frustration is not a good emotion when people are trying to refer you.

Robert Plank 6:54 And so this is a good co line of thought we're on here because this whole idea of being a connector being a referral source, like a lot of people talk about that. And that's like a good thing to to be and do. But I think in practical terms, there's kind of a problem with the implementation, right? Because being doing referrals, and all that sounds great. But then there's that worry of, well, do I need time to run my business still? Or if someone says, If I spent all my time with networking, what will be left over? Or even like? I'm not sure I have the energy to always be like schmoozing and talking into there. So that person so what do you say to the naysayers and the negative nancies? Out there? Who say, well, referring is great, but I just don't have the time or the energy?

Speaker 2 7:39 Well, we have the answer. Because when I share my info, like I just did with you, Robert, you now have 45 of my business partners, I would have to refer you it will refer for you. I'll tell you go to my network. If you're looking for anything at all, go to my network first. You're looking for credit repair, you're gonna click on Bill, open him up, maybe reach out to them, ask them questions, how much time it would take me? Zero, I'm still doing my business. In phone, you go through my info and, and do the referral yourself. So much easier takes that time away. I'm a one hour referral, Robert, you. I'm gonna want to give details. I know not everybody's like that. And that's why I love it. Our clients can go, Well, let's think about this. Think about this vision. Every time I give out my phone, I give out 45 business cards. I'm not going to carry 45 business cards to the next chamber event and go, here's my photographer, here's my credit repair. Here's my CBD supplement. You don't do that. But within phone you can we say in info our phrases your network is your net worth. If you're one person, your business network, you can do okay, but you can have 45 like me or 145 sky's the limit because now you started getting the reciprocal, back and forth referrals, hey, I ran in this guy, you need to talk about info, hey, I ran this person they need an insurance agent I ran you know. So now you've get this and the universe changes when you give a referral out to somebody it comes back to you in some type of form in a positive way.

Robert Plank 9:14 And so it seems like the kind of the theme of our conversation here is that the old way of doing things that was inefficient results in a lot of things gets getting thrown out like we were saying you meet someone business car gets thrown out but you meet someone you get with them on a podcast that lasts forever and it's in this whole sea of the internet. So it's another question if someone finds it but if the right person at the right time finds it, then that is something and then now with your with your info on your base that that kind of create this kind of like directory around yourself where like the people that you meet are kind of part of your network. So someone starts using this in phone service, and they get the QR code and they're like building their network building the directory. What That's kind of the 60 day plan, like should someone go out and look at who they already know? Or how does someone go from nothing to like filling their directory up?

Speaker 2 10:10 Great question, Robert. Great question. First thing every time you meet somebody, whether virtually or in person. Hey, Robert, let me leave you with my info on this all my contact info. That's what I do with everybody probably had one out of 500 that say no, but everybody's met with me. And it's not about just buying an info, it's my resources. So that's the first thing everybody you meet, you give me your info like it's a business card. The second thing is I tell all the businesses I mentor, including my clients, the first thing you do after you meet with me is you need to go through your contact list. And I've had one of the businesses do that over the last six months. Every single one of them got a sale, because guess what happens? Their cousin goes, Robert, I didn't know you build podcasts for people. I didn't know you operate books. Yeah, Mike, I just talked to this guy here last week. Because we don't tell our family and friends what we do for some reason, either. It's a fear of block, or we just don't think about it. I talked to a gentleman and I forget his name a couple years ago, very young, he built a flipping house course. Just through his family and friends through his contact list on his phone. It's the only way he marketed he's, he makes a million dollars a month now.

Robert Plank 11:23 Fantastic. So you've built this, this cool service. And you have this podcast called doing business with a servant's heart, Ken, so can you tell us about like what you were doing to get the word out, because the referrals are doing their thing. And you're, you're a really good kind of marketer of what you have here. But as far as like the rest of your business, what are you doing to get this traffic and get the attention?

Speaker 2 11:49 Burst, having great guests, as you know, being a podcast, so when you have a great guest, and you get somebody on YouTube, getting 1000 views, that's first thing because they're gonna keep seeing doing business and servant heart, then I get a message that want to be on your show, or I've got this guy that wants to be on your show. I have so many guest opportunities just from refer, just after we did our show this morning, I had three people sign up to be a guest from somebody else referral, hey, you need to be on Steve's podcast. I also think doing business with a servant's heart resonates with a lot of people. And they want to be part of that. It's a very positive experience. And it's positive that they get that message out about their business, that they do that. Because I did a TV show this morning. And that's what we talked about. If a company focused on serving their staff, their employees and their customers, it's a 50% bump in income eventually. I can't give you a timeframe, I don't know. But the thing is, your culture increases. You're out there, the manager or the CEO side by side with their staff, helping them serving them, what can I do to better whatever that may be? It is a game changer for businesses, I should write a book and maybe I do, I am looking at writing a book called be a better customer. Because think about this, Robert, we have terrible customers out there. That person that sits in the shopping line. And you know, at six o'clock in the afternoon, it's packed and they're screaming, get another clerk This is crazy. Good. You see, all these people we don't know for people didn't show up for work, or there was an emergency. We don't know we're not walking in their shoes. We need to have empathy and patience. We teach customers to do that. And they deal with the company that way the business and vice versa. It's going to change the game. I'll use restaurants. That's where I started my research. I talked to over 100 managers in the last couple of years. And I always look for the good in a waitress. So the waitress does their work and I love them. I call the manager over 99 out of 100 times Robert, I get a face like like holy crap is another negative response. And I'll go Hey, Joe. Debbie, that waitress was so good. She was talking about my wife, my kids. I love her. She's one of the best wages I've ever had. They go like this. And like what's going on? He goes, I've never heard that. And one guy told me in 10 years as a manager at that restaurant, he's never heard a positive experience. Why? Because people are getting positive experiences tell them and he said it changed my day. That's serving. Let's as a customer, tell our businesses they're doing a good job. Whether it's a review or just I think it's even better to go right to the manager and tell him man, I just bought some clothes here. This salesperson was so great. They were so kind. We do more of that. I think we change the world.

Robert Plank 14:54 I love that message that it's so easy and natural to go to the negativity And then in a any kind of customer service situation, these people that are, you know, managers working the cash register etc. They spend their whole day just dealing with the the anger they complainers. And if you just went out of your way to vet that little bit of positivity and the compliment and just like sick happened, nice remark that would really stand out. And there's so little of that in the world. And so this whole idea of doing business with a servant's heart when I hear it, I think I have an idea of what it means it seems self explanatory, but I want to hear the message from the horse's mouth. What is doing business with a servant's heart mean?

Speaker 2 15:40 So firstly, I'm gonna put a challenge to your audience, I love doing call to actions. Audience, I want you when you want listen to this, I want you to reach out to one business manager, somebody in a business that you go to, that you've done business with, and just tell them how good they were. Now, I'm not saying lie, you know, if there wasn't good, you know, maybe don't say anything was not too bad. Of course, if it's bad, I've had a restaurant that didn't do I had to tell him, Hey, our food was cold, and they took care of but I don't yell at them. But challenge you to pick and do more. But at least one time this week, when you listen to this, reach out to somebody and tell them how good they are. That leads to doing business with a servant's heart. I tell people serve all the time, and I get this, I don't have a lot of money I'm serving doesn't mean you spend money, you don't need to go give to your church, give to your nonprofit, if you can, that's great, that's serving. But how about calling your best friend you haven't talked to in the year will probably wouldn't be your best friend to talk to you. But someone you haven't talked to in a year. And maybe they're going through a hard time and you just tell them I'm here for you. That's serving. Go to your employees and just thank them for being an employee. Go to your you know, to a soup kitchen, go to a homeless shelter, and volunteer, spend 30 minutes of your day a month and volunteer. I do that with my church, a volunteer twice a month, it's the best experience in the world, your universe will change. And I don't want you to surf, spectating something back you will. You don't know what that's gonna look like it could be money, it could be a great client, it could be when you're down. Robert calls me and says man, that was a great show. Now I'm up, give value give people a lot of increase. Give a pet to your dog that's serving your dog. I don't care what it is. But give people value, again from thinking Grow Rich, a law of increase, and your life will change and get better and better and better.

Robert Plank 17:42 Amazing. Just do the small actions adding up may say it costs nothing to be kind. And so you've given us this cool concept about the earphone. You've given us His really great life advice about being a better person and being courteous and everything that goes along with that. And as you know, the story and the struggle and the conflict is what's really interesting. So since we've been super positive, now it's time to get maybe a little negative, but not too much. But do you have any kind of anything to share with us about some area where you struggled? Or you've kind of gone through some kind of like emotional turmoil and come out the other end? Is that anything come to mind as far as just the difficulties in your online business journey?

Speaker 2 18:24 Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, I was part of a company that we're marketing company, was about a year in and I remember, I still remember for care driving to play softball. I get a call from my partner in my team, and he said our company just got closed down by the SEC. Plus 7k. Like, holy crap, what? Big team, I was doing presentations in front of 2030 4050 people loving it, serving them, and he's gone. What I learned is, that was an opportunity that went away. And I was not going to do other opportunities. But I said no other successful people, Warren Buffett comes to mind, I have had many bankruptcies, many problems in business like that, where they've just didn't work out. And I've had to close a business myself. It was hard because I was really helping people. But what you want to do with that obstacle is learn from your lessons. Go out serve. So when I lost my business, I went start working in a restaurant. I built that little eight table restaurant with my friend, that's the owner, but it was me, serving my clients, having fun with them while I'm cooking. I get doing servant mentality we grew to we were packed all the time. We did really well. So get past your obstacle. Take your time to grieve, but learn from your lesson and move on. The other thing I've learned about obstacles and struggles if you're a business or a person that's serving all the time to somebody when a mistake happens and an always does in business, you know, you do podcast maybe it's spelled wrong or the wrong page, whatever it may be, if you've taken care of your customer up to that point, the obstacle is not a mountain, it's not Yosemite, it's now just a quick molehill, oh, they have a little problem, people get past it, because you've taken care of them by serving them all these years or months, or whatever that timeframe is. That's the power of serving, you can overcome obstacles.

Robert Plank 20:23 And what comes to mind with some of this is just this idea of emotional intelligence and the your own self awareness. And you're making me think back to when I was a teenager and early 20s. If there was some small problem I would really freak out about and I would make a huge deal about it with myself and with someone else. And maybe it's maybe it's because I'm a dad now or something. But if there's a problem, I kind of I don't ignore the problem. But I kind of if there was a way to justify it as something silly that happened or something that in the grand perspective of things, is it really that bad. And it's never as bad as I used to overreact about just the tiniest of problems. And then there's also like that factor you're mentioning there of the goodwill you've built up into this point. And if like, you've been 99.1 percents, everything's great. And there's just like, the tiniest little mistake, that'll be fixed later than in the whole ratio of all the bad to the good, there's so much good, and just a little tiny mistake that's temporary, that it will be fixed. And, and it's like, it's hard to, to naturally come to that conclusion. But it helps to have the the cognitive, like logical brain to give us those kind of concert reminders just to overcome that, that tendency to just really go for the extreme negative, and everything's bad and really not as bad as your emotions are trying to tell you. It is

Speaker 2 21:49 very well said. Unfortunately, in our society, it's so much easier to go negative than positive. I don't know why. Because negativity leads to negativity back at you, which is hard to deal with. But when you get positive, you make somebody smile, you make them laugh, you make them feel good. You feel good. That's 100% guarantee. Nobody can argue with me on that. Maybe they could but it just really I've seen it, you know, you see it, we've all seen it. If you think about you have kids, you do something good for them. They're gonna smile, they're gonna be happy. Why not bring that up more and more and more that serve like the never served before.

Robert Plank 22:28 I love it inspiring message and you're again, you're digging up all these memories, but you're making me think about like when I was even younger, like you know, Junior High School in high school, and just being arounds just being around bad people and and you know, playing the woulda, shoulda, coulda game and thinking, if I could do it over again, I would have found a better group of friends. If there was someone who was just bringing me down in that way I wouldn't I would have done made more effort to not give that oxygen and then move on. And just to say, you know, the these people that just do nothing but tear others down, they don't really deserve that much attention. What does deserve attention is the the other crowd that is doing their best to bring everyone else up. And so that's why you're here and I'm here. And then the people who are watching and listening are tuning into the positivity when they could be tuning into some doom and gloom news or just looking into all these reasons to get upset. But instead focus on building your business being a refer using in phone tuning into the doing business with a servant's heart podcast, etc. And so I want to do a little bit of copyright infringement off of you here, Steve, which is when I was on your show, you asked me what's my favorite book? And I believe something along the lines of like, what's what's my one of my favorite like life lessons. So can you indulge me in this copyright infringement? And tell me what's your favorite book? And what's a really hopeful, powerful life lesson to pass along to our listeners?

Speaker 2 24:00 Well, I love that. We talked about thinking Grow Rich again, get that but I'm not going to focus on that because we've talked about coming to my podcast. And listen, Robert eloquently talked about thinking Grow Rich. One of the things I like that ties in the survey is Malcolm Gladwell, outliers. And talking about for example, in Italy, for some reason, there's this little town in Italy, these people live 100 100 405 They're outliers compared to the whole world, that they're just living us. antarians. And when you serve, unfortunately, in this world, when you're a serving person, you're an outlier. You're going to stand out more, you're going to be unique. I mean, like I said, the story about the manager of restaurants, how many times are blown away? How was complimenting their staff, when I think it should be the other way around, but right now, that's an outlier and it's a great book talking about the power of being an outlier and being unique. What I'd love to leave your audience and I tell everybody I meet that wants my help is is Get, get better 1% Every day, read a book, get on a podcast, talk to Robert, talk to a mentor, whatever that is get better just 1% That's a very small percentage. You do that throughout 2023. We're now in March. So I'm going to do a quick numbers, that's probably like, over 200% increase in you. And your business 1% Every day, I try to do that every day with my study. And with connecting with good people and increasing my environment, I suggest to do the same thing. And I'll leave you with one more thing about serving. The power of serving is looking at your staff. Looking at your environment you said earlier to caught my ear with that is your maybe I should get rid of some my friends and maybe I should have as well. And I have a look at your environment. Are they serving others as you are? If they are, keep them tight, keep them close. Because your your life and your business will be much better.

Robert Plank 25:59 Powerful. Control that circle and 1% compound interest, improve your knowledge every day. So much of the conversation we've had has been about these ideas we're passing along and digested and learned doing business with a servant's heart, you can locate that at serving in business podcast.buzzsprout.com. And then if someone wants to use this in phone business tool pad, which they should, how do they claim it? How do they begin using in phone.

Speaker 2 26:29 So what they do is they'll scan the QR code like you just did. Or they can go to n phone.co/sr. One, I n p h o n e.co/sr One, if it resonates with you, I have a button on my Infosys get your in phone and you can make the purchase. And you get started with me and I'll work with you and serve you or reach out to me and I'll jump on a demo and spend 20 minutes or so with you. And I'll demo the power of in phone and serve you as well.

Robert Plank 27:00 Fantastic that is in phone.co/sr one. Or as Steve said, a lot of people don't know this, especially with iPhones that it's kind of hidden, but you can click hold or hold down the camera button. And then you just hold it up to the QR code. And then there you go, and it scans it. And then you are the newest in phone user. So you can build that directory or referrals and then give without the expectation of receiving in return. But also knowing that in general with the spooky laws of the universe, or whatever you want to call it by putting out there, it will return to you in some way. Just don't expect it and don't be giving with the expectation of getting immediately be a giver be that referral source, put the good and the positivity in the world. And you can begin doing that by checking out Steve Ramona on social media networks that doing business with a servant's heart podcast and in phone.co/s r1. So go ahead and do it right now and we will see you there. And Steve, thanks so much for being on and podcast swapping with me and sharing some really cool stories. I appreciate you.

Unknown Speaker 28:06 God bless you, Robert. Thank you. This is fun.