Lately I’ve been getting some great clients via referral. In the past few months, 5 new clients (qualified with budgets!) came my way via 5 different connections.

Sounds awesome, right? While this is awesome, it’s also terrifying. And Ilise’s rant about word of mouth hit the nail directly on the head.

Every time someone gets referred to me, I have a weird feeling. A voice that yells, “Don’t ever get used to this, Deidre!”

You could easily get lulled into a false sense of security.

You could easily get so busy that you “don’t have time” to send your newsletter, reach out to prospects, update your website, do your marketing.

But even if qualified referrals are coming my way, I can’t forget these facts:

1. Sometimes, many months go by with zero referrals.
2. If the clients who get referred to me are qualified, it’s because of the caliber of the people who are referring them. Most of the referrers are people with whom I’ve developed personal relationships with for years—clients and colleagues I’ve worked with before, people I met years ago at conferences or via my own outreach and kept in touch with.

Let’s say you have a wonderful garden that feeds your family. But your neighbors have abundant gardens too and they start sharing with you. Boxes of veggies show up. You get lax with your own garden. You don’t water it as much. You leave your garden tools outside and they get rusty. The following year, you decide not to plant your garden at all. Then suddenly, everyone you know moves away and you have no vegetables!

I always want my garden to be producing crops. I want to be self-sufficient. I need to have some control over my pipeline.

Keep caring for the garden. (Watch Ilise’s video to find out how.) You can always share the extra veggies.

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Hi, I’m Deidre. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a web copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning as I go (with Marketing Mentor as my guide). To keep in touch, sign up for my un-newsletter here. 

*Vegetable garden photo, courtesy, Shutterstock.