In pretty much all aspects of business, revenue always comes out of relationships, be it with clients, business partners, or even with people who can simply hook you up with some kind of opportunity somewhere. Creating revenue is therefore a matter of building business relationships which you can tap into when the right moment comes. Patty Farmer, an award-winning marketing and media strategist, international speaker, podcast host, magazine publisher, event producer, and best-selling author, joins Juliet Clark in this episode about relationships and revenue. For Patty, building revenue-creating relationships is all about making connections with the right people and looking for ways to serve them. Patty assures us that by leading with contribution, compensation will always follow.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Building Business Relationships That Create Revenue With Patty Farmer

I’m glad to have you here. I have another extraordinary guest, but before we get going, I want to remind you to go over and take our Promote Profit Publish quiz at www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com. Go over and follow us on YouTube at Super Brand Publishing. Write us a review. It would be appreciated. Our guest is Patty Farmer. I met her on LinkedIn, but I quickly realized that I should have met her a long time ago. We have a lot of mutual friends. She is an award-winning marketing and media strategist, international speaker, podcast host, magazine publisher, event producer and bestselling author specializing in marketing and media strategies.

She works with small business owners, entrepreneurs and speakers to attract and convert their ideal clients so they can make a bigger impact in the world and even bigger deposits in their bank account. That’s what we’re going to talk about, revenue and relationships. She’s created a network of 100,000-plus connections while teaching thousands of entrepreneurs to connect, collaborate and convert in less time and make more money while designing the lifestyle they want to live. She believes we all have a message and her mission is to help them master the market and monetize that message in a way that creates transformation for both them and their clients.

Patty has been seen on the cover of magazines such as Accomplish, Unleash Your Bold, Be the Boss, Women Who Mean Business and EXPERTpreneur. She was awarded the Global Business Strategist of the Year by Global Powerhouse Group in London, England and named number three in the Top Ten Media Speakers You Need to Know. She was awarded the International Speaker of the Year by the Public Speakers Association. Welcome, Patty.

It’s great to be here, Juliet.

I’m excited to talk about revenue and relationship because most people think a click is a relationship and they would be wrong.

They would be wrong because it’s hard to quantify a like or a share or comment. No matter what else I say, this is what’s important for people to remember. The reality is the only difference between a contact and a contract is the R. The R stands for Relationships. Every person you meet is a contact. If you want it to convert and become a contract, it’s all about the relationship. It’s all about the R.

Can you expound on that a little bit? I know it sounds simple and straightforward, but there’s a lot to building business relationships.

There is, and one of the things that’s the most important is it’s not about you. I know and we all think it is about us but the reality is that it’s not. It’s all about being of service. I always want to say you have this network of people, whether you call it your tribe, network, list, whatever you want to call it. The bottom line is you have that. If you build it on relationships and you build it with service, it could become your retirement account. Think of it as an ATM machine because it is. You have to make sure to ask yourself though, “Are you making more deposits or are you withdrawing?” You need to know that when you’re collaborating with someone or when you meet somebody, the reality is if you want it to be a relationship that’s going to create revenue, you have to go first. It’s like, “I’ll go first. Let me serve you first.” Set the stage. Serve not sell. That’s how it becomes. In essence, I would say it means lead with contribution and compensation will follow.

We were talking about that we are both in the same field. We both get along well and there’s that room for everybody versus all the scarcity we see in the marketplace. I complained about this on the Marketing Monday show that someone will refer someone to me and then they’ll come back and they’ll say, “You didn’t refer anyone to me.” That is such a scarcity relationship because I always feel like if I make connections for people that karma or the universe or whatever will bring that back. It’s the same thing with what you’re saying, “With the service, we’ll bring in.” It may not be from that person you gave it to, but it will come from somewhere.

Creating Revenue Through Relationships: The most important thing to remember about building relationships is that it’s not about you; it’s all about being of service.

It’s thinking about for people who understand timeshares or they’ve been around for a long time. When you buy a place and it’s a timeshare, if you don’t want to go to your own place, it goes into a pool. Somebody else decides they want to go there, but it’s not like, “I’m going to give you my place and you’re going to give me your place.” It’s not like that. You put it in the pool and then you have to know that because you made a deposit into that pool, you will get to make a withdrawal too. It doesn’t necessarily mean that deposit withdrawal is going to come from the same person. You need to think about it and say, “I am going to make a lot of deposits into the pool and know that when I need it and I need to make a withdrawal, I’m able to make a withdrawal from the right person who’s going to be able to help me.”

When you think about it, you don’t want to be connected to anybody. You want to be connected to the right somebody. In reality, when you think about it, like what you were talking about with that abundant mindset is that to me, I want to be connected. The strategy is to be connected to people who serve the same market as me, but in a different way. You and I both know marketing in itself is the biggest umbrella but nobody does it exactly the same way. Something that people need to remember is you’re not reinventing ice cream, you’re making your own flavor.

Tell us a little bit about what you do in marketing strategy. I know, and you and I talked about this a bit, digital marketing is big. People have these big funnels and it’s click and drip. They think that they’re building a relationship. They’re thinking they’re nurturing people. What’s wrong with that picture?

There’s nothing wrong with automation. Automation is what gives you more time back. When you can automate something, that’s time you’re not doing that. What kills it is if you think that that’s enough because what that’s doing is giving you time back now so you can be more social and be more engaged because you didn’t have to do that. If you’re going to be posting or sharing something that has a link to it, a blog post or something like that, it can be automated and it should be automated so that you can automate it at the time that your ideal market needs to see it.

If your ideal market is there at 9:30, just because it’s convenient for you to be there at 11:00, they didn’t even see it. That’s what’s great about automating so that you can show up and serve. Automation is good. Here’s the thing people need to realize. There are a couple of ways to do content. You create content, write a blog, publish a magazine, do a podcast or whatever the thing is. That’s content we create but then there’s content we can curate. It’s much easier. I would have to say that 70% of what I post is what I curate. The difference is that curating is when somebody else created the content and you’re giving your opinion on it. For example, you’ll see lots of posts where people say, “Top Ten Marketing Strategies or Top Ten Ways To Do this or that.” You can take that post of what you didn’t even write.

Google can be your best friend here. Go in and say, “Top Ten,” whatever your industry is. When you get that, you have a couple of ways you can break it down. First of all, if it’s a top ten, each one of those ten could be something you can put on Twitter. You don’t need to do the whole article. You break it down and you have ten different things to post. The second thing you can do is you can post it, and this is how I use it effectively. I’ll read it and I’ll post it. I’ll make sure that I tag the person who created it and then I will say something like, “I love number three. I need to add six to my calendar. I’m not quite sure I agree with number nine.” I may not say all of them in the same thing, but here’s what happens. My people want to know why I don’t agree with number nine, “You said number six, maybe I should check out number six.”

If I would have posted that with the link, maybe they would have clicked on it or maybe not, but now that I put my narrative to it, my people want to know why and they’re going to click on it. You can curate content all day. If you’re thinking, “I don’t know what to post,” go to your industry and do that. There’s a lot of different ways and because you’re posting somebody else’s information, they’re happy about that as well. By doing that, you’re not having to spend all this time creating content, which leaves you more time to then go and build relationships and to be able to expand on relationships that you built and to be more social.

That is a great plan. I do it a little bit differently. If you’re connected to me on Facebook, which I know a lot of you are, I do funny memes all day. I’m amused by the universe. I will have people come up to me at places and say, “I follow you. You’re funny,” and they find out what I do. That’s not a strategy.

It’s a good strategy and I’ll share why it’s a great strategy. That’s a great strategy, and we’re specifically talking about Facebook, because the way that Facebook algorithm works is we know that Facebook rewards you when you have more engagement. On National Puppy Day, I posted something with my puppies and invited people to share their puppies. There’s a lot of engagement. Going back to what I said about creating and curating, whenever you’re going to post something you created and you care because it’s yours, what you want to do is for two days before that, you do want to put those cute little memes and things that you get lots of engagement. Facebook then goes, “Look at all this engagement she’s getting.”

When you post the thing that you created, it’s going to get in front of more people. After you post that, then you can let it go because Facebook does everything by an average. This is the way that you work the system since we don’t all know how the algorithm works because they’re not telling us, but knowing when should you post a video? When should you post a meme? When should you post these things? When you’re creating and curating your content, if you plan that out, which is where the automation part comes in, you know, “This is coming up on Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday I need to do this.” It helps you to know to get the best bang for your buck.

Creating Revenue Through Relationships: You don’t want to be connected to just anybody. You want to be connected to the right somebody.

If you’re not somebody who has a bad sense of humor like I do, it’s really dark, try going over and putting broccoli or Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts seems to be a better one. Brussels sprouts are not. Watch people get on there and give you the opinion. If you have something cool to post, do something like that 1 or 2 days before. Everybody will post. Everybody has an opinion about Brussels sprouts. As what Patty said, it will beef up what and who Facebook shows that too.

The other thing that’s funny is, as a general rule, you’re trying to stop the scroll. That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s why broccoli or something would do that. What’s interesting is if you post something and you say, “Which things do you like better and why?” what will happen? People will look at it and they’re like, “I’m busy. I don’t have time to say why. I’ll come back to it.” Half of them won’t forget. If you say, “Which do you like better?” or, “Fill in the blank,” or “A or B?” you don’t say the word why. As humans, we can’t help but give our opinion. We’ll write A or B and then we’ll tell you why. You didn’t even ask us to tell you why because we like to give our opinion. If you ask us, then we’re like, “That’s going to take time. I don’t have time right now.” You don’t need to ask them, just know they will. It doesn’t matter because as soon as they say one word, Facebook stops.

One of the things that I think is funny is when people will like your post and they’ll even share it, but then they don’t comment and you’re like, “That’s nice of you. I appreciate that.” It would have been nice if they could at least write the word sharing so that Facebook will love me because I had an engagement on that post. The same thing for when you’re on Twitter and people will do the little heart to say they like something. The only person who got to see that you liked it is me. Whereas if you would have retweeted it, all 33,000 people will see it. It’s funny the way people do things and they don’t understand the strategy, which is why my mission in life is to help people understand that everything you do, you should have a strategy of why you’re doing it.

What else do you do inside? You have Money Mindset Masterminds as well. Tell us about those.

I have a Marketing, Media & Money Magazine, the podcast and my events. I also have a millionaire mastermind for businesses who want to go from 6 to 7 figures. That’s specific for that. My Marketing, Media & Money Mastermind is more for people who are right about between $60,000 and $80,000 and they want to get to $150,000, $200,000. That’s more for that. I have both of them. When you’re in a mastermind, you want to be surrounded by the peers who are like you. That is important. One of the things that I love to do though in my service is helping people to leverage media. You have this show, what would you say? How many people are on a show? They posted on Facebook and they’re like, “I’m excited that I was on XYZ show.” They post a graphic.

They don’t understand that they should be promoting it before, during, after and months later. Honestly, they don’t know how to get the most bang from it and they don’t know how to leverage. My three favorite words in business are strategy, leverage and monetize. Those are the things that I help my clients to do. What is the strategy that we’re going to use so that we can leverage every single thing you do so it monetizes your business? It starts and works backward. For me, it’s always about asking yourself, “How am I going to monetize this?” That’s the strategy that you need to have. Not every single thing you do is going to monetize in dollars from that thing.

It’s like what we were talking about, that pool. Sometimes it’s going to monetize through opportunities and the best OPP is being in front of other people’s people, which is why you should have a strategy. Sometimes people will go on podcasts and I’ll be like, “This is your business and you’re on that podcast. Why were you on that podcast? Are those your people? What’s the strategy of why you are there?” That’s where the revenue is in the relationships is knowing who serves the same market as you and what is a way that you can serve them. Somebody came and said to me, “Patty, would you be willing to come to do training for free,” in their Facebook group of which they had 80,000 people and they did websites.

I’m in marketing. A website person would be somebody that has the same type of market for me. While they weren’t going to pay me, is there a benefit and opportunity for me to be in front of 80,000 people? Sometimes it’s about the opportunity and it will come back in money in revenue but it’s important to be able to know. Sometimes it’s not all about being out there and doing that. It’s thinking about what are those opportunities? On the flip side of that, you can’t spend all your time on that and not make money too. I always like to say, “There’s now money now and there’s more money later,” and you need to be working on both of those.

Being in front of other people’s audiences, it may not be a now money thing. They may be in that person’s audience because they’re coaching with them, but you may be the answer to the next step they’re looking for when they get to the end of that. The visibility is definitely important in that sense and making sure that people are sequenced right. I don’t know about you and marketing, but I see this a lot where people are off with the speaking and the book coach and they don’t even have a business yet. They don’t have a sustainable business. That’s one of the downfalls of the coaching industry is that whole bootstrap your way to bankruptcy model that you have. You have to have a business before you go out and get those other things, a product and a business.

Part of that too, is making sure that comes again to people who are staying in their lane. Is this person your client? For me, if they’re not my client, I know they’re not ready for me. For example, I do marketing and media and I’m going to help them with all these things but there have been times where people have come to me and they said, “Patty, I need to do this. I took out a loan or I pulled from my 401(k),” or whatever the case may be. “I have this much money and I want to hire you.” I’m like, “First of all, I don’t want you to do that.” That sounds great, but I don’t want to be somebody who’s a magic bullet. The bottom line is it’s not just hiring me. Are you going to be able to implement the strategies that I’m going to give you on how you’re going to do that funnel and we’re going to make you the money?

Creating Revenue Through Relationships: Always ask yourself what strategy you are going to use so that you can leverage every single thing you do so it monetizes your business.

If you take all your money, you think and pay me, that’s not enough. The flip side of that is I’ve had people who wanted to hire someone and then they don’t even have a virtual assistant. They don’t have anybody who can do some of the tech stuff. The reality is, do you have the foundational pieces? You can’t wear every hat in your business. I will say that one of the ways that you can do that, I helped two of my clients in the one session create a program. In that one hour, we created a program for them. That’s great but if they would have said to me, “Patty, can you go into the backend of my website and install that or set this up in my CRM?” I’d have been like, “No.” I have a person who does that for me. That’s not what you’re hiring me for. You have to have those people in place. It is not smart for me to spend time in my CRM or doing that.

I always like to say that you become the CEO of your company when you realize that you need to work in your brilliance and you need to hire other people to work in their brilliance. Stop licking all the envelopes yourself. It also means that you control your calendar and your time. I have to tell you when people say, “Patty, I know we had an appointment, but then somebody came into my office.” Believe me, you’re only going to do that once. That’s what we’re going to happen. If they came into the office looking for you, they would’ve still wanted to talk to you an hour later after our appointment. It’s a mindset shift that has to happen. It’s like what you said, “Are you in the right mindset and you’re ready to build a business?” It’s building those relationships that are going to help you with revenue.

Here’s the other thing I see a lot, and I don’t know about you, but your calendar is your moneymaker. Protect it. If you have somebody like you were talking about, I had someone who canceled at the last minute three times and she came back and rescheduled again. I had to say, “This is my moneymaker and the answer is no.” When you’re working inside of that genius, also be protective of that calendar because that calendar is your revenue generator. That’s your way to build relationships with people and talk to them.

I like to say all the time that as a CEO, I am responsible for managing my time, money, resources and energy. I know and everybody has a time that you are the most creative. For me, that’s morning. For some people, it’s in the afternoon. Whatever that is, you should only be doing revenue-generating activities at that time. For me, that is in the morning. I get up at 5:00 in the morning and by 6:00, I’m ready. I’m working for my number one client, which is me and then I start my day. In the afternoon at 3:00, I’m not quite as feisty as I was at 6:00 in the morning. That’s when I do admin tasks that I have to do. I can do those with my puppy in my lap. I don’t have to be as creative then.

I like to say for me, if I’ve already met you and I’m doing relationship building calls, I can do those in the afternoon but revenue-generating things happen in my morning. You have to know what those things are for you. I’ve had clients when they first come to me and they’ll be like, “I worked hard.” I always want to say, “Have you ever said to your spouse, ‘This was such a crazy week. I worked hard and many hours and I’m tired?’” You look at how much money you made and you’re like, “I didn’t bring in any money.” That’s because there’s activity and then there’s productivity and they’re not the same thing. You need to make sure that you’re not spending all your time doing activities that are not generating revenue.

I have with my clients a worksheet that I show them and I have to have a minimum number of revenue-generating calls on there. Whether it’s a power partner or someone that I’m cultivating for business because your power partners, it’s important to have update meetings with them as well because they’re the people who are sending you business.

I love that you said that because that’s my absolute favorite thing. That’s how you create revenue with relationships. The thing is, say you have this project that you want-to-do list program, this project that you would like to do and you know that it wouldn’t serve. You have to ask yourself, “What makes this a no brainer? What is the thing?” You need to say, “What would get it to the marketplace faster? How could I execute it faster?” I’ll give you an example. For me, my number one thing that is not much my thing that I do well is write copy. I can modify copy. I can make it be marketable. I know how to make it the sales. I know how to use the right words, but I have white paper paralysis and I could get stuck on looking at that. I know that for me to get something to the marketplace if I want to do something, and I also had told you that whole tech stuff in the backend, I know how to do it all. It’s just not my favorite thing.

Whenever I’m going to do a project, the first thing I like to do is reach out to some people that I know that write copy and some people I know that do tech stuff and say, “How would you like to collaborate with me on this project?” If I’m bringing my genius to the table, they are also bringing their genius to the table. We’re going to get this thing done a whole lot faster. When you’re doing it, you also want to make sure you all serve the right market together so that this way when you’re in front of other people’s people, it doesn’t matter that you may be splitting some of the profit, but you’re also splitting the work.

You’re splitting the upfront cost, you’re splitting the time and you’re getting to three times as many people and as long as those people are your people too, then that’s even better. You don’t have to do everything yourself. That expression, “It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a tribe to build a business.” You don’t have to do it by yourself. You should be thinking about, what are the relationships that I have started to build or already have with people? What could we do together and who could we introduce to each other? Who can you connect and be able to help them build their business? I guarantee you have at least a handful of those people in your network already.

I’m going to point out something to you because I heard Patty say it and I’ve told you before, you’re a professional. I’m a professional. I can write other people’s copy all day long, but I can’t write my own. Don’t you think we all have that blind spot when it comes to our own businesses?

Creating Revenue Through Relationships: You become the CEO of your company when you realize you need to work in your brilliance and hire other people to work on their brilliance.

When I have clients or people will say, “Patty, what do you think of this?” In five seconds, I say, “Let’s change this to this and we need to add this word here and we need to do this.” I look at my stuff and we get in our own way in that aspect. That’s why it’s good to be in a mastermind and have a coach. Coaches have coaches and to be able to have someone who gets you so that you can run it by them. That is very important. You don’t have to do everything by yourself.

Patty, where can we find you? I think you have a free gift for us too.

The best way for them to find me is on my website, which is PattyFarmer.com. Juliet, we all know a lot of people, but what worked 10, 5, 2 years ago, is it working now? I have a magazine that I publish and we are giving it away for free subscription for life. I bet every person in that magazine and they are all writing about something that’s what is working. This is the best resource that I can give. You have to go to MarketingMediaMoney.com and you can get a free lifetime subscription.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Now you know how important relationships are if you want to generate revenue.

Thank you so much for having me, Juliet. It was a pleasure. I love it when I get to talk to other experts that honestly get it and you totally get it.

Important Links

• www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com
• Super Brand Publishing – YouTube
• Patty Farmer
• Marketing, Media & Money Magazine
• Podcast – Marketing, Media & Money
• PattyFarmer.com
• MarketingMediaMoney.com

About Patty Farmer

Patty Farmer is an award-winning Marketing & Media Strategist, International Speaker, Podcast Host, Magazine Publisher, Event Producer and Best-Selling Author specializing in Marketing & Media Strategies and works with small business owners, entrepreneurs and speakers to attract and convert their ideal clients so they can make a bigger impact in the world, and even bigger deposits in their bank account. She has created a network of 100,000 + connections while teaching thousands of entrepreneurs to connect, collaborate and convert in less time and make more money while designing the lifestyle they want to live. Patty believes we all have a message and her mission is to help them master, market and monetize that message in a way that creates transformation for both them and their clients. Patty has been seen on the covers of magazines such as Accomplish, Unleash Your Bold, Be the Boss, Women Who Mean Business and EXPERTpreneur. She was recently awarded the “Global Business Strategist of the Year” by the Global Powerhouse Group in London, England, named #3 in the “Top Ten Media Speakers You Need to Know” and awarded the “International Speaker of the Year” by the Public Speakers Association”.
Create

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

• superbrandpublishing.com
• Promote, Profit, Publish on YouTube
• Follow Juliet on LinkedIn
• Take the Quiz!