Referral Success Secret #8: Have a Supportive Partner

“If you really want to be in business and your partner is holding you back, you have to look at your priorities.”    Duncan Bannatyne

Last summer I was talking to a client who was telling me that ever since he left his corporate job and went out on his own, his wife didn’t think he had a real job anymore. It had been three years! She would call him three times a day asking him to run errands. She did not respect the fact he needed to work even harder now – it’s just his days were not structured by a boss or a company schedule.

Know someone like this? I can think instantly of two other people that I’ve talked to in the past two weeks who have had identical experiences. One changed jobs because he got sick of the criticism; one got divorced and he’s been having his best year ever.

It is not unusual for people in relationships to struggle with a self-employed partner. If you want great referral business, you have to have great relationships with your clients and prospects. That takes time and effort that typically goes beyond your 40-hour work week – at least for a few years. The same goes for building outstanding customer loyalty: business as usual does not get you there!

I don’t know anyone with a great referral business who hasn’t had to consistently go above and beyond to get there.

I have friends who are a married couple. She has been a referral coaching client of mine; he became a good friend of mine – so I learned to keep my mouth shut when each of them vented to me. She’s a financial advisor and he works for the state. For the first couple of years that I knew them, he was always worrying about her income.

There were conflicts about not spending equal time with the kids because she needed to be out networking, building relationships, and potential business. He did not understand this. He had always worked for the local government. She threatened him with divorce and I suspect things did not really calm down until she landed a huge client that put her in the top ½% of her international company for new assets brought in that year.

By and large, people don’t change.

Quite recently I was unceremoniously dumped by the woman I was dating. She felt she was playing second fiddle to my business. She was right. I was working on adjusting my priorities. Evidently I was not doing it fast enough. In my mind I could not flick a switch after having devoted nearly six years to building something I loved doing. And the truth is I was never going to be the Monday-Friday 9-5er that she was looking for (and maybe she didn’t realize all that she wanted/didn’t want until she met me!). I think it took her a while to realize that I was not going to change - as I suspect she had hoped.

The real point here is that it is hard to understand what a self-employed person goes through without having had any life experience of it. I had no idea it was difficult until I tried it! Clearly some partners are accepting of it. For others it is too far out of their comfort zone and always will be.

Support Matters Big Time!

I know this isn’t your typical referral-related topic and I am not a marital relationship specialist. That said, I believe this topic deserves a little air time. I have had my share of clients over the years where they made no progress business-wise because their personal lives kept getting in the way. I truly hope that’s not you.

Duncan Bannatyne is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. In his autobiography, Anyone Can Do It, he tells the story of a woman who had heard him speak to some business leaders and who had emailed him for some advice. “She wanted to know if I’d had support from my family because her partner wasn’t (being) understanding of what she wanted to do. I just wrote back to her and said, ‘Dump him!’ I was only half joking: if you really want to be in business and your partner is holding you back, you have to look at your priorities. It’s tough getting a business off the ground, and everybody needs support. Gail (my wife) gave me that, and in doing so she made the hard times that little bit easier.”