Mike Garrison
Life is too Short to Wait for Referrals! Relationships are everything to me, both personally and professionally. I have spent the entirety of my career in helping salespeople and sales organizations develop and implement strategic referral marketing plans and then coaching the producers to success. As I have learned more about how the customer buying experience has changes as a result of technology I have become convinced that sales coaching with a heavy dose of referral expertise is sorely needed. Are you ready For Referrals you can predict? Learn more here .
Articles by Mike Garrison
- Business Growth
You Won the Most Trusted Advisor Seat. Don’t Give It Away.
So when you introduce an outside consultant to your best business owner client, be clear about what you’re doing.
- Business Growth
Stop Guessing Where Your Next Clients Will Come From. Build a Referral System.
Take your eye off the ball and get lazy or distracted and just like with most aspects of any business you will suffer accordingly.
- Business Growth
Stop Chasing Impressions. Start Having Conversations.
I watch all the hijinks here on the LI and am continually amused by the never ending drum beat of 'reach'.
- PowerAdvice
Own Your Marketing or Keep Renting Your Growth
Someone I know just suffered some consequences because of this pursuit of scaling through marketing tech.
- Artificial Intelligence
BCG Says AI Will Transform Wealth Management. They Buried the Most Important Finding.
So this is not me crapping on AI. I use it every day. This is me pointing out that the paper way oversells the advantage and stays quiet about the cost.
- Business Growth
Stop Competing for Deals Already Won
Small firm can’t win that war, but it can do something a giant can’t: arrive already trusted, through a warm introduction
- Artificial Intelligence
AI Agents Are Becoming Your Prospect’s New Gatekeeper
Here is what I want you to think about: referrals and personal branding were never two different things.
- Business Growth
Successful Owners Don’t Exit From Something—They Exit To Something
The Discipline Behind the Firm You Would Actually Build Today. This week is about constraints. The ones that your life gives you.
- Opinion
Client Acquisition Is Your Business—Everything Else Is Just Branding
Before you open another tab, scroll another feed, or rewrite another bio answer this question: who actually owns your business?
- Business Growth
Why Most Advisors Pick the Wrong Clients
Here is an uncomfortable truth that nobody in the financial services industry wants to say out loud: most advisory firms are terrible at choosing clients.
- Business Growth
Trying Harder Is Costing You Referrals
That sounds counterintuitive. We’ve been told our whole careers that effort is the answer. When it comes to referrals, the opposite is often true.
- Business Growth
Scaling Beyond Yourself Without Losing Presence
Why the most successful advisors I know are often the least free. And what the Kitces data is quietly telling us about how to fix it.
- Business Growth
The Sale Is Over Before It Starts: Why Prospects Pick You in Advance
The question isn’t how do I sell better? It’s how do I get on the list before there even is a list?
- Business Growth
Why Your LinkedIn Connections Might Not Be Yours—and What To Do About It
This week, Richard van der Blom dropped a newsletter that basically confirmed everything I’ve been saying.
- Business Growth
Referrals Aren’t Dead. But Most People Are Doing Them Completely Wrong.
Doing business by referral, business by relationship, can compete with and in many ways exceed the return on investment from any other form of marketing.
- Business Growth
CEPA Designation Isn’t Hard. Implementing It Inside an Advisory Firm Is
Heart of exit planning is one of its greatest strengths and one of the most underestimated implementation challenges successful financial advisors face.
- Opinion
Social Media Is Not a Growth Strategy for Serious Advisors
Let me say this clearly. If you are an elite professional serving high stakes clients, social media is not a growth requirement. It is a tool.
- Business Growth
Referral Compounding Starts With One Discipline Most Professionals Avoid
Leveraging the Clients Who Already Believe in You. Every real business can be pressure-tested by three questions.
- Business Growth
AI Isn’t Killing Advisory Fees—Weak Value Is
This is not an attack on advisors. This is an attack on a dominant and largely unexamined business model.
- Business Growth
Never Let Someone Else Drive Your Referral Without Telling You
You hand the keys to someone you trust. A safe driver. Someone you’d let borrow your car again. That’s where this gets dangerous.
- Business Growth
Are You Running an Advisory Practice — or an Accidental Sales Organization?
Let me start with a question that makes a lot of advisors uncomfortable, usually because they already know the answer. Are you a sales organization?
- Business Growth
Why Most Referrals Fail: The Secret To Predictable Growth in Professional Services
Referral clients convert faster, stay longer, generate more lifetime value, and are generally easier to work with.
- Business Growth
How To Turn Credentials and Experience Into a Profitable Practice
What happens after you decide what you want to do? You’ve got credentials. You’ve got experience. You know the work you want to be doing.
- Business Growth
You Can’t Systemize Trust—and That’s the Real Growth Constraint
Because once you see the role mismatch, you also see what can’t be fixed with more tools, more automation, or better delegation.
- Business Growth
You Don’t Have a Growth Problem. You Have a Role Problem.
You Don’t Have a Growth Problem. You Have a Role Problem. For years, professional services firm owners have been told the same thing
- Business Growth
Social Media Was Meant To Be Human—so Why Does It Feel So Fake?
Here is the paradox. Social media can be powerful, but most people are using it in a way that actively destroys trust.
- Business Growth
Buyers Decide Before They Call You: How Elite Firms Win in the New B2B Reality
The winners will be those who don’t wait to be discovered but engineer their presence into buyers’ decisions early.
- Business Growth
The One Hire That Unlocks Your Next 10 Ideal Clients—and Gives You Your Life Back
For many of you, that number is two hundred fifty thousand or five hundred thousand, or much more.
- Business Growth
The Referral Revolution: How Leaders Win With Ideal-Client Growth
Right back at the beginning, only at a different level and with a deeper understanding of what ideal client acquisition does to leaders and their firms.
- Business Growth
AI Owns Information Now—Here’s How Advisors Stay the Only Answer That Matters
This shift will keep accelerating as AI becomes the primary way people look for information and make decisions.
- Business Growth
AI Will Change Everything—Except How You Win Clients
So the more useful question becomes: what never changes? What always works, no matter the technology, is human connection.
- Business Growth
How To Stand Out in the AI Era: Be More Human, Not More Automated
It’s no longer a novelty, and as the ‘noise’ increases, what’s left, what’s truly rare, is you.
- Business Growth
Why Your Ideal Client Defines Your Future Value—Not Your Marketing Plan
The premise is simple: when the stakes are highest, you want to hand the keys to someone you trust, someone who truly fits.
- Business Growth
Think Like a Specialist: The Proven Path To High-Value, High-Fit Clients
The more successful your firm becomes, the more dangerous nonideal clients can be, especially when they have cost you time and money to acquire.
- Business Growth
CPR for Your Pipeline: How I’m Rebuilding After Dropping the Ball
Hold a spot, waiting on someone else’s decision, I’m not just being patient I’m pausing my growth. That’s a dangerous place to live
- Business Growth
You’re Now Selling to Two Customers—One of Them Is AI
Before you tune out thinking this is another AI is taking over post, stay with me. This one’s for people who actually sell ideas, advice, and trust.
