Episode 196: Building Real Relationships with Lisa Princic

When you run a service business, your relationships are everything. Who you know, what they think about you, and your reputation can make or break your business. In this episode, we talk to Lisa Princic about building real relationships, the care and feeding of those relationships, and more.

The real currency of your business isn’t money despite what we’re conditioned to think about revenue = our worth and success. Instead, the real, true currency is relationships. Because without lasting, trusted relationships, you won’t really have a business for very long, your reputation may suffer, and you’ll be on a hamster wheel of always having to find new people. In short, the relationships you have with clients (past and present) and the greater ecosystem of collaborators and colleagues that you’re part of is key to your business’ long-term viability.

But when you’re heads-down working for your clients and building your business, it can be challenging sometimes to keep those relationships at the forefront — especially when you’re operating in a world that’s not face-to-face. Today’s guest Lisa Princic shares the concept of scaling deep and how creating and maintaining relationships can be simpler than you think. Best of all, you don’t need to have 100s of them — you just need the right ones.

Here’s What We Discussed:

1. Lisa’s business and how she makes money.
2. What the concept of “scaling deep” means.
3. How we can build real, genuine relationships as service businesses and how that ties back to scaling deep.
4. Why this idea of scaling without mass media growth and really focusing on your 100 customers is so important for service business owners.
5. A few ways to care for and feed our business relationships.

Lisa’s bio:

Lisa helps impact-driven business owners dive deep into their unique value and business models to build sustainable $1million brands. She helps them simplify their offers, focus their brand with bolder messaging, and strengthen and deepen their marketing systems.

She is a trained business strategist and the host of the Scaling Deep Podcast.

Lisa is a results-oriented, deep thinker who has a knack for “seeing” the value of each business and turning that into a pipeline for ideal clients.

Lessons Learned from Lisa:

1. Scaling deep is setting a guideline to think about how your business can grow. It doesn’t have to feel icky or like you have to hustle or feel empty. It’s not the giant leaps that we’re always told that we need to take because that’s not going to work for the majority of small business owners out there. Business owners need to focus on scaling one by one.
2. Scaling your business doesn’t have to be impersonal or cold. Growing your business in a meaningful way requires focusing on how you can continue to add value over the long term and nurture the relationships with both your clients and your team.
3. Building relationships is a cornerstone of effective scaling. Regularly following up with past and prospective clients is key. Understanding their needs and how you can be of service to them positions you to be their best advocate.

This episode is our last one of 2019. The show will be back on Monday, January 6th, with a new episode, where I’m doing a fresh take for 2020 on one of my most popular episodes of all time: Myths of Growing Your Service Business.

As we wrap for the year, I want to say thank you to all of you who listen week in, week out. We’re nearly at the 200 episode mark, and I’m just about six years in as a podcaster, so I truly I appreciate each and every one of you, and I wish you the best this holiday season. Cheers to you, boss.

Links for the Show:

• Monday.com
• Forbes article on influencer fatigue
• Scaling Deep
• Scaling Deep Roadmap