How To Earn $15,000 by Sending an Email

Deanna Berardi is the Head of Partnerships at Quiet Light. In this role, she helps develop relationships with buyers, sellers, and partners to ensure the best experience for clients. She is also the Manager of Customer Success at Intuit.

Deanna has over 20 years of experience in strategic business development and was the Marketing Manager for Smart Wires Inc. and the Marketing Program Manager for Ernst & Young LLP. She graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a bachelor’s in business administration and marketing.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:40] How Deanna Berardi works with buyers to streamline investment criteria
• [09:02] Why establishing a connection with clients creates referrals
• [14:31] Elevating the exit experience through quality care
• [19:44] Deanna details why Quiet Light’s referral program is successful
• [24:10] How to manage referrals through your website
• [26:18] Scaling a brand through passive content
• [29:15] Deanna talks about unique ways to build trust with clients
• [32:36] Deanna explains how to foster quality relationships with clients and referral partners

In this episode…

If you’re selling your brand, how can you authentically connect with aggregators? Whether you’re buying or selling, you want to work with a credible source. What is the easiest way to connect with other brands?

Referral partners can create a trustworthy environment for you to buy and sell brands with confidence. Deanna Berardi begins with a few simple questions to find the right fit and match with an advisor. But you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to connect with other brands — you simply need to send an email. Deanna knows that to provide content catered to a certain group, email is the best way to deliver. Are you ready for a fantastic exit experience?

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Deanna Berardi, Head of Partnerships at Quiet Light, to discuss establishing valuable partnerships through referrals. Deanna talks about how providing quality care creates lasting impressions, why passive content can generate more interest, and the value of building trust with clients.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Deanna Berardi on LinkedIn
• Deanna Berardi’s email: [email protected]
• Quiet Light
• Quiet Light on YouTube
• Referrals at Quiet Light
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook: How to Sell Your Online Business for Top Dollar by Reverse Engineering Your Pathway to Success by Joe Valley
• Michael Jackness on LinkedIn
• Sherry Walling on LinkedIn
• Steve Chou on the Quiet Light Podcast
• My Wife Quit Her Job

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by MyAmazonGuy, an Amazon agency to help level up your PPC, SEO, Design, and manage your entire Amazon catalog.

This episode is also brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. They provide trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations. So, your Quiet Light advisors aren’t your everyday brokers — they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on its website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light offers the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07

Hi folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:32

Hey folks, Joe Valley here, welcome to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Before we jump into who the guest is, today’s podcast is sponsored by My Amazon Guy. I know Stephen Pope very well. He’s the founder. And you may have seen him all over YouTube, sharing free educational content about how to scale up your Amazon business. If you need someone to level up your PPC or SEO, your design, and manage your entire Amazon, Amazon Amazon catalog. Steven Pope and his team at My Amazon Guy is the team, MyAmazonGuy.com Check him out. And now today’s podcast is with a very, very special guests, the first ever non advisor employee at Quiet Light, who has the joy and privilege of sending people lots of money, the highest amount of money she sent, probably an audience member is almost 60,050 $9,000. And the lowest somewhere the average is somewhere around $13,000. So what I’m talking about is referrals. Just over 25% of our year to date, transactions that have closed have been referrals. Historically, it’s always been somewhere in that 23 to 25%. And it seems to be growing in average size every year. And we’ve done nothing except treat people well to grow it. Well. This person Deanna Berardi is somebody that originally started out as a special person helping buyers and then morphed into a good part of her job of 50% is scaling up the referral program. And this is important because a it’s a large part of our business, but it helps us help you, the audience and your friends and colleagues that you’re closely associated with. So we’re going to talk about the scalable referral program how Deanna is working with different clients, give some client examples, and hopefully bring you into the fold and hopefully you’ll become a referral partner quiet right. So here we go Deanna Berardi. Deanna Berardi, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. How are you?

Deanna Berardi  2:39

I’m doing great, Joe, how about you?

Joe Valley  2:41

Good. I love the fact that you’re on here. You’re actually the first non advisor, employee of Quiet Light that we’ve had on the podcast. And, and you and I have worked together on a specific program, we’re going to talk about here a little bit. But it’s really essential for the audience to know about it, because they can benefit them as well. But before we delve into them, we’ll slide into that in a second. But why don’t you give the audience a little bit of background about how long you’ve been with Quiet Light what you do at Quiet Light and things of that nature.

Deanna Berardi  3:11

But Joe, you’re just saving the best for last night? Yeah. You. Yeah. So, you know, you know, it’s super fun. When I when I first started with Quiet Light, I was addressing a group of our ecosystem, which were the buyers, and essentially, my role was to work with buyers, get them profiled, listen to them, make sure we had a better streamlined access to find the investment criteria for our buyers who we absolutely adore. Of course, yeah. So that was fun. And we kind of got our arms around that. And then we started looking at our numbers, as you know, and we saw, like, wow, how many of our deals that have close had been through referrals. So we decided wanting to put our arms around that group and our ecosystem, our referral partners, and basically just serve them better find a way to take better care of them treated like the VIPs that they are them in their clients.

Joe Valley  4:05

Yeah, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump to the end. And then I’m gonna come back, folks. This is all about what would Deanna focuses on at least 50% of her time now is Quiet Light’s referral program, which is in the year to date about 25% of our close transactions. And they result in historically result in somebody closes a transaction with Quiet Light. They love the process. They tell their close friends about it or their audience about it in the case with let’s say, Mike Jackness, for instance, I sold his business we’ve connected over the years. And Mike has an audience through EECOM crew. And when people ask him personally for a recommendation on an advisor, he reaches out to us makes the intro and quiet light and that benefits his client because he gets that one on one service from us and it benefits Mike and it benefits Quiet Light as well. So all of that is what we’re going to delve into a little bit here with Deanna, because this is what she’s doing, except she’s trying to be create a scalable referral program. But before we jump into that, now I’m jumping back to the beginning. And oh, by the way, the average referral fee, year to date is just shy of, what is it the end of $13,000? Yep, yes, just shy of $13,000 year to date. With the buyers, though, when you were building that buyer database and working with buyers that were trying to purchase a business acquiring, you had to deal you created a buyer database that were specific to aggregators as well. And, you know, that blew up because it was crazy in 2021. And now, it’s this is an important thing that I tell people about when they want to work directly with an aggregator, they need to be real careful about adding certain things into contracts and agreements. And that’s all in as everybody knows, at this point in the experts playbook. But you’ve created a database of aggregators that have broken earnout agreements and failed on seller, no payments and things of that nature. Is that correct?

Deanna Berardi  6:13

Yeah, we’re starting to track that information. And, you know, it’s not to like beat anybody up. I mean, the reality is, these aggregators are had a huge investment in doing an outreach and trying to find brands to exit with. And so they’re having conversations or talking to them, they’re getting to know them a little bit. And then the aggregator says, Well, you don’t hit our criteria. Now, what do we do with you. So now what we’ve done is we’ve got some aggregators are actually sending some of those brands that weren’t a good fit for them over to us. And we’re able to put our arms around them, you know, listen to them, get to know them a little bit better, and hopefully help them find, you know, the ads that they were looking for, because our criteria might be a little bit lower in terms of size, volume, age, but we look for

Joe Valley  6:56

larger or larger, depending on the aggregator, or in some cases, you know, an aggregator has decided to double down on the, let’s say, supplement niche, and somebody connects to them. And it’s, you know, clothing or whatever kind of brand it might be. And then they’d make introductions to us, which is part of the referral program. But I was actually talking about the list of nine aggregators out of the 100 or so that are out there that we are very wary about ever doing a transaction again, with. And this is because, you know, they, they failed to make an earn out payment, or the stability payment, maybe because they ran out of inventory, things of that nature, where now we’re negotiating as much protection into the asset purchase agreements as possible or pushing the clients attorneys to do that. Sometimes they do it, sometimes they don’t. But it’s, it’s not just because they’re flush with cash, that they’re absolutely going to make payments, just because they you know, boast about the size of their portfolio, the size of their available funds, doesn’t mean that they’re not going to have a lower level manager that’s ordering inventory and doesn’t do a good job of it, and they run out of inventory. Just before that stability payment is too. So we do have a list, I think it’s up to nine now that we’re very cautious about working with and if you’re out there selling your business, and you’re selling to an aggregator, you can reach out to us and we’ll chat with you about that and laid out be honest, as we always are relentlessly honest. And just help you as you go ahead and sell that business on your own to somebody like an aggregator. Okay, enough of that. Talk to me about the referral programs. Deanna, who’s the ideal referral partner that is currently getting an average of, you know, just under $13,000 as a referral fee from us, when they send us a client, how does it work?

Deanna Berardi  8:51

But typically, they’re they’re going to be folks that have worked with us before. And you know, we’ve got 15 advisors out there, they’re doing a great job and crushing it, right. So some of our referral partners, it actually could just be a private individual or business owner that successfully exited with Quiet Light at some point. So we get a lot of those folks that had a very meaningful shift, you know, when they sold their business, and they’re now entrepreneurs, and they’re bringing in their friends and other peers in as well to get a valuation and look at an exit. So that’s one major, major partner we have.

Joe Valley  9:26

Yeah. Let me just let me address that one. I think in that one, folks, the thing to understand is that it’s, it’s somebody that has a deep connection with Quiet Light because we help exit their business. And they also have a deep connection with the person that they’re referring to Quiet Light. So it’s a friend that said, That’s awesome, man. Congratulations on your exit. Who did you use? And did you like them had the experience and then they refer them over to quiet like, It’s and we’re looking for that deep connection. We’re not looking for somebody that is just advertising our referral program. We won’t accept those. It’s somebody that has a deep connection with somebody that they can refer over to us and experience with us as well.

Deanna Berardi  10:04

Yeah, exactly. And frankly, that’s the most numerous type that we have, you know, if you look at our database, if you’re who’s referred folks in the past, they’ve been private individuals that are referring friends, they themselves had set up, exited. So that’s the highest number. The other one that we get a lot of would be, you know, some masterminds, you know, people that are participants in masterminds, people that are running their own masterminds, that are, you know, luminaries kind of speakers in the sector, a lot of those folks. And then we get another good source, for example, might be professional, that serving some of these companies serving our entrepreneurs. So like CPAs, might be a good one, a law firm, someone in the funding space, those are the types that we get, probably those three, I say, the private individual, the luminary type, you know, mastermind, and then someone that is a professional in this space, that is hearing our name again, and again, like, for example, we’ve got one guy, his name is Sid Jain. And he’s a CPA. And, you know, he’ll he just, you know, mentioned to me yesterday, you know, hey, you know, I’m a CPA, and I heard about Quiet Light, because one of my clients bought a business from you guys. So then I referred one of my other clients who was looking to sell, and then we sold that business and that guy, he said, quote, unquote, had, you know, such fantastic things to say that without hesitation, he’s gonna continue to refer again and again, because he knows that both buyers and sellers are getting touched up service, you know, from from Quiet Light. So that’s a very common one would be the professional.

Joe Valley  11:37

Yeah, and I just pulled up his you just got a written testimonial from him. On the 11th of November, I’m gonna let you, I’d like you to read it in a sec. The key thing here is, Sid has a relationship with his clients. He’s heard about Quiet Light connected with Quiet Light and different ways trusts us to take care of his client. And that’s exactly what we do. This referral program folks isn’t something where you refer somebody over to us and you are just rolling it out. It’s a process because first and foremost, our goal is to help your friend or a client. And oftentimes, when we help them achieve their goals. Part of the advice is, you gotta wait. You need to fix this, you need to flip this to accrual, you need to double down for another troubles. One of one of the experiences that reaches out to me comes to my mind is, was it it was a referral, a guy named Joe, and he I’ve had him on the podcast, he sold a gun accessory business, it was the holsters and things of that nature. And he was referred over by somebody that runs a podcast and a mastermind group. And Joe’s first call was he had a goal to exit for, like, one 1.2 million, I can’t remember the numbers exactly. And his business was absolutely not worth it. Because it was trending down, he had taken his eye off the business a little bit. And so my advice was, this is not going to work, let’s do this, this and this to achieve your goals, it’s going to take at least a year, and it ended up taking about 18 months. But at the end of it all, we sold it for about 1.6 million. And Joe said that on that first phone call. And when I had the numbers and everything he said it was like you stomped on my heart. And it meant it. And it hurt because I didn’t I couldn’t just exit. But it was the right advice that I needed. And I doubled down to ended up selling for 50% more than I hope to so it’s that type of client and that kind of experience your friends and clients are going to get from us, we’re going to give them honest advice to help them grow their business to exit at the value that they want. I don’t know if that was the experience with SIDS client but I think you’ve got that testimonial up in front of you. Now. Could you paraphrase that or read it so the audience can hear what city saying?

Deanna Berardi  14:01

Yeah, so here’s here’s his quote, he says I’m a CPA and I first heard about Quiet Light because one of my clients bought a business from Quiet Light and had rave things to say. So I referred one of my other clients Quiet Light. And my client was just as thrilled with the outcome. They sold their business they found their personal freedom and had fantastic things to say about the whole exit process. So without hesitation our for more clients to Quiet Light, especially when I know though consistently get white love top notch care.

Joe Valley  14:33

Yeah, that’s That’s great. There’s so many deep connections there have sold business and a client that wants to exit and a referral over to Quiet Light and whoever the advisor was took good care of them. And this is something that happens with CPAs and bookkeepers, even though when they refer a client over to exit odds are they’re losing a client if the buyer like somebody else’s the bookkeeper or CPA The next one I think is really interesting is it’s actually a SAS. I think it’s a SaaS business. I know that when I, when I hear that the name Walling, I think of Rob, and Microsoft and his business that he sold for eight figures many years ago. But you’ve got a testimonial from Dr. Sherry Walling, as well from Zen founder. What’s, what’s that? What about?

Deanna Berardi  15:22

Yeah, well, so zen founders is a podcast. So it’s a very popular I mean, she’s got, she’s got it. She’s an author, she’s written two or three books very, towards entrepreneurs, very geared towards entrepreneurs not having burnout, and taking care of themselves. So she’s, she’s also like a super cool yoga instructor. She’s a PhD, as well. So you know, she recently referred a client over to us that had a fantastic exit, and she got a nice, large, you know, referral fee for doing that because it was a larger transaction when it closed. But her point, and I’ll quote her is that I’ve referred several friends and clients to quiet light. And I trust quiet light with those who trust me. They’ve supported my referrals through an incredibly important life altering process. So her whole angle is to be mindful, to reduce stress and to reduce burnout and the entrepreneurs and to have them be cyclic ly successful in the various things that they accomplish. And she also, like I said, she’s an author, she’s a podcaster. She’s got her own website, she’s a consultant, she does retreats. So her whole business is based on trust, very similar to ours. So for her statement that I trust quietly with those who I trust me, I mean, that kind of, you know, says a lot of it.

Joe Valley  16:43

And I think I think the incredibly important life altering process, I think, is what you said, what she said, and that, folks is how we look at our relationship with our clients. I remember early on back in 2012, back in the day, right when I first started, and I went to an event, oh, down in New Orleans, I can’t remember I remember the smell, because it was New Orleans, I just don’t remember the name of the event. It’s my first time in New Orleans, currently the host, the host of rochestown every night, and I happen to go out before the host him down. But I was sitting at dinner one night, and somebody said, you know, how do you how do you how do you like brokering Joe? And I said, I love it. I’m just really enjoying helping people with their goals and exiting. And he quickly said, Oh, well, you just like the money. And I had to fight back against that. Because really, we we end up with deep connections with our clients. And we do help change their lives for the better, because we want to help them exit for maximum value for whatever their goal is. Sometimes that happens pretty quickly. And oftentimes with referrals, it does happen quicker than, you know, a lead that learned about us in another way. But it’s something we take very, very seriously. And I want to get a little bit more into how the scalable referral program approach is because that’s what we’re really trying to do. But it’s a couple of different ways. But before I do that, I just looked up a text that I sent and a response I got. So I sent a text to a guy named Bill and said, Hey, Bill, we owe you. And this is Bill is in the e-commerce world and is big on Twitter and a big influencer within the mastermind group that he’s a part of. Hey, Bill, we owe you a referral fee for blank business of $20,200. Keep an eye out for an email from our bookkeeper. Our new bookkeeping firm, they need a W nine stuff to pay you out. And he wrote, wow, this is absolutely the best text messages I’ve ever gotten. Thanks, Joe. And then literally within another three weeks, we ended up needing to pay him out another referral Shea. And I think there’s profanity in there. Nope, there’s not his response was this was a much smaller one of about 2000. And he wrote, man, I love it when you text me. And I love texting him. And I love it when we have success with a client that’s been referred and we can pay out that referral fee to the client as well. Speaking of that, how does that how does it work? What does a person like Sherry walling who refers somebody to us? Who’s wanting us to work with a client because she trusts us and to try and close client trusts her? How is Sherry getting paid? In terms of the referral fee? Is it a percentage is it dollars? I know the answer, but I want you to tell the facts.

Deanna Berardi  19:44

Yeah, so So basically Sherry In her case, okay, she gets 10% of the commission that we collected on that closed deal. Okay,

Joe Valley  19:54

so if we sell a business for a million dollars, the broker fee would Be 10%. So that’d be $100,000 broker fee, Sherry’s gonna get 10% Off the top of that. All right?

Deanna Berardi  20:05

That’s correct. Good. All right.

Joe Valley  20:08

So let’s talk about the scalable and I’m doing air quotes folks that are listening, the scalable referral program, because that’s really, what your job is now is to scale the referral program, again, historically, or even just year to date, we’re at about 23% of all of our close transactions are from referrals. And that has just, that has just happened organically, it’s before you really started, right? There’s nothing that has closed that you made an initial connection with. But now you’re, you’re speaking to influencers and speaking to people that have just sold their business or bought a business and trying to make a connection with them to duplicate what Syd is doing or Cheryl’s Sherry’s doing. How, how are you trying to scale this referral program to double the close transactions, let’s say from 23 to 46%, of our total transactions?

Deanna Berardi  21:00

Yeah, well, there’s really three ways to do that one, number one is just basic awareness, just letting our folks know that this program exists. Because people have great exits, and they’ll think about oh, wow, you know, I can actually refer somebody else and I can enjoy that kind of, you know, fee for exiting. So some of us just simple awareness, we’re trying to make it very easy to send somebody our way. So there’s, there’s one way to do it is just simply provide an email address to somebody at Quiet Light, though, it could be to the advisor, that, you know, it could be to myself, it could be to anyone, like one of our founders, like you Joe, or even to Mark Mark Daoust. So just send an email providing a simple introduction, and I received that email. And I asked some very basic questions about the business to find the right fit, first of all, to see if it see if we can give an evaluation. And then I find the right advisor for their business to jump on a call with them, give them their free evaluation, and then give them their exit advice and their strategy. So email intro is one way to do it.

Joe Valley  21:59

Let me let me touch on the email intro folks. So you can always send an email to referrals at quietlight.com. App. Those will go right to you Deanna. If you want a founder or owner of the company like myself, or mark CC, because it’s important to be introducing your client to one of us, Joe at quiet light or market quiet light.com. And you could and you could see see referrals EC pilot, so DNA gets us as well, because initially marker, I will respond, but Dan is going to take it and run with it and work with Lauren, who’s our advisors support person to see who is the best advisor for that type of business and who has capacity to take it on. And then there’s also an option DNA if somebody bought a business or sold a business, and they have a friend that wants to go through the same process, let’s say of selling a business, we don’t do referrals for buyers. But for selling, they might want to say, Look, I just love Chuck Mullins, I need to refer my friend over to chuck Mullins, you would just do an intro [email protected], it’s easy as that you can always again, and I think it’s necessary to cc referrals at quietlight.com. I think that’s easier to remember the end, His email address is [email protected]. But [email protected] We’ll get to her as well. And that way it’s going to be Chuck who’s going to be taken away with that. So when you’ve got a preference in terms of the advisor, whether you are selling your own business or referring a client over it, we will definitely run with that that’s your choice who you get to work with that quiet like we just we don’t usurp your authority there if you’ve got somebody that you want them to work with. And that person has the capacity that you’ve got to work with. Alright, sorry, that went on tangent there on the emails, what was the other way that you talked about?

Deanna Berardi  23:54

Exactly. Another way is that you can send a referral, you know, to us is to just email me and you can even email again, Deanna referrals and just ask for an affiliate link to be built for you. And with that affiliate, and that affiliate link could reside in a place that you want it to reside, it could reside on your partnership page. It can be something you can put onto a landing page, something you can associate to one of our articles if you want to repost that, but we can build a an affiliate link for you so that anytime someone uses that link, it’s going to be tied back to you. And then you just drop right into our CRM as the referrer. We’re going to grab that information and when that lead or that person, you know, that found you through found us through you, it’s attached, it’s designated. So we’ll we’ll address that and we’ll say oh, we see that you came into this affiliate link myself on my lead person who manages leads will know that this is the referral partner and it’s tagged that way as if it came in through an email intro. So the second way is an affiliate link, which is just blind, Quiet Light and that would come also you could ask me to create one

Joe Valley  25:00

I love that aspect of it. That is a situation where, let’s say Steve Chu, who runs my wife sold something about my wife quit her job. Steve got millions of visitors to his website, it was blog every year. And if you had a partner, I think he does that somewhere. I actually think we have an article with a link in it. But if it was, what it what it does, it gives Steve, the people that trust him and know him because they’re reading his information. It’s that’s the scalable part, we’re reaching the masses in a bit of a way that we couldn’t with, oh, I just bought a business from quiet like, what a great experience, I’m going to refer my other friend to quiet light to sell their business. So that’s the scalable Part One scalable part of it. So anybody listening, if you run a mastermind group, if you’ve got, you know, a site where you’ve got a partner page or anything like that any CPAs bookkeepers, things of that nature out there with a partner page reach out to Deanna@QuietLight, and so we can get you the logo with the affiliate link that would simply take them to either a particular article that you like to or to the valuation portion of our website anywhere else that they can be sent to Deanna.

Deanna Berardi  26:18

Yeah, sure. I’ll give you an example. Um, they got acquired, we recently did like a co sponsorship with them, they all they’re sending out reports on a regular basis. And this particular report was all about content companies that have exited, they did a report around that. So they have a podcast listing group, they also have the Subscribed users that get these reports, we planted a link in there with our logo, and we had with it, we had a dozen leads within that report launching. And all those leads for passive of course for day got acquired, and they all came in to our system, and they’re all tagged. And if those whenever those convert those businesses, if they ever sell with us or convert to clients, that was it could be a year from now we’re all tie back to that original report that we sent out co sponsored with them in October of 2022. So that’s a real easy, passive way. That’s through an affiliate link. Love it.

Joe Valley  27:10

So what we’re talking about here is straight up e-commerce, right through bill and through said, Sherry, who’s probably got a few more connections with SAS businesses because of the business her and her husband had together. And then they got acquired content sites just love content, one of our advisors has a $58 million content site under letter of intent. It can’t tell you any more about that. And it’s not up on the cell page. We’ll put it up when we get a little further and due diligence with permission from the buyer and seller right now, it’s a kind of a pocket deal at one of our advisors said that came from a small content listing. And then we ended up reaching out to two other people in the niche, private equity firm was approached with a small content site too small, but if you could tie up the other two players in the business to package it up. We’re interested and the advisor that we have tackling this one was able to get the number one and the number three in this niche and maze, I don’t know, it’s 58 60 million, something like that. But it’s more content, its content. It’s great stuff, its content. Okay, so one email to affiliate links with quite light logo, things of that nature. Was there a third option

Deanna Berardi  28:32

here. So the third one is kind of I think is emerging. And it’s I think it’s got a huge potential to it. And it’s, it’s the hybrid content provider that actually really deeply wants to educate even further their audience. And they’re, they’re seeking additional content resources for sellers. And they’re, they’re like, you know, they have got, they got a resource page, they’ve got articles, they push out, they’re actually looking for third party content to bring to their users. And they want to educate because they love them, and they care about them. And they’re very trust building. And these are clients that keep for a long time. So like CPAs would be great for this. They’re like any content, right? So we have found a way to take the entrepreneurs playbook and put that inside their content library, but it’s kind of CO branded. And there’s affiliate links embedded in that book. So that if you just send the book to somebody, it’s a free digital book. This is what the book is free. It’s a free digital book. That is a coroner’s playbook, but it’s coming from let’s say, Sid Jain and add wise tax, for example. He can send that to all of his listeners, or to all of his subscribers and email, then they can get the book. They can read it and inside that book, there’s a digital link that’s evaluation link, which takes them right back to the valuation page, we can drop in that it came from that referral source. And that, again, is scalable, very passive. So it has no idea it’s occurring. But people downloading that book can get a free evaluation from quiet light. And that’s tagged to him as a referral partner. That’s another way to kind of get the silent, passive scalable referral system working.

Joe Valley  30:17

That is very passive. You know, it’s interesting, as we’re talking about this, I’m no content expert, I love selling content sites. But one of the things that might make sense for us, and I’m just throwing this out there, and anybody that’s an expert in this area can reach out and tell me if it makes sense or not, Joe, at quiet, let you know where to find me. But you know, I’ve got 300 pages in the book, The explorers playbook. And maybe instead of providing a digital version of the book, maybe we could provide an actual chapter like Chapter 11 On ad backs, which is very detailed, very thorough, and very specific topic that’s very educational, and provide the content for that to the blogs, website, Owner, whatever it might be somebody with a list, as long as it’s theirs do not follow. Like, if it goes up on their website, they could use it in newsletters and things of that nature. We’ll have to figure that out and see if it would make sense and try it. Try it with anybody that might be interested DNS, and anybody listening, you think I’m just an idiot? Let me know that that won’t work. Or if you think it’s brilliant. Let me know that too. If we can get a two to one ratio there, brilliant to idiot, that’d be great. All right, yeah, let’s start talking about

Deanna Berardi  31:28

the key things are just trying to make it simple. You know, there’s some of these other, you know, brokerages out there that do also have referral programs, and they require you to sign agreements, or they require you to go online and fill out an application to become a partner. Or they may kind of have a software program they want you to sign up to so you can see what’s going on, we decided to keep it a little more ease, easier to use more based on trust more based on relationships. And so we have found, frankly, that that’s easiest through email exchanges, and that’s just fine with us, that’s just fine with us. If you do want to do some sort of mailer or podcast yourself and you want a landing page, we can certainly give you that too. If you want to provide, you know, you know, catered content directly to your group, we can do that, too. So we’re just about flexibility. Because like you said, Joe, we want people as referral partners that have people that trust them. So we know that it’s going to be a smaller group. And at the same time, you know, we want you we want you, we want you to know us and trust us. So we’re not into like, you know, we want quality, we want really good quality relationships, and we’ll watch, it’s me, they’re all going to come back to me, I’m going to touch them all. So look at my face, I will be accountable, to make sure that they get sorted and taken care of, and I will have a regular dialogue when referral partner is about to be paid. I’ll touch them as many as four times to make sure they get their payment. And even when they their their company that they they referred is listed. They’ll get a heads up, hey, this business has been listed, right? Because I recognize that referral partner might want to touch base to the seller and say, Yo, you’re listed. Are you okay? You know, I exited? You’re exiting, you’re listed now, how are we doing? Because I want you to have that chance to foster that friendship because you sent your friend to us. So we’re going to be a part of that process. We’re going to work side by side with you on that.

Joe Valley  33:20

Yeah, makes total sense. And one of the things that a lot of referral partners ask before they start sending leads over to us is, what kind of listening to you prefer, what size what’s too big, what’s too small. And so I just pulled up some stats here on our deal dashboard, again, actually just refreshed it and the total referrals as a percentage of all of our listings is actually 25.88%. But the average referral fee now that I’ve updated, it is $13,383. The max referral fee that we’ve sent out this year is this is a nice one. Just thinking about tuition at my son’s private school. $59,875 is the largest referral fee. Our average transaction size folks year to date is 1.5 million last year it was one point a based upon what is set to close I’m pretty certain it’s going to settle in around 2 million for our median or average transaction size. Our largest closed transaction this year is just under 20 million. And this is kind of a shocking number. Our smallest deal is 10,000. But that was a pocket thing that we were selling on somebody else’s larger business and sold off a smaller transaction. Really what we’re moving towards is probably in the next 12 to 24 months based upon what’s under loi is an average deal size of 3 million and you know sticking to probably definitely 250 on it. 50,000 or above, but I think that number is going to creep up, as well. Quiet Light, we’ve got 15 advisors, and anytime you bring on new advisors, they have a tendency to take on smaller listings first. Or if it’s a client that has a smaller business, we’ll sell that first before as they prepare to sell their larger business. But because we’ve got 15 advisors, no new ones in the last 12 months, those new advisors are non existent. And the average deal size creeps up because of their experience, and expect that to creep up north of 2 million for 2023, probably for the end of 2020, for close to 3 million. So give us a little detail about the average transaction size, let’s say you’re referring somebody over to us, we want the potential value to be at this point at least 250,000. And, again, our largest deal close so far this year, just under 20 million, the largest historically that we’ve closed is just about 25 million, but we’ve got one that is going to be in that $60 million range. And a couple of others in the $20 million range, if you look at our website under analyze. So that answers that question that nobody asked on this podcast. And then you know, just sharing previous questions that people do ask to give them the answer to that. Anyway, let’s let’s let’s wrap up on the referral program Deanna. Any last thoughts or ways that you want people to think about the referral program or connect with you.

Deanna Berardi  36:26

Probably the best way to do it is just is to start out with email. So just referrals a quiet light started out there. And then if you’ve listened to this, and you’re interested in educating your audience with third party with stuff like your book, just mention that and we can start getting the book co branded. So they can you can present that to your audience. And the other thing would just be like, hey, you know what, I do have a place I want to plant some affiliate links, let me know that we can get that going. But the bottom thing is just just just just don’t, don’t stop. Don’t Don’t Don’t hesitate, I should say, don’t hesitate to even send someone that might be a little under some of our criteria to us, because we will we’ll we’ll give them some attention. And we’ll nurture them. And we’ll definitely give them some really good content that will help them prepare later for their sale.

Joe Valley  37:13

I love the fact that we can share content with folks. The other thing that they can do is go to and just unlikely repeating what you’ve just said, because I had to switch my headphone and I couldn’t hear anything that you just said quietlight.com/referrals. Did you already mentioned that?

Deanna Berardi  37:28

No, that’s a good one, too. The web pages is another good one. Yep.

Joe Valley  37:31

It gives a little bit more detail. And you know, technically folks, we’ve historically a referral program has been very organic, very natural, very loose and handshake comfort type of thing. We do have a referral agreement that we’re more than happy to sign so you’ve got something in writing from us. But most of you know us. Those are the folks that we were referring people over to us never relationship with us. But we are definitely happy to sign off on that as well. If you if you prefer that.

Deanna Berardi  38:03

Absolutely. Okay. Thanks, Joe.

Joe Valley  38:06

For Thank you Deanna and I appreciate you coming on the first non advisor, employee of Quiet Light ever to be on the podcast and I think you’re doing amazing things with referral program helping lots of people. So thanks for coming on.

Deanna Berardi  38:16

Thank you so much. Bye Joe.

Outro  38:21

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 And the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, email us at [email protected] Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.