Business is Slow? The Law of Reciprocity

Summary

In this conversation, Branden Sewell discusses the importance of investing time and energy into building relationships within the community. He emphasizes that serving others without immediate benefit often leads to reciprocal support and referrals in business. By adding value to others' lives, individuals can deepen their connections and create a network of mutual obligation and support.

Takeaways

Invest time and energy into people.
Serving others often leads to reciprocal benefits.
Building relationships adds value to your network.
When you give, it creates an obligation to return the favor.
Community involvement enhances personal and professional connections.
Opportunities arise from the relationships you cultivate.
Referrals often come from those you've helped.
Deepening relationships can lead to business growth.
Adding value is key to successful networking.
Your name will be remembered when you serve others.

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.326)
Hi everybody, I am Brandon Sewell. I'm the owner of Seal Pro Painting and I am also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. If you've been following along recently, I've been doing a series of episodes on the Off the Ladder podcast that have to do with, it's 10 things that you can do

when business is slow. And these are really foundational, actionable items that you can do, whether it's just a season, you have a slow season, or business has just all of a sudden dried up, and you're just trying to figure out how to get business in the door. So I've been going over different things that you can do, and right now we are on...

the eighth episode, so on the eighth topic that we're talking about. The last thing that we talked about was just low-hanging fruit on social media and a strategy in Facebook community groups. But today, we're going to talk about, really you could call this a lot of things, but it's the law of reciprocity. Now, what does this involve? This involves serving. This involves giving.

going out of your way to try to help others. Now, you know, this is like for me, this can, this can get kind of like muddied up. And what I want to try to communicate in this is that the ultimate goal and the posture of

your heart, if you will, with this topic is to expect nothing in return. Now, that might sound counterintuitive because we're in business, right? And we expect a return on whatever we're going to invest, whether that's our time, our money, talent, whatever.

Branden Sewell (02:15.278)
as business owners, we have that thought like, okay, whatever I give, I want to make sure I get a return. Now, this topic kind of flips that on its head. And one of the things that has helped me with this is having my Christian faith. You know, it's like the Bible teaches that the last shall be first.

and you know taking that low and humble approach to things actually has a lot of upside and a lot of value so we have to kind of put aside this mindset and mentality of what am I gonna get out of this and how is this going to benefit me and then come to these situations with what can I give

How can I benefit this other person? How can I give them more value? How can I help them to better their situation, their life, whatever? And so my encouragement is that you take this topic and like I said, you completely, you try to let go of your motive being.

getting the business which like I said it sounds backwards because we're going over this for the purpose of getting business so it almost when you hear it it's like it almost doesn't make sense what I want to say is of course in the back of your mind you have this anticipation that something might come from it but we've got to come back and check the posture of our hearts because

If our motivation is what we will get from it, then we might stop doing it because we're not seeing the return. And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes the return takes time. Sometimes it takes a little while for it to come back to you, but you're making these investments of giving your time, giving your money, giving your talent, wisdom, whatever you have.

Branden Sewell (04:33.634)
your skill and ability to others. And like I said, eventually it comes back to you. So a lot of times this is called the law of reciprocity. Now we implement this in a lot of different ways in our business. You know, that could be from doing, you know, giveaways to our community. It could be doing some free works for somebody. It could be,

doing some work to help somebody make connections or referrals with other services that they need for their projects. This could look like pouring into somebody in your same industry.

it could look like pouring into somebody who's in maybe a similar industry, but a different field and pouring into them and helping them and building relationships and what happens is when you invest that time and that energy into people and you give and you serve Ultimately, it comes back to you. It's like when if I do something for you And there's no benefit for me

the chances are is that you are likely going to feel an obligation at some point to give back to me. And so, you know, if you can get out there in your community and you can build relationships with people and you can do things that are going to add value to their lives, to their businesses, then you're going to

Deepen the value of that of really yourself being connected to that relationship so that when opportunities come up for those people that you're giving to and serving and pouring out to when the opportunity comes for them to possibly refer you business Or to mention you when the topic comes up for your services You've poured out and so they're gonna have this obligation

Branden Sewell (06:41.602)
to remember your name and refer you. And so I guess really at the core of this, this is really investing and building valuable relationships. Not just surface level stuff, not just relationships that only benefit you, but it's you stepping out and bringing value to others, making yourself valuable in your community.

And you know, there's so many different ways that we can do this. I mean, you can do it through serving in local charities and going and serving at local outreach events in your local community. It could be sponsoring some type of charity or something to give back to your community, hosting an event that has to do with giving back, whether that's a food drive or...

doing some type of like clean up, community clean up in your local city or town. There's many different things that you could do to give back. It could be your team volunteering at a local charity, a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or a thrift store, whatever.

But look for those opportunities and go serve. Serve people. Do it genuinely. Do it with a grateful heart, with a cheerful heart. And I promise you, when you position yourself in your community as a person who serves and gives and pours out and gives your time and your money and your effort and all of that to your community, it will come back to you. You will see some type of reward

from pouring out into your community and it's without fail that law of reciprocity will come back to you. So take some time, sit down, think about...

Branden Sewell (08:41.292)
What does that look like for you? How can you get involved? Maybe it starts with researching some local charities in your city or town. Maybe it means getting involved in a local networking group and having one-to-ones with other local business owners and asking them how you can help them grow their business, how you can refer them business, how you can help them thrive. And then,

what will happen is all that is going to come back to you. So I hope that this episode drives home for you guys and I hope that you find some value in it and I hope that you get just that the main point is to get out there and give back.

Get involved in your community. It really will help your business grow. And I apologize, I was out for a couple weeks. I just had to take some time away from doing the podcast. It's a lot of work, but I'm going to try to get a few more episodes pre-recorded and get those out and get back on the grind with this. And we'll have two more.

episodes after this so topic 9 and topic 10 and that'll wrap up this short series of actionable items to help you in the slow season or just in a downtime in your business or when you're getting started so anyway thanks for listening to this episode of the off the ladder podcast and I will see you next time on the next episode as always if you need any resources for your business check the show notes below like comment share rate and review the show I appreciate you guys I'll see you next time