195 | Why 68% of Clients Leave (It Has Nothing to Do with Your Service) | Leadership, Delegation & Systems with AI Frameworks

What if your next client, referral, or six-figure opportunity isn't hiding in your marketing funnel but in a relationship you've accidentally neglected?

Most founders think client retention is about delivering great work.

It's not.

In this conversation, Dawn Andrews sits down with relationship marketing expert and LinkedIn strategist Janice Porter to unpack why people leave, why follow-up feels so awkward, and why the businesses growing fastest aren't necessarily marketing harder; they're remembering people better.

If you've ever worried about sounding salesy, struggled to stay in touch, or treated LinkedIn like another item on your endless CEO checklist, this episode will completely reframe how you think about relationships, visibility, and business growth.

Download Janice Porter's FREE Real Connection Guide

If this conversation made you rethink how you're approaching networking, follow-up, and client retention, grab Janice's free resource and learn the practical steps behind her REAL Connection System.

What You'll Learn

• Relationship Marketing Is 80% Relationship, 20% Marketing
• Your LinkedIn Strategy Might Be More About You Than Your Audience
• The Secret to Better Networking Isn't More Messages
• Slow Down Your Outreach to Speed Up Your Results
• Client Retention Has Less to Do With Service Than You Think

Resources & Links

Connect with Janice Porter

• Website: janiceporter.com
• LinkedIn: Janice Porter
• REAL Connection Guide

Want to increase revenue and impact? Listen to “She's That Founder” for insights on business strategy and female leadership to scale your business. Each episode offers advice on effective communication, team building, and management. Learn to master routines and systems to boost productivity and prevent burnout. Our delegation tips and business consulting will advance your executive leadership skills and presence.

Transcript

She’s That Founder
195 | Why 68% of Clients Leave (It Has Nothing to Do with Your Service) 

Dawn Andrews: She helps founders turn genuine relationships into consistent business without feeling pushy or awkward or like you need to be on LinkedIn every waking hour.

So if you've ever avoided following up with someone because you didn't wanna seem salesy or maybe you just weren't quite sure what to say, this episode is going to change how you think about that forever. Stay with us

Welcome to She's That Founder. I'm Dawn Andrews, business strategist, executive coach, and the person who will tell you the hard thing your best friend is too nice to say.

Today's guest is someone I've been wanting to have on the show for a while. She started her career as a teacher, moved into corporate training, and built an entire business around one deceptively simple idea, that the quality of your relationships is the quality of your business.

Girl, I couldn't agree more. She is a LinkedIn specialist, a relationship marketing expert, and the host of the Relationships Rule podcast, which if you are not already listening to it, you need to fix that immediately after this episode. She works with founders and entrepreneurs to build the kind of client relationships that don't just retain business, they generate it organically, consistently, and without cold pitching.

So Janice, welcome to She's That Founder. I'm so happy to have you.

Janice Porter: Wow, those are big shoes to fill. Thank you so much.

Dawn Andrews: That's you. That's you, girl.

Janice Porter: That's very kind. Very kind. Thank you for that introduction. I'm so glad- Well- ... to be here ...

Dawn Andrews: i feel very lucky to get your time, so I'm... Everybody out there listen up because this is good stuff.

Because I think it tells us as listeners something important about how you think. So from teacher to corporate trainer to LinkedIn and relationship marketing specialist, those are, like at least on the titles, are not obvious steps. So what for you was the through line? What connects all of that for you?

Janice Porter: I think being a people person, I think that's really the key to it. I do remember, and this just came to me when I was thinking about the question that you had sent me, and I was born in England and I was in what we called I guess preschool there because we started school earlier than in Vancouver when I moved here.

So I was four and a half, so pre-kindergarten kind of. And I remember a lot of the kids coming in and crying when their moms left and whatever. Hmm. And I was like making them all feel better because it was all, for me, about people even back then- Wow ... making other people feel better. So whether I was teaching kids or adults, because corporate training's just like teaching children just with a little bit of style perhaps.

But it's really based for me on listening, asking good questions, and making people feel seen. And so that never changes. The context may shift, but the human need underneath stays the same. So I think that's where it all threads through.

Dawn Andrews: so much heart in what you just shared, and it sounds like it's at the center of everything you do. Mm-hmm. It's just the classroom got a little bigger.

Janice Porter: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Dawn Andrews: let's get into the work that you do a little bit. you use the phrase relationship marketing, and I wanna make sure that our listener understands what that actually means, and I wanna make sure I understand what it actually means.

Sure. Because I think we, we hear it, and we think we know, and I would imagine that most of us are probably not quite on point with it. from your perspective, what's relationship marketing really, and where do you think everybody kinda has it not quite right?

Janice Porter: Well, I think if you just take the term relationship marketing, most people focus on the term marketing.

That's what they hear. They hear marketing. Mm-hmm. And so they think, " Hmm, okay, I'm out there, putting myself out there, being visible, me, me, me, it's all about me."

Dawn Andrews: Like giving to get, it sounds like.

Janice Porter: Yes, exactly. Very good.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: But it isn't. I look at it as eighty percent relationship, twenty percent marketing.

This comes to me actually from this book that I read, The Power of Human Connection: How Relationship Marketing is Transforming the Way People Succeed. This was written by Cody Bateman, who is the owner of a company that I've been affiliated with for eighteen years.

It's called Promptings now. It was Send Out Cards. But that's where this philosophy actually came from. Yeah. And basically, like you said, it's not about sending out to get, it's about sending out to give. It's about always making sure that you give first, that you give without expectation, that you celebrate people, that you gain their trust as a human more than as anything else.

People don't buy your stuff. They buy with emotion and they buy you. They have to trust you, right? So it's not like as much as I might say you can systemize and have a campaign to send this to stay in touch with people, it's really not a campaign, it's a practice or it's a habit.

It's a way of being and that's what I like to instill in people. In fact, well, I guess to put it all together, there's a famous quote which I looked it up because I wasn't sure who said it first and I think it was Teddy Roosevelt, the president of the United States, but then it's been told by Zig Ziglar who I admired, in the old days as a personal development leader.

But that people don't care what you know until they know that you care.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: That's the essence of it.

Dawn Andrews: Well, let's talk about that part in real life and where things go sideways because we are seasoned ladies of an age.

Janice Porter: It's all said. We're wise women.

Dawn Andrews: Yes, girl. You know we are.

Yes. But what I notice is that especially for people that have grown up in the social media age, and even for like, especially for young people who are, have just entered or are entering the job and professional world-

Janice Porter: Mm-hmm ...

Dawn Andrews: Their perception of giving to give or giving to build trust I think is skewed a little bit because social media, especially if you're young and using it coming up, it rewards a look at me way of thinking.

So give me an example of what is actually, building relationship and what is the relationship marketing version? What is somebody actually doing when they're sharing to give?

Janice Porter: Well, I mean, you're talking generic, I think specific- Yeah,because I think on LinkedIn more than anywhere else. Okay?

Dawn Andrews: Great. Well, let's talk about that.

Janice Porter: Okay. Because, and I've worked with both types of people, and You cannot get them to change. Yeah. But some you can. So I'll give you an example.

 I had a client who was a, She actually teaches coaches and has a certification program, so she teaches business coaches, executive coaches, that kind of thing.

Okay. And she's very smart, and she's very good at what she does, and she posts on LinkedIn all the time. But every single post has a picture of her on it. Every single post is about the next upcoming certification or the next event that they're doing.

Dawn Andrews: Mm.

Janice Porter: In order to be more showing yourself more as an authority in the field, let's say, which she thinks she's doing, okay?

But she's really just advertising and marketing. She needs to step back, and she needs to talk more about stories that have happened with her clients to become successful. She needs to teach her elements of what she does, you know, little bits, little snippets here and there, and then throw in the next event is this, right?

But it just, I see it so many... I don't know. I don't understand putting... i'm always hesitant to put a picture of myself up there. I go the opposite. I've gotten better because, I was in an event a couple of weeks ago, and people were posting pictures from the events on LinkedIn 'cause it was a business event, and I had a couple of photos.

I thought, " maybe I'll just put one up." I don't look the best, but there are other people in it too, right? And then make a point about, which I did, about it was an in-person event, which I hadn't been to for a very long time, that kind of thing. And so for me it was a throwback to, "Oh, yeah, networking in person was fun. I should do it again," you know, 'cause I haven't for years. , And so that would be an example. But did I answer the question or do I need to-

Dawn Andrews: Yeah. No, that was... I think it's very clear because, so what I took away from what you just shared is that- Part of what people are saying, and we'll just stay in the LinkedIn zone- Right

I think it's challenging when we're deciding what it is that we want to share because the majority of people, by default, are doing the marketing first, people second version. Mm-hmm. And so most of us in looking what others are doing to kind of model what our choices are, are looking at that picture of me, me, me, me, me version of things over and over, and we think, "Okay, well I guess I better do a personal photo shoot and get a bunch of pictures of me and-"

Janice Porter: Yes.

Dawn Andrews: share about the next thing I'm doing," because we think that we're not doing it right if we don't do it that way.

Janice Porter: Mm-hmm.

Dawn Andrews: And what we're sharing , is not necessarily the opposite, but just rebalancing of what it is that we're trying to do.

Janice Porter: Yes, but then I'll just open that up a little bit and say that Instagram is a lifestyle type platform. So it's very different, and it's not as real as I don't feel, but that's where that might belong more than on LinkedIn, if that makes any sense.

Dawn Andrews: Yes.

Janice Porter: Yeah. 'Cause there's certain, professions it makes more sense to be on one than the other. You don't actually have to be everywhere, but that's another question for down the road maybe. for this audience- Yeah ... we're talking to founders and leaders and business owners- Mm-hmm

Dawn Andrews: where you can... Look, I enjoy Instagram, so that's like my weekend playtime. But look-

Janice Porter: Me too. Me too.

Dawn Andrews: Right. It's pretty. Yeah. That's

Janice Porter: right. It is. It's pretty. Exactly. It's the Met Gala, and it's the- Yes ... best recipes that are out this week. It's the fashion and so on.

Dawn Andrews: Yes. But like for the purposes of growing my business- Mm-hmm

LinkedIn is where I absolutely want and need to be, and so you're helping to... Like already you've taken the conversation of do I need to be everywhere- Mm-hmm ... and then, okay, let's go to LinkedIn because I'm a business owner, and that's where I wanna focus my time and attention.

Janice Porter: Two reasons there. That one, and my audience or one of my audiences is there.

Dawn Andrews: Yes.

Janice Porter: A big part of my audience. Yes. Because that's why you need to be there, right?

Dawn Andrews: So you're finding the playgrounds like that, like the clubhouse hangout, wherever your people are, and if the

Janice Porter: majority-

Dawn Andrews: Find where people are ... of your clients, customers are on LinkedIn- Right that's where you need to be.

Janice Porter: Right. Exactly. Yeah.

Dawn Andrews: Got it. Okay. So what I find fascinating about what you do is the people that you're helping are not struggling because they don't care about their clients. They care deeply about them, but they're not necessarily showing it in ways that land, and I think that's part of what we started discussing.

Why do you think that is? Like, why do you think that smart, successful, genuinely caring founders feel so awkward about staying in touch and following up and nurturing relationships or flip that balance to where they're sort of pushing more of themselves out there than they need to be? What do you think is going on underneath it?

Janice Porter: I don't know. In some cases, I think they hold back. They think they're, you know, in the case of focusing on themselves, they don't know how to... A-actually, I'm amazed at how many people that I've trained, 'cause I say upfront that m-my approach to LinkedIn is more about building relationships, so speaking one-to-one in the messaging, in the mailboxes.

And they don't say DMs on LinkedIn, but we tend to carry that over from somewhere else. But yeah, so in the mailboxes as opposed to content. So I'm amazed at how many people don't know how to have a conversation in a mailbox. Like, they just don't know how to connect with people and not pitch, which of course is what we definitely don't want them to do.

Yeah. So I think They hold back, they stay away because they're not really sure. I don't know

Dawn Andrews: I kind of feel the same- I would imagine another thing that I... Like, I don't necessarily pitch when I go into the box.

Janice Porter: Mm-hmm.

Dawn Andrews: But in the absence of pitching, it's like all of a sudden I've forgotten how to have a conversation.

Like in that context, you know, if you and I were sitting in a room together and we just met and I'd never met you before, and we're at a networking event, I can always like, "Hey, have you seen the bathroom? Like, where is it? How pretty is it?" Yeah. Like, I could start a conversation and we could find common ground together.

But for some reason, in that messaging thread behind the scenes with somebody, I... It's like my brain is gone. I don't know what that phenomenon is.

Janice Porter: Well, let me ask you this. When you do meet somebody new on LinkedIn, whether it's somebody's post has come up on your newsfeed and you think, "Oh, they look interesting," and you go to comment.

How many times do you actually go and look at their profile first and sort of find a point of connection or a point of a rapport that you can use in that conversation that you might, 'cause that's key.

Dawn Andrews: Ah.

Janice Porter: Right?

Dawn Andrews: So it's

Janice Porter: like when you in person, Janet- What's their zodiac sign? Yeah. What's their zodiac sign?

What university did they go to or- Yeah ... or where did they live? Or you can see... I see between the lines.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah. But that, like, you just opened up something for me there for sure, because it, there's something about seeing it in that flat two-dimensional on-screen. You know, just like some- Yeah sometimes people prefer to write by hand- Yes ... on a pad of paper-

Yeah ...versus typing into the computer.

There's something that happens for me in going from being in physical prox-proximity, like real life with somebody, to looking at those things online and literally until you just said that, I had not translated that activity onto the screen. I think that's a genius little nugget that you just shared.

Janice Porter: Good, because I love it myself, and I'm just looking at your profile real fast to see if I, something dawns on me. No.

Dawn Andrews: Oh, yes.

Janice Porter: None did. But, oh, yeah. So I'm looking through your profile, and I'm looking right now at your work experience piece.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: And down in the depths there, I see Motion Picture Literary Agency. Yes. That was one of your-- perhaps one of your first jobs maybe?

Dawn Andrews: They go,

Janice Porter: they go much farther back than that. Yeah. No, it's the last one. It's the last one. It's the first one you put in here. Yeah. So that fascinates me because I love the movies and I love movie industry.

So if I were to first meet you through LinkedIn, first I'd reach out and ask you to connect. Yeah. And then I always start the first conversation with something non-business. Okay? And then for me, my curiosity would come into what was that all about, the Motion Picture Literacy piece.

Yeah. So just looking for something that shows that I've actually looked at your profile.

Dawn Andrews: And isn't that amazing? Because I just wanna call this out for everybody listening because this is blowing my mind. Janice opened my profile and took fifteen seconds-

Janice Porter: Yeah ...

Dawn Andrews: to read through my profile and look for something that caught her eye to be able to have a real conversation with me.

And like me, I would imagine most of you out there have a bunch of stuff in your LinkedIn inbox and messages from people that AI has written it. It looks like somebody just rubber-stamped messages into the box because it gets something done, and it's sort of like casting a really wide net to see if anything pops.

But I can tell you already, if you wrote me a quick note and you just said, "Oh, I saw that you worked here," and, "You were in Motion Picture Lit," that's pretty fascinating. I'd love to hear more.

Whether it starts a conversation or not, I would immediately have more warmth towards you because there was a common ground moment.

Janice Porter: Perfect. So the thing is that those people that you just men-mentioned, they're thinking transactionally. They're thinking numbers. It's all a numbers game. I don't work that way. I work a relationship way, and that's the difference, right? Yeah. It's not-- I always say, and this isn't an original quote. It comes from that I admire in the relational field.

What they said was, Slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome.

Dawn Andrews: Ah, I like that.

Janice Porter: Slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome. So if you can pick five new people to connect with in a week from LinkedIn, that's actually one a day. So you do have time for 10 minutes to go look up a few people, see who sparks your interest based on a lot of things like the strategy of who you're looking for and all of that good stuff.

But you can always find people to reach out to that intrigue you, right? Yeah. Or there's something in their profile that intrigues you. That being said, you can also go back and look at your existing connections and do the same thing with five people that you're, you actually haven't talked to for a long time, and wouldn't it be nice if you rekindled that relationship?

So what's new in their world? It may show on their LinkedIn profile, and you haven't talked to them for three years, so you don't know.

Dawn Andrews: okay, this is something that I'm really curious about. You shared that your clients have a holy shit moment when they learn how many strategies exist, connecting or reconnecting on LinkedIn that can actually turn into business, and I think that that's fantastic.

So what is that moment? What does it look like? And I'm also curious, like, what do they think LinkedIn is before they work with you, and what do they understand differently after they've worked with you? I think we've got examples of it, but, you know- Yeah. I've asked you like 18 questions.

Janice Porter: That's okay.

Dawn Andrews: So tell me about the holy shit moment.

Janice Porter: Well, in most cases, people say, "Well, I'm getting my social media all together, so I've gotta get something up on LinkedIn." And they think when they say that, they mean Or they'll say, "I'm not posting enough." " I post every day."

Well, okay, are you getting engagement on stuff? Oh, do you respond to the engagement that you get? Because for me, it's about relationships. It's not about how much stuff. Yeah. And a lot of the time I hear, " Oh, I didn't know you could, import your contacts so you can actually work through them and see who's alive, who's dead, who you don't even wanna talk to anymore," all of that good stuff.

Or, "Oh, I didn't know you could actually do a strategic search or you could..." There are so many different things. There's a system on different things you can reach out for. I'll give you a little example. One of the things that I like to do on your network on the menu, there's, at the top of the LinkedIn pages, it's either two little people or it says Network.

Yeah. And when you go there, you can see, I think there's two things, grow and catch up. And these are two different strat, um, lists of people that are a need to-- newsletter or inviting you to an event. And then the catch up, it might be their birthday, an anniversary, a new job, whatever. You can actually look, okay, whose birthday is it?

Okay, don't just click wish them happy birthday, but actually go to their profile and send them a personalized message 'cause you haven't talked to them for a long time. Yeah. Like, "Hey Bob, it's been a minute. I can't believe it. And now it's your birthday. So I just noticed that online," blah. And maybe you say something else, but it's a message, a private message.

Maybe you do a voice message, maybe you do a vi-video message, which both are a little bit better. But I had this, an experience, where somebody wished me happy birthday in September. It was my birthday, and I looked... All he said was happy birthday in the message, and it was a message to me. And I looked at it and I went, " Who is this person?"

He's a first level connection of mine, but I don't know who it is. So I went to his profile and I thought, "Hmm, he actually does need some help with his LinkedIn profile. It's pretty bad and old," but not to that at the moment. And I responded to his happy birthday greeting and I said, "Hey, thank you so much, Dave. You're not gonna believe this, but it looks like we've been connected since two thousand twelve." I said, "And I don't think we've ever had a real conversation. So what do you think? Should we have one?" Ended up having a couple of Zoom calls and he became a client of mine and I did his profile for him.

Dawn Andrews: So fantastic. All from the happy birthday message and from you using your authentic approach to connecting with him.

Janice Porter: Yeah. And I've got other stories like that where it's just if-- Most people will-- won't reach out. They won't do it, they won't take the time. But you're missing out because those are all signals of ways that you can reconnect with people.

You can reach out with nothing in return. Like sure, I said to you, I was honest. I said, "I think he needs help. He could be a client." I didn't really know that at that point. Yeah. But for me, the best bet is to get on with him, have a couple of messages, offer to have a Zoom call. One of the lines I use a lot is, " I'd like to turn our connection into a real connection," and I have capital letters for the word real.

"Would you like to jump on a Zoom call next week or so?" And I don't throw in my calendar then. I always wait and say, "Would you like to..." And they go, "Yeah, do you have one?" So I don't reverse.

Dawn Andrews: So again, it's so obvious and simple and in these online spaces, I think because it's easy to click a button We just keep clicking buttons or we associate volume and numbers with success, which doesn't necessarily trade into revenue or real relationships and introductions to bigger things.

And, I'm feeling myself First of all, getting a lot calmer about hanging out on

Janice Porter: LinkedIn. Oh, good. Good.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah. So well done. And, um, realizing that I think I had been approaching it in this like it's just another like thing that I gotta check off in my day. So yes, I might spend fifteen or twenty minutes there, but it's like, okay, click here, check your connections, double check your comments, and okay, next.

Yeah. Like, I'm-- and, and if those were actual human beings sit-standing in front of me, like the five people who were kind enough to like a post or write a nice- Yeah ... message back, comment below, there, there is no way... I mean, I would be like, oh my gosh, I would have been the most rude person ever if I was like, " Hey, thanks," and just like blew right past them.

And I think it's just very easy to forget that there are humans that are behind the clicks, right?

Janice Porter: Well, it is, but It's a mind shift really. Right. Right? It really is. I saw a post this morning on Instagram actually, and it was.

Do you know who Cory Booker is?

Janice Porter: Senator, right? In the United States.

Dawn Andrews: From New Jersey. 

Janice Porter: That's right. Okay. Well, he writes-- he often shares some s-stories, interesting stories of Americans that have touched his heart. And there was a woman talking about, being in the grocery store, and the price of groceries was just, it's insane, as we all know.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: But she could see a young woman in front of her was struggling to, like, hoping that the last item wasn't gonna put her over the top kind of thing. Yeah. Which it did. So she was struggling to decide what to put back. What she took out were, like, Paw Patrol Band-Aids so she, this woman, said " I put those on my bill." And the girl said, "Don't, no, no, don't, don't, that's very nice of you, but no." And she said, "No, no." And then she said, "Put her whole bill on my bill." And so the guy behind her started joking and said, "You wanna take mine too?" He's, like, shoving it closer, but in a joking, nice way.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: Yeah. And so they were having a little laugh about it, but she did. She paid for this. She said, " I could see how hard it was, and it was just my moment where I had to be the blessing." And, if you give to give, the laws of reciprocity work in strange ways. You know? It's not gonna be that person who's going to come back, but somebody's going to put a blessing on her.

 I am not a religious person. She was. But the sense of it was what got me. Mm-hmm. The sense of how we must always... Don't count everything with check marks and checks and balances. Just, that's the way relationship marketing needs to work as far as I'm concerned. It's just do what feels right.

Dawn Andrews: I love it. So we're gonna end part one with a stat that I think is gonna land hard for the-- our listeners. This is something that you shared. You shared it with me, and I think it's, I think it might even be on your website, but sixty-eight percent of clients leave-

Janice Porter: Mm-hmm ...

Dawn Andrews: not because of the quality of work, but because they feel uncared for.

And actually, before I go into this question- Mm-hmm ... I just wanna say thank you for sharing that story. That moved me to tears, actually. I'll

Janice Porter: send it to you because it really, it, it will when you hear her.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah. It's just so wonderful. Okay, so-

Janice Porter: Okay, so sixty-eight percent of clients leave

Dawn Andrews:. Yeah. Because they, because they don't feel cared for. That's a ridiculous number.

Janice Porter: I can give you two stories, if I may.

Dawn Andrews: Okay. Yeah.

Janice Porter: One is, a friend of mine did well in business, and he kept changing... They moved the family home bigger and better, and he did that.

He had three homes, so first one, second one, third one, and in each case, over fifteen years, this is, and this is a true story, and in each case, he used a different realtor. Why? He didn't move from o- one city to another.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: He just moved neighborhoods because the realtors never stay in touch.

Dawn Andrews: Yeah.

Janice Porter: So why would- And the one,

Dawn Andrews: from one realtor, that could've been, like-

Janice Porter: Yeah.

Twenty thousand dollars a year ... that could've made your year over and

Dawn Andrews: over again.

Janice Porter: Yeah. Could have been. Yeah. Yeah. Could have been. And they don't realize that- Those little things make the difference. And the good realtors, the ones that stay in business for years and years and years quite often do. But the ones that don't, they're the ones that don't think it matters.

It's the little things that matter, right? And, the other story, this is actually a story from this book, okay? So Cody, the owner and founder of SendOutCards, he goes to the same church for years. Every Sunday, they go to the same church. The same w-woman plays the organ every Sunday in the church. And Cody was in the habit, as I try to be, of who needs to hear from me today and who do I send a card to today?

And this particular day, he decided he wanted to send a card to the lady in the church, I can't remember her name now, who, plays the organ every... And to tell her how much he appreciated the music she plays and that she does that volunteering every Sunday. And he put it in the mail.

Two weeks later, he's coming out of church, and the lady's there, and she stops him, and she says, "Cody, I have to tell you, thank you so much for that card. The day I received it..." I still, eighteen years I've been in this company, I still get goosebumps when I say this, okay? She said, "The day that I received your card, I was going to quit playing the organ in the church because I was tired of people saying, 'Why don't you play this song?

Why don't you do that?' Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was going to the phone to call the church, but something stopped me, and I went to the door instead to get the mail, and your card was there."

Dawn Andrews: So moving. It really is the tiniest things It's the little things

Dawn Andrews: Well, and I feel like we need those even more present now.

Janice Porter:  So much today we've come full circle, so that's right. We do. We need relationship today. We need people to show that they care. And I think, we beat ourselves up thinking sometimes I didn't do the work properly or, something wasn't right about the connection that we had. But it's usually that we stopped paying attention to them.

Like, why would I go back there if nobody... I actually see this with service providers a lot, like- plumbers and the tradespeople, and they need the work. Mind you, tradespeople are so busy these days for some reason. But the thing is, for someone like me, if I don't have a relationship with the person, then I'm not inclined to wanna have them back.

If they did something for me that was above and beyond, if they sent me a kind note saying thanks or for allowing me to do the work for you or whatever. We only get telemarketers. That's all we get. We don't get the follow-up that we need, and that's another whole story too, but it's all part of the same thing.

Retention is not about service quality alone. It's about making people feel remembered.

Dawn Andrews: Ugh. Talk about a killer end quote to part one. Janice Porter, everyone. We're just getting started. So, here's what I am inviting, listener sister, this is what I am inviting you to sit with before I have part two with Janice.

The business that you want is already inside the relationships that you have. You just don't have the system to activate it yet. So in our next conversation, Janice is gonna get tactical. We're gonna start talking LinkedIn strategy for founders who have, I don't know, twenty minutes a week and up, and need every one of those to count.

And we're talking about her follow-up and appreciation and celebration system, and we're absolutely gonna talk a little bit about AI and what's helping and what's hurting and the traps that nobody's warning you about. So if you aren't subscribing to the podcast already, do this so you don't miss the next episode.

And Janice, just so that we have it in this episode, where can they find you?

Janice Porter: Janiceporter.com. Mm-hmm. LinkedIn, which is just linkedin.com/in/JanicePorter. You can find me there as well. I also have a fr-free e-book on my website, janiceporter.com/#real, R-E-A-L. And in that, they'll get a lot of tactical things and that are part of my r-real connection system.

Dawn Andrews: Love it. Okay. Go forth and kick butt. I'm Sasha Juice. This is She's That Founder, and we can't wait to see you in part two.