The City Wire Business of the Month: Business By Referral

Editor’s note: The City Wire highlights each month a business operating in the Fort Smith region. Business struggles, accomplishments, philanthropic support and many factors are considered when selecting a business to profile. Input from The City Wire readers also will be considered.

Business By Referral (BBR) is not a business, but the newly formed organization does bring several businesses together for the purpose of boosting one of the most important business sectors in the Fort Smith area —the small business sector.

BBR began in February 2009 by “five people with a vision,” noted BBR President Jeff Smith, who works as vice president-investments for Raymond James & Associates in Fort Smith. In addition to Smith, the first five group includes Katie Basiliere, Summit Hotel Group; Casey Collyar, First Western Mortgage; Jacob Gorham, Corrugated Services Inc.; and Orval Smith, Tri-Hill Pest.

“All five founding members were initially bonded by one common factor. We had been invited to join other networking groups and it just did not click with us. Some were too stuffy, while others were too chaotic. Some focused only on generating direct referral business, and then sharing that information with everyone else in the group,” Jeff Smith explained. “For three months, we met almost every single week to hammer out what we wanted this group to be, what we wanted to do with it, and who we wanted to populate it with. … In the end, we put together a group that feels more like a family than a function.”

The five founding principles of BBR, are:
• There shall never be any membership fee;
• What is good for one is good for all;
• Referrals are private business matters and are not the sole focus of our meeting. Therefore they should occur outside of the meeting;
• We stand behind the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce and its directives; and,
• CPA

What is CPA? You have to join to find out, but Jeff Smith said it is “an undercurrent for everything we do in our group and outside of it.”

The small group began recruiting new members in July, and as of mid-October had a roster of 27 members. Possibly what makes BBR different from other business referral groups is that they seek a “selective membership” who “believe in our community” and seek community success along with their primary goal of business success, said Jeff Smith.

“It is difficult to sum our vision up into one concise package. We exist to serve each other and each other’s businesses. I may not get a referral in any given week, or month. But, if I am running into a wall with regard to a target client niche I’m trying to reach, or with regard to a message that seems to be falling on deaf ears, I know that there are 26 people who are willing to go to bat with me and help me take my practice to that next level,” Jeff Smith said. “It is our hope that, with time and continued effort into developing as a group, we can do that same thing for our community.”

The BBR membership criteria is built around tenure, market share, community exposure and passion.
 
“We look for folks who have been in business long enough to be consummate professionals – yet not so long as to be established. We want you good. We want you committed to your profession. And we want you a little bit hungry. If we do our job correctly with the selection process, BBR will be made up of people who are on their way to being the best in their business,” Jeff Smith explained.

The group meets at 7:30 a.m. each Thursday morning at the Aspen Hotel in Fort Smith to share ideas and issues, and hear from someone active in the community. The speakers have included Tracy Winchell, with the economic development office of the city of Fort Smith, and Ivy Owen, executive director of the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority.