We are on the horizon of a new industrial revolution with new opportunities abound. In this article, we want to discuss how to position yourself in the middle of growth opportunities. A matchmaker or dealmaker and I watched how people moved like this in growth sectors and kept themselves relevant while others become marginalized and obsolete.

The goal of this article is to help you understand how to position yourself and have a backup plan for your career and venture to keep yourself relevant and have food on your table to keep eating.

What is a Referral Service

A referral service is an information broker that connect supply and demand. They play an important role in our economy and are the ones who make things happen. Some referral services you are familiar for example, a dating service that match two potential dates based on preferences. Another referral service is insurance brokers that match your information to find compatible insurance policy. ObamaCare is another referral service to match you with insurance providers as well.

I need you to understand the core of every business, every sector can use the help of a referral service. Have a business that connects qualified talent with companies looking for qualified talent. Once you understand how to build and execute referral services, you have a stable money maker in your back pocket to always leverage. I know plenty of people in their 60s in big cities who quit their jobs and have nothing but broker and referral services setup to fund their retirement years.

Fundamentals of a Referral Services

To start a referral service in any sector, you have to gauge the supply and demand. It’s important to gauge the sector if it is growing or declining. Most of the stable industries are going to have established players like auto listing sites that connect car buyers to car dealers.

For you to make a splash, you going to need the following:

Better Matchmaking. This requires having more attributes to match and the use of machine learning and graph database to find more connection points between buyers and sellers.

Trade Shows. You are going to have to attend trade shows nationwide/worldwide to know your service. At these trade shows, give them free access to do a couple of searches for free at your trade booth.

CRM. You need a good Customer Relationship Management to find and manage contacts. You need contacts on both sides as leads, that you focus on converting to customers.

Sales Team. Today, you can get an outsourced sales team instead of paying for an in-house team. The Philippines is a big market for remote sales people who contact via WhatsApp and phone to reach potential customers.

The business model is you allow the market to manifest itself. You allow the buyers and sellers to specify what they are looking for in as much detail as possible. You get your service out there for both parties to play with and get them the business they looking for.

Notice one thing you don’t need – you don’t need a web site for your business. You don’t need to be telling other people what you doing – you rise in silence. All you create is a matchmaking service for the supply-side and the demand-side and let the market determine itself.

In this example, we are going to discuss the print farm industry and how you can create a referral service for this growth industry.

Know Your Customer: Print Farm

A print farm is a business with an array of industrial 3D printers that can manufacture physical object from a 3D file. This is also known as micro-manufacturing because of the less space needed to manufacture on spec.

There are two types of print farms, one goes broke fast and the other is thriving. The one that goes broke fast tries to create trinkets to sell on Esty. The one that thrives is the one that create one-off industrial replacement parts or improvement parts.

Here is a YouTube video of an individual who created a print farm and explain his business setup.

This is a more advanced print farm

These are the type of print farms you are targeting in your referral service. These are print farms that create pieces for industrial parts that can be discontinued or the manufacture went out of business. They also can provide these pieces quicker than the manufacturer who may be overseas and will have to slow ship the part, where it is easier and quicker to use a print farm.

Noticed they use different types of machines for wood, steel, plastic and can perform laser and robotic forming. So, these attributes are needed to match a print farm capability with customers who need specific requirements to print.

Know Your Customer: Commercial/Industrial

The type of businesses that require print farm are industries that generate high revenue and depending on machines that has parts that need to be replaced. For example, auto parts for classic cars that are no longer made, a patented part for steam engines designed to protect the operator. These machines cannot have long downtime and if parts are needed, it is needed immediately to keep the business operating.

These are the aerospace industry, the manufacturing industry, agriculture and farming industry. Another industry is those who have created unique limited runs like a 3D printed basketball where they can license the right to print their design for royalties. A print farm can target items out of patent or get licensed to print from the original manufacturer.

Matching Technique

I think most people know and I have no problem plugging – our DBEXX exchange platform has a matching engine that we can customize for various sectors from crypto exchanges to trade auctions. We can create referral services for dating services, job recruiters, and yes, we can create print farm matching engines as well.

For matching, the best technology out there is using a graph database with nodes and edges to connect attributes of supply and demand to match. For example, a node “CNC” will match a CNC wood furniture part buyer looking for a CNC wood furniture manufacturer. Another technique is using tags but both will work because you can use algorithms to transfer the graph or the tag library.

What is important is you don’t focus just on customers searching, you use off-site jobs that can search your database and CRM and recommend services and find new leads similar to your existing customer base and send them a marketing message. You also need to check print farm capabilities to print in a short time or have a waitlist. You also need to find out the quantity the buyer needs for parts and who is capable of fulfilling that amount of 3D printed parts.

In summary and to keep it in mind – a key/value style dataset or use tags or graph nodes, algorithms to research and create new marketing leads, match capability and scale of each party.

Transactions and Revenue

How do you make money as a referral? You can make money on both sides of supply and demand. You can charge a monthly subscription fee for buyers and sellers to access the search. Then you can charge a fee for the connection between the buyer and seller by trading their contact information or facilitate the transaction match with a commission on the deal.

There is another party you may have forgotten about – the person that owns the 3D file to print the object, you can charge them a distribution fee because you encrypt the file that can be unlocked by the buyer and this is similar to the software download business with unlock serial codes.

It’s kind of important to discuss transactions, you can do credit card transactions but there are more options. You can send an invoice and they can pay direct transfer to your bank account, bypassing any transaction fees from credit card payments. Another option and what I recommend is consider crypto utility tokens and let’s discuss that option.

Blockchain and Tokenomics

The blockchain is good technology to encrypt 3D printed files that can be decrypted by the print farm to have right to print. Once the print farm provides their digital signature using their private key and digital signature, that creates a unique 3D printed file for the printer to get a one-time license to print. You can facilitate that blockchain solution that can hold the 3D print file and you have a forward-hashed distributed ledger with the 3D file owner to verify the activity of their files being transacted.

Tokenomics is where you can use a utility token and the purpose of the utility token is fast settlement of cash or transaction. See if the buyer writes a check or pay with a credit card, it takes time for that cash to settle and all business need cash flow to keep running smoothly.

Tokenomics using stablecoin or utility token that is managed by the broker allow faster transaction that your business can settle. The way you do it is offering the tokens to the buyers and sellers to buy like a prepaid gift card. Then you deduct the amount and send fast payment and fast refunds as a holding operator.

Also, this is a consideration to fund your referral service is to have an initial coin offering where any buyer can purchase the coin at 93% discount and get 7% back for each token purchased by the supply and demand customers who pay 100% for the token that are initially released. That is a better offer than a bond offering or getting someone to invest in your business making demands on your operation, just focus on you and your customers.  

Referral Service Drives Sectors

What I see over and over is when someone smart retires, they either publish content or create a referral service for the industry they worked in as their second wind. In fact, they don’t retire, they rewire their professional pursuits with new venture.  

You should always understand when there is new growth sector like AI or 3D print farms, a matchmaker help grow the sector by connecting the demand with supply. It is a critical piece of accelerating growth. Matches need to be made to find qualified talented people to work at reputable startups or consult others on the sector to grow their business. This is where referral services are so important.

Once you can create one referral service, you can keep making frameworks for other referral services for healthcare sector, job recruiting, auto parts trading and more. This is also passive income if you kickstart with a platform that can run its own algorithms and let the buyer and seller set the attributes of what they looking for.

Remember to stay in commercial and professional sectors to move in silence and around the real money. When you start doing stuff like dating matching or consumer-level, the scammers and weirdos show up and they don’t have the money like the industrial/commercial ventures. The best solution is to focus on business and government sectors and help contribute to the growth of the overall economy.