Refer.com founder Tom Gay spent two years manually refining his product before turning it into software

Tom Gay knew he was onto something.

The systematic process he used to build a thriving high six-figure consulting practice in just two years was working. Not just for himself, but for others, too.

After all, for service providers, like attorneys, consultants and accountants, building relationships — and trust — is critical. But it is also time-consuming and hard to track. His company, called 22 Touch at the time, solved that by providing a standardized protocol for how and when to connect with prospects.

“For most small businesses, the only distinguishing feature to sell on is relationships. The only competitive advantage we have is the relationship,” Tom explains. “ We give you both a strategy for building relationships and a system for making it happen.”

Despite how well he was helping small businesses use the system to have success of their own, Tom knew the coaching and consulting methods he was using to deliver his product weren’t reliably scalable.

So he turned to software,designing and building a web-based application that would manage the process he had spent years developing manually while adding a host of new features to make it even more powerful.

“The secret to profitability is operating leverage,” Tom says.

“Software gave us that leverage by building a problem-solving machine that can be rented to others to solve their problems.”

As his approach had success, Tom saw tremendous opportunity. But one thing nagged at him: the name.

“Everything we had to do to build the 22 Touch brand was going to be hard-rock mining,” Tom says. “It described our approach, but it was also limited. I realized that would be a tough hill to climb.”

Tom and his team set to work to find a new name. They spent hours brainstorming, researching and reaching out to website domain owners. After all, they figured, if they were going to change their name, they wanted it to be top-shelf, giving them the best opportunity for success.

Eventually, they found Refer.com. It was short, easy to remember, and described their service.

It was also not for sale.

But that didn’t stop Tom. He researched the domain owner and discovered it was IdeaLab, a near-legendary Pasedena-based business incubator that has invested in or launched a host of famous companies, including CitySearch, eToys.com and NetZero.

“They had a company called Refer.com that failed about 2001, 2002,” Tom says. “They had this name basically sitting in the warehouse. We negotiated an acquisition of the name and they became small shareholders. Now they stand in the wings to co-invest if we decide to raise more capital.”

The name, according to Tom, added instant credibility, something that would’ve taken many years and hundreds of thousands dollars to build from scratch.

“We got lucky,” Tom smirks. “But we created that luck. In startups, you have to make your own luck.”

Today, Refer.com offers a robust web-based system that helps professionals grow their business. “It’s all based on the principle that people will do business with people they know, like and trust,” Tom says. “If you live that principle in a disciplined way, you will create an abundant flow of new business.”

From their office off of Eagle Road, Tom and his close-knit team, which includes multiple-time Boise startup alum Chris Bounds — the company’s President and COO — serve clients all over the world.

“Boise is great. It’s highly relational and receptive to ideas,” he says. “However, it is not reflective of the broader market overall. You have to play out your story in other markets in order to prove you have a solid business model.”

The company is growing, sometimes in areas they didn’t foresee. For example, while their product was originally designed to serve independent profesionals, Refer.com is getting increased interest from companies who want to implement it for their entire sales team. This meant rearranging some priorities for Refer.com’s product development team. Moving enterprise-type features up the schedule and delaying some of their earlier plans.

“We didn’t want to go after the enterprise space for another six months or year, but damn if somebody didn’t want to buy it right now,” Tom jokes.

While Refer.com has good traction, Tom wants more. Even after investing years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into building the company, he knows he is still in the thick of building the company Refer.com can become.

“My wife reminded me the other day that every company I’ve ever built took seven years before it reached the level of success I hoped for,” Tom says.

“There are so few overnight successes. When you read about these internet successes out there, what you don’t read about is that they spent three years in the woods trying to figure out what’s what.”

His advice? Keep running at full speed as long as you can.

“A wise man said to me 20 years ago, the secret to being an entrepreneur is to say alive long enough to get lucky. So I keep running fast and hard. Sometimes it’s the track shoes that you have on as an entrepreneur that can make all the difference.”