Professional Experience Built Over Decades
I’m Mike Garrison, founder of the Strategic Referral Team. My work sits at the intersection of strategy, trust, personal experience and the simple truth that real growth comes from pursuing the right clients in the right way.
For years, I’ve made myself widely available, calls, webinars, one-off conversations with firm owners navigating growth, referrals, and exit planning.
That generosity created reach.
It did not create continuity.
Here’s the hard truth I’ve learned:
Most owners don’t need more insight. They need fewer isolated decisions.
So I’ve made a deliberate shift.
I still teach publicly.
I still share frameworks, ideas, and observations openly.
What I’m consolidating is decision-level access, the ability to stay close to how owners think and choose over time.
That work now lives inside Strategic Referral Team.
SRT is not a mastermind.
It’s not a content platform.
It’s a small, ongoing system designed to keep owners close to the decisions that compound trust, referrals, and enterprise value, before urgency forces those decisions for them.
To protect that, membership is capped.
Not as a gate.
As a constraint that makes the work worth doing, for everyone involved.
The Personal Reality That Shaped SRT
Behind the credentials is something more important: my life at home. My 22 year old son Robert has multiple disabilities, and the responsibility and privilege of being present for him has changed everything. It reshaped my priorities, my time and my definition of success. It also forced a hard pivot in the summer of 2025. I couldn’t keep the relentless travel schedule common in this industry. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my family to maintain “business as usual.”
So I rebuilt everything…intentionally.
SRT is designed around bringing the right 50 business owners to me twice a year in Roanoke. These sessions aren’t retreats. They’re deep-work intensives where we tackle strategy, execution and accountability shoulder-to-shoulder. I created a program that allows me to be fully present with my family and fully present with my clients.
Nothing diluted.
Nothing outsourced.
Nothing half-hearted.
Why SRT Exists
I wanted one place where I could bring everything I’ve mastered across my career: commercial sales expertise, referral science, ideal client acquisition, exit strategy, business growth models, accountability frameworks and relationship driven leadership and pour it into people who are ready to use it.
SRT is that place. It’s the forum where:
- Owners get clarity on exactly who their ideal clients are by name, not just category.
- They build a predictable path to those clients through disciplined relationship driven strategies.
- They receive guidance from someone who has actually built, owned, exited and rebuilt companies, not someone guessing from theory, or, who took a course/certification.
- They grow without sacrificing their integrity, their time or their sanity.
- They learn from what I’m learning, in real time, with zero sugar coating and no guru nonsense.
What This Means for You
If you join SRT, you’re stepping into a partnership with someone who has lived the entrepreneurial grind, navigated the complexities of exit planning, built companies from scratch, and faced the personal realities that force you to choose what truly matters.
You’re joining a community built for seriousness, not crowds. For owners who value depth over noise. For leaders who want more ideal clients, not more marketing chaos.
I built SRT so I could give everything I’ve got, now and in the future, without compromise. If you’re ready to grow in the same way, intentionally and with purpose, then you’re in the right place.