Don Martelli + Joe Apfelbaum: How To Get Clients On Alignable

All right.

So welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. We have an incredible thought leader and marketing expert, Dan Martelli. Don, can you tell us a little bit about yourself briefly before we get the interview started? You are the Chief Marketing Officer of Alignable. It's one of the world's largest professional social networks. Can you tell us a little bit about—

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So former journalist for the Boston Globe, spent 25 years now in marketing communications, mostly on the storytelling kind of content development side. I'm currently in a VP role with Alignable. I am not a product developer. And why I'm there is because as somebody who's worked with and sold small businesses for 20-plus years, I know what the platform can do for a small business owner. So my role with Alignable is really to work with the product development team, our chief revenue officer, and others to really make sure the experience for small business owners allows them to get in, get value, and get on with their very, very busy days, as you know.

So as the person in charge of marketing for Alignable, how would you describe how Alignable is different than LinkedIn? A lot of people ask me that question, and it's hard for me to explain it other than saying that on LinkedIn you have a profile and a company page, and on Alignable you only have a company page and everybody's a company. Because you guys are more focused on business owners versus just employees. But can you describe it a little bit more, like in a way that you want, like representing Alignable? Like what is it that Alignable says of how they're different than LinkedIn?

Yeah, great question. There's a couple ways I answer that. And all the product marketers and folks that work for the platform, we discuss this all the time because we obviously, LinkedIn is sort of the Goliath in this space. They're both designed to help individuals network with other people, right? The difference between LinkedIn and us is think of quantity versus quality. I have about 5,000 people that follow me on LinkedIn. I have another 49,000, 55,000 connections. I probably know a 16th of those people. On Alignable, I have about 700 connections, and I've carefully curated that network Over time, right? So the difference between the two of them from a networking perspective, it's not about volume, but it's rather about on the Alignable side, the networking you do one-to-one with either your direct customers or your referral partners. LinkedIn has grown so much that it's become a bit of a lead generation tool for large-scale businesses and a fantastic, honestly, thought leadership platform. If you want to be known in particular circles on particular topics in business, most people are doing that on Alignable outside their own podcast and their website. So when you think about Alignable, it's really for Main Street, not Wall Street. It's for the general contractor who lives just outside of Boston looking to meet electricians. It's for the woman that owns an art gallery in Idaho looking to sell her art to homeowners or real estate agents in LA. It's not for the Fortune 500 company that is looking to add another 500 employees to their 10,000 employees globally. Big difference. Big pond, small pond. That's the difference. And outside of the experience, Our platform is about the individual and their profile. Their profile literally is the algorithm. It's how it's set up and those ideal customer tags, ideal referral partner tags, everything on your profile feeds the system, which basically tells you, hi, my name is Don Martelli. I work in marketing. I want to meet nonprofits. Tell me who in my network knows nonprofits, and they are an introduction away by one click.

I love that. I love the whole concept of like, You're dealing directly with Main Street business owners versus with just a bunch of employees. And there's, there's 1.2 billion people on LinkedIn. Alignable has 10 million people only in the US that are just business owners, and there's only 32 million businesses in the United States. So you're talking about 10 million people that are interested in networking and relationship building that are business owners. So if you're looking to do business with business owners, just go to Alignable and build connections with people. I'm personally a client of Alignable for several years now, and I can tell you I've built some pretty incredible relationships. Can you speak to the revenue generation that you've generated just in the past year alone on Alignable?

Yeah, yeah, I have a great example of this. So prior to joining the company, um, I've been on the platform for probably a decade, on and off, on and off, and I was For my company, which is the PR bunker, I was prospecting for nonprofits in Maine—a very specific type of executive director in that in that area. Reach out to a gentleman who said, "Hey, look, I have a PR guy, but I'd love to send you referrals on Alignable." I'm like, "Oh man, I think I have an Alignable account." You know, he sent me the link, logged back in. I was like, "Oh geez, I remember this thing." So I started to play with it, and then within a day or two. Reconnected with a gentleman that I haven't talked to in about a decade. We started talking, do a one-on-one. 3 weeks later, he's sending me a project for $25 grand for 3 weeks worth of work.

Wow.

5 figures, 3 weeks. And I said to myself, who else is here? Former clients, former colleagues. I'm like, man. So I— and Eric Groves, who, who's our CEO, and him and Venkat, the 2 guys that founded this thing, Eric has a great analogy. Everybody has a stack of business cards somewhere in their office, and they're just sitting there either collecting dust or leveling off the table in your, in your business right now. Imagine if you knew who those people were connected to and how to untap that network pretty quickly. And that's what Alignable has done. That's what Eric and Venkat have done. They have been able for you to see into your network's network. And so just within a 2 or 3 week, you know, situation where I re-engaged the platform, reconnected with my, my contact, Signed that that project, and from there it was just a catalyst. I literally stopped paying for LinkedIn, put the credit card down for Alignable, bought a premium subscription for the year, and it's been gold ever since. And ironically enough, it was my network that got me to Alignable. Somebody who I know who knows somebody who knows somebody, our chief revenue officer had a couple conversations, and here I am down the line. And one of the things they identified quickly and early on was we need folks that are. using the platform, that know how to use it, that can educate other users to do it. So in terms of a revenue number, in terms of the quality of my network, it was instrumental. Uh, the fact that I can meet literally between the 700 connections I currently have now on the platform, there are over 20,000 potential customers and/or referral partners that are a single introduction away. In the 9 minutes you and I have been talking, I could have asked for 40 referrals. It's that easy.

It's crazy. Yeah. So I just go to my network. I click on connections. I click on the submenu under Alignable 360 called referral partners. And I have 15,000 referral partners right now. If you guys are watching this live, you can actually see me scrolling through my referral partners. And then I just can click on a button and make a request to be connected to that person. And that's kind of like how it's designed. It's such a powerful tool.

Yeah.

A lot of people don't realize how powerful this tool is if you learn how to use it right. And you clearly know how to use this tool in a powerful way that have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and even found you a job at a company leading marketing at this company. What would you say is the thing you love most about Alignable besides the fact that you can get referrals? What does Alignable make really easy for you as a networker and as a business owner?

So a couple things. One, I get to meet so many talented people, not only that just work for Alignable from the Erics and Venkats and our developer team and everybody else, but the folks like you and others using the platform from the photographer in LA, the bookkeeper in Miami, uh, the art gallery woman in Calgary, right? The volume of people you can meet from all walks of life that can bring something to the table is instrumental. You go through our Smart Connect sessions, you meet 7 to 10 people in a networking event. And you can meet some people that just are doing some interesting, very cool things. And for me, when I network with somebody, it's not one-to-one. There's a couple things I want to learn. I want to learn about their business, but I always assume that they know something that I don't, and I want to glean that from them. Like whether it be about podcasting or running an art gallery. And as a journalist, former journalist, I spent a career interviewing people and collecting information. So what I love about the platform is I get to meet really cool people. Doing incredible things. And like stories like this, I met a gentleman today who's retired twice over but got bored and realized that his buddies that were still in business had a hard time managing their books. So as somebody who spent years on Wall Street, launched a bookkeeping business just to help his golf buddies out with their books. Third career, making some money, but he's using Alignable to do that. And so it's just that entrepreneurial spirit that you see and experience every single day on the platform, which has been instrumental for me both personally and professionally to meet folks from all walks of life doing incredible things. And it's the equivalent to me of anytime you've gone to a networking event, you go up to your table, you grab your card, you have 9 cups of really bad coffee, and you aimlessly walk around the room hoping to meet some people, and you're playing networking roulette. Now, imagine when you go to that card, that table, you pull your card and you walk into the room, everybody that you're designed to meet as either a potential customer or referral partner, they've got a purple pin above their head. Oh, that's cool. And you're like, oh, I'm gonna meet all these people. Who are you going to walk over to first? The people that matter to your business, right? That's what Alignable does. And that's what excites me. It excites me about the platform, its future, the technology that's kind of using AI on the back end and just meeting people. So it's the traditional sense of handshakes, of meeting people, but also using advanced technology to do that and make it simpler.

Can you speak to that advanced technology a little bit? What are some of the things that Alignable does that other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and so on are not doing? are able to be more robust because you don't have billions and billions and billions of users. You have 10 million users. That's still a lot, but you guys can do a lot of stuff because you don't have so many diverse types of people. You have a niche. Your niche is business owners in the US and Canada, and you have 10 million of them that are available to network. What are, what are some of the things that you're doing that's very, very different?

Yeah, I would say that the matchmaking that goes on in the platform, so when you showed your users that are with us live, The ability for you to look into your referral network literally within seconds and ask for introductions within that same amount of timeframe, that matching technology that happens in the backend. So if Don Martelli is a bookkeeper and I work with contractors like electricians, plumbers, so on and so forth in the greater Boston area, I can find them quickly because the information and the AI and the technology in the backend of the platform is helping make those matches. Based on your profile, based on those tags. However, if I'm a digital marketer that wants to work with nonprofits from a national perspective, I can also find those people. So, for me to be able to find executive directors in LA working on things like veteran homelessness, I'd have to kind of do some searching, go through Google, so on and so forth. Alignable is kind of like a business dating app. And so, on the back end, the technology creates those matches based on what you tell us who you want to meet. You log on, you go through our onboarding process, and the networking coach on the back end basically says, tell me about your business, Joe. Who do you want to meet? What do you sell? Where do you sell? Do you sell locally in your community or internationally through all North America? And we guide you through this system so you get set up the right way. And the beauty of it all is that small business owners are great at running their business. They know a lot about bookkeeping, about art galleries, about plumbing, electricians. Being an electrician, oftentimes what they don't really do well is network. A lot of folks that are just either introverted or just never done it before, right? They just don't know how to get people from hello to yes. And the technology in the backend of Alignable helps people in that process. Hello, welcome to the platform. Tell us about yourself. Who do you want to meet from a customer perspective or referral partner perspective? Let's get you set up to do just that. And from there, once you're on board and you go through the process of getting your profile set up, we have a whole robust education laddering strategy where people can get some live training. But we also have a live networking coach that's on the platform that reminds people, hey, Joe sent you a message a couple days ago, you might want to get back to him, and here's some suggested content to do that with context. So we're just trying to, you know, put some polite, supportive technology that's sort of innocuous within the platform just to aid these small business owners to make this really arduous process at times simpler for them. Because as small business owners, they got to manage their books, manage their products and services, manage their staff. They got a million things going on. Networking should not be hard, which is why we say network smarter.

I love that. And Alignable seems like they also put tags automatically, like ideal referral partner. I'm seeing solution lead, ideal customer. And so I can go through and see who looked at my page because I pay for Alignable Premium. And then I can, I can be told exactly which customers are the most ideal customers and which ones are the most ideal referral partners. And so it kind of cuts through the clutter of, of all that stuff. And the other thing I'll tell you is a lot of people are afraid of the LinkedIn algorithm and they're going to get banned and all this other stuff. Alignable doesn't really ban people. I mean, am I right about that? You guys are not like going around randomly banning people.

No, no, we're not. So a couple of things, we do a pretty good job at policing those that come on here that want to just sell directly, like sell, sell, sell and pitch slap folks all day long. Right. In this particular case, it's about authentic relationships building through like, know, and trust. So if I come onto the platform and I'm— and I'm— I join 30 different groups and I'm blasting, check out my podcast, and I'm being overly promotional, the little bodyguard in the system says this is too promotional. But instead of banning you, it says, hey, you know what, if you want to promote this, we have the AI in the back end that says let me help you rewrite this content. I'll give you a suggestion how to make this more informative or educative so it'd be helpful for your followers and your connections versus slamming content down people's throats. So we, unless you are doing unscrupulous things, saying things that you shouldn't say on the platform, that's one thing. But if you have the true intent of connecting and pushing content and meeting people, the platform will at times kind of put their hand up just to remind you that this sounds a little too salesy, but you can still post this with some suggested revisions on the content and so on and so forth. So the team works really hard on making sure that this is not an environment where It's so sales heavy, but it's focused on true authentic relationship building.

I love that. True authentic relationship building is the name of the game. And if somebody is spamming and behaving badly, they should be stopped because otherwise everybody's experience significantly goes down. Why, what do you think the biggest challenge is with business owners not really understanding Alignable? You mentioned business owners, they don't really know how to network. They don't really know how to use the platform. Do you feel like if somebody created a really good course for their community on how to use Alignable, like an Alignable 101 course, that Alignable would benefit from that? They would like that. They would promote that. What's it, what's the deal?

Yeah, there's, there's 3 buckets of folks that I personally have come across and I was actually one of 'em. Um, what is Alignable? Question mark. I have no idea what it is. Right. 2, I think I know what it is, but I don't know how to use it. And 3, all in, get it on it every single day. Uh, I was one of those in between 1 and 2s. Like I knew I had a profile. I wasn't really using it cuz I was focused on LinkedIn and traditional networking. Um, what I didn't realize was it's not a social network. It's not a place where you log in and just slam it with content and hope that the fish jump into the boat, but rather the system allows you to figure out where those ponds are to go find the fish that you want to cull for whatever, right? And so what I think it does well for small business owners is sort of provide clarity on a, on a process that can be pretty arduous. And honestly, networking can be a massive time suck. Yeah. And so what we've had to do as an organization, you know, driven through the executive team down on was how do we improve our education offering? So it's not just, hey, welcome to the platform. Thanks for putting your credit card down. But we're investing significant amount of hours in individual, you know, training sessions and group sessions to show people the basics of profile setup. And then things like how to develop your own playbook. So you have sort of a process every single day, every single week, every single month to get people from hello to yes. and how to find those people. Not just Ctrl+A, select all, give me everybody, but go find the electricians in Boston, go find the marketers in LA, or the, uh, the photographer in Seattle, right? So we're doubling down both on live coaching sessions but also in-platform coaching sessions. We have several resources that the team has developed that are, um, just give people information every single day, every single week. Uh, we do a ton of content on a weekly basis that Just provide simple basic tips. For example, the networking you're doing now is not about today, but rather your opportunities you're creating in Q1. So between now and Santa Claus, what should you be doing with your network to tee you up for a successful start of January 26th? So when everybody quits the gym on January 3rd, you're still grinding, you're still in the gym working. And so we provide content tips, in-platform tips, live coaching sessions, and the networking coach that the team is working on just is there literally to surround our users so they have support no matter where they are on the platform, their experience on Alignable.

Wow. That's so much support and so much help. And I love that you're sharing that. And those 3 buckets are really, really helpful. Um, in terms of Alignable, yes, it's important to add new connections and all that jazz. Is there a specific strategy that you personally use that really stands out? If you, you, you are a small business owner looking to connect with other businesses, maybe you're a coach, Maybe you're a consultant, maybe you offer a product or a service. What approach would you take somebody from zero to hero? What are the step-by-step processes that they could follow to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars like you do through the platform?

Yeah, for me, it's about going into every relationship assuming that it's going to have some level of value, right? You might meet the bookkeeper in Miami and you don't need a bookkeeper, but you don't know who she is connected to. And so for me, it's about the excitement and journey of meeting new people and getting, you know, and getting to a bit of a rhythm. So in terms of how I was successful early on the platform, I developed a bit of a process. I want to meet 5 to 10 new people a week, and I do that by asking for and giving introductions from my network. And so every time I ask somebody to introduce me to somebody else, I'm also trying to replicate that for them. For me, it's the opposite of the swear jar. I want to put a quarter in the relationship jar. So if you're going to help me, I want to make sure that I help you. So at some point, there's some mutual value. For me, it's about kind of a seesaw where the relationship has equity on both sides. And so for me, I go into every conversation with relationship equity on my brain. I always ask a lot of questions. So it's not about me pitching you, but rather, Joe, tell me about your business. Who do you want to meet? How can I help? And just almost taking my journalistic experience and interviewing people so I can cull information so I know how to help them. Where to help them, or at what particular point who to introduce them to for assistance down the line. So the strategy is, if I'm looking, for example, to make $20,000 to $40,000 over the course of a month on recurring revenue, not every person I speak to is going to close business. So if that equates to— if that $20,000 is 10 clients, that means probably 10, 40, 30, 50, 60 conversations to get to the 10 clients, right? That also means probably 120 relationships. So, it starts to branch out like a funnel. And so, how do you then take your networking to get to that number? Well, to get to 10 clients and that results in maybe 60 relationships, that's probably 120 one-on-ones with the right types of people. So, my advice, put structure to your networking, put KPIs down, start with your revenue goal, back that out based on the average dollar amount for your deal, and then figure out, well, who knows those people that can potentially hire me? Not just the, the client himself, but who works around those folks like bookkeepers, marketers, photographers, graphic designers, fundraising specialists. If you're in the nonprofit space, thinking about extensively your referral network, who do you know in those spaces? How often do you have conversations with them? Every 2 to 3 weeks just to kind of keep the train rolling. And then how do you scale that over time so you can get to the 10 clients? And so for me, it's just whatever your time is, write down a process, set those KPIs and hold yourself accountable. to them every single week. Because if you don't, networking will be just a massive time suck and you're back at collecting more business cards that sit in your desk drawer and collect dust.

I love that. I love that. And I like using an omni approach. You know, with Evvy AI, we integrate with Alignable and allow you to find people from Alignable on LinkedIn and from Alignable on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. So sometimes if somebody has an Alignable account and maybe they're not that active, You can find them on other platforms, but start in Alignable because that's how you know how you can get referred in via Alignable.

Mm-hmm.

Because you'll see who's actually active. One of the things I like looking at on Alignable are the badges. So you see the premium badge. I know that they're taking Alignable a little more seriously. How many active users are currently using Alignable? You have 10 million people, but do you guys publicly share how many people are actually active on a daily basis, weekly, monthly, annually, or whatever? Do you have any stats that you guys share openly?

Internally, we do. Publicly, not. But I can tell you anecdotally, I've coached thousands of people and there's a cluster of folks that have come back to my coaching sessions on a regular basis. But there's not a single day that doesn't go by that I meet another 50 to 100 folks. And I've been with the company just short of a year. I mean, I would guarantee you there's thousands of thousands of folks on this platform every single day. If you log in and look at our events, our networking events, there's not a single day that does not go by That there is not an event you can go to with dozens of people attending. You want to do a networking event twice a day for 30 days in a row? They're happening on Alignable. So it's thousands upon thousands of people active on the platform and in some variety of use, right? There's like the active users like you and I that are there every single day, open tab in their browser versus the casual. But again, to your point, I look at their profile. Are they active? Do they have a lot of connections? Are they recommended? Are they premium? Those signals to me tell me that they're active on the platform. And if I do reach out or ask for an introduction, more than likely I'll get to meet 'em.

If somebody has multiple companies, let's say me, I have Ajax Union and I have Evvii AI. Ajax Union is a digital marketing agency and Evvii AI is an AI assistant for social media. How would somebody use Alignable with multiple companies? I just have it represent one company and I just go with one, but how would somebody add multiple companies?

So it comes down to a couple factors. One, if your companies can be stitched together— in your case they can be, right? Because you're a digital marketing agency that offers a tool from a subscription standpoint. That makes sense. You have a sort of an umbrella story you can tell. My name is Joe, I run this thing, I offer this product to help clients do this, right? Because your consulting can obviously implement your technology for those small business owners. So you can have an umbrella account that says My name's Joe LLC and I do this sort of thing. The difference with that is if the product you're selling is targeting different people than your agency is targeting, then you can have a profile that says, I wanna meet bookkeepers and electricians.

Right.

2 different worlds, right?

2 different worlds.

So if, yeah, if you are a life coach but also do bookkeeping, they don't really align. Well, actually, if your books are healthy, then you have a pretty decent life. I get that. But if you have like, you know, one's in left field, one's in right field, My suggestion is probably have 2 accounts, but then you're— now you manage 2 profiles, 2 emails. It becomes a lot. Um, look, I love a great hustle and you have a good story to tell. And honestly, for a couple hundred bucks for the year, depending on your pricing model, you close one piece of business, it's paid for itself 3 times over.

100%. I agree.

Right? So if you're— if you're like you in your case, if you have the agency and a product you sell, there's a story that connects them to really well because one's just a product. That your agency could use for your clients, you can have one account and it's really you. You're the guy that they're looking to meet because people don't want to network with a logo or a company. It's the people they hire that matter.

It's a human. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I know that you have a hard stop coming up. I appreciate it. So thank you for being here. Go check out the post. I think someone already tagged you on it and there's dozens and dozens of likes on it. So feel free to repost it, share it with your world.

I will.

You did a really, really good job and I'm looking forward to maybe having you again here in the near future. Thank you, Don.

I appreciate it, Joe. Appreciate you. Good luck. Take care.