Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Monetize Connections with Joe Mindak

Transcript

How to Monetize Connections with Joe Mindak · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  Three, two, one, zero.
• 0:04
  Ignition.
• 0:06
  Lift off.
• 0:09
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
• 0:17
  Emerson.
• 0:18
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:23
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 0:26
  Now here's your host, the small biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
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  Have you subscribed to the small biz chat podcast?
• 0:37
  Well, it's time.
• 0:38
  Every Wednesday, we offer listeners bite sized actionable tips to start and grow a successful
• 0:45
  small business.
• 0:46
  In just twenty minutes or so a week, you can get a ton of insight and resources to propel
• 0:51
  your business forward.
• 0:53
  Be sure to subscribe to the Small Bitch Chat podcast today.
• 0:58
  Hi, everybody.
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  Welcome to another edition of the Small Biz Chat podcast where we help small business
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  owners get real answers so they can succeed as their own boss.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small business lady, America's number one small business expert.
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  And it is my honor to host another episode of the Small Biz Chat podcast.
• 1:19
  Hi there, Joe.
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  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast.
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  Hi, Melinda.
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  How are you?
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  I'm excited to be here.
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  You got a lot of energy going on.
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  Absolutely.
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  I'm waking up in the afternoon listening to Absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  Well, I'm so excited to have you because ever since your team reached out to me about you
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  being on my podcast, I was thinking to myself, where has this man been all of my life?
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  So let me formally introduce you and then I wanna get into this.
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  Mr.
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  Joe Munnett is a connector and operator and author focused on turning social capital into
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  real economic outcomes.
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  He is the co founder of Nolodex, a referral platform designed to help communities and B2B
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  organizations capture, track, and pay for introductions, bringing transparency and
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  accountability to a channel that has historically been hard to manage.
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  He's also the founder of Konnective, a curated multi chapter network of vetted connectors,
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  experts and founders who open doors for one another and share commissions through a clear
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  tech enabled model.
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  And for more information, go over to noladex.com.
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  Joe, welcome.
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  Thanks Melinda.
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  Thanks for the nice introduction.
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  I'm excited to talk about it.
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  A lot of people like yourself that are connectors are like, I wanna be paid.
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  That's kind of what
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  I I want mean, from for twenty years, I've always been told givers get, right?
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  So I've always been a generous person with my role.
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  Even when I first meet somebody, I will open my phone and be like, oh, you know what?
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  I need to introduce you to so and so.
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  Never really thinking about the only people who've ever sent me a check back for
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  introductions is franchise consultants.
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  Now them people, they pay for introductions.
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  Oh, yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  They're the best.
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  Nobody else in my life though that's ever sent me a check.
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  Every now and again, I'll get an Amazon gift card or some flowers or something from
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  somebody, but I'm like real contracts, like what's up with that?
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  So tell me about you and how you got into this business of helping people monetize
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  relationship.
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  Yeah, it's like one of those long story, old stories that you just kind of fell into this
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  business.
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  I wasn't planning on starting a business and starting a software company because I'm not
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  very technical savvy, but luckily I got a great partner that knows tech.
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  And all of sudden I own a software company that was never part of the plan.
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  I've never actually, it's funny, I just recently in the last year or so realized I've
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  never actually worked for anybody.
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  I knew it, but I never thought about it.
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  So I got out of college and I just kind of fell into the marketing role and started a marketing
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  company and grew it for twenty years.
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  And then from there I started a magazine and I started some other businesses.
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  I just fell in love with starting companies And I was a sales guy, I was always a sales guy,
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  but I learned how to market having a marketing company.
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  Learned how to market.
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  So why don't I market my own companies?
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  I want to start my own thing.
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  So that's just kind of how the ball started rolling.
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  And then after twenty years, I sold the company, I sold the magazine that I'd started,
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  and I was starting two other companies, but I was a connector and I was the guy people
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  called.
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  Joe, need this, Joe, I need that.
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  I said, Melinda, I don't do websites anymore, but let me introduce you to these people.
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  And like you said, we have always been connected.
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  I love connecting people.
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  It's always been a thing.
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  But I connected a $100,000 project.
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  It was actually mentioned in the franchise world.
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  It was actually in the franchise world.
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  And I introduced one of my old clients to an agency and he hired him for $100,000 and I
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  wasn't getting anything from it.
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  And I basically set the deal up and I was like, you know what, I should be getting paid.
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  Like you said before, pay me.
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  So I called the agency back.
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  I was like, hey, how about I bring you some more business?
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  Like you guys know I know a lot of people.
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  How about I bring you business, you pay me a referral fee?
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  I won't charge you anything.
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  There's no upfront fee.
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  You bring them and I bring another piece of business like that, will you pay me?
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  They're like, yeah, all day long.
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  Why would I not?
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  You literally handed us $100,000 deal.
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  So that agency was like, I'll pay you 15% or whatever you bring me.
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  And they actually paid me 15% on that deal.
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  So I got a check for
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  15 They should have.
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  Yeah, they should have.
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  And like you were saying before, why aren't these people paying you?
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  Only the franchise people.
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  If you gave me a great deal, you should be thanking those people that gave you a deal
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  because guess what?
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  Melinda's got more deals like that.
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  But if Melinda finds out and you got $100,000 and they didn't even send that Starbucks gift
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  card, Guess what?
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  The next time she has an opportunity to send you, you're not getting it.
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  So that's the mentality.
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  And I cannot tell you how many times I hook somebody up and then I later heard that they
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  got an opportunity and didn't even say anything to me.
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  And then the next time I had a chance to hook them up, was like, Lo dolo.
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  I mean, and
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  it, I
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  hate to be punitive with people, but I just think it's just basic common courtesy to tell
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  somebody, Hey, that introduction you gave me, I ended up being interviewed on CNN and this is
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  what happened.
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  I mean, like I got them kind of connected.
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  So it's like, how am I gonna hook you up and you not even call, tell me what happened, send
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  me a thank you card or whatever, like that's just ridiculous.
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  Yeah, and they don't realize.
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  When I started this whole thing, kind of on my own, just kind of sending introductions, I had
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  an old vendor of mine I knew for years.
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  I said, help bring you business.
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  I introduced him right away to somebody, never heard anything.
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  Finally, six months later, I find out that Todd's been sending this guy Joe business the
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  whole time.
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  And Todd's like, I just sent a $50,000 project to him.
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  And then of course that guy reached out to me and said, hey, you got more business?
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  I said, what about Todd?
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  Well, Todd, I forgot he acted like he forgot about it.
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  I'm like, that's the worst thing you could do is, first, not even pay me.
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  Second, act like he didn't even know what was going on.
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  And I'm like, you know what?
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  It's okay.
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  You've missed out on hundreds of thousands of dollars of other business I've given another
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  vendor just like you because you want to stiff me for a little commission.
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  Absolutely.
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  I mean, I've even had people who've been on this podcast who got business from being on my
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  podcast and called me back and said, hey, Melinda.
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  This happened.
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  I'm gonna send you.
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  You know what I mean?
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  But, literally, I don't have that as a closet to be on my show or anything, but but just but
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  just a courtesy thing like, hey.
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  Like, my podcast is kind of big, people beg
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  me But to do
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  let's talk about referrals.
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  You believe that referrals should be treated as a true, real revenue channel and not a side
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  hustle.
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  And can you talk about how you turned it into a more formal engagement with people?
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  Well, when I got that one deal done, said, let me test this out, right?
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  I've been networking all my life, I've been connecting people.
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  I got a dozen agencies that I knew and said, hey, Melinda, you and Sarah and John and Kevin,
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  I'm going to send you guys business and you pay me.
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  And I did that as a side hustle for that year or so while I was building these other
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  businesses.
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  And they were closing deals.
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  And I wound up bringing in 85,000 in commissions for myself, dollars 85,000.
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  I mean, that's not peanuts as a side hustle.
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  So that no longer is a side hustle.
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  That's a full time salary.
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  That's nice.
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  So I'm not retiring off of it.
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  But for $85,000 for Melinda, like forty hours of work.
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  Like if it took me forty hours, a week's worth of work to make those introductions that I did,
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  that was probably a lot.
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  So I'm making lawyer money, dollars 2,000 an hour for those introductions.
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  So that's when I was like, wait a second, this is something that could generate real revenue.
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  And there's other people like me that want to do this.
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  So I called up people.
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  You, Melinda, you're a good connector.
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  I called 20 people that I knew and said, hey, listen, I just made $80,000 making intros.
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  Melinda, you know people.
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  Doctor.
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  Michelle knows people.
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  Let's all connect each other and you get a deal, Melinda, pay into the pot.
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  We'll take that dollar you put in and we'll split it fiftyfifty.
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  I'll run the group and we'll split it.
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  And that's just kind of a very simple way to do it.
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  And it's always been about you know.
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  Sales has always been from the dawn of time, who do you know?
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  Melinda, do you know John?
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  Can you make an introduction?
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  I do.
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  Now it's like, I do know John.
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  I'll make the introduction.
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  If you get business, pay me.
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  That's it, very simple.
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  Connectors get paid.
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  That's why I wrote it.
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  I feel like I'm honking my book.
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  Connectors get paid.
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  Hey, this is a place where you can hog book.
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  Connectors get paid.
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  Think I need you to send me that.
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  Anyway, all right.
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  I'll send you a copy.
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  Yeah.
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  And that's very simple, connectors get paid.
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  So if someone wants to turn referrals into this sort of like measurable revenue stream, like
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  this quarter, what is the simplest place to start?
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  Well, not to hawk our software, but noladex.com is the software we built to run our community
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  to track all those deals and pay out all the it does everything for you.
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  So anyone could sign up and get on our software.
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  It's only $129 a month.
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  So if you are looking to start your own referral network group or take your network
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  that you already have and put it into a trackable system or trackable platform, it's
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  $129 a month.
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  We made it very affordable for people to start.
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  Now, if you don't want to do that, you don't have to.
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  I started with an Excel file.
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  Make an Excel file.
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  Hey, Melinda, I introduced you to Doctor.
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  Michelle.
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  How did that go?
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  I heard you close the deal for $5.
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  We've agreed to 10%.
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  You owe me $500 and track it in an Excel file.
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  And that's what I did for the first year with the people that I had.
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  And then eventually, when you start making money and you want to buy a system and get it
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  more of a licensed platform, something more enterprise level, you can go to a software.
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  But for now, an Excel file and a simple contract to send.
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  You want to send somebody the contract up front.
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  That's the problem.
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  You don't wanna go back after.
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  Hey, Melinda.
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  I heard you closed that deal.
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  You wanna pay me?
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  Well, Joe, we didn't talk about that.
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  Right.
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  Right?
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  So you wanna talk about that up front.
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  Okay.
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  I I like that.
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  I like that.
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  So you you let's talk about the money.
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  So you you okay.
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  So I'm I'm saying I'm gonna make these strategic introductions for you.
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  Is 5%?
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  Is 10%?
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  Is 15%?
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  Is it a sliding scale based on how big the opportunity is?
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  I mean, how do you feel like a flat fee kind of situation?
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  Yeah, we let everyone that comes onto the platform, they decide what they want.
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  In our community, they decide what they want to pay.
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  Other communities that sign up for the software, say everyone has to pay 10%.
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  That's up to them.
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  We allow people to decide what they want to pay because everyone has different margins.
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  Some have huge margins.
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  And those people are paying 20%.
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  Some people pay 25.
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  Like, look, I got great margins.
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  I will pay you, Melinda, 25% on an ongoing basis because I know if you get me that deal
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  and you're the one that's going to get me into that company to close that, I'm happy to pay
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  you because otherwise I'm still making my money.
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  Others have like a 7% margin, so they're going to pay less.
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  So, it's up to them.
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  Everyone that goes on the platform puts their number on there.
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  So, let's say, Melinda, you've agreed to 8% commission.
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  That's what you feel comfortable as your this is your incentive for the other person in your
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  community to give you more business.
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  If they know you're doing big deals and making margins, you're giving a little percentage, it
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  might backfire on you.
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  You want to be fair with what you're paying.
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  And now if I introduce you and that client says, Melinda, I love you.
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  I want you to be my person here.
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  It's a little high on the price.
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  Can you come down a little bit?
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  Then you can negotiate the 8% down.
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  You go back to the other person that introduced you and say, hey, Joe, thank you.
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  I want to work with this client.
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  Are you Okay if I pay 5% on this deal?
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  So it's always negotiable.
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  All right, Joe, but how do you normalize people paying for introductions without potentially
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  damaging long term relationships with people or making people feel like your relationship with
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  them is now transactional?
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  Well, everyone signs an upfront contract, right?
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  And going into it knowing that, yes, Belinda, anyone you introduced me to, I've agreed to
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  pay.
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  I'm signing a contract, legal binding document that says, hey, I am in this group with you
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  now.
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  Anyone you introduce me to, I will pay a fee for.
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  So I don't have to go back and make it awkward after.
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  Hey, Melinda, I heard you close that deal.
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  And I am not.
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  Look, and we tell everyone that joins, this is not a transaction.
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  Introduce Don't Melinda to your client because she is paying 10% commission.
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  Make sure you talk to Melinda and get to know her a little bit.
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  Ask her a couple of questions.
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  You are never going to just refer.
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  This is your reputation on the line.
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  So you are not just going to hand it over just because you are getting paid.
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  So help me understand.
• 14:23
  So do people on your platform that do not know each other refer stuff to each other?
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  Yeah.
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  So when somebody new joins, right, like we have five fifty people in our community.
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  If you join tomorrow, Melinda, you don't know everybody.
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  You're going to get to know them.
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  And it's still about building relationships, right?
• 14:39
  You're going to build relationships with people.
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  You're going to start to talk to Corina a little bit more and hit it off with her and be
• 14:44
  like, I love you, Corina.
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  You know what?
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  I think you would be great.
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  You would be perfect for my client.
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  I trust you.
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  And we don't let everybody in the community.
• 14:51
  We are very strict on who comes in.
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  So we don't just you have to be invited to our community as well.
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  And other communities, they do what they want with it.
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  They don't have to do it that way.
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  But we want to make sure that you're getting building relationship with people, then you're
• 15:04
  going to introduce them.
• 15:05
  You're never just going to pick, go on the site and be like, I need a website person, boom, and
• 15:08
  send them to your client.
• 15:10
  Because what happens if that person does a bad job?
• 15:12
  But we're pretty strict about who we let in and do things, but you're never going to just
• 15:17
  introduce somebody just to make the money.
• 15:19
  That's the secondary part.
• 15:20
  Relationships is always still the first part of any networking group.
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  We just happen to have a nice component that says, hey, Melinda, you and I have gotten
• 15:28
  along.
• 15:28
  We've really we've really hit it off well.
• 15:29
  I want to introduce you to somebody.
• 15:31
  Oh, yeah.
• 15:31
  By the way, I get a I get a I get a percentage of the deal if you close as well.
• 15:35
  That's the icing on the cake.
• 15:36
  Sure.
• 15:37
  Now, in the platform, do you guys take any money from people other than their monthly fee?
• 15:43
  Yeah, so we don't charge a monthly fee.
• 15:46
  So, charge the licensing fee to the community owner.
• 15:51
  So, you own the community, Melinda's community.
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  All your members, whoever you sign on, if you want to charge them a membership fee on a
• 15:57
  monthly basis, you can charge through our system.
• 15:59
  It'll charge automatically.
• 16:01
  We'll charge them for it and that's all included.
• 16:03
  We charge $20 once a year for each person to use the platform.
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  So $20 once a year.
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  So if you sign up today, Melinda, you get charged $20.
• 16:12
  Next year, you get charged $20.
• 16:14
  And then we take 10% of the deal.
• 16:16
  So let's say your community closes a deal where it's a $1,000 commission.
• 16:21
  We're going to take 10% on that.
• 16:22
  And we pay the credit card fee.
• 16:24
  So we're going to take 10%.
• 16:26
  We're going take $100 out of that deal.
• 16:27
  We're going to pay the 4% credit card fee.
• 16:29
  So we wind up with $60.
• 16:31
  And your community has $900 as the commission.
• 16:35
  And then you decide how you want to split that commission up as your community.
• 16:38
  So you could say, I'm gonna give my member 90% of that deal.
• 16:42
  Melinda, I'm gonna take 10%, I'm gonna give my member 50% and you're gonna keep 50%.
• 16:47
  So everyone decides on how they wanna split that remaining money up.
• 16:50
  Okay, so wait a minute.
• 16:52
  So all of the money for all of the commissions flow back through your platform.
• 16:57
  So if I decide that I'm gonna pay you, Joe, a commission, I pay it through the I'm not
• 17:03
  Venmoing you money.
• 17:05
  I'm
• 17:05
  paying Right back through the on the platform.
• 17:08
  So you're you're putting your referral in the system and then you close that deal Melinda,
• 17:12
  you go on to the system, you hit add my payment, you owe $1,000 you're going to pay it
• 17:16
  right online.
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  And the system is going to take that money and say, okay, this community has decided to break
• 17:22
  it up this way.
• 17:23
  So, it could break it up a couple of different ways.
• 17:26
  Our system takes it, 50% goes to the member, 25% goes to the people that run our different
• 17:32
  chapters.
• 17:32
  We have different chapters that incentivizes them to bring business to their members.
• 17:37
  And then we take 25% as the community owner of our community.
• 17:41
  So the system can divvy it up and then it can even take the 25% and break it into two if it's
• 17:46
  amongst two different chapters.
• 17:47
  They each get 12.5%.
• 17:49
  So the system is very complex in the back end.
• 17:53
  It takes that dollar and says, Melinda, how do you want to split that dollar up?
• 17:56
  And every community owner says, well, I want this 10% go here, 20% to go there.
• 18:00
  So it's very intuitive system and it does it automatically.
• 18:03
  And everything goes through Stripe.
• 18:05
  The money doesn't come to us.
• 18:06
  It all goes into Stripe.
• 18:07
  And the next day it spits out the money.
• 18:11
  And Stripe doesn't normally process money that fast.
• 18:14
  Maybe you have a better deal than So I how have you kept these relationships from becoming
• 18:22
  litigious or people getting upset because if I did a deal with you and it was a deal for a
• 18:30
  thousand dollars and the platform's already gonna take 10%, I wouldn't wanna share that
• 18:36
  money with anybody else in my community.
• 18:38
  That's my commission that I earned from the opportunity that I gave to you.
• 18:42
  So that's why I'm a little bit thrown off about the people in the community getting a cut of
• 18:48
  the money.
• 18:48
  I don't completely understand how that works.
• 18:51
  Yeah, so if you join our community, right, we have five fifty people in our community.
• 18:57
  We're giving you the opportunity to sell five fifty other things that you don't have the
• 19:01
  opportunity to sell right now.
• 19:02
  And all five fifty of those people have agreed to pay commission, Melinda, if you get that.
• 19:08
  So you don't know these people.
• 19:09
  You now have an opportunity to sell this stuff.
• 19:11
  We're So giving you an opportunity to make this nice new passive income by referring all these
• 19:16
  five fifty businesses that you have never met before that can now say, okay, have a video,
• 19:21
  I'm going to send it over to Mike.
• 19:22
  He's going to do the video and I'm going to make a commission on it.
• 19:24
  So yes, we split it.
• 19:27
  The reason we always split it because when I started this, it was like, hey, Melinda, you
• 19:31
  bring a deal to the table.
• 19:32
  I will handle the back end, all the money, all the processing, everything else.
• 19:37
  If we make a dollar, you get 50¢, we get 50¢.
• 19:40
  Other communities could do it.
• 19:42
  Some communities give 100% to their members.
• 19:44
  They don't take anything.
• 19:45
  It is up to them how they want to do it.
• 19:46
  That is the way our community is set up.
• 19:48
  That works for us.
• 19:50
  Interesting, interesting.
• 19:51
  Okay.
• 19:52
  So does your platform sit on top of Circle or School or anything like that?
• 19:57
  Or you made it custom, is it proprietary?
• 19:59
  Yeah, it's custom built platform.
• 20:01
  We built it onshore here and we built it from scratch.
• 20:04
  Okay, interesting.
• 20:06
  All right, well, you've really given me something completely new to think about that I
• 20:11
  like.
• 20:11
  It's interesting.
• 20:12
  So I'm here for affiliate relationships and commission relationships.
• 20:16
  So I definitely feel like I'm gonna investigate it.
• 20:19
  But tell me this, what is the best business advice you have ever received?
• 20:26
  So I was thinking about it when you asked that before, I've got a lot of business advice, but
• 20:30
  the one thing I've always kind of been my mantra, it's more of a quote than a business
• 20:34
  advice, is the only way to predict the future is to create it.
• 20:38
  If you want to predict your future, you can't predict it.
• 20:40
  You've to create it for yourself.
• 20:42
  And like I said before, I've always had my own business.
• 20:45
  I created this business from scratch.
• 20:47
  Like it was just an idea.
• 20:49
  If you want to predict the future, then go out and create what your future is going be.
• 20:52
  So I've always had that mantra in the back of my mind, like go and do it.
• 20:56
  And there's a lot of people you're talking a lot of small businesses, probably a lot of
• 20:58
  people listening, like I have an idea.
• 21:00
  I want to do something.
• 21:00
  Go ahead.
• 21:01
  Do it.
• 21:01
  Create it.
• 21:02
  Like come up with the idea and go out and create it and do it yourself.
• 21:04
  That's the way you're gonna predict the future.
• 21:07
  Love it, love it, love it.
• 21:08
  Well, thank you so much, Joe, for being on the Small Bitch Chat podcast.
• 21:14
  Please go and check him out, you guys.
• 21:15
  His name is Joe Mendack and his platform is noladex.com.
• 21:23
  Thanks for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 21:28
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and join us next Wednesday for
• 21:33
  more fantastic information and interviews.
• 21:36
  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
• 21:40
  website, succeedasyourownboss.com.
• 21:44
  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.