Ep. 98: Why the Best Connectors Deserve a Paycheck with Joe Mindak

Episode Links:

The Connective - https://www.theconnective.me/

Nolodex - https://www.nolodex.com/

LinkedIn: Joe Mindak - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemindak/

Book: Connectors Get Paid by Joe Mindak - https://www.amazon.com/Connectors-Get-Paid-Referral-Network-ebook/dp/B0FRYM3QT9

Summary:

In this episode of The Corvus Effect, I sit down with Joe Mindak, a serial entrepreneur with 25 years of proving that generosity scales. Joe founded The Connective (a vetted community of over 550 professionals generating more than $10 million in referral revenue) and developed the Nolodex platform now revolutionizing how chambers of commerce operate nationwide. He shares how staying in his lane while delegating to the right people allowed him to focus on sales and connecting, reveals why traditional networking was missing a critical component (the incentive), and discusses the morning routine of sauna time and swimming that generates his "holy shit ideas." Joe also opens up about rebuilding an American Legion post after Superstorm Sandy, which snowballed into building housing for homeless veterans across New Jersey.

Chapters:

00:32 Meet Joe Mindak

04:10 Stay in Your Lane and Delegate

06:38 Learning the Hard Way

08:56 The Missing Incentive in Networking

13:27 Building The Connective and Nolodex

21:15 Throw Spaghetti Against the Wall

25:00 Finding Stillness for Strategic Clarity

26:38 The $34 Million Sauna Deal

32:15 Rebuilding the American Legion

36:46 Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we explore what it takes to succeed professionally and truly enhance all parts of your life. I'm Scott Raven, Fractional COO and your host. Each episode we go behind the scenes with leaders who've mastered the delicate harmony of growing their professional endeavors while protecting what matters most. Ready to transform from Chief Everything Officer to achieving integration in all facets of your life? Let's soar!

Meet Joe Mindak

Scott Raven: Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Corvus Effect. I am thrilled to have Joe Mindak on the podcast, a serial entrepreneur with 25 years of proving that generosity scales. He's launched and exited multiple businesses across many different industries, and in 2021, he founded The Connective, a vetted community of over 550 professionals with a 96% member renewal rate and over $10 million in referral revenue generated. Underpinning this is Nolodex, a platform tracking referrals and commissions now revolutionizing chambers of commerce at scale nationwide.

He also helped rebuild an American Legion Post after Superstorm Sandy, and he is an adjunct professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology teaching innovation and entrepreneurship. Joe, welcome to the podcast, man.

Joe Mindak: Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me on, man. I'm excited to be here. And again, sorry for your Eagles loss yesterday.

Scott Raven: Yeah, yeah.

Joe Mindak: I'm a Jets fan.

Scott Raven: You know what, just to put in context, we are taping this the day after the wild card round. So I'm a little bit sad, but that's all right. Let's get on the happier stuff, shall we? As I said, you have built and exited numerous businesses over many years, and I like to think of myself as an early to bed, early to rise guy. I wake up just after five every morning, mainly to get my daughters to the bus stop. And you got me beat. You're getting up at four, you're hitting the gym by five, you're spending 15 minutes in the sauna with no phone, and you find time to have walks with your wife. Now we do what we do here at Corvus because most people are running on fumes and they are their own bottleneck, but you seem to have figured it out. How did you figure out this special sauce that for many entrepreneurs is so elusive?

Joe Mindak: You know, listen, I just started getting up at four this year. I've been getting up at five for the last few years. I think, honestly, everyone's always telling me, "You must be so busy. You do this, you have these two companies, you run a charity, whatever." But I've always got the best people I can to be part of the team, and you just rely on everyone to do what they do best.

I'm not as busy as most people think I am. I'm not on fumes all day long, like, "Oh my God, oh my God, playing catch up." I told my buddy this years ago, I follow my calendar. I have a set amount of hours in a day. I'm up at four. Getting up early is definitely helpful. My grandmother had a saying, I think it was Irish: "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." She always said that. I've always gotten up early, but you get so much done.

By eight o'clock, I mean it's nine o'clock now, I've gotten so much done already in a day. I've had five hours to get stuff done, and that's where I get all the crap done. All the minutiae, all the things I have to take care of. And then the rest of the day is meetings and meeting people. I have great people. I have a great partner, Adrian. I have Bob, our CFO. Jack does everything. Sam. You just have the people that take care of the rest of the stuff, and I can focus on what I'm supposed to be doing.

That just has always worked for me. Every business I've had, as long as I had the right people, it's like, "Scott, you're in charge of this. Stay in your lane, I'll stay in mine, and we all do what we can do." That really helps.

Stay in Your Lane and Delegate

Scott Raven: I think it's very important that you speak in terms of staying in your lane and playing to your strengths, because you say two things very unapologetically: "I love sales and I love connecting people." How has staying in that lane while delegating elsewhere optimized your success path?

Joe Mindak: Well, if you look at when I started The Connective years ago, it was me running it and we had maybe 60, 70 members, maybe a hundred, somewhere in that range. I met Adrian, my partner, when I was soliciting him to be a member of The Connective. Doing what I do, doing sales. Then he said, "Well, I like what you're doing. I'd like to get involved." He had just sold a company. I said, "Well, look, I'm looking for investors." Anyway, he became my partner, and now we're at 550 members.

The software got done. I honestly never would've been able to build the software. Not that we built it ourselves, we hired a group, but my mind does not work that way. My mind works in sales, how it all comes to play, how all the money gets distributed, how this goes to that, this web of stuff in the background of a software. I don't know if I ever would've been able to do it.

So the fact that he came on, took over operations, took care of all the BS of running a business, the contracts and all that, I could just go out and do what I do best. If you can get your people to all be, you know, you look at the Eagles. You just need a quarterback. That's what you do. You need to block. Everyone does their job. You could be the best quarterback in the league if you did that. So that has given me the freedom to just go out and bring in people and grow this thing, and you could see it as soon as I brought on someone that helps do the other stuff. That's just the way it should be.

Scott Raven: Now a lot of entrepreneurs have a challenging time when they're talking about becoming their own bottleneck, letting go of the Chief Everything Officer title. And yet for you, as you were talking about when you met Adrian, it was not as hard, or at least I perceive it wasn't as hard, to allow Adrian to come in and help. You focused on what it means to build out this community from a field perspective, from a people perspective. What do you feel made it easy for you that a lot of entrepreneurs miss?

Learning the Hard Way

Joe Mindak: Well, because I learned it when I was younger, when I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I was a Chief Everything Officer. You think you're smart as hell and you think you know every answer. I had my accountant telling me, "Joe, shit's coming, watch." This was during the recession back in 2008. And I'm like, "Ah, don't worry. I got this. I'll just sell more. Sales is the key to everything." And all of a sudden that recession hit. I was 27, 28 maybe.

Scott Raven: I was working for Home Depot at the time, and I got laid off in February right when everything went to hell in a handbasket, so I know that time well.

Joe Mindak: Yeah. And I owned a marketing company, so the first thing that every company slashes is their marketing budget. I learned right off the bat I should have had somebody in there monitoring the finances. Now I had an accountant, he was telling me stuff, but I should have had someone else.

So when we started this company, the first real person we brought in besides me and Adrian was our CFO Bob. Like, "You watch our money." That's what it was. I learned that. I can bring the money in, but don't let me touch it from there. Let that person in. I guess I learned it. I know if I go into that role too, I'm gonna screw it up.

Scott Raven: Yep.

Joe Mindak: So put somebody in that's not gonna screw it up. That's what you have to do. You can't do everything. You can do a couple things, and why shouldn't I be doing the best thing I'm good at? So yeah, you learn the hard way. I wrote a book called How to F Up Your Business Without Really Trying, and it was all about the stupid things I did because I didn't know any better.

Scott Raven: We're gonna make sure that we put that in the episode links because the title alone is fantastic. But let's talk about something that you are doing well, which is the growth of The Connective. As I said, 550 members, generating $10 million in referral revenue, 96% renewal rate, and you don't describe it as a networking group. You describe it as a community where connectors get paid. What is the fundamental difference that this group brings to the table?

The Missing Incentive in Networking

Joe Mindak: Well, what I found was there was a big piece missing in networking, and that's called an incentive. Everyone's been in networking groups for years, and I was always the one giving out the most referrals and not getting anything back. I go on LinkedIn, "Hey Scott, do you know Sally?" "Yeah, dude, I sure know her, but I'm not gonna introduce you to her." So just that incentive was missing.

Originally the name of Nolodex was Profgle. This was back like 15 years ago.

Scott Raven: Yeah. That doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

Joe Mindak: Yeah. I made it up. It was like profit and Google. But the idea was to incentivize people with either, if you had tickets to the Jets, you could put your tickets up for points, or you could put cash up for points. And those points got you meetings with people.

But yeah, the main difference is our community is all incentivized. 550 members are not just here to network with each other, because when you network with each other, it's, "Oh yeah, let me introduce that person. I'll do it." Like, "Okay, here's Scott. Here's John Smith. Go talk to him." And then I'm like, whatever. No. Now when I introduce you, I'm gonna get paid. I'm incentivized. I wanna make sure every deal I refer is gonna happen. If it happens, I get money for it.

That just changes the whole mentality. And that's why with 550 members, we have 4,300 deals on the table. 4,300 deals. That's not just because people are trying to help each other. No, it's like, "Hey, I know somebody and if I can make Scott an introduction, I'm gonna put $5,000 in my pocket." That changes the game.

Scott Raven: Right. Now, one of the things I think really works, and in the interest of full disclosure for everybody, I am a member of The Connective. I've been a member for about a year at this point, and I found The Connective after leaving BNI because I found BNI to be too rigid in the way that it worked. One of the things that I feel that you've brought to the table with your community is flexibility but accountability. So talk in terms of how you developed this model.

Joe Mindak: Yeah, I mean look, it originally started when I had referred a piece of business that was like a hundred thousand dollars. And I was like, "Ah, I should have got paid for that." I went back to the agency and said, "Listen, I'll bring you more business. How much will you pay me?" And they were like, "Yeah." And then it just kind of snowballed from there. I was like, "Well wait, there's a better way to do BNI or any of these other groups."

And look, BNI, I'll give them credit. They're great. I was part of it for 10 years. It's great for what they do and their focus. Not great for the B2B part of it, because B2B is a little higher ticket items, and people want to be incentivized.

So I got 20 people together. "How about we all pay each other, guys? We've all been in these groups. How about we start our own group, but let's just all put, you get a deal, put it in a pot and we'll split it." And then we just kind of figured out the model from there and just went with it, and it just kept growing. 20 people turned into 40 people turned into 80 people turned into 550 people. People like that idea.

It's two types of people. The connectors, the really great people that are really good at connecting like myself, are happy now because we're getting paid for the deal. So I don't care if you give me a referral back. I'm gonna give you as many referrals as I can, Scott, because I know you can close the business. I know you do a good job for my client and they're gonna keep coming back to me.

And then the people that don't want to connect, they're just a little more shy or not salespeople. A lot of people come to these communities because they used to work somewhere and now they started their own business and they're the head of sales. And like, "Well, how do I do sales?" Well, it's not that easy. So they're like, "Look, Scott, if you know people, I'll pay you to make introductions to people you know and people who want my services. I'm happy to pay it."

It brings those two together and it's so simple. Sales has always been who you know. Networking has always been connecting you to somebody. It's just always been missing that last little incentive to make sure that people are opening doors more easily and helping you close those doors because they know they're gonna get paid. That passive income.

Scott Raven: Now another catalyst to what has made The Connective so successful is the software that you had Adrian work on developing along with the team called Nolodex. At the highest level, why was Nolodex necessary? What was missing in terms of technical solutions that were out in the marketplace that Nolodex specifically addresses?

Building The Connective and Nolodex

Joe Mindak: So the main thing that Nolodex does, there's software out there that makes intros. There's software that tracks referrals. There's software that pays commissions. There's all different disparate software that does pieces of it. Nothing did all of it. Nothing took that dollar that came in and said, "I can take this dollar and split it five ways automatically."

So what I was doing at the end of every month when we had a hundred people was spitting out a report from Stripe saying, "Okay, Scott sent Susie this deal, Susie's in this chapter so that chapter gets a cut, Scott's in this chapter..." It would take me three days to just figure out what had to be paid.

Scott Raven: I can't imagine the headache. That gives me a headache just listening to it.

Joe Mindak: And that was at a hundred people. Can you imagine 550? There was no way anyone could manually do it. It would take a month to get it done. If I had Nolodex when I started my community, I would have been at a thousand people now. It just takes care of everything on the backend.

Think about your business. Who's gonna do your accounting, your billing, your invoicing, your 1099s? All that stuff is all done by the system. I don't need all those people to do all that. It just makes it easy for someone that wants to start their own networking group. "I've always wanted to start my own group, but how could I do that?" Look, for $129 bucks a month, you could be in business tomorrow and start your group. That takes care of your membership dues for you. It builds out the platform for you. It gets your people to put up their profile. It does everything. You just need to go out and recruit people, which is what I was doing when I started The Connective. But I had to do all the other stuff too. "Oh, I got Scott on. Let me send him a contract. Let me email, 'Hey Scott, you haven't signed a contract yet.' Okay, you're on. 'Hey Scott, you haven't paid your invoice yet.'" All that stuff is just automated. You wanna start a group or you have a group running already and you want something to take care of all your backend stuff? It does it automatically. It's fantastic.

Scott Raven: And speaking of recruiting, I know now with the progression of Nolodex, you're actively recruiting specifically for chambers of commerce in terms of them adopting the platform. So let's ask that really common question. What's in it for them? What is it about Nolodex which is gonna bring these chambers of commerce to the next level?

Joe Mindak: So the biggest thing we hear from chambers is they're looking for non-dues revenue. Most of their revenue comes from membership.

Scott Raven: Right.

Joe Mindak: That's their revenue and they do some sponsorships with galas and golf outings. But I was at a gala recently and the amount of time and effort, I'm there watching this thing all unfold and it's probably taken three months to get this thing going. And they wind up with $10,000 at the end of the night. We made five grand last week.

Scott Raven: Yep.

Joe Mindak: Last week off of passive income, not even doing anything. The people and the members are just sending deals to each other. So think about that. You made five grand every week instead of 10 grand on a three month gala that you're building.

It's giving them a new revenue stream. They're all looking for how they can make revenue outside of dues and sponsorships. What else can we do? And their members are already giving deals to each other. They're just not taking that. They're leaving money on the table right now. The money's there for them to take. They can have it. And it's not just them taking it from the members. They're now giving their members a way to make money.

So those good connectors in the chamber that are like, "Hey, I'm here giving chamber members deals all the time," they're getting tired of it. When that renewal comes along, they're like, "You know what? I didn't get anything out of the group. I've given a hundred referrals this year. I didn't get anything out of it." No, now "I've given those referrals, but now I made money. Yes, sign me up again." So their renewal rates are higher. And then they're making passive income. The members are happy because the good connectors are giving them more business.

And then it also engages those members more. What do you do between the gala and the coffee thing you have once a month? How do those members connect to each other between meetings? If you don't go to a meeting for three months, what are you really getting out of it? So chambers are really saying, "How do we give better ROI to our members?" Well, this does it all. It gives a better ROI to the members, which gives a better renewal rate, and it also gives a passive income stream to the chambers. It just makes sense, and they're all like, "This is what we've been looking for."

Scott Raven: Let's take on that theme of membership longevity and bring it back to The Connective and think about the OGs who have been part of The Connective since it was started five years ago. As you think about these OGs who have stayed, maintained, grown through The Connective, what makes you most proud to be affiliated with them?

Joe Mindak: Well, I think they really feel a sense of community in the group. They really get a lot out of the group, but not just business. They've got peer-to-peer advisory. A lot of people in our group have set up separate groups to be like, "Hey, let's all the marketing folks get together once a month to talk about different things going on. Let's all the manufacturing people get together." There's a lot of value in that. A lot of people have formed really great friendships in the group. I have some great friends in the group. Karina has been around for a long time. John Keel, all these people have been around. Tim. Good friendships.

And also the ROI isn't even a question because it's $1,200 for the year. You close one deal for your business or you give one deal, you pretty much make your money back. That kind of pulls out the ROI thing. You have three income streams based on using the Nolodex platform to bring money in. So the money's almost secondary. Like, "I don't care, keep charging me that hundred bucks a month. That doesn't even matter. I'm making money, I'm getting value." It's all packed into one. So yeah, it's great to have these people that have been around since we started in the coffee shop with seven people. Some of those people are still here.

Scott Raven: Yeah. And you know, we talk about avoiding being the Chief Everything Officer, avoiding being your own bottleneck. Have you found, as you have seen The Connective evolve, that it's not just about these advisory groups where people are in common spaces, but that people come together in corollary ways where people work together who are in related spaces, and one plus one can mean more than two at the end of the day?

Joe Mindak: Yeah, I mean, we have a couple groups right now and we're working on this as one of our big initiatives for this year to say, "Hey, Scott, you do this. Sarah does that. Joe does that. If all you people come together and go after a client, you might have a client that you're going after for your space, but that client also needs all these other services wrapped around it."

So we're putting these groups together that can go out to a customer and say, "Hey, we can handle all these things for you under one umbrella." Obviously there's different people, but we all work together very closely. We're all aligned with each other and we all do different things. "I'll take care of the HR, you take care of the sales, you take care of the marketing."

So we're seeing these groups, and the groups have been coming to us saying, "Hey, I got these five, six other people that I've really hit it off with. We're kind of those corollary industries. We wanna go after clients together." The big overall client comes in, a piece is paid for the referral fee and then gets split up amongst everybody. It really works kind of well to bring all those different disparate industries together.

Scott Raven: And I think that this is part of your philosophy in life, which is that you have a bias for action, trying quickly, listening, staying consistent, but learning and revising along the way. As you think about some of the people who may be listening to this podcast who are stuck, who feel like, "I don't know where to go. I feel like any move that I make is gonna be the wrong move from where I am." How would your philosophy play in terms of telling them, "Here's how you get unstuck"?

Throw Spaghetti Against the Wall

Joe Mindak: Right. Yeah. I was just on vacation with my daughter, who's a freshman in college, and I told her about, "You ever hear about throwing spaghetti against the wall?" She was like, "What are you talking about?" I said, "When you make spaghetti, it gets sticky, and you throw it against the wall. That's how they used to see if it was done. If it stuck to the wall, it was done."

So same with anything in life, in business. You gotta try some things. Listen, I've tried a bunch of different things. Even when I started The Connective, I had one vision in mind. And it started to stray from that vision. I said, "You know what? This isn't working the way I want to." I had 60 people in the group. I cut 30 people out. I said, "This isn't going the way I want to."

At that point we tried different chapters in New Jersey. I was in Jersey, so let's do one here, let's do different counties. I was trying to open up in different counties. I was throwing anyone into a role. "Scott, oh, you live in that county. Good, you take that role." But you might have been a shitty leader. You can't just throw anyone in a role.

So I realized it wasn't about the geography. It was about that person. So moving forward, when we were bringing people like Karina and Tim and those guys, our first chapter heads, it was about the person that was really doing well. So I tried it that way once. It didn't work, and that's okay. It's okay to fail. Like I said about my book.

Scott Raven: You win or you learn in life. Play it back to where we started with the Eagles. Jalen Hurts being the constant stoic from last night, saying, "We're gonna learn from this." So I agree with you. But one of the things that I feel has made you successful is you'd say this yourself: you've never really been one to stress, you control what you can, you have patience with what you can't. Do you feel that that's been more natural for you, that that's been innate, or that you've learned that lesson along the way to apply it better to what you're going after?

Joe Mindak: Yeah, I think, you know, I don't know. I go back to golf maybe.

Scott Raven: Mm-hmm.

Joe Mindak: In high school, I really wanted to be good at golf and I was getting pretty good. I was getting low eighties, which for golfers is pretty good. And I would get so stressed and pissed off if I screwed up on a hole. And it's like, really, the whole thing is being out there enjoying the day and all that stuff. And now I'm 15 holes in and I've totally ruined my day because I had a couple bad shots. Really? So I just stopped keeping score. I haven't kept score in golf in 30 years.

Scott Raven: Good for you, man.

Joe Mindak: Unless I'm in a tournament or people want to play, yeah, go ahead and mark it down. But I don't care. I don't even care what my score is at the end because I know I'm gonna have a hole where I'm gonna get a 10 on it, and I'm gonna get a couple pars. So I just stopped stressing about things. I can't control that. I know I'm gonna screw up some things.

Same in business. Some days you're gonna be really horrible.

Scott Raven: Good days, bad days, and downright ugly days. Yep. I agree.

Joe Mindak: In the morning you could be having the best day in the world and you get one phone call that just completely destroys it. So what am I gonna do? I can't control that. Stress out about it? I don't. And look, I think I'm a little different than people. I just don't let things bother me. My wife, I'm like, "What are you stressing out about?" I just kind of take it as I can control certain things and certain things I can't control, but I can figure out a way to fix them. So it's like, "This sucks, this happened. How do we move forward? How do we come up with an idea to keep moving forward?"

Scott Raven: And do you find, to play off of that, that by finding those moments of stillness, the strategy that comes out of those moments is more effective, is more on point in terms of what you really want? You find the benefit by being in the stillness.

Finding Stillness for Strategic Clarity

Joe Mindak: Right. And that's why I go to the gym every morning and I spend about 15 minutes usually in the sauna. Sometimes there's somebody in there and we'll chat and stuff, but a lot of times nobody's in there. I don't have a phone. I don't have anything but my thoughts. And now I swim in the mornings too. I swim for about 45 minutes. And it's just you and your thoughts, man. And just the most brilliant things come out of this. "Holy shit. I never thought about this before. What if we did it this way?"

So I think every business owner should have some time during the day. Whatever your time is, for me it's early in the morning. I'm in bed at 8:30 at night. Some people it could be one o'clock in the morning. They get up late. Take 15 minutes or so just to think about things and nothing else. No phone calls, no TV, no distractions. Just kind of thinking about your business and maybe there's an issue you're having or a problem you're trying to solve. When you have the clarity to just sit back and focus on it, stuff comes to you. It just does. That's the best way to do it. But you have to clear your mind to really think about it.

Scott Raven: Right. Well, speaking of something that you're solving, when you take a look at the broader picture of The Connective and Nolodex, you're addressing something that is very prevalent in today's business society, that at times it can feel very cold and transactional in nature. Why is it that the business community needs to evolve into this broader relationship-based approach?

The $34 Million Sauna Deal

Joe Mindak: Well, I mean, look, it's always been since the dawn of time, since someone was selling wood to a caveman to start a fire. Like, "Oh, do you know the caveman down the road?" "Yeah, oh, I know them. We had them over for dinner." So it's all about relationships. Who do you know?

But I think what people do a lot is just do that transactional thing. "Oh, Scott, you wanna talk to CEOs? Here's the CEO." And you send them over and they don't... What we train everybody in is like, "Scott, do you know Tim well enough to make an introduction?" "Oh yeah. Tim and I went to college together." "Okay, good. So you know him real well. Can you ask him if he's looking for a new accounting company?"

And you reach out to Tim, say, "Hey, Tim, listen, I got a friend. He noticed you on LinkedIn. He's looking to see if you're in the market for a new accounting company. If it's a no, it's a no." "If it's a yes, actually, you know what? Yeah, thanks Scott. Good timing. I'm looking for someone." Good timing. I was on a call the other day with a chamber. "This is perfect timing, Joe. We have a task force meeting tomorrow about this topic." Just perfect.

How better of a deal are you gonna get to that? Someone that you know well, and someone that wants the service. So now you, Scott, are introducing me to Tim, your buddy from college who's looking for an accountant, and you're vouching for me. It just works a hundred times better. So it's always still about building relationships.

It's funny because everyone talks about AI now. And look, AI is great. I was on it this morning. It helps me generate some ideas and stuff. But it's not gonna replace that human relationship. The biggest deal I've ever had is closing, hopefully closing, I mean, knock on wood, but it's a $34 million deal. It should be closing in a few weeks. The biggest deal I've ever done in my career. And it all started in the sauna.

Scott Raven: And there you go.

Joe Mindak: Just me and this guy talking and bullshitting.

Scott Raven: Humans making decisions about other humans at the end of the day.

Joe Mindak: Right. And we just hit it off and we get along really great and we've just had a lot of long conversations about a bunch of stuff. But in between all that, it's like, "Hey Scott, you just got me thinking about something. I should introduce you to this person." And that's what happened. I'm like, "Hey, let me introduce you. I know this person's selling the company. You should..." And then next thing you know, this is happening.

So that'll beat AI or any other software you have any time of the day. It's just about trusting each other, building those relationships. I've had relationships for 20 years where people call me back all of a sudden. Just Friday, I had a guy reach out to me. Jim. He's like, "Hey Joe, it's been a while." I got on with him. I'm like, "Yeah, good chat." We haven't talked in probably eight years, but we built that relationship with each other. He reached out to me. I automatically was like, "Yeah, let's talk," and we talked and there's some things that we could probably do together.

Scott Raven: There you go. I'm curious, as I play off of that, in terms of how you're carrying that message forward to the younger generation. You teach at Stevens. You've obviously raised kids that we talked about. I see it in my son where, you know, I'm late Gen X, so I tend to be at times overly pragmatic about things. But he has a lot of the affinity in his life in terms of the close-knit friend group that he has and the strong relationships in terms of them all building together in certain ways. Do you see that in your conversations with the younger generation as you are espousing this wisdom and paying it forward?

Joe Mindak: Yeah, I think the one thing I try to teach the students and my kids and everything is it's all about relationships. "Guys, you're here today with all these other students. Make sure you... " And I tell my kids, "Make sure you're good to everybody. One day you're gonna call Scott back, and if you were not kind to Scott, he's gonna be like, 'You know what? I'm not gonna help you get that done.'" So make sure you're nice to everyone. Keep in touch with everyone. Get on LinkedIn with everybody. Because five years from now you're gonna be calling that guy from your class saying, "Hey Scott, we had this chemical engineering class together. By the way, I see you're working at DuPont Chemical or whatever. Hey, I need this job." You gotta keep those relationships going.

So I'm preaching to all of them: build those relationships. Get on with your parents, your cousins, everyone you can to start building relationships because that's gonna be critical for your career. Moving up, getting new jobs, if you're in sales one day. Again, it's all about networking.

They're getting it. My son's been very hesitant to let me help him get an internship. Now it's January and he still doesn't have one. And he asked me the other day, "Hey Dad, you hear from that guy back?" I'm like, "Yes. Finn, listen, I know you want..." And this is to the young kids: I know you wanna do it yourself. And we applaud that. It's awesome. "I got this." That's good. You can have that inside and have that drive to be like, "I'm gonna be successful on my own."

Scott Raven: It's so hard to remember. No one gets anywhere great alone. I'll put it that way.

Joe Mindak: Right. And I said to my son, I said, "Listen, if I don't get you in that job, Scott's nephew's gonna get there. Because Scott knows the same guy. Scott's gonna get his nephew in there and get the job before you." And it's just, your first job or two, it's all about getting in through somebody you know. And then from there, you'll build your own relationships. But yeah, you have to use that network that you built.

Scott Raven: And that sense of giving is not just in this arena. There's also the giving back in terms of what you did for the American Legion after Superstorm Sandy. I'd love for you to opine a little bit in terms of what that was and what that meant for you to be of aid.

Rebuilding the American Legion

Joe Mindak: Yeah, I mean, look, I've always... My parents were always just that giving type of people. They always were doing stuff for people and not getting credit for it. They weren't looking for it. I was always taught you always give back.

I had a magazine in Hoboken where every month we'd raise money for charities. And one month, the American Legion was the charity. And they had told me Superstorm Sandy wiped them out and they haven't been back in their home. I said, "It was two years? Two years, no one's helped you guys?"

So we went in, fixed up the home. It was a one-car garage. It was like an old mechanic's garage. And as the president of Rotary, the whole Rotary club went in and we fixed it up cosmetically. And then that snowballed into me meeting somebody who built housing for veterans. So I brought them in and we got the mayor in and next thing you know, we tore that building down, built a brand new hall, and we put six units of housing for homeless veterans on top.

Now we have 18 more units on phase two for that place in Hoboken. Out here where I live now in Westfield, we have a 22-unit housing facility coming up, and we have six other locations across the state of New Jersey. So we're building about 150 to 200 homes for homeless veterans on these old American Legion VFW plots that are owned.

So there's a formula there that we figured out. Hey, we can take the equity we have in the land, government grants, and some fundraising, and build these homes and give the vets brand new halls, housing, office space, cantina for the vets to hang out in, banquet halls in some of the spaces. And then housing for homeless veterans up top.

These veterans, it's amazing how much the veterans want to help the other veterans. The ones that came home and are doing well, they're more interested in helping those other veterans than getting a new hall. New hall is great and they love that, but they want to help these other veterans that need their help. It's amazing to watch. It's amazing. I've never seen anyone thank me or our organization as much as veterans say, "Thank you, thank you" all the time. We're like, "Thank you, thank you guys. You were the ones that did all that. You know what you did for us?"

Scott Raven: Do you find that it's a difference between the typical "thank you for your service" versus show me through action how you are paying, and paying is the wrong term here, but demonstrating an effort towards something which is going to help them?

Joe Mindak: Right. And look, we tell the kids, always say "thank you for your service." They want to hear that. But they're also so appreciative of all the effort that me and the team have put in. They thought, when I walked in the door three years ago, they were like, "Who's this business guy? What's his angle? What's he getting out of it?" And I think they're really appreciative that we've stuck with it and built it.

Scott Raven: Because they tend to have a little bit of distrust upfront, and then you have to break through a little bit.

Joe Mindak: Right. And there's a lot of, unfortunately, dishonest charities out there raising money for veterans that aren't really raising money for veterans. So I get it. And so we've proven that and they appreciate it. They're very thankful. Vinny said one time when I first started this, he was up at the mic when we were raising money for the charity. He says, "We thought you all forgot about us."

So I think for them to see people so ingrained and so excited and ready to build and work hard to get this thing done for them, that's much better than a "thank you for your service." It's like, "Hey, we're now able to serve you guys. You served us. You did your part. We're here to do our part for you. Now it's our time to serve you guys."

And they're very appreciative of that. Like, "Wow, okay. People didn't forget about us and they're working hard to help the people that came home and just need a little help. Need their own place to stay."

Scott Raven: Yep. So as we go into the traditional close of these podcast episodes, and I always do a tip of the cap to Randy Pausch's book The Last Lecture, and his final line, which was, "This was written for my kids," thinking about younger generations. Whether they be the folks that you teach at Stevens, young entrepreneurs, et cetera, they're listening to this episode and they're like, "I have no idea how I'm gonna be able to get to that level of success because I feel like if I spend it in the business, I neglect my kids. If I spend it with my kids, I neglect my wife." What guidance would you give them in terms of how to achieve the breadth and the depth of impact that they truly want?

Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

Joe Mindak: Right. So it's a time management thing really. You gotta set aside the time. When my kids were young, I remember seeing some guy talk, I couldn't tell you who it was, but he's like, "Every day I get home and I put my phone down for an hour."

It's simple. That's all the kids want from you is one hour every day. You don't need to spend five hours with the kids every day. Nobody wants to spend five hours with the kids. But that hour you get home from work, just take that phone, put it down in another room, and spend that hour quality time with the kids doing whatever. Take them to the park, do whatever. That's your time.

Or now my kids are gone. So my wife and I go for... Yesterday, we went for a walk for an hour. We just spend time together. You don't need all that time. For my wife, an hour is good for her. And then focus the rest of the day on what you do in business.

I have my time in the morning where I go to the gym. And after that I spend an hour from 7:30 to 8:30 prospecting. And then from nine on is when I do all my different meetings, whatever it might be. Meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. And then at six o'clock I'm done for the day. I'll check some emails and stuff later on, whatever. But about six o'clock, put that schedule in place and stick with it.

Obviously, you can adjust here and there. But if you stick with a certain schedule, do certain things every day, and you know you have to do it, it works. Sales is tough. Every day doing an hour prospecting is a tedious, boring task. Nobody wants to do it. But guess what? I do an hour a day, hit 50 prospects.

Scott Raven: Yep.

Joe Mindak: And I do it every day. I have that hour that I have to sit down and do it. And at the end of the week, I yield five new meetings with five new potential clients. It works. But just make sure you figure out how you're gonna split up your day.

I follow along my calendar. After this, what am I doing at 10 o'clock? I don't know yet. My calendar's gonna tell me what I'm doing. But I set those times up and it's just very helpful.

Connect with Joe

Scott Raven: Yeah. And for those who have listened to this podcast now and are like, "I want the things that are in Joe's universe as part of my life," let's talk about how people get in touch with you, The Connective. Learn more about Nolodex. Give us the details, man.

Joe Mindak: Yeah, so the easiest way is joe@nolodex.com. N-O-L-O-D-E-X dot com. You can check out nolodex.com if you want. Theconnective.me is our website. But just shoot me an email if you want to hear about it.

You can buy my book called Connectors Get Paid. It's out on Amazon if you wanna learn about how to start your own network. This gives you everything we did to build The Connective and how we built it to 550 people and growing and deals. It'll tell you all the secret sauce and everything that we did. It's all spelled out right there. So yeah, that's the best way to do it.

Scott Raven: Right. And I understand that in order to join The Connective, you have to be accepted in. However, if you have heard about The Connective through sources like this, through this podcast, that will give you prioritization. Is that right?

Joe Mindak: Right, yeah. So if you mention the podcast and put who referred you, put Scott Raven on it, and you'll get priority boarding.

Scott Raven: Ah, you know what? Who doesn't love priority boarding in this day and age? Joe, any final thoughts before we close this episode out? This has been great, man.

Joe Mindak: I mean, listen, the one thing I would tell any entrepreneur is start reading some books. I'm trying to get my kids to read books. I unfortunately didn't start reading till like 40 years old for whatever reason. I just thought I could do it on my own. But just pick up some business books, man. There's some great wisdom in those things.

Scott Raven: I absolutely agree. And you brought a lot of great wisdom to the podcast. Joe, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really appreciate you, man.

Joe Mindak: Yeah, this was great. Thanks for having me.

Scott Raven: Now to my listeners. As always, thank you for investing your time. Your charge is now to take this and go out and act accordingly to produce the impact that we're looking for. As always, subscribe and share. Give us your feedback so that we can give you the most impact from these sessions. Until next time, I'm Scott. We'll see you on The Corvus Effect. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. If today's conversation sparked ideas about how to free yourself from overwhelm, visit TheCorvusEffect.com for show notes, resources, and our free Sixth Dimensions assessment, showing you exactly where you're trapped and how to architect your freedom. While you're there, check out the Corvus Learning Platform, where we turn insights into implementation. If this episode helped you see a new path forward, please subscribe and share it with others who are ready to pursue their definition of professional freedom. Join me next time as we continue exploring how to enhance your life through what you do professionally. It's time to make that your reality!