Can Allie Read My Future?
Most business owners know they need better customers.
Fewer think about the other relationships that determine whether their business actually holds together as it grows: the financial advisor who can speak your clients' language, the accountant nearby who knows your structure, the trusted insurance contact before something goes wrong, the strategic advisor who can see the whole board when you can't.
These aren't referral partners. They're your resource network. And for most owners, building it has been entirely accidental.
Here's what I've observed across a decade of watching small businesses grow: the ones that scale without breaking aren't just good at finding customers. They're good at surrounding themselves with the right advisors and operators and they build those relationships before they need them.
The financial advisor relationship matters most before a pricing decision, not after a cash flow crisis. The attorney matters most before you sign a contract, not after a dispute. The strategic advisor matters most when you're choosing between two growth paths, not when you've already committed to the wrong one.
The owners who have these relationships in place make better decisions faster, because they're not building the network while solving the problem.
What most owners don't realize: the people they need are often already one degree away. Already connected on Alignable. Already mutual with someone they trust. Already warm… just never surfaced.
The Playbook Move
Allie (the intelligent partner coming soon to Alignable) will be able to look across your entire Alignable network and do something most owners have never done deliberately: map the resource gaps.
Ask Allie which critical business resource roles you already have covered (financial, legal, operations support, accounting, insurance, strategic advisory) and which are missing. Allie will look across your connections, assess the trust signals (mutual recommendations, recent interactions, shared network), and tell you what's there and what isn't.
The answer is usually more useful than expected. Often you have more than you think in some categories. And in others, the ones you'd need most in a growth moment, you have nothing. No one. And because you've never looked, you don't know.
Knowing the gap is the first move. The second is filling it intentionally, while you still have the luxury of time.
Your Action This Week
Ask yourself: "What are the most important business resource relationships I should have in my corner as my business grows — and who in my network is already in one of those roles?"
Look at your network, and see surfaces. What's missing. Pick one gap category and find one person on Alignable who fits, someone a connection could introduce you to. Reach out before you need them.
That's the difference between building your resource network as a strategy and discovering you needed it as a crisis.
A Question for You
Which relationship outside of customers and referral partners has made the biggest difference in your business… and how did you find them?
I read every reply and I'll feature the best answers in a future Playbook. Because the real answer to "how do I find the right advisor" is usually buried in how another small business owner actually did it.
Eric Groves is co-founder of Alignable, the peer-to-peer referral and networking platform for small business owners. Ten million members. Thirteen years of watching what actually works.
Comments (1-8)
Yet another fabulous tool offered by Alignable for PREMIUM members!
If you have not yet upgraded, what are you waiting for? I was not a premium member for literally 10 minutes in April of 2019 right before I launched my business with Modern Nature. I saw the value immediately after I blew through my connection requests in record time!! I have nothing to gain from this post…but hope you take my advice! YOU will gain connections, referrals, clients (90%of my business comes from my network and referrals), community, unlock so many special features, and gain access to ALLIE! Oh, and your membership is a business expense!
Have a wonderful day ☀️
Eric, this is the right framing — most owners build this network by accident, if at all. Treating “who covers legal, insurance, accounting, strategic advisory” as a deliberate gap analysis rather than something you scramble for mid-crisis is exactly the kind of systems thinking that separates businesses that scale cleanly from ones that break under their own growth.
To your question — the best connection I’ve made on Alignable so far didn’t come through an introduction at all. It came through my profile: a founder found me, and that relationship turned into him bringing me on as CEO of his company. Not something I could have engineered through a match — it came from putting myself out there and being findable.
On the introduction side, though, my experience has been the opposite of what you’re describing. Several Smart Connect introductions in a row have sent me to the wrong people entirely, and there have clearly been AI issues behind it — misrouted matches, rough edges in the flow. I’m not sure if Allie is already partly driving Smart Connect or if that’s still coming, but whichever system is behind it feels like it went live before it was fully tested. I like where this is headed conceptually — I’d just want the matching solid before leaning on it for something as important as advisor relationships.
Frankly, the greatest relationship is me noticing I need help with something I don’t know enough about. By trusting myself with clarity, I am then able to reach out to my network and ask for a referral. Alignable has proven to be the number one place to build solid relationships. In the seven years I’ve been coaching, my contacts list shows the most genuine relationships stem from reciprocal care for one another. Over the years it becomes obvious who is genuine. So, thank you Eric, I appreciate your heart and soul enveloped into continuously developing the Alignable platform. I can say the name sure gives way to the ultimate in building genuine relationships.
My most important and largest referral source resulted from an article I wrote to the editor of a local newspaper about Medicaid Rules and Regulations and urging members of my community to seek legal advice from an expert to protect their home and assets to that they can pass the benefits of their hard work to their children or close friends and family. An esteemed and successful Elder Law Attorney in my community invited me to work with his firm as he was impressed by my comprehensive knowledge and handed me 10 clients on the spot. Not all Elder Law Attorneys appreciate the value of working with a Clinical Social Worker/Aging Life Care Professional but he did.
So i have had a chance now to tey Allie; and it is fascinating to learn how it figure out the people to network with, and evaluates good matches and opportunities. So impressed!
When can I ask Allie?
Eric - a question. Recently when I've accepted a connection request, I found a response "by" me already written "for" me. (3X) Is that Allie, or another kind of AI?