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Don Johnston
Licensed Real Estate Broker at Redfin
Professional Background
Don Johnston is a dynamic and driven serial entrepreneur who has made substantial contributions across various industries, including real estate, capital markets, and military service. With two decades of experience in leading high-performing teams, he excels in fostering personal and professional growth among individuals and organizations alike. His diverse career encompasses roles in business intelligence, startups, non-profits, media, and franchise operations, showcasing his adaptability and comprehensive understanding of market dynamics.
In his current capacity, Don is focused on empowering individuals by teaching them how to overcome obstacles and build authentic relationships that lead to success. This passion stems from his own life experiences and the desire to help others realize their full potential. As a highly regarded speaker, mentor, and coach, he has successfully shared his insights with numerous groups, emphasizing the importance of self-discovery and achieving one's goals.
Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Don served an impressive fourteen years in the United States Army, Army Reserve, and in paramilitary operations for the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. He began his military journey in 1994 with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and continued to make significant contributions, especially following the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Through his work with the United States Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USCAPOC), he supported Special Operations in Iraq, collaborating with the esteemed 10th Special Forces Group and the 101st Airborne Division.
In a private operator capacity, Don honed his skills in intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, reconnaissance, and personal protection. His dedication was further exemplified during his tenure as a civilian contractor at a GS13 equivalent position, where he played a crucial role in managing a substantial linguist services contract in the volatile regions of Iraq.
Education and Achievements
Don Johnston's educational background is rooted in a strong foundation in cybersecurity and business management. He pursued Cybersecurity studies at the esteemed New Jersey Institute of Technology, further augmenting his technical expertise. Additionally, he studied Business Management, Business Administration, and General Management at Penn State University, where he acquired the skills necessary to navigate the complexities of running a successful business.
Through his commitment to education and continuous learning, Don has been able to adapt to the ever-evolving business landscape and effectively tackle challenges across sectors. His expertise particularly shines in commercial and residential real estate marketing and sales, where he has established himself as a leading authority in the field, guiding many clients to achieve their real estate objectives.
Moreover, Don has held various leadership roles in prominent organizations. He formerly served as the Executive Director of Bunker Labs in New York City, where he passionately worked to support military veterans in their entrepreneurial journeys. By mentoring and advising aspiring entrepreneurs, he connected them with vital resources, including mentorship and funding opportunities necessary for scaling their businesses.
In addition, he actively contributes to the veteran community as a board member of Backpacks for Life, a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting homeless veterans. This crucial initiative involves the distribution of innovative and design-patented backpacks that provide essential items and help those in need stay prepared and resilient on the streets.
Achievements
Don Johnston’s career is characterized by an array of noteworthy achievements that reflect his leadership, service, and commitment to making a positive impact. Over the years, he has earned recognition for his contributions to diverse fields, demonstrating a multifaceted skill set and dedication to service.
- Leadership in Veterans’ Entrepreneurial Support: Through his role as Executive Director of Bunker Labs, Don significantly improved access to mentorship and funding resources for military veterans. His efforts in this capacity have helped foster a vibrant community of veteran entrepreneurs, supporting their transition from service members to successful business owners.
- Philanthropic Involvement: As a board member of Backpacks for Life, Don has actively engaged in initiatives that support homeless veterans, reflecting his commitment to social responsibility and community service. His work has made a meaningful difference in the lives of countless individuals in need.
- Expertise in Real Estate and Capital Markets: With proficiency in commercial and residential real estate, along with substantial experience in capital markets, Don has guided numerous clients to successful transactions and investments. His comprehensive understanding of both public and private equity underscores his prowess in this competitive field.
- Military Service Excellence: Don's long-standing military service, particularly his critical role in operations during the Iraq War, showcases his dedication to his country and his exceptional capabilities in high-pressure environments. His experience in intelligence and operational support underpins his strategic thinking and leadership skills.
- Mentorship and Coaching: As a sought-after coach and mentor, Don is dedicated to empowering individuals to embrace their potential and achieve their life goals. His motivational speaking engagements have inspired many to pursue their paths with confidence and determination.
Throughout his multifaceted career, Don Johnston has consistently exemplified the qualities of a true leader. His commitment to service, education, and mentorship continues to leave a lasting legacy, making him a respected figure in both the veteran community and the business world. With an unwavering focus on helping others achieve success, Don is making strides that extend far beyond his immediate work, positively impacting individuals and communities alike.”],
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
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- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.