Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Arias WebsterBerry and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- 4 days ago
- 19 min read
Welcome back to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're diving into the future of networking. What if you could use AI and automation, not just to grow your network, but to monetize it, turning your connections into real, measurable revenue? My guest today is an expert at doing exactly that.
We're talking about scaling relationships without losing authenticity, using technology to deepen trust and building a network that actually works for you. If you've ever wondered how to stay human in an automated world, this episode will change how you think about connection, influence, and income. So let's get into it.
Aria, let me just welcome you to the podcast. I'm so thankful to have you on, and why don't you give us a little about your background and what got you here today? Sure Michael thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here. I really appreciate you've been teaching for years that this know trust you framework.
And that's something that I personally subscribe to. So I'm really happy to be here. So in terms of me I have around the world and back again I've been through trials and tribulations, but I'm as we said before, we jumped on every day that you are on this side of the dirt and vertical is a gift.
I'm just a kid from Dallas, Texas. I grew up in San Diego, California, so I always tell people that I get my heart from Texas and I get my brain and my hustle from California. And I'm just, I'm in love with business. I love all things commerce. I love the free market. I love seeing entrepreneurs take their dreams and their hopes and build it into something that helps add value to other people's lives.
Sounds great. That sounds like great, and it's a great beginning to this podcast since right now we're all about you. But let's start to go from relationships to revenue. You teach that a professional network isn't just a collection of contacts, it's a revenue generating asset. What's the first mental shift someone needs to make to start treating their network that way?
First mental shift they need to make to start treating their network that way? I would say that you have to we all know that the money is in the follow up. And in that follow-up, you need to look to deepen the relationship first before you ever start looking for money. There's no shortage of people that are out in your inbox following you around on social media, calling you and leaving voicemails that are looking to get your money.
But there's very few people that are honestly. Trying to develop a relationship and figure out what it is that they may actually be able to help you with. So when you are networking and you come across someone who wants to exchange information, take the time to actually build the relationship first.
And the best way you can do that is by ensuring that you automatically follow up with them. I cannot tell you how many times I personally, before, I built the companies that I've built, would get a business card or put a number in my phone and, I am tired. I go to sleep, and the next day I've got meetings and, it's 3, 4, 5 days before I remember to follow up with them.
And these days I realize that I'm bad at it. So I put a system in place to make sure that the very next day an automated message goes out and it's not, me trying to pretend it's. Me in something heartfelt. It's just there to get the conversation going, right? That message gets triggered, an email and a text message goes out so that I'm on their radar, they're on mine, and hopefully a conversation can ensue.
Absolutely. And I'm a firm believer that the follow up is probably more important than actually meeting the person themselves, right? Because the answer is in the follow up. It's how quick and when you follow up will determine whether or not you'll have success in that relationship. But we'll go into that a little bit later on.
AI is helping people build networks faster than ever. Speed doesn't always mean substance. How do you balance efficiency with genuine human connection? That, that's a hard one. It, it's all about, how do you keep the relationships personal, right? How do you keep it from, being robotic. And that's a fine line. You want the efficiency and the speed and accuracy of automation, but you still want it to be you. For lack of a better term. And that's a fine line to walk. It's something that we do all the time. Actually currently we are building out models to handle incoming inquiries and a lot of people on social media.
So we, we have multiple social media accounts. We have, I dunno, maybe a hundred to 200 people having conversations through those accounts every single day. It can get daunting unless I wanna hire an army of people to handle those conversations. So it is the best way that I can say, instead of giving you some generic answers, is you need to figure out how to distill down your brand voice.
You have a, you have terms that you use. You have a background and a story and an origin that makes you uniquely you. There's a certain way you speak. There's certain terms that you go to and reach for automatically. You have to figure out how to take those things and put it into a document so that if let's say an ai agent is responding on your behalf, it sounds like you.
But you also need to put some limits on its abilities. It doesn't need to pretend that it's you need to be honest with people. Have integrity. If it's a, if it's an AI agent, say so. But you can make a joke out of it and say, Hey, but I've got all of Michael's best qualities and none of his worst ones, okay. So it, it is. Trying to pull as much of your personality in lending this to AI as possible while also maintaining integrity and using the best parts of its efficiency and automation. That sounds great. When you go into a networking event i, I coach, I mentor, I teach but I always tell them to go in with a servant's heart.
To not expect to receive anything but expect to give. When I have them at a table or something and I'm speaking with somebody, I use another form situation like that. But. After they, after I'm active listening to them and I listen to what they have to say, I say that I like them. I like how they do business.
How can I make you more successful? How can I be a good referral source for you? And they're like blown away. They usually say, Mike, you know what? I don't even know what the hell you do yet, and you're already trying to make me better. I said, yes. I'm trying to make you a better version of yourself.
So if you go into a networking event with that, you take all the pressure off and you go on your way. Alright, indeed. Enough about me indeed. When someone automates outreach or follow-up, how can they keep from sounding robotic or transactional? Yeah. I think it's it's all about authenticity, and authenticity comes from relevance and you being able to one, know what is relevant for that person, very much to what you just said.
Go in looking as to what you can add rather than what you can get out. Staying in and making that the core objective, or at least one of them when you're building out some of these automations in AI, makes it so that, it takes that with it, if you set the core objectives of, hey, get some contact information, book a call sell them on something, then that's the language that's the basis.
If you. Go in and you infuse, Hey, how can you figure out what it is that they need? How can we add value? What pain points are they having? What are they struggling with? How can we pair maybe some of the things that we offer with those pain points? And even something that most people don't think about telling it to, to back off, Hey, if you don't see an actual need something that we can actually help with.
It's okay for you to end the conversation. Again, that integrity, that authenticity of, taking that good part of you and lending that to these AI models, right? They're just like children. If you teach your children a curse and you teach them to not respect their elders by your actions, they're going to mimic that.
And, these automated and AI models are very much the same. In that, whatever you feed it, they're going to obey and mimic. Absolutely. And really what you're talking about is so spot on. But you have to realize that when you back away from a situation, from a problem that they're having, knowing that truly that you cannot solve that problem because after all, we are.
Problem solvers. So if we can't solve the problem because of all your networking, you know somebody who can, so you can then put those two people together. I'm in my area known as a super connector, right? Because every week I try to find two people, one with a problem, one with the solve to that problem.
And I put 'em together and I back away. I just, I said, look, I don't want anything from it. I'm just putting you two together. So that's what enables you to do what, exactly what you said. You can say, something, you're best off if I don't help you, but I know someone who can. And again, that's that integrity. Is what draws people to you. You may not be able to help them today, but they'll remember the fact that you didn't, try to sell them something that they didn't need. And when they do have a need for your services, they are wide open to you because you led with integrity and they trust you.
And that's the biggest thing. Know you like, you, trust you. Then they'll do business with you. So you've really gotten right to the point. Alright? So everyone talks about building at scale. What does scale with integrity look like in networking? Oh, that's a good one. What does scale with integrity look like?
I come up with a couple of good ones. Actually, I think it's what we just spoke of. I believe that it is utilizing your taking the integrity and the honesty that you have as a business o owner and just as a human and putting that into your system. But using the system and making sure that you were doing the same thing every time my networking took off when I had the ability to, to no longer have to take a whole bunch of business cards and go home and try to enter it into my system and then, put it on my call sheet for the next day and, figure out what, hold on.
What was it that guy said? Was that Tuesday he said to call, or was it Wednesday? I've had 40 conversations over a few hours. It can get hard to keep them straight. So setting up a system. So in my business specifically, what I do is I have a form. And a QR code. So it's a funnel of sorts.
So the first page is a QR code. So when I meet someone I say, Hey, we'll scan this. When they scan it, it takes them to the next page, which is a just a simple form, name, phone number, email, and maybe you know the name of your business or your website. Once that happens, it immediately sends a text and an email, and then it puts it on my pipeline tomorrow to follow up.
Then it also has an email and a text message set to trigger 9:00 AM in the morning. So it then frees me up to really engage with them knowing that I don't have to try to, okay, what was the guy's name and all these different things. And then what I do at the end at the end of the night, I usually try to go through and make some notes if I can remember them.
And then that way I go to sleep. I wake up tomorrow. I forgot, most of the conversations I've had, but maybe I have a couple quick notes that I can enter in, in reference. So I think that's it at scale. And then if you have a. Follow-up sequence that's already built, a email follow-up sequence that's not just that first email.
Maybe the conversation stalls or goes cold. Maybe over the next few weeks you send a few more emails that are value-based in order to rekindle that conversation. Yeah, that's exactly right. If I could just add something to what you said. You said at the end of the night you're gonna write down all these notes.
My suggestion. Is after you take their business card, write down the date, the name of the function, and something you spoke about, write on that card right after your conversation. Because really a three or four hour event, you shouldn't talk to more than 15 or 20 people. Because that meant that you have that relationship with those people.
But if you write down those notes, as soon as you get back that evening or the next morning, you have it all right. Oh, that's right. That was that guy. Oh, that's right. Oh, that's right. He's the with the big nose. Oh, yeah. I know. I gotcha. But it's something to make you remember.
And then if you include something in your email about what you spoke about, he will remember. You, he or she will remember you. Absolutely. And so it goes back and forth that way. So it's good. Okay. What are the signals that tell you a relationship is ready to move from connection to collaboration or from rapport to revenue?
Signals from. Okay. I would say that they are asking for the details, once the, you have explained what it is that you do. Maybe some of the features and benefits once they start inquiring about cost more of the features and benefits. Does it do this, does it integrate with that? I've tried something like this in the past and the issue that we had was.
X, y, z that's we're not getting into the weeds of your actual offer, your product, your service. That's when it's time to turn up the heat a little bit and really get down to sitting at the table and figuring out if this will actually work for them. Your goal is not to push people into the sales environment.
It's to gently. Guide and nudge, and once they start asking more questions and they start inquiring more you've got them in a buy state of mind. If people are interested, they're gonna, they're gonna make it clear. They're gonna ask lots of questions especially the more high ticket you're offer.
And if they're not doing those things you're talking to them, you're pitching, you're emailing, and the responses are dry, they're short. They're not asking any follow up questions. That tells you that they're either not interested or you have not come to the point where you've explained the benefits to them adequately.
Absolutely absolutely correct on both sides. So I can't even add anything to it because you were spot on. You said it exactly the way it is. Okay, so ai, AI thrives on data, but people thrive on emotion. How do you bridge that gap when using data-driven tools to deepen relationships? Yeah.
How you bridge that gap when you're using AI is data. And people are look for emotions. So you're trying to bridge the gap between the data and the data-driven tools to deepen the relationships. Like how can you do that? Yeah. I was a sales man and a sales manager for many years.
And that was one that was the secret sauce, what, if you will of the great salespeople that I've met, their ability to get down to the emotional parts. And after you have so many conversations, you realize that, you kinda have a script, you have a talk track, some points that you hit in your pitch, and typically people only have a few answers.
They fall into a few categories. And when you start realizing those categories, then it makes it very easy for you to figure out what those responses to their response is gonna be. What is your rebuttal? And what are those emotional triggers and pain points that fall in that particular part of the category of the conversation.
When you start to figure those things out, that's the data, right? Once you've had 10, 20, 30, a hundred, 200, a thousand conversations, you've collected enormous amount of data about how this thing typically goes. And if you're paying attention, then it allows you to navigate the conversation. When you hear those key phrases or things come up, you know what they're really saying.
What they may not be actually saying may, you're able to read between the lines. That data allows you to personalize it. It allows you to strike a chord with them, get them into an emotional state. And we all know that when people are buying, if they're in an emotional state, it's more likely that they will.
Yeah. And when it comes to networking, I always tell everybody there are three words that will help them succeed in networking. Practice. Because the more you go out and practice, look, the first time you go out, you're gonna suck. That's horrible. That's, but move on.
Yeah. You're gonna find out. When you get your answers, as you said, when you're talking to them and they're giving you data back. And if they're not if it's not landing, you have to go back and say, okay, they said this, I said that, but that was probably wrong. So you have to get the answers to those questions so that the next time when you go networking, somebody will give you those same questions.
You'll have a better answer. Practice. Absolutely. Okay. Most opportunities are lost in the follow up. Funny we were just talking about that. How can AI help professionals stay consistent without coming across as pushy or automated?
Keep it short. Keep it short. One of the things that we've learned is, most people when they're especially in text, in, in more informal modes of communication or social media, they're not really long-winded. And AI is, it is lengthy. It decides, it wants to give a whole diatribe on, a simple hello I would focus on trying to keep it short and simple and sweet. Try to boil down that four sentence response to one to, to one and a half, so that it seems more natural. It seems more human and it's not overly verbose. Okay. Sure. That, that, that's probably the best advice that I can even think of is because listen I tell my wife all the time, why do you explain things in three paragraphs when you can do it in two sentences?
But I don't say that too often because. It's her Uhhuh. Okay. But that is the way that I'm used to going. Oh, lemme give it to you in a few short sentences and just tell me what you think, so that's really what you're saying that AI is turning into for you to start your conversation.
AI won't replace your conversation, but they can help you start it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So as AI begins to predict who we should connect with what role will intuition play in future networking?
I would say that, the Savvy Entrepreneur is learning to niche down and you can go into networking events, just, looking to connect with everyone. Or you can have your antennas up to find people that are in maybe a specific industry specific vertical that you can help if you can tailor your solutions to provide a specific solution or.
To solve specific problems for that industry or that vertical. Now, your intuition is that antenna. You're in the room and you're looking for this particular type of person, and not that you can't interact with other people, right? You want to add value to everyone. You can have just a good conversation and that's okay.
But knowing. Who your archetype is, who your persona that you're looking for the specific person that, that you can most likely help. And also on the flip side, those that you can't. Knowing that, asking those strategic questions about where they are in their journey to say, Hey, you may be a little too early in your journey for you to be a good fit for me.
But you know what? There's a smaller company that does something similar to us that only works with people that are where you are. And maybe I can connect you. I think that. Is going to be something that, that in networking is going to help you. It's going to help you filter the list of people that end up in your database in the first place, which then allows AI to give you better results.
That's right. And I'm gonna revert back to what I said before because the more you practice the more you're gonna see more. When you walk into a room, you're gonna say, okay, that's the person that I want to talk to. That's not the person I want to talk to. And the only way you're gonna get there is to practice practice.
So you can get the answers you're looking for. Okay. There's a fine line between automation that serves people and automation that manipulates them. How do you keep networking, technology, ethical and authentic? How do you keep tech from manipulating beagle essentially that, that's essentially what the question is.
I think that it comes down to something we touched on earlier. One, it's okay to let people know that you're using some automation. It's becoming common practice, so don't lie about it. You know that's actually probably the best way to lose a connection with someone is to be dishonest.
I would say that, that overall, I've seen a lot of that and a lot of people that are using AI for the first time, especially when it's personal they feel like it makes it awkward. So be honest about that. But I think that the. A way that you can keep it from manipulating people is giving it very tight parameters.
Telling it what is off limits. Don't, if you don't have a guarantee of certain things or maybe you do have a guarantee, they're looking for 10 x what you know you can deliver. Say that, put that into the model. If you know that. Two outta 10 times your product or service doesn't work for someone.
Built that in. Hey, we've got a 80% effective efficacy rate. Just try. These are things that, that, you know, because you've been doing it for a long time. But when we're taking these systems and we're deploying them many times, we forget these little nuances these little pieces that we've collected over time of doing this, time and time again.
So it's about taking all of that. Infusing it, making sure you put some guardrails on making sure that you are regularly analyzing its responses. Don't just set it and forget it 'cause it can just have all kinds of wild conversations on your behalf. Check in on this thing regularly and make sure that it's still on track.
It's not saying things that are not accurate. And it's not, being dishonest again, just like a human. If the conversation goes a certain way and that's a place where you haven't set guardrails or it's a question that it's never been asked before, who knows what it could say? The more conversations it has, the better it's going to get.
But if you're regularly checking on it and making adjustments, it's gonna get better and better. Perfect. Perfect answer. Okay, so I'm gonna bring this podcast full circle. And I'm gonna ask you last, the last question. If we fast forward five years, what do you think a top performing networker will look like?
Someone who truly masters both human connection and intelligent automation.
Aside to me, five, five years from now what is a master networker look like? Yeah. I think that I. That looks like someone where you can't tell where they begin in the AI ends. I think that it's a seamless transition and we are, we're getting pretty close to that right now. We, on my social media, a lot of times people will reach out.
Sometimes I respond because, we've got time periods and, or sometimes it'll say something and I'm like, oh, I got an answer for that and I'll cut it off. But they are none the wiser. That's the goal. The goal is for it to have the versatility to answer whatever you throw at it, but also allows you to bring your unique personality to it and it, that's not gonna be done in one day.
It takes a long-term commitment to you training and educating and developing and tweaking and filtering with this technology so that it truly becomes an extension of you and your brand. Absolutely, I a hundred percent agree with you. Because we don't know where AI is going. Okay. We have a good idea.
But we don't know. But we know what networking can do for you and how you can do it. So as you said, when it becomes seamless, that I think is the perfect networker five years from now. So I'll tell you how I do in five years. Okay. All right. So Ris let me ask you a question. If somebody wants to get with you they wanna talk to you about networking, about AI or both, or have you coach them or whatever the case may be, what's the best way that they can get hold of you?
Sure. It is, I'm not hard to find on the internet. If you look up s Webster Barry A-R-I-A-S, last name is Webster, like the dictionary, and then B-E-R-R-Y, all one word. My personal sites and social media comes up. But if you're specifically wanting to talk about how maybe you can use AI in your networking how you can, create some systems that help you do more faster, do so ethically. Then Ignite Funnels one of my companies is amazing. We are developing omnichannel AI agents, which means that they can have conversations across social media, email, text, WhatsApp live chat on your website, and keep all of those conversations straight and know that they're coming from one person.
If you're looking to maybe deploy one of these things and you don't wanna break the bank in the process ignite funnels.com is your best bet. Go there, set up a demo. Me or someone on my team will be more than happy to speak with you and see if we can help. Perfect. Thank you, Arias.
I can't I can probably talk to you for another hour because you are so in tune with what you do and you, from the sounds of it, you do it very well. So I implore every, everybody who's listening to give him a call and just give him a shout and just say, Hey, I'm trying to do this. How can I do it? So I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and we'll talk soon.
Thank you for having me, Michael.
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Folks. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today, get out there and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review. Share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website michaelaforman.com/podcast.
Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
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