Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Chris Troka and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Jun 24
- 20 min read
📍 📍 Welcome back to another episode of Networking Unleashed, the podcast where we turn con conversations into connections and connections into profits. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're diving into the future of networking where strategy meets technology. My guest today is a powerhouse in CLI client acquisition, known for helping businesses create systems that bring in sales.
On autopilot we're we're taking AI automation and how to build real lasting relationships in a digital world. That's changing by the second. If you've ever wondered how to blend authentic networking with the power of AI or how to make it client, how to make your client pipeline run while you sleep.
This episode is for you. Let's unleash some next level strategies. Come on, let's get into it. Hello Chris. How you doing? I have Chris here today and he helps solopreneurs and small businesses save time, nurture leads, and scale through smart marketing and efficient automation. How's that Chris? How's that for beginning of a podcast?
Michael, you absolutely nailed it. Probably the best intro I've ever had before. I'm stealing that, if that's okay with you. No problem. Go right ahead. So excited to be on here and I love both your intro for the podcast, what it's about. I. 'cause really life and business is all about networking. It's about making conversations into those connections.
And how do we utilize those connections? So this was my experience just from 11 years ago, starting a wedding DJ business. Being a solopreneur. Eventually I grew and scaled a team. We became an award winning wedding DJ service, and suddenly this became my full-time income. I could quit my job and just focus on that.
During Covid is when I was finishing my degree in marketing and as we know, the world shut down so we couldn't DJ a lot of weddings. So that's when I shifted and transitioned into starting the automation AI technology marketing agency. It feels weird to try to put it into a box 'cause I always feel like we're just helping our clients with solving different types of problems all the time.
So we're just getting creative. But through that experience, it's been incredible. I love nurturing relationships, marketing, just business in general. So I'm excited to nerd out about all that fun stuff with you today. That's great. I love when you have to nerd out everything. Really the problems that you deal with.
I think more of the problems are outside the box. Nobody has the same problem, there's always a little twist on it, but let's kick things off. How has AI changed the way professionals network and build relationships today? Absolutely. So AI has been an incredible tool. It's existed for quite a few years, 10, 20 years in different forms.
This was more like computer machine learning and algorithms. But just recently we saw the introduction of open AI's Chat, GPT and then many others followed suit of these large language models where you could basically ask. Anything you wanted and see what kind of result you could get. So first it started creating copy, making conversation.
Then it was able to create websites and become a programmer for you. And just recently, OpenAI released their updated image generation model. So I'm sure you've seen a bunch of people creating fun little action figures of themselves. Or maybe a corporate professional headshot that takes a regular picture and.
Tosses a professional business attire onto you. So it's been an incredible game changer and the way that we've seen this evolving is now we can use AI to. Both engage in conversation and personalized conversation. So now, just in a, as an example, maybe you have a list of leads you've been hoping to follow up on, maybe your processes that you reach out to 10 people each week and you probably go check out their LinkedIn profile.
Maybe you scrape some data on them so you can make a more personalized. What's cool is that AI can now do this, so either through a simple, prompt or chat, jt, you can do this manually or you can set up an automation system that is now incorporating AI agents. LLM models to craft the perfect opening sentence for your next email and maybe even a personalized subject line.
So this is personalization at scale, which is really cool. Something we haven't seen before. Of course, we've had automation tools, MailChimp CRMs that would. Allow us to scale, but nothing that could really personalize this to this degree. So it's an incredible way for people to now outreach, connect with people create meaningful conversations.
But I always recommend having that human touchpoint follow up after. You generally don't want the conversation to all be run by ai. Certain instances it can, but if you're creating genuine human relationships there's a place for AI and a place for the humans to take over as well. I know that there's a place in, in, in my heart, of course, but where AI meets networking and you have to put that personal touch on it, that relationship, if we were just client building, AI could just, hit it and let's go.
But you have to change it and do it, so you really have to pay attention. But it's a good mix of both. You specialize in client acquisition systems. How important is networking in creating a lead generation engine that runs on autopilot? Absolutely. As a whole lead nurturing is that middle of funnel.
This is how we get leads into the system after after that top of funnel strategy, right? So networking. You're out there doing the groundwork. I. We need you to be collecting those leads and then entering them into the system so that way the automation, the AI can then take over to help you with those touchpoints and follow up and nurturing them.
So we don't recommend people getting rid of traditional networking. In fact, we want you to introduce those leads into the automation and client acquisition system. But. Just as a whole it's a way for a business owner to take a step back and really look at how they nurture and bring value to their prospects, leads, and clients.
So we find a lot of businesses are, unfortunately, their follow ups sound like hey, are you still interested in buying? Or, why haven't you bought yet? As opposed to I created this blog post just for you because your story reminded me of something. Or similar, entrepreneurs have this struggle, so it's just a clever way where we can provide value.
Build and nurture those relationships. And we use AI and automation within this, but not to replace that human connection and networking. We always recommend that as a top funnel strategy as well. Outstanding. I couldn't agree more with everything you just said. So I really don't have anything else to say.
When someone is starting to automate their client acquisition, what networking strategies should they not forget to include in the process? I. Absolutely. When we think of top of funnel strategies, and most people think of marketing we think of advertising, right? Paid ad placements, maybe Google putting something up on Facebook.
And those can be great when you have a systematized process and really dialed in on your audience, your offering, your messaging. But that's a scaling. That's a scaling problem that you want to hit. Before you reach that, you really need a a manual process that is replicable already.
So you need to have some clients in your system already. You need to understand what they're going through, what their pain points are, so that way you can build this into a system. Now what's cool is that at any time you can adjust. Make changes to your system as we do with many of our automation email campaigns or, I think this process, I feel like our clients are getting stuck here, so I'm gonna make this a little bit easier.
So we definitely recommend using these automation tools. The CRMs put, putting them all together. But that top of funnel strategy, it's either getting found or getting front of the right people. So getting found, you can either, utilize YouTube channels, social media and search engine optimization, so that way you're showing up for the right keywords.
People are researching solutions to their problem, and if you happen to show up and present yourself well with the solution now there are, they are prewarm and ready potentially for that next step for you. But getting in front of the right people can include networking. It can include cold to warm direct messages with a lot of individuals and businesses.
Again, I feel like if you focus on serving overselling. You're, you can easily find ways to provide value and then nurture that relationship naturally. And a lot of that can be done with ai, which is super cool. Yeah. I, I always talk, listen, I'm a public speaker and I go coast to coast and I talk about networking communication, but I always say, go in.
With a servant's heart, go and say, what can I do for you? What can I, how can I make you more successful? Yes. And without even telling them what I do, I want, that's what I want to do. So that should be the beginning of everything. You can use AI afterwards, but after you get the feeling for the people, for the person, then introduce ai.
So it's a good mix. It's a good mix. How can business owners strike a balance between human connection automation in today's AI driven world? We just talked about that a little bit. Absolutely. And it's something important that we dive a bit deeper into because I feel like today, in 2025, we're almost bombarded with ai.
AI is now creating songs. AI is creating images. It's take taking a lot of the creative outlets that we wanted. Originally we wanted AI and robots to do the laundry, maybe the dishes for us, but instead it's like writing songs and poetry, the things that we wanted to do on our free time instead.
But again, trying to find and strike this balance here. What's interesting is I never imagined seeing AI where it first started and where it is today. I don't know if you remember the one of the first original AI videos created, which was Will Smith Eating Spaghetti, and it was, it's probably the worst AI video you've ever seen.
Just very choppy. It's like they were copy and pasting, pictures of spaghetti into it, and it just did not look natural. Fast forward two to three years later, and this video is absolutely incredible. So to see the evolution take place over the years but people need to be careful. There are instances, like we mentioned before, using human touchpoints that you can't really replicate with AI just yet, or it needs that human touchpoint that.
AI just can't provide yet. But what's cool is that AI is more contextual. It's more flexible than previous automation or reply follow-up systems. Before they would just look for a generic keyword and maybe post in a copy paste reply. But today, now it can have natural more engaging conversations based on previous conversations.
For example, if you take like a, you have an intake, maybe you have a meeting with a client. Just type their information into a form here. And now that ai, when it provides the follow up three to seven days after it can use that previous chat as context to follow up and say, oh, hey you told me about this new project you were working on.
How is everything going with that? So it's a great way to marry those two elements together. But don't forget that human connection element that needs to exist. Absolutely. Yeah. You need that initial. Natural element just to say hello. AI can't introduce you on the computer.
They can introduce you, but you can't feel the vibe. Chris and I can't go to a meeting and I can't feel the vibe of Chris or the room and have that. Unique feeling, and you pick up a lot of things from that. And I can say, you know what, Chris, this really is working out. I'm gonna go to another table, and go to another table.
But, in essence it's really that natural feeling that AI as of right now, can't introduce, I totally agree. Totally agree. Absolutely. Can you walk us through how a strong personal network fuels or enhances automated sales pipeline? Absolutely. Once you're trying to put yourself out there and get your name out there you start to create these instances and examples of, okay, this is my new process.
This is who I'm helping, this is how I help them. And these are the main pain points they have. So it's kinda as you expand your network and you start to learn a bit more. You become more in tune with some of the problems that they're experiencing, where they go to research solutions, to their problems.
Where do these people hang out and have these conversations? So it's just bringing this all together so that way you can that way you can grow and scale your business through, through that top of funnel strategy. The more people you have knowing about you and liking you, suddenly you can create some brand promoters.
These people are basically advertising you for free and probably the best best prewarm lead other than search engine optimization is gonna be a personal referral, right? There's less selling involved. People have already been hyped up about who you are and how you help them. So there's less barriers.
It's less of a cold introduction and it's way more warm. So now it's much easier to build that relationship. But then using that information, you can feed that into your ai, into your LLM, into your CRM, so that way it can. Adjust itself based on maybe your selling style, maybe your conversational style.
The best way to get a better output is to provide examples to your LLM. So if you can provide past blog posts that you've made, it can create a better blog post. If you provide conversations that you've had directly with clients, it can better imitate and replicate. Your personal conversation style.
So this is a great way that we can use kind of these top of funnel, mix them through the the community and just networking events and then build our, be better business. Yeah. In, in the networking world, there's a mantra I. If they know you, if they like you, if they trust you, they'll do business with you, right?
So know you, listen, we I know you and we can know each other by Zoom, but like us, now that narrows the scope down just a little bit. All. And now trust. That's the un factor, that element of trust. You can't get through Zoom, you can't get through something else. You have to go there in person.
So know you, like you, trust you, and then they will begin to do business with you because you know what? Nobody's gonna do business with you if they don't trust you. Okay, so now tell me, Chris, now before I finish with a few more my of my questions, you are. Successful. You were successful as a DJ and successful now with ai.
What, gimme an idea. Gimme what mistake you made and how you overcame it. Absolutely. So throughout business, plenty of mistakes but through those mistakes, those are all lessons that we can learn. One of the biggest mistakes that I've made is. Waiting too long, procrastinating with the idea of that I need to make it perfect before I launch, or I really need some more insight.
Or I need to watch one more video. I need to read one more book from the bookshelf to really dial in what I need to know. No, all of that needs to get thrown out the window. Action is what is going to create the end result for you. So without the action, it's just an idea. People have plenty of ideas and dreams that they want to implement into business.
Oftentimes it's the execution that is lacking. Now I would rather see imperfect action. Instead of not doing anything at all, waiting for something to be absolutely perfect because these things you learn through these hands-on experience. You can't learn that by not acting on it yet.
You can always update and change things as you go along. So I definitely promote people. Take action. Don't wait. This was a mistake I made. The further you can hit the ground running, the more hands-on experience you'll get, and you can always adjust as you go along. It doesn't have to be perfect.
And that's so right. When I tell people who are really afraid to go out there and start networking, the first thing I say is just do it. Just go out there and network and listen between you and I. Don't worry. 'cause I know you're gonna suck. It's gonna be horrible. You're gonna fall flat on your face, but the next time you're gonna make a few.
A few less mistakes, and then the third time you can be a little bit better. And a fourth time, you know what, Hey, this is fun. I'm gonna go out and try it. But you have to go through the first three times before you get to that little bit of enjoyment. I agree. But that, but I think it takes the pressure off them too, when you just say, go get it.
Don't worry about it. Yeah. You're gonna fail. Hey, you know what? Later down the road, it'll get better and you'll improve. Look, you will fail. You're gonna suck. It's gonna be horrible. Get over it. And then that's one thing you have to do about getting over yourself. And another thing is that will help build your confidence.
So you know, the more confident you are, the better you're gonna be. Okay. So surprise will be motivational. Excellent. You're like, he's gonna fail and it's gonna be great. I feel good about that. That's right. You feel really good about that. What role does trust and credibility play when you're leveraging AI tools in networking or client acquisition strategy?
It's a great question, and the tr trust and credibility factor is huge. I'll be honest, most people don't trust ai. Many people don't even know what AI is or what it's capable of, so we can't trust what we don't know. And if people are having a. Difficult time understanding or grasping how impactful or positive it can be, or if we're only looking at just the negatives.
It's kinda would I be afraid to ever fly a plane if all I knew was plane crashes? But if you look at statistics, say, okay, wow, probably the safest form of travel it's gonna get me there quicker. So I feel like AI is kinda like the plane of. F modern technology now.
So it's just another tool in our toolbox that we can use to go a bit further, a bit faster. But the trust and credibility factor you really. I don't know how AI and technology incorporates specifically to that because the trust and credibility this is how you present yourself. The words that you say, if you're just a good natural person, I feel like people will connect and resonate with that.
And there's no way that AI could really, AI can't make you a good person. So it can make you a better copywriter. It can make you a better programmer, it can teach you a lot of things, but for you at the foundational level, it really can't. Change who you are, right? That trust factor, that credibility.
If you're not trustworthy if you don't follow through on your promises and your word. People aren't going to trust you going forward. But what's cool is that the AI automation piece can help you become more trustworthy in the way that if you are able to systematize your follow up process, now you have more time to be able to follow up with your clients to dive in deeper into specific questions to give them more attention to detail as opposed to not having it at all.
So I feel like that's a great way they can help build the trust and credibility aspect. But again, you, as you as a person, you need to put yourself out there to build that trust. And you said so many things that were good points that I didn't know where to start but or where to comment. AI is a tool.
It's a tool in your belt and take it out when you need it. And I personally have found AI to be great. It'll free up some of my time so I can delve a little bit further into my clients and I can help them just that much more because I have more time to do that. I love that. How do you recommend using AI to stay top of mind with connections without coming off as robotic or salesy?
Absolutely. So that natural relationship building, I think again, goes back to what we discussed a little bit earlier, is just the serving overselling. When we focus on serving, this becomes a value add. It becomes conversational. When we're focused on selling, it comes off as desperation.
It's like I have nothing of value to bring to you, but I just wanted to check in. So there's a couple ways you can now use AI for this. The systems that we create with AI agents they replicate what a person on your sales team might do or a person in your customer service department might do.
You can preset. Specific follow up dates. I want you to follow up, twice in the first week. I want you to follow up once in the next two weeks and then maybe a final check in at this point. During those points you can feed your ai LLM, different blog posts and content that you have that bring na that bring value to their journey, that help nurture them.
And so we can now create these AI agents that follow up with more natural conversation specific to that client based on the contextual conversations that you've had, as opposed to a preau, pre-written, automated email that is written for everybody, right? I find myself doing this with my automated email follow ups.
Is it sounds like it's for everybody, right? So you can find different ways to mar marry that together. So take your regular template, put that at the bottom, you have words that, the phrasing and how it's put that you don't want to change. What I change is have ai craft the first two sentences of your email and possibly the subject.
So once you have that little bit of opener, I. That's how you make it sound more personalized. This was written for me. And then the rest of the email can then continue on into the rest of your lead nurturing strategy. So I feel like combining those two methods is a great way to not comes off, come off too salesy but be more conversational with people.
It's almost exactly how I use AI in my emails. See, you're, I was like, you're using it. I don't believe it. You're telling them exactly what I do. I didn't mean to give away the secrets here, but how has it been for you? How have you seen that change with, your typical pre templated email versus a more contextual follow up?
Yeah. Emails. It has been crafted to, because it sounds like me. Okay, so it sounds like I, I'm responding to their email, but my follow up, my secret sauce. I'll call, I'll say. Is a little bit more in depth than what you just described and a little bit more often, but I actually can change your follow up to get it from a 2% response rate to about a 75% and it's holy cow, it's ink.
Yeah, it's incredible. But it, the response rate, when I say response rate, it's just to have them give you. Feedback, positive or negative. That's feedback. But that's all that I'm asking. It's a positive or negative, and it's about 75%. So about 75% of the time you're getting feedback, which is really good.
And that I teach my, my, all of my clients that when I do a workshop or something else, this is what I'm teaching them. I've gotten so many emails back saying, oh my god, Michael. This is fantastic. Why haven't I done this before? I said that? 'Cause you didn't know me before. So let, lemme finish out these two.
Tell us about a time when networking opened the door to a major opportunity and how you used tech to scale that relationship. Absolutely. So a couple examples here. One was just in-person networking. I joined a local networking group. So this was just, hang out, have a cigar, maybe some drinks your classic networking group.
From that I was able to get these new relationships that people were now promoting my services. I was able to get one client and one referral just from this networking group. Now, it did take over a year. For this relationship to form. But I think most of us know in the B2B world, it can take eight to 15 months plus for someone to finally make a purchase decision for your product or your service.
But this is a great example of just in-person networking. Put a proposal out there, let people know. Who you're about. And when the time is ready, when they feel like it's right, they can come around back to you to sign up for your services. And that has then led me into becoming a subcommittee for a board member on a nonprofit that helps with mental health.
So that's been a great way for me to feel like I'm doing marketing for something good. And to show how impactful that could be, that gave me the confidence to then make a post in a Facebook group about being available as a guest for podcasts. Suddenly a a doctor from a nonprofit summit reached out and said.
You sound like a great guest, you can provide a lot of value. Would you be interested in speaking at a virtual summit? Coming up in April? It's actually this week here in April 25. So I was like, wow, that's incredible. So this one little opportunity that led me into some sort of interest for continuing nonprofit work turned into a Facebook post that turned into a relationship.
That now we're following up. So now we swap podcasts. We're helping build and nurture each other with our systems and relationships. So now we're now I'm using that as a template. How do I follow up naturally after I meet someone in person? Cr I created a form and a button that gives me that context that.
Provides that nurturing relationship follow up. And then once I have more examples of working with the nonprofits directly, I can then create a system and template for that so that way I don't have to manually be doing it, but I need that personal conversation first to know how the conversation might go until I hand it off to an employee or an ai.
And I think you need, not the one person, but two or three. So you get a better idea of it. And then you can hand it off and everything else. But yeah. But AI is a tool that you're using and that was a great idea with Facebook, by the way to get that. So I may have to use that. Please do.
Please do. Okay. Knowledge is power. We share it. That's right. That's right. Alright, so let's bring this conversation full circle. Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities for professionals who wanna build strong networks and leverage technology for growth? Absolutely. So I think AI and technology right now is allowing us to produce more and go faster than we could before.
So this just means you're able to do more net networking events without having to be stuck in doing admin work. You're able to make more attempts to outreach and again, like you said, improve the reply rate. I see a lot of people, they focus on Hey, book a meeting or do this next step when really we just need.
Conversation one, we want to confirm that it's a real email address, is they're a real person. And like you said, the positive or negative reply, we just use that information to help build and nurture. So overall it's saved me tons of time. This has allowed me to grow a, six figure plus wedding DJ business with a team of DJs and not feel like, I'm constantly coming up for air like I'm drowning.
This just allowed me to create systems and templates that I use to run my business. I use that experience then to move that into the automation agency as well. So all of the efforts that I've been running for 10 years with marketing and search engine optimization and processes, I use all that experience into the agency and then therefore my clients as well.
So one of our clients a dentist, she's. B2C. We help her get six to eight new patients per month. So we solve different problems as they come. Once she got too many patients, then she was like, okay, maybe we need to pre-qualify them a little bit more. Or how do we follow up with them?
'cause maybe the the show up rate is, lower than other channels. So this is just about providing solutions to problems that they have. So as long as you're someone who can think outside the box, think creatively. You're able to provide value for others. So that's what I focus on.
That's how I'm using AI and technology to help me build my business better and help others as well. Chris, that's great. And I feel as though I can talk to you for two more hours. Alright. Because that's I really feel that we have a kindred, a little kinship here. Absolutely. But if somebody wants to get hold of you for a number of reasons, how can they get hold of you?
Of course people can Google my name, Chris TrkA, T-R-O-K-A. Otherwise people can visit my website, chris trka.com or focus biz.com. That's great, Chris, it was a pleasure speaking with you and I'm sure we'll talk soon. Sounds great, Michael. Thanks for everything. I appreciate it.
Well, hold on folks. Don't go anywhere. Lemme just read a few of our sponsors that we have. Struggling to read success. Maybe. Time to quit in Quit Your Way to Success by Rodney Davis. This reveals 27 steps to Breaking Bad Habits that hold you back. This powerful book helps you rewire your mindset, take control of your actions, and turn setbacks into stepping stones with real life examples.
Motivational quotes and actionable lessons, especially for sales professional, you'll gain the tools to quit what's stopping you and start winning. Transform your future today. So quit Your Way to Success by Rodney Davis. Available now on Amazon. And this is a nonprofit called Revved Up Kids. This is something I believe in Wholeheartedly Revved Up Kids is on a mission to protect children and teens from sexual abuse, exploitation, and trafficking.
They provide prevention, training programs for children, teens, and adults. To learn more, go to rev up kids.org. That's R-E-V-V-E-D-U-P-K-I-D-S. Dot org.
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.
Digital Courses
Comments