Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Debbie Longo and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Sep 24
- 20 min read
📍 📍 📍 Welcome back to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're talking about the intersection of behavior, leadership, and profitability. My guest is a trusted voice when it comes to helping business leaders make a powerful shift from managing people to motivating performance.
She dives into how we show up our tone, our e, our energy. Our consistency directly. This directly impacts the relationships we build and results we drive. So whether you're leading a team, running a business, or just trying to navigate leadership without burning out, this conversation will show you how powerful your presence truly is.
We're unpacking why the most profitable leaders. Aren't always the loudest. They're the ones who connect with purpose, lead with clarity, and build trust that lasts. So if you're ready to lead in a way to energize your team, strengthen your network. And boost your bottom line. Let's dive in. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Debbie Longo which I just found out.
She's a New York native. But I would like you to introduce yourself, Debbie, and tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah. So thank you very much for having me on the show. I appreciate it. And my name is Debbie Longo. I'm an executive behavioral coach. I've been in this business for over 25 years.
I had a spiritual teacher mentor until 2021, and she passed away of cancer, so I decided to continue her work and start a business. And really get into what is my gift that I was born with. And that is how I was very successful in this business. So I worked with her. She helped me get clients, then I got them on my own.
I also have a graduate degree in criminology criminal justice. Some psychology background. So I decided, and it's a little bit of a story with the pandemic, COVID the companies were going outta business and they were going bankrupt, and they said, oh, it was because of CO and the economy.
And to tell you the truth, the way that I teach it, that's not. Why that's not the reason. And if I teach something or I work with a client, and let's say I complete the process, I complete their goal, and they get to their goal, I complete everything that they wanna do, all their needs are met, then for them outside forces doesn't matter.
So they could be hit. With anything, with a recession, anything. And they will still be successful and the other companies will say, what happens? We are not doing good. How are you doing so good. And then they will know when that happens. So it's a little bit of a different way than most coaches do it.
The way that they, the way that they perform and they make their plan and everything. So I take a very different take on it and there's a lot of backend stuff that I do also that really helps the client. It really depends on what the client is and what their needs are, but that's very brief of my background.
Wow. That's great. It sounds very intuitive, but it sounds like every business needs what you have what you're offering. So I can't wait to get into my questions. You focus on how behavior impacts profitability. How does that show up in the way leaders connect and build relationships internally and externally?
That really is gonna depend on what the relationship is and how it's formed. There is a line between a boss and an employee, but a boss a lot of times is very ego oriented. And they give orders and they need to follow what the, job duties are. What their role is, what the employee's role is.
So they need to be a little bit more of an authority figure, right? Like it could be even like a mentor or something. But the thing with that is. If they build too much of something, either too much ego, too much negativity, too much of giving orders, right dominance, okay, then that relationship will almost always fail.
So I want to do it as a business owner, as a boss, I wanna be able to do all of those things in a positive way, because that's my job, right? Is to enforce what their job duties are. To make sure everybody is doing the right thing. To make sure that they're doing everything that the company asks for, because that is the way that the company operates, right?
There's no other, you can't just, employee can't just make their own, job duties. Or what they wanna say and do every day that they go to work. So that's really a boss's job. So that, so if I take it. As a positive way. Okay. If I approach what the employee needs to do, just as an example, okay, they go to work every day.
I need to tell them maybe their job duties are different every day. They might not be the same. Something might come up and they might need to do something different, right? So I need to tell them, but. I need to talk and express these things in a positive way, not in an authority way, where it's very negative.
Kind of like a military ish kind of thing, right? That's not being a positive influence. Now, it could be. If I'm not doing it over, over overreacting, something like that. That's the thing. Because when a boss does too much of it, right? Or they say this has to be the way, right?
Where there's like a demands kind of thing, then that's not gonna turn into a positive way. Then the employee's gonna get upset and the employee's probably not gonna say anything. Then they're gonna start to get resentments, and then you have a whole ball of wax now is starting to build, right? That snowball is small and then it gets bigger and bigger.
And what I'm hearing, you're really taking the boss management style and creating a leadership role with that boss because I one of my talks, I tell the difference between boss and leader and what's the difference and really. You don't, as a business owner, I really don't want any bosses under me. I only want leaders because a leader will show others how to lead, not just boss them around.
So it's very good information that you've just shared with us. Leadership burnout is real. How can building a strong, trusted network serve as both prevention and support during those seasons? Here's my question. How many leaders, if there is a CEO or an owner of a company, how many leaders do you have under you?
Are you just saying, oh, I just wanna hire one assistant manager? Just to save money, right? Because I just wanna save money. That's just the way that it is. I don't, the company doesn't need to, let's say the company is doing good, right? So they're gonna hire one assistant manager and the boss is not gonna care, and then it's gonna start to get busy because this seasons.
Probably in every single job. There are times there might not be seasons, as far as what we consider, but in every job, every company, there's highs and lows. There's peak times, right? So the manager, the CEO, might not care and he's gonna work and work, right? And then what's gonna happen is gonna get busier.
Then he's gonna work more hours. And then there's gonna be a big problem when that happens because he's really gonna pound on, his employees gonna take it out. He's gonna be working a lot of extra hours. I'm not talking five extra hours a week. I'm talking a lot. Okay. And he's really gonna be pounding his employees, even to the point where he's abusing them.
Okay. And I've seen this happen. Okay. It might not be that he's really what we think as abuse, but maybe being, yelling or raising his voice, right? Different things like that. So how many people, if you are listening to this and you're a CEO, or a manager, how many people do you have under you?
Are you sure? That you have enough people where you, even if it gets busy, you don't have to work. 60 or 70 hours a week, e all the time. So instead of having one assistant manager, when it's not busy you don't do this when it's busy, right? You don't do this during the peak time. You do it non-PE time.
You have one assistant manager, non-PE time, hire another one. See if you are working 40 hours. If you're working more, then hire another one. Because I'm gonna say this, the more people you hire, the more inviting it is for a customer to come in. Okay. If there's two people working. And I've been to stores over here where I didn't wanna go in because I knew that I had to wait be, you know what, because I know there's two people working all the time.
It's ridiculous. And so if you have, even if it's not busy, if you have three people working, I. Even if they're, they'll know. The employees will know if they're managers or assistant managers or whatever. That's inviting more employee, more customers to come in, right? Or you are going to get more clients calling.
It doesn't matter what business it is, okay? We're not talking about the type of business, right? We're talking about how to run a company, so then it's gonna be inviting, and then you're gonna get a lot of business. So that's really a different take on it. It, you're talking about the downtime. And wouldn't that be a great time for training, for extra training for the assistant managers and for the people, whether it's a sales person or not.
The customer service level has to be that much higher than everybody else. So because I've learned. I've had multiple businesses and I've learned that if my employees are not happy, they can't show their happiness to my customers. So you always have to make sure you're, everybody says the customer's always right.
It's hogwash. Okay? Because the employee, if they're happy, they will get to the bottom of whatever problem my customer has and fix it. And the customer will always be happy. The employee will be happier, then my managers will be happier and it goes on that way. So that's very good. What's one behavioral pattern in leaders that unintentionally blocks profitable connection with their teams or peers?
I think that. The podcast before you, I spoke about a lot of different things. I spoke about negativity, respect in the workplace, and I think that there are several things, so if I can bind all these specific things. I am creating all these specific things of negativity that I do, right? We just spoke about ego authority over, over authority, right?
Different things. When I create those things, no matter what it is, I am creating a recipe for disaster, literally. So it's not gonna happen immediately. Okay, it's gonna happen gradually and then people say, oh, I don't know what happened. Happened right away. It just happened. The CEO says 20 people quit, like overnight, it just happened.
Just like that. No. That's not the way it happens. It happens gradually. It's just that the CEO, the boss doesn't see those warning signs. Okay. Aware. And there are a lots, absolutely. There are a lot of warning signs. Okay. Not just a few. And they're most of the time staring me right in the face. So I wanna get down to what is specifically going on in that business, in that company, and I wanna make sure that I could find ways solutions to get rid of all of this.
Whatever's going on, right? All of this negativity or whatever they're doing, this is all natural stuff that bosses do. This is not their fault. This is not something that they say, I'm gonna go and, abuse my employees today. They don't do that. It's just the way that, that, a lot of times it's just human behavior, just natural human behavior, but people don't know how to control it.
That's true. They have to the managers have to set a few things in place first, whether it is how the employees can talk to you, have an open door, whatever. But you need to have a a survey or something, more importantly than what's going well, what's not going well, what would you see as a change, and what would you suggest for those changes?
So all of that gives the employees that much more feeling of, something, I like this job, and oh, he took my. My idea and he ran with it. So it gives them a little sense of purpose as well. So you're right, there are a lot of warning signs, but there's a lot of ways that you can combat that and have them take care of it.
You talk about shifting from managing people to motivating performance. How does that shift affect the way we network inside of our organizations?
So again, there are a lot of things here and not only do we invite the customer, okay, because of the way that we set up our company, our corporation, but we always wanna be fair. To the employees because the client or the customer knows how they treat their employees. They can see it and they probably can see it immediately.
So there are things that we want, we can do. We can do all different things that are positive. We can make goals, we can get rid of that extreme. Authority figure. Okay? That negativity, the attitude where I'm the boss, you have to listen to me, and that's all there is to it. And when we get rid of these attitudes and behaviors, then everything falls into place.
Everybody's happy, the employees are happy. The clients are happy and people want to do business with companies like that. Okay? Absolutely. Now, there are companies that say that have a therapist, like a number you could call, right? And then you could call the therapist and the therapist says, oh, we won't.
Tell the company anything. It's just between you and me. And that may be true and that's fine, but why can't the boss act that way? Why do they have to get a therapist involved? Does the boss know what they're really doing? Do they know that they could possibly be contributing to the fact that this employee needs to call this phone number?
This employee needs to call this person. That's an outside force, and there's nothing wrong with that. There really isn't. But does it come from the manager? Is it because of the CEO that this employee is, has to reach out to this? Therapist or psych counselor, whoever it is, it might be, the answer might be yes, the answer might be no.
But this is something that a business owner should really think about because we don't wanna throw it on somebody else, or we don't know if the employee is happy or not. Okay? And all of these things are gonna help to build a very successful company. And the, they will get so many. You wanna talk about increasing sales and profits, it'll be over the top.
He, the CEO, will not believe it. It's going to the moon. Absolutely. Absolutely. It again, that goes back to my have a happy employee. Who that, that can talk to the, per your supervisor, whomever can just walk in, say, look, I've got a problem or. What do you think about this?
I always, whenever, whatever business I had that open door policy with my employees and I said, look, I don't mind you bringing me things that are wrong, but don't come to me with something that's wrong without an idea of how to fix it. So put a little onus on them as well. Okay. So in your experience, what's the difference between a leader who builds a loyal teams?
A leader who builds loyal teams and one who just gets compliance. How does communication style factor in kind of what I just thought spoke about? My question is this, I think the business owner or the CEO should really think about are they just going to work for the money? Are they, do they, are they only concerned with the fact that they wanna.
Increase their profits. I'm not talking about for the company, I'm talking about for them, right? For their board. For them to keep the company afloat for them, let's say if they're on the stock market, right? So they could keep raising the stock market. Okay? Are they only concerned with money?
However you wanna phrase it. There's a million ways to phrase that. Or are they more apt to think about if the employees are happy? So when they go to work every day, do they think immediately, as soon as they get to work, do they think, how am I gonna make my money today for myself? How am I gonna increase my paycheck?
How am I gonna make the board members happy? Or do they think, which employee do I need to help today? Which employee was a little upset last. Last, yesterday when I left and maybe something happened or maybe I was unsure, right? So I didn't wanna say anything. I had to go home and think about it. Okay, what can I do today to make my employees happier than they were the day before?
All right, now, which way do I wanna go? Which one does the CEO think? Okay, that they are going to be more successful. Which direction do they wanna live on greed and power. It's one kinda works with the other. If you want to see why your employee is unhappy and you can make them happy, wouldn't that in turn make them a better employee, better with your customers?
And. Give you a boost in your paycheck. So you're handling both by handling the one thing. So instead of just looking at the whole picture saying, how can I make more money? You can just, see how your employees are doing, help 'em through their problems, that in itself will build your profits.
That's right. What does role. What role does emotional intelligence play in building profitable building relationships, especially at the leadership level. So let's think about what emotional intelligence would be. Would that be like, I have a high, I got a high GPA, when I graduated.
Okay. I don't think that's what it is. You can look it up. If you are watching this podcast, you can look up the definition online. There's a lot of definitions will come up and you could look up which one, appeals to you or refers to you the best. Yeah. But my definition is, two things that we just spoke about over exaggeration, where I am overly enforcing things.
Okay. I'm overly author almost like authoritarian, okay. And the negativity. The employees don't appreciate me. And when these things happen, and rewind this podcast, if you're a CEO or business owner, rewind it just to some parts. You don't have to listen to the whole thing again, just to, going back and forth with some of these parts.
When that happens, my emotions get to be extreme. So they'll go up a little and a little, right gradually. And then they get to be over the top where it's too much. And not only do I become more negative, I might start to say the employees, I might put what I, the way that I am. My attitudes and behaviors on the employee, and because I'm a certain way, I would say the employee is this way to me.
If I'm loud, the employee is being loud to me. The reason why the employee is loud to you is because you are loud first to the employee, and this is why we look at ourselves, because what I do triggers the other person to do the same thing. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. And you could watch any show.
You could watch the news. You it's everywhere. Okay. You could watch it. You, if you look for it, it's everywhere. Absolutely. A, absolutely. And you really only get what you give. So if you're giving that calm and consensual and it's an overall feeling of calmness and let's talk about this respectfully, yes. You have to watch out what you say because it might, I. Stoke something in that other person. But if you remain calm, if you remain, above the whole conversation, then they will respond exactly the same way and you'll get more out of it, you'll get much more out of it. For leaders navigating constant change, how can they maintain trust and credibility in the relationships while still pushing for results?
The, one of the big things that I talk about, and I made two podcasts on this already, is respect. They can respect their employees. They could treat their employees like a human being. Okay? People are not robots. People do not come to work and expect that they are gonna do the same thing over and over again.
And they're not gonna say anything, and the manager or the CEO is gonna do whatever they want. They're gonna treat the employee however they want, and the employee's gonna be fine. That's not gonna happen. That's not realistic, and I'm going to explain to you a trick, okay? Okay. Tons of companies do this retail and.
Big companies also do this. What they do is they rotate the job duties. So every time, almost every time the employee comes to work, the manager will say, I have this job for you today. Okay. So they're trained on a few different things. So then they say every day they'll have a different job for them, or they'll have different forms to work on.
Okay. It's not the same exact thing. It's not like a robotic way, right? It's not the same exact job over and over. And when they do that, that not only helps the employee but the employee because the employee is doing something different every day, right? Then they think that it's a different job or they could be happier.
Because they're not doing the same thing every day. So this just creates all of a positive feedback, right? And positive attitude will give the employee a positive attitude. And this is very easy to train an employee. It's not that difficult, okay? You could even train on something and then you could say let's show you this and let's show you this.
And just add. A few things onto the training, because if it's a big company, each job duty might take a lot of training. Okay. Even if they, there's a lot of rules, there's a lot of regulations, there's like tons that they have to follow, like on every position. But they could just add that to the training.
There are things they could do rather than just saying, no, I can't do that. But won't it also allow the employee to see what the other employees do and maybe have a little more. Respect for that position. 'cause, let's just use a retail position. The front person against the warehouse person, and the front person will say, oh, the warehouse people, they don't know what they're doing.
They're always screwing this up. But if you take them out of it and put them into the warehouse, say, oh, okay, so this is why this happens, or this happens, so maybe. I have a better idea of what goes on and, maybe it could be done this way and that person can go up to their supervisor and say, look, I was in W The Warehouse and they did things this way.
Would it be better if we did it this way? So it was, she's bringing or he's bringing the idea forward. They may say no, we tried that, but it didn't work. Or something else like that. But it gives them a feeling of, something they listen to what I have to say. Okay. So before I ask you the last question, I always ask us, of all the podcast guests, you are successful, you've been doing this for 20 years.
What major mistake did you make and how did you come out of it? I started a little too late when I used my spiritual teacher as a mentor obviously, but a person that was just gonna gimme the business. And if I started this business a lot sooner, right? I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have been faced with a decision should I start the business or not right after she passed away because I didn't know that she was gonna die.
We don't know that somebody's gonna die. And she was not, there wasn't anything wrong with her up until the last year. You know that will LA last maybe two years. And she was living because she got the cancer pretty, fast. And then she just wanted to die. So I didn't predict that was gonna happen, but I was able more than able for me to start my own business while she was alive.
Okay. And I would've been, this would've already been, established way. Established, okay. More than what it is now, but it's okay. And I don't look into the past and I know that this just happened in the right way. It happened in this time for a reason. Okay? And I don't, I don't dwell on the fact that I'm not successful now.
It's difficult for me to get successful now because I didn't do it when I thought that I should do it. My mother would always say, everything happens for a reason. Everything does, and it works out in your time. So what you say is exactly along the lines of what I've always believed. Now, bring in this podcast full circle.
If someone wants to become more connected, more a more profitable leader, I. What's the one behavior shift that they can start practicing today?
They can take a piece of paper, go to work, and write down everything that they see that's negative during their workday. Just go about your normal day. Don't do anything different. Write down things that you see. Maybe if the employee's unhappy or if a board member is a little upset because they didn't make profits, they didn't make their goal last week or last month.
Okay? Just write down everything that you see that you don't like. Or you think it's an issue or something that you think you should work on? And I'm gonna say, be honest. Don't say there's a problem here, but it's not a big deal. Okay? Listen to what your first thought is and listen to what you are thinking, right immediately.
Okay? And don't make any excuses. Go home, take that piece of paper. Or you could do it at the end of the day. I would do it while the, you could do it on your phone, you could do it anywhere. It's very easy. You don't have to, I say paper and pen, because, because that's what we used to do.
Go home, read that paper and say to myself, do I need a coach? I see there's a few things wrong here. Do I need somebody to help me to get rid of these things, these issues, these problems? The employees are unhappy. My peers, the board members, they telling me they're coming to me with all these issues.
Don't point the finger and say that person is a problem. No, look at everything and think about do I need a coach? Can I help to do something to improve my company? And that's really the bottom line. And that's a simple thing that anybody, the Ja, the janitor could do it, an employee could even do it, right?
And they could give it to their boss. Okay. Different things like that. Everybody watches everybody. When everybody, everybody watches everybody. And Debbie, I'll tell you, that's a perfect segue for me to ask you if somebody wanted to get hold of you either to be coached or just to find out anything that we spoke about, what's the best way that they get hold of you life in Bloom, n y.net.
That is my website and they can get all of the information off of there. I have a podcast page on there. They can also go to YouTube. Look up. I have two podcasts. They can Google my name. You know what? In the search on YouTube, they can put in my name. Okay. And I have behavioral profit and six figure shift show.
Okay? So I have two podcasts, so they could look that up. They could reach me through YouTube Facebook and Instagram. And like I said, they could just put my name in the search. It'll come up right away. So they could, there's a lot of ways to get in touch with me and we could start off slow. It doesn't have to be a big thing, a big problem.
I can't solve this. It's over the top. I don't know what to do. It doesn't have to get to that. It can be just a little thing. I need help with this and that's it, and that's perfectly fine because the client tells me what to do. I don't tell the client what to do. I give the client solutions. As they tell me what their issue is or what they need help with, I give the client solutions, but it's up to them ultimately to carry out everything that I explain to them, everything that I teach them, the way that I do it.
I have to tell you, this was a great podcast. Thank you for all of your insights into business itself. And if anybody's listening wants to get ahold of Debbie, please just contact her through the website, through anything, through, have her help you. So Debbie, thank you very much for coming up. Thank you for having me on the show.
I appreciate it.
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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 and share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
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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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