Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Dima Raketa and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Mar 28
- 16 min read
📍 📍 📍 My guest today is Dima Rake Rakella. Yeah. And okay, and he is An incredible guest.
He's a world class expert in reputation management, digital marketing, and international business development. He's a member of the Forbes Business Development Council and a two time winner of the Stevie Awards. And without further ado, let me introduce Dima and let him tell you a little bit more about his background.
Dima, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me at your show. I'm very pleased. Yeah, my name is Dima Raketa. Yes, and I am over 15 years enhancing and developing different companies all over the world. My My journey has started from the Hong Kong, actually there, I have established my consultancy for different startups to help them to get into the acceleration programs or incubation programs.
And I have found very good people there who met me with the world of reputation management. I was. Honestly when I first time heard about the reputation management, I thought, who cares about what do people say in Google? Who cares about what do people say in comments in YouTube and so on? But suddenly I have found very big world of reputation.
Now there are approximately 250 different websites and platforms where people can leave comments. Where people can share their opinion share their view and they discuss. And suddenly I have found that big companies, they use special tools like social media, listening to know the voice of their customers, users, and their clients.
And this is incredibly interesting because you can find a lot of things. For example, when you work at the company, you think that you create a good product. Your customers are satisfied, your employers are satisfied with their work. But when you run social media listening, you see how do people all over the world perceive you, your company, and even what do your employers write in LinkedIn or Facebook about working in your company.
And many people start to be at least maybe disgusted or disappointed because the picture is not quite different. It has a huge difference. And that's why already for eight years, I'm working in reputation management and I have found a lot of interesting cases with big companies, different brands, personas, sportsmen cinema, movie actors and so on.
Yeah. Also my key expertise in, I'm keen on raising companies for zero to one. I'm not interested in doing something. Routine, duration works and so on. I'm happy to convert idea in the working business model. That's my passion. Good. Very good. Sounds quite like quite an extensive background you have.
Let me just start with, give me what role has networking played in your success across management, digital marketing and international business. I will tell you the story. And it was 2017 or 18 or something like that. I came to Hong Kong and even those times I already understood that I have to be impressive.
I have to leave a print in the mind of of the people which I meet. Meat and so on. But dressing red colors is not enough, honestly. That's why I was bringing some special presents in my backpack. It was caviar, it was vodka, and it was incredible sensitive presents for people whom I met.
And during one of the conference in Hong Kong, It was something around something about blockchain or something like that. I have met guys second time, or maybe third time who was. Greeting me from the entrance saying, Oh, there's Dima, he has some vodka, let's talk to him. And so on.
So it was a point of connection. Yeah. It's, it looks not professional. It looks like not high business value and so on, but I was the person who people like to meet second time, third time and so on, by the way with this person whom I met the, those time at the conference. Still we have two companies.
His name is Thomas Chong. He's very good friend of mine and consecutive three years in a row, he's coming to my birthday in any point of the world and we celebrate it together. That's the value of imprinting into the mind. Not about your business skills, not about your hard skills, soft skills and so on.
It's about what kind of suppression you can give. That's my point. Okay. Good. Gimme some key differences in networking strategies between local and international. Local inter you mean local in UAE and international ? Sure. I know there are a lot of key difference but let me divide my answer into two parts.
Okay. Number one, I divide all countries into the straight nations and unstraight nations. What means straight nations? It's people from Germany, UK, US, sometimes Hong Kong. These people will say directly to your face, they don't like the product. They don't like to work with you. The price is high or maybe it's not a good time to sign a contract and so on.
And there is undirected nations like Middle East, like Chinese. Filipinos and so on, who never say to your face, no, I won't sign with you. They will tell you, let's wait a little bit. Yes, I have received your agreement. I don't, I didn't have time to review it. Blah, blah, blah. And it can continue for months.
So this is one of the things number two personally, I let me bring value to your listeners. Okay. Personally, I I do like to divide people into three categories and it takes for me around 30 seconds to understand which category belongs the person in front of me. I call it thanks for Peter Nixon.
He taught me this tactics. I call it RGB dialect, right? Green and blue. Only three times of the people can be standing in front of me. Who is red? Red is always active. Wearing red t shirt. He's doing everything fast, quick to move on. And he's very demanding, competitive, driving, and so on.
Another dialect is blue. They're warm, friendly, caring, supportive, so they're well connected. They are not about their profitability of the business. They're about good, strong relationship. Okay? You good, me good also. And Green Dialect, it's a rational dialect, okay? They calculate every penny, thoughtful, methodical, skeptical, critical.
So it's rather hard to find the proper keys, how to work with them. And for each of these RGB dialects, I have a special script. How to work with them, okay? For example with the red category, you have to tell big picture. You have to tell how you're gonna how you're gonna strike the moonshots, okay?
You should be very confident. Keep talk various, short phrases. And don't don't make any big sentences or something like that. Okay? So for blue dialect who is friendly and warm you should be very fair and polite. You should never push. You should discuss.
You should demonstrate trust, transparency, and so on. My, one of the first things which I would like to share is right in the first 30 seconds before the negotiation, 100 percent that 80 percent of success for negotiation is your preparation. So prepare before negotiations. Try to find out maybe for me, it's three different categories.
Maybe for you, it could be five, seven, 10 depends on the psychology or your occupation or maybe event or something like that. And and spent around more than 30 seconds to understand who is in front of you. Yeah, this is one of the key things. That's great. That's great. What are some effective ways to start a conversation at an event or online without feeling awkward?
How do you start the conversation?
The humanity has a brilliant weapon and not many people use it. This weapon is called smile. When you smile, a lot of muscles all over your face are initiated. And, if we look to the past for maybe 20 or 30 thousands, 20 or 30 thousand years ago women who was on the householding, they were waiting for men from hunting.
And when the man was back from hunting he hadn't he hadn't to say even a word on his face was everything. And now, nowadays, women they call it sixth sense or something like that, but it's bullshit in my opinion they see on our face. Muscles. How do they how do they reflect on the current situation?
And without any words, nowadays, women know that you're lying or you was with another women or something like that. That's it. It's not sixth sense. It's genetics. DNA. Something like that. So my perfect weapon. My perfect weapon to start to initiate the dialogue to meet people, to perform an organic very clear smile, smile with eyes, smile with your teeth, smile with your cheeks.
Okay. And everybody would like to start the conversation with you, even if he's staying in 10 meters or something like that. Look directly into the eyes and smile. That's it. Very good. Very good What strategies have you found? helpful for maintaining nurturing professional relationships over time
Let's be honest with each other if your connections become cooler If you don't keep your connections maintaining, they become cooler. Relationships become cooler. And there is there's a very good strategy. Value number two. There is a very good strategy. Big numbers.
Okay. Let's imagine that from tomorrow, each of you will start do very simple thing. It is called five connections per day. It's all about new connections. Just open your LinkedIn, talk to your previous employer, or maybe a far family or something like that. And do five actions to restore the connections, to keep them warm.
Ask if their children graduated, how is their wife? I don't know. Do they work in the same place or something like that? And just imagine if you do it five times a day. Per week, it is, except weekend, for example, per week, it's 25, per month, 100, per year, 1. 2 thousand connections you can keep maintaining.
And it brings you a lot of value. It brings you it brings you the opportunity to be connected day to day. And one of my good friends. I'm obviously, I'm very impressed how he's doing it. We we're in friendship for more than 10 years. And his phone book has around 3. 5 thousand addresses and telephone numbers and contacts and so on.
And he reminds all birthdays. He keep he keep he keeps every year sending a message, making a telephone call, sending a bucket of roses to girls. And he said that it's a very good text to remind to the people that I exist. This one is very good but it's rather hard. No, but I cannot, I could not implement it into my life because, my phone book is huge and I even don't have a time to find out their birthdays, just print into the iPhone.
I have tried I spent around the week and the, my result was around 25 or 30 contacts and said, Oh, Jesus, no. Do you use any type of CRM to any of your follow up? My bet, no. I'm not using any CRM. I'm not using any CRM. And but I'm using we call it with Kutoniksan Bulldog Opportunity Tracker.
During events, during the events you can collect dozens of different business cards, but it's very hard after the event to remind who was who. That's why we have created a short list where we have we have printed, like a form. Okay. And you have to fill into the form.
You can do it during the event or the next minute after. We're very simple questions like what is the opportunity? Working with this, when you have to connect with this person next time and and one of the key things during the first during the first conversation would be great to know some kind of detail, what kind of dog he had.
from which city, where did he live before, what college his children have studied. So this is very small detail will help you a lot when you wanted to establish new connection or start the conversation and so on. We should understand that personally, I understand that I don't have clients. I have a relationship, we're working with reputation.
It is very sensitive and intangible thing and very less people in this world will pass to you their reputation to manage without being in a relationship with you. So for me, it's vitally important to have very strong and warm relationship with my, sorry, clients. What I do is at, when I'm at an event if I'm having that talk with somebody or anybody, and I want that deeper relationship on the back of their card, I write down the date, the name of the function, and something we spoke about.
So I have that. So in, in two weeks or so, when I look at that business card, I'm going, who is this? I turn it over. I know exactly who it is. I go, oh. That's who it is. And that's all part of my follow up and there is the secret sauce to the follow up because it's probably more important than even meeting the people, but the follow up is very important.
But let me ask you a question. You've had such great success. What mistakes have you made and how did you overcome it? It's always a good question. Yes, it's a good question, but I feel a lot of positive emotions from this good question because personally I think that all great experience is coming from the parents.
People say there is no, there is no color of an experience. It couldn't be, it could not be negative or positive. I think it's a bullshit. It could be negative and it could be positive and negative is much more better than positive. I have I have faced two times bankruptcy. In that time when I have faced it the next couple of months, it was, it's a very deep depression, 19 percent of my friends they didn't didn't answer my calls, messages, and so on.
Because I've been everything and became nothing. That's it. And it was terrible times. But after one year or two years, when I did something like reverse back engineering about what is happening. Why I was at that point and and that was the great experience. That was the best experience I ever faced in my life, honestly.
But the next time I did mistakes also, but it was another mistake. So I had an opportunity to learn more and more. Yeah. So I think, yes. And if we are talking about negative experience, one of the worst experience in my life was in Hong Kong. I moved to Hong Kong with a great project. It was my passion.
I spend days and night developing this project helping to bring it into the market, find proper partners and so on. But my teammates, somehow they decided that I'm doing wrong things and then, and they You know, nearly nearly frankly two hours before my key presentation in Hong Kong, they blocked my access to the demo, to the MVP.
And there was a partner in Hong Kong and it was a breakfast in Shanghai. I remember this day as today, honestly, and it was a breakfast. And when I was going downstairs for the breakfast, I had only one question in my mind. Should I tell truth or should I lie? Tell truth. Just put on the table everything what happened.
Or lie. We have technical error. Let's postpone or something like that. I cannot show at the moment. Or continue imaging the good day or something like that. Yes. And my decision was to say. I was waiting almost any reaction,
any scenario I was waiting, but I wasn't, I was not waiting the thing which happened. He turned to me, he asked the waiter, it was around 8am or something like that, he asked the waiter, bring us please champagne. I asked him, Chandon what are you doing? He said, we will celebrate the best day of your life, because let them do this at the stage of MVP.
At the stage of demo, when you just starting, neither they will do it two years after. You should be very happy that it happened today. It, it turned everything I became very happy that I have heard this great words from his mouth and for sure I felt terrible, but the time it was more than okay.
And he he said very very proper words for this situation. And even now, when I facing the negative experience. I'm saying better to happen today, neither in one year or two years or something like that later. All right that's brilliant. I was going to ask you if you had an aha moment or a story that turned you into a success, but I think that kind of answered both those questions.
So it's very interesting the way you put that. Give me one. Simple mindset shift, or an action step that someone can take today to make networking more enjoyable and effective
action step.
Let me before I answer the question let me tell you for for for things. Which each networker should have in common, okay? I think the first one, you should be sociable. You should be sociable. To sell well, you need to be the one person who is proactively connects with everybody.
And people should feel comfortable in conversation with you. You should be well dressed, smiling, as I said before you should know your language, and so on. Another one thing is curiosity. You cannot copy curiosity. Curiosity should come from your heart. It's your mindset. You should be curious about the project, about these people, who are them, from where are them, why they wear these clothes, who is accompanying them, and so on.
And the curiosity should come from the heart. You should be very energetic. It should be like fountain from you, the energy. It's the key success for negotiation for business development for for expanding your business, expanding your relationships and so on. And the one of the key things it's number four for me is self confidence.
You should know what are you talking about. You should be very insured and you should have a very great expertise before you go to negotiation. One of my friends says you live your life. The quality of your life depends on how you negotiate. And this is very important because negotiations, they are everywhere in business.
With your family, in shop, and the most hardest negotiations are against yourself. This is the toughest thing, honestly. I want to wake up at 6am. No, I don't want, I'm going to sleep very late. No. And you negotiate with yourself to find out how to get what you want, that's the point.
And answering the question, what kind of actions should be taken from today. As I mentioned before 80 percent of success in negotiations and business development and so on, it's all about the preparation and our preparation depends of our depends on our knowledge. And first thing snooze three books to improve your negotiation skills.
And finish them before 1st of June, or maybe three months after. I don't know, guys, when you're going to listen to this podcast. But let's set up a target in the next three months. Read three books about the negotiations. And you will get more knowledge. You will get more experience, more techniques. And you can use them immediately on the very next day.
Let me ask you a question from everything that you've told me, told my listeners, what's your favorite networking? I'd say tactic. What's your favorite networking way that you always choose?
Very good question. Very good question. The best tactics when I feel extremely cool is when you're going to some kind of event, who will be attending, the list, you choose two or three personas with whom you have to establish connection. And then you create a magic, you open internal, you open Google, you start to Google this person.
You start to look into his social media and so on, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, it doesn't matter. And you find key discussional points. For example, dog. Or for example, the last place they visited in Europe, for example. Or maybe they like cars, watches, and so on. Just study what do these people like. And, when you have an opportunity to meet them, use this weapon, just tell him, Oh, I was late because I was walking around with my dog, which is called LaLaLa. And suddenly he has the same dog and you have a topic in discussion in common. Or maybe I have heard you was visiting Zurich last month. And what I'm going there in the sec in the next couple of months.
What restaurant you suggest me to visit there? Is it good starting point? I think yes. So Yeah. Choose, find the list of attendees, choose your target, spend 10 minutes in social media to find out the things in common and start the dialogue with this point. It's a magic. Outstanding. Outstanding. Dima, this has been great.
The time flew right by. Listen, how can anybody. get in contact with you either for coaching for it to be a client or just to get hold of you. What's the best way to get hold of you? You can write me directly in LinkedIn. This is the best way I think, or Google Dima Raketa, Google, or just print into the LinkedIn.
I, I answer all messages there, all messages. Yes, there could be some delay because of the traveling or something like that, but be sure that In a couple of days, I will answer, I would be very happy to help with the negotiations to help with the business development and for sure with the reputation management.
I would you asked me what are we going to what we can suggest to do the next action for our listeners in terms of negotiations, but I want to suggest one action for listeners. Try to Google yourself right now. What do Google says about you? Many of you will find a lot of interesting things.
And it's not it's not a fairytale and it's not magic, but you can change. What do Google says about you? You can change. What do YouTube says about you and the instruments, the tools, they are very easy to implement and very easy to do if you want to do something with we, the Google search results, just ping me in LinkedIn and I will help you.
I will send you some tools and some instruments. You can do it by yourself because we are working with big companies, big personas, but I would be very happy to share absolutely for free some kind of checklist or maybe some kind of instructions of how you can do by yourself. Google result page about your name.
It's great. Dima, thank you so very much. You're a great guest and I look forward to speaking with you in the future. Thank you so much. I appreciate you to having me on this podcast. It's time has finished and I thinking that I was thinking that it passed two minutes or three minutes or something like that.
We hadn't even started yet. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'll talk to you soon.
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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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