Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Hank and Sharyn Yuloff and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- 7 days ago
- 21 min read
📍 📍 Hello, and welcome back to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Connections. Welcome back to the show, folks. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and you're listening to the podcast where networking is more than just awkward handshakes and bad coffee. It's an art and a talent. But here's the twist. It's an art and talent you can actually learn.
Yes, even if you're the person hiding in the corner at every event, pretending to check emails. Networking isn't just a nice skill to have, it's a game changer. And when you get good at it, You'll wonder why you didn't start sooner. More connections, more opportunities, more profits. It's like unlocking a cheat code for life.
So whether you're the life of the party, or the just let me stay at home and text type, we've got something for you. So stick around. Let's turn those awkward small talk moments Into big wins. Now, I have a guest that will I actually have a pair of guests today. They are a husband wife team They are small business coaches Sharon and Hank you love they're authors of eight best selling books hold small business breakthrough bootcamps several times a year and have hosted almost 400 episodes of their podcast, the Marketing Checklist Viewcast.
They focus on marketing, sales, public speaking, and human resources, the four areas where most Business owners say they struggle and this is near and dear to my heart because this is what I talk about. I'm sorry, excuse me. I go on stages for, and I really like to talk about. So Sharon, Hank, why don't you just give us a quick backup of what you do?
Our clients they call us their easy button, when they have a challenge, yeah, the best 799 ever spent at Staples, when they have a question about sales or marketing or I'm going to a networking meeting and what do I do? They press the, the easy button and we walk them through it, in advance so they know what they're going to our background our business started like most.
Family businesses do over Thanksgiving, we were one of those families that went around the room and talked about, how, what are you thankful for? And I was, it was my turn mom, everything's great, sharing me, married, and I'm passing it on to my sister. And my mom said gee, Henry, oh, God, when she uses the formal name how's work?
And I got to tell her. How work was going. And her comment was, what would it take instead of being a manager for this other company, why don't you, what would it take to start your own? And I gave her a very flip answer that I would need to buy a new fax machine. 'cause it's, 'cause the one I own had belonged to the company.
Your audience does know what fax machines are, right? Yeah. And she looked at my dad and said, write him a check. So two weeks later. The business was started and fast forward 13 years and ish and Sharon came on board. He had a client that needed his marketing and sales background, but also needed the HR and office systems background that I had.
So we agreed to team up and we really haven't looked back since. So it's good. So you two create a wonderful synergy between your two backgrounds. Correct. Which is great for starting a business. Okay. So I'm gonna move right into my questions. How has networking influenced your career in marketing, sales, and public speaking?
Yeah, let it's I'll be real blunt networking built my business. I joined a couple of different chambers of commerce. I joined a hard networking group, and it's really that was the bedrock of it. Some folks might not know what a hard networking group is right? It's so I can be an eye tip.
I said, Chamber of Commerce is a soft, right? There could be multiples of you in there. But a hard networking, there's one, one business per category, one one marketing firm, one banking, one, it's not one lawyer because there are different brands of lawyers, different specialties, but there'll be one for each specialty.
Yeah, I believe that networking is the base of all businesses, because no matter what business you're in, you have to network, and whether you do it through Zoom through your cell phone, or in person, I believe the in person is the most important, because you pick up on all the vibe of the people, the room, and everything else.
But that's neither here nor there. Tell me what's your most successful networking strategy for hr professionals? Watch this sharon it's not much different for hr than it is for anyone else who's your ideal client customer referral partner Where are they hanging out go hang out where they're hanging out?
So it depends on what you're right. Are you looking to network with other hr professionals? Are you looking because you're hiring and you need that next, whatever that best employee is, right? It depends on what's the goal of that networking opportunity, but that's pretty standard, no matter what, right?
What's the goal? Yeah, that's true. You always have to look at the end to see where you want to begin because when people start to network, they say, Okay, look, I'm in mortgages. And where do I go for mortgages? But you have to look at where your customer really is networking and you go on from there.
That was very good. Can you share a memorable connection that significantly impacted your career? Oh, easily. There's actually several kind of one. I'll give you one that I share all the time. I was on the board of the Encino Chamber in Los Angeles and it was a mixer and being on the board, I felt it was my obligation or in networking terms, it was a great excuse to walk up to any new person that came in and introduce myself, talk about the chamber, Not buy my stuff, but welcome to the chamber.
Let me get you involved. Who can I introduce you to? One particular mixer woman walks in. Now, demographically she fell into one of my target audiences. Okay, age, got it. And it turns out, occupationally, in that demographic that you go to a meeting, I want to meet this person, There she was.
And turns out we ended up having a hour and a half conversation. Didn't talk to anyone else at the mixer that night, but her, I had been on her boss's TV show. She, cause she was working for Time Warner cable and she was his, she ran the office which in the promo business, this was like the perfect buyer.
So we became very friendly. We rooted for different baseball teams, we got past that. Now let's fast forward several years. She's been a client and a friend. But because of her job, she was in the San Fernando Valley in front of a lot of audiences. A lot of business audiences. If the mayor of Los Angeles came to the valley for a particular event, she was the emcee, etc.
And quite often her first her story, as it turns out, I was the very first business person she met after she got her job when she walked into the mixer and she will see me in an audience and she would see that guy right there. Thank you law, and she would edify what I, my company. And then talk about the importance of being a business community.
But it was that third party validation that goes, that started being the very first person to be welcoming a new person into the chamber. At first you look, there's a feeling within networking that when you go to an event or anything such like an event, you look to give, not receive.
Absolutely. So you don't, if you look to give, then you'll always get back because what goes around does come around, but it puts you in such a better place if you look to give. And so it looks like you hit that nail right on the head. You probably teach this. Look, but if there's a new person and you say, so you're here at this meeting, who would you like to meet?
If you can connect to them, what's the first thing they have in common is you. Hey, they're going to talk about you a little bit, but yeah. You've now, you've banked some karma points, or business points. Even if you get no business from either of them you've done a good thing and in business, our businesses are built on continuously doing good things and being of service and that's vital in networking.
Yeah. And that's exactly what I teach to my students and when I go on stages and everything else, because I say it in such a way that, because I bring everything down to a A. Chamber event a chamber of commerce event. If you see somebody new coming in, you say, who are you? What do you do? And everything else.
I think, look, that table over there has a table full of marketers. I think you would fit in very well. Let me go over, introduce you. You go over introduce and then you step away, but you've built yourself up in their eyes So that I take that one step further sure all right folks, let's say you're going to be you're going to introduce that person to one person What i've done is i've said, you know what?
You two have a conversation and I'll tell the new person, tell you what, when you two are done, come find me and I'll introduce you to somebody else. That's even better. That's even better. So that's very good. And I'm going to have to steal that. He's now going to steal, yeah. Okay, so the first time, give me attribution.
After that, it's all yours. Okay, you got it. You got it. Okay. So how do you balance online and in person networking in today's digital age? I think. I think of trying, in whatever it is, trying to find balance it is, it's a fleeting attempt. It's not, it doesn't happen. It's not the same as balance. It's what do you need today, right?
Today you might be out of balance, in the in person, right? Oh my goodness, we have three events we have to go to today, or we get to go to today, right? So today we're out of balance. Because we're not doing anything online, or tomorrow we might be doing a webinar and a podcast and something else, and it's all, oh, today we get to be online, we actually can be in jeans and a t shirt or whatever, right?
That day is out of balance in the other way. Overall, the balance will even out in whatever way is brings you the fastest path to cash. No, that's true. That's true. But keeping that in balance, as you said is really, it's very important because you can't have the scale go all one way or the other.
In today's business, you need both. And you said it perfectly because one day you might be doing everything online and the second day you might be doing everything in person. And also you're very fortunate you have two people, so you can actually do both at the same time. We, this is just our personal, this is our brand.
We tend to do most things together. Occasionally we do have to be in two places at once. And yes, we're fortunate. There's two of us. We can split, but we do try to do everything together because that's our brand, right? If you're going to hire a coach and you only see me out and we resonate. And you're interested in hiring us, but you haven't met Hank or vice versa, right?
It's hard to make that buying decision because there's a piece of the puzzle missing. So we try to do those things together, but yes, occasionally, especially if it's some, if we're meeting with folks we've already met before, if there's two different chamber events, those people already know us. They know we're a team.
If they're going to make a buying decision, they already know what they're getting. It's totally fine. But if we're going someplace new, we're always going to go together. Yeah. Although if we spill it up, we almost have to wear a badge that Sharon is not. Yeah. Sharon's doing this or Hank's not here because he's doing, cause that's the question.
Where's Hank? Where's Sharon? That's good. Because if you go to places predominantly together, then they're always going to ask where the other one is. Always. So it's good. So listen you've told me how successful you've become. But I'm sure you've made a plethora of mistakes. Give me the biggest mistake and how you avoided it.
I would say my biggest mistake is I am an introvert. Why is that a mistake? I'm a shy introvert, right? So for me to go out in public to network, I have to channel my inner Hank. Anyway. So left on my own, I would do it online. I'm just really, you want me to go out there? Like COVID for me was awesome.
We can't go out. Oh, darn. Oh, that's just too bad. So right. But in the business world, that is a mistake. So to lean on those initial, I don't want to's. That's the mistake the learning process was well, how badly do you want it right? I want our business to succeed More than I want to embrace being a shy introvert So i'm gonna channel my inner hank and go out there.
I'm not as good as hank is out there, but I can Yeah. Yeah. She has her steps. She does wonderful. , they always say the introverts always, or the second half of the team always say, I'm really not good at this. I'm not. And you still say, wait a minute, you are very good at this.
You are sensational at this, but you don't realize it, ever since the secret weapon in our couple. Yeah ever since the pandemic, when people were staying inside, people now, one other thing that I speak about is when I go to high schools and colleges, I speak about how people don't know how to communicate with one another, they lost the feeling of all they're doing is zoom or through texting they lost the one on one feeling.
And as well as I do, when you meet somebody, yeah, You're feeling the vibe of the person, you're feeling the vibe of the room, and basically, whether or not you're going to do business with that person. So can I turn your podcast around for a second and ask you a question? Sure, why?
All right. Okay, go ahead. So welcome back, this is Tarrin and Hank, the marketing team. Thank you. Okay, good. We have our guest, Michael Forman, he's an expert at networking. Michael, you speak on, you speak to a lot of the, of Gen X, Gen Y, a younger generation. What this is a topic that's important to me.
Have you noticed a difference in how they network compared to millennial and moving toward baby boomers? Sure. It's huge. It's huge because the younger adults as I said before, they never were taught how to communicate. They were just because they don't know about it. So that was, that's what my job.
Is when I go into high school, I have to tell them, look, you may think everything's on zoom, or you may think everything by text, but you must do it in person. When you go to meet with somebody, when you go to meet them in a company or corporation, you don't. You're not going to do it through Zoom, and you have to learn etiquette.
You have to learn be confident. You have to learn eye contact, handshakes. You have to learn politeness, respectfulness, and all of that is gone, and they don't know how to do it. So yes, the answer to your question is yes, there's a big difference, and that's one of the reasons why I go out and try to tell everybody.
I've noticed when it comes to things like all of the service groups, Yes, chambers, etc the silent generation did a marvelous job bringing baby boomers along and baby boomers We did not do as good a job bringing millennials to and teaching them the same thing So your public service, is important and please continue doing it.
Thank you. I Agree wholeheartedly because I do feel that is a missing link. And I think that the businesses of today without that, they're going to lose out on a lot. So that's why I do it. But going back to introverts, how can introverts Excel at networking in sales and marketing? Yeah, Sharon in networking here.
Here's my secret sauce. When you walk into a network, a room of networkers. You're not the only shy one there. I promise you, you're not. Look around, there are other people hanging out at the wall. Like your high school dances. Okay. Go introduce yourself to one of those that are saying, Hey, I see you're here by yourself.
That's my inclination too. My name is Sharon. Just be willing to be first our, with our clients when we are, when we are sending them out to a network, they all know, I'm not going to tell them I'm going to a network group because I'm going to get the assignment and the assignment is all right.
Is it one two or three and they have to pick a number? Are you going to meet one two or three brand new people? And come back to the coaching call and give us your book report on Show the card Yep. Yep. Yeah, you have to put them on the spot. You have to make them accountable For their own good, you know They don't that's what I try to Yeah, that's what I try to do with all my coaching students, I make them accountable If i'm sitting there just preaching to them.
They're not going to get anything out of it if I make them accountable Then they really will pay attention and do a little bit more and get their money's worth so to speak what role does public speaking play in effective networking? It's tremendous. Yeah, you can meet one on one, but you could also meet one too many and I the other thing I tend to stress a lot is You're not just looking for your next client or customer Like, if you're only working on client customer, you're missing out the referral partners.
Don't forget about those referral partners. Sometimes you're not going to meet your next client or customer, but what you might meet is someone who has a tribe of people that also want to meet you that they could introduce you to. If you ignore the referral partners because you're so focused on the next client or customer, you're missing out.
I always say that referrals are gold. That's golden, right? Because you're not speaking to that audience, but you're speaking to the network of that audience, so you're not speaking to 50, 100, 200 people, you're speaking to 1000 people, because if you're good enough, and you resonate with them enough, they're going to say, Oh, you know what?
I saw this guy speak, you have to hear him, and so on, so forth. So yeah, I think it's very important. How do you maintain and nurture professional relationships long term? We have several tools. Okay. You mentioned our books. We are, we've given away way more books than we've sold. But that's how we, that's the tool.
We are huge believers in direct mail. We have an entire greeting card system that we use that, that puts things into their mailbox. We don't believe in using our email to sell without. delivering knowledge our social media, Is part of it, you know remembering little birthdays on social media there's there are a lot of different parts of the puzzle what did I miss it really comes down to follow up if you just met someone and then that's it You're just leaving it to them Hoping that they're going to reach out.
Hope is not a marketing plan, right? So yeah, but it's a short one So follow up whether it's greeting cards, or social media, or texting, or sending an email. Heck, we had a one to one call we give away 30 minute calls, strategy sessions for business owners that are stuck. We had a call with two women that they were in entertainment, it doesn't matter, but they were part of the, in the L.
A. fires that happened. So I, we sent an email. It wasn't, Hey, let's continue the conversation about coaching. It was, Hey we just heard about this. We know that you're in that area. Are you okay? Be a person , no, it that's true. But you, what you said was key is the follow up to your whatever.
Right now I personally feel that the follow up is almost more important than the actually meeting of the person themselves. That's right. And I went to a networking event. And I just, I asked, I was talking with somebody and I said, Hey, how do you follow up with all of the people that you meet?
He goes I'll send them an email tomorrow and I'll thank them and I'll send them an email next week and I'll follow up with them again. And probably the week after that. And I thought, I said, okay, thank you very much. And I'm thinking, okay, if I go up against him, He lost because I have a secret sauce it involves writing a handwritten.
Thank you note You know to that person so I follow up in such a way It's about six times in two weeks. So you think oh, no, that's an overkill. No, but you'll find It takes between 8 and 12 touches before a person will respond. And I can guarantee you that with the way that I follow up is you go from about a 3 percent chance to about a 70 percent chance.
And both of you work corporate America. And if you were told somebody that, okay, I have a 70 percent chance of my emails, somebody responding to my email, that's gold, right? But then you'll know. Positive or negative response. If they respond to you, where to place them either in the no go file or the follow up again file or something else.
But you have what to do with them. So follow up is the key in our greeting card system. We use several different greeting cards. And we do have them by list, clients get a, get the, get a card every month. Past clients get a card. We have prospects we have, which is a very broad category, but yeah, and we change the message to make sure that they understand, look, you may never, ever need coaching, but here's just a little positivity for the month.
Yeah, you don't know who they know. You have that message that Positivity message and as long as you are uplifting and positive and everything then Everybody would just love to either open it or just say oh, that's right. That was hank and sharon That's you know, and that's it look we send those the since we're talking about greeting cards We send the greeting cards out to our chamber of commerce and quite often.
It'll be We'll meet them at a mixer. Oh, you're the ones that send those cards every month. Yes, we are. Yes, that's us. We've already met them. So we've already met them, Michael. Now we're just continuing the conversation at the mixer. And it's a lot nicer when it happens that way. So you don't have that cold, what do you do?
It's that takes that all of that out of the mix. All right. Can you share tips for turning casual connections into a profitable business relationship? Sure. Tell you what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use your audience. All right, audience, careful. You're about to get sold here. We have several books.
One of them is called the marketing checklist. Your guide for overwhelmed and overthinking entrepreneurs. If you would like this book, all you have to do is send us an email. But wait, would you like the marketing checklist for sale? Here's where it gets fun. You have to listen to another episode of networking unleashed and give us like a two sentence book report on what you learned from Michael.
Yeah. If you'd like the marketing checklist to listen to another episode and tell us what Michael taught you. If you want our human resources book. Yep. One more podcast of networking unleashed. Tell us what Michael taught you. And you can have each of those books. So what we're doing is we're getting somebody to get some free stuff and we're building a relationship with you because we want them to listen to more of you and maybe that You'll get some coaching out of it because they listen to more networking unleashed you might meet somebody that needs coaching that doesn't do what you do and then we refer so it's not a fastest path to cash, but it's Doing enough things in your business that, spinning all those plates, they start to come back to you.
It's layering. Yeah. You give, so the thing is give of yourself. And if you haven't written a book, all right, some special report in your industry. I pride myself on being able to put two people together. And I am really known for it in my circles know for. Look, if Michael doesn't do it, then he knows people who do, and he'll put them together.
And I do that almost every day. And it's really, it's as much of a good feeling as. It's just really a good feeling. Why wouldn't you do it? Yeah. It's being a good person. It's a good person, a good neighbor, a good, whatever. Isn't that what Mr. Rogers told us, taught us to do?
Oh wait. Most of your audience has no idea who Mr. Rogers is. That's right. That's right. But that's what Cookie Monster taught us to do. They probably still don't even know who Cookie Monster is.
It's good to be nice to people. Okay, last question. All right. How has networking evolved the HR industry and what trends do you foresee?
I'll start with one. Go ahead. When, before we worked together or as we were starting to work together, Sharon would hear me talking to clients about marketing. And she realized real fast that she was doing the same thing internally, So I used to think that he was a marketing guy. I didn't know anything about marketing.
I was hr and office management What do I know about marketing right? But as he said I was overhearing the conversations he was having with his small business client Knowing that when I was doing hr, I was only working with small business. I didn't work with large companies. It was small business owners so the same conversations that he was having with his clients, I would have in my HR office, right?
Employees would come to me and say, I have this great idea, but my co worker or my supervisor won't listen to me. How do I get them to listen to me? It's messaging. Or the bosses would come to me and say, we have this great idea, but we want the employees to buy in so they feel like they have some ownership and it actually works.
It's messaging. H. R. is just internal messaging. Unless I'm putting an ad out looking for a new employee, right? Then it's external, but. Again, most of my career was small business. We didn't do that much hiring. It was a small business. So You saw that i'm gonna use that word again synergy for what you're doing for what both of you can do together And that's what makes it work that's what makes your team Work because you are powerful in some areas hank is powerful in other areas And when you combine that you make such a good team And, it's, if, let me ask you a question, if somebody wants either your coaching, or buy a book, or just to see what you're all about, or even just to talk to you, how would they go about doing it?
Okay, don't go to Amazon and buy the book, reach out to us, we'll give it to you for free. Alright, that's the first part. Our calendar link is how to get there faster. Grab a 30 minutes with us. If you only want a book, just send us an email. You can track us down. Our email addresses are all are on our website.
You lock creative dot com. But if you want some time, that's how to get there. Faster is the easiest way. They'll ask you a couple of questions. So we're ready for you. Here's our entire sales pitch. You ready? If you want to talk about coaching, go to company marketing plan. com. So that's five seconds of the 30 minutes.
So the other 29 minutes, 53 seconds is yours. That's good. That's good. And I try to get to the person behind the business and to get to the person, then you really know what their business is about. And the people who give you that fake front, I don't want to deal with, we had a business coach that.
We were with him for two years and I'll say this up front. I Every penny we invested totally worth it. We didn't continue Because toward the end of the second year, I said look i've got a marketing question, you know for us How we should do it and his answer was, I don't know your clients well enough to answer that and I was like Okay, wait a second.
In the first, when a client starts with a thing, we start with a two hour onboarding session. We know about their clients like that. And during the course of our contract, of a year with somebody, we really know their business. So it was an oh my goodness moment. And again I feel fine about every penny we invested.
It was worth it. But it also that last thing taught us to create the coaching program that we wish we could have found out in the wild, but we also felt and still feel like we don't really know him. We know his persona. But we don't really know him. And we don't know how to do that. We don't want to learn how to do that.
What you see here with us and talking to Michael is what you're going to hear on the phone or in our mastermind. When you meet Michael in person, you're probably going to get the exact same thing as you see here. There's no persona. That's it. That's, I hate people that put that front on, and that's why I really don't do business.
It it's hard because you know what, they don't remember what they said a month ago because it was all fake. If I can just be me, then I don't have to worry about that. You just be you. And that's why you're successful. I'm successful. And, it makes the world go around that much better.
So I want Hank Sharon, I got to tell you, this was a great podcast. I Learned so much because I your background and my background are so much alike and we're teaching almost the same things So it was like a breath of fresh air Okay, so I have a feeling we could chat for another hour or so and in fact, we might do that folks.
So y'all have a great day We're gonna chat for another hour, but you're gonna wish you would hurt at all But make sure you keep listening to Networking Unleashed because I have a feeling there's a whole lot more you can learn from Michael. Thank you and I'll talk with 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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