Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Jasz Joseph and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Oct 9
- 22 min read
Welcome back to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, the podcast where we unpack the real strategies that turn handshakes into opportunity and conversations into clients. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today's episode is all about one of the most powerful and often misunderstood.
Business growth tools, referrals in the word sales. If the word sales makes you wanna hide behind your LinkedIn profile and you're going to love today's guests. She's built a thriving referral driven business without cold pitching, high pressure tactics or awkward coffee meetings that go nowhere.
We're talking about how to earn referrals by building trust, delivering value. Showing up the right way. So if you're ready to grow your business by building relationships instead of chasing leads, this one's for you. Let's dive in. I want to tell you my guest today, this is all proven technology, right?
And this is what I talk about all the time when I go into businesses, workshops, it's all about. Referrals. So jazz. Jazz. Joseph, I want to welcome you to the podcast, and why don't you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about your background. Thank you. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. So I spent my career working for big marketing agencies specifically HubSpot, platinum Diamond partner agencies.
And then I started my own business about four and a half years ago in January of 2021. And that business has ebbed and flowed in a few different directions over the years, whenever we originally started. We were an agency for agencies, so I always used to say, working in the agency world for years, the shoemaker's kids never have shoes.
And agency owners spend so much time building their clients' businesses that they rarely have the time energy focused to work on their own business. Then in the past few years, the market has shifted quite a bit with the rise of ai. And the decrease of organic reach. And so we really started to hone in more on sales enablement and sales support.
Whenever I think about marketing, I always think about marketing through a sales and marketing alignment lens. I'm very ROI driven. I love to talk numbers, revenue with my clients. And so we really have morphed into more of a sales enablement agency, and now we support businesses of all sizes, aligning their sales and marketing, making sure that they have full visibility.
We are still a HubSpot partner agency, so we lean heavily into CRMs and tracking. Everyone in your CRM, which I know we're gonna be talking about today, not just customers, but also referral partners and networking opportunities, and everybody that you should be keeping in touch with as a business owner.
This all sounds fantastic because it's right in line what I talk about, so I'm very excited for this podcast. Okay. Let's dive right into it. You built a referral driven business without leaning on traditional sales tactics. What was the turning point that led you down that. Yeah, it's a great question and one of the reasons that I've started my own business is because I really wanted to be human centric, right?
And so I worked in client services for years, account management, and I was running these accounts at these agencies. I hated the sales piece of that job in the sense that I hated to always be nickel diming, nickeling, and dimming my clients, right? Asking for more and more. More, oh, you wanna do this thing, actually, it's gonna be an additional cost.
So when I built my own business, I wanted to be really intentional about doing it in a way that felt aligned with me. And not always nickel and dimming my clients, but figuring out a model that allowed me to really be a fractional member of their team and embed and build those strong relationships with them.
And so naturally, whenever you build a business in that way, referrals start to come in. A lot of what I did in the early days of my business and still do today, was networking. So finding out those groups where my target audience would hang out. So whenever I was really focused on agency owners. I was trying to figure out where are agency owners hanging out?
What events are they going to? Where are they hanging out online? What slack groups, what Facebook groups? The list goes on. And then down the road I actually started hosting my own events. So I started being that point of contact for agency owners to gather and network and collaborate. And so that was another great way to just continue to boost that referral business.
That's so you hit on so many points that I don't have time to, to comment on all of them, but it sounds like you're going down the right path because I am a firm believer that networking is the base of all. Businesses and if you do it correctly, but if you follow up correctly, not just meeting the people, but if you follow up correctly, you'll have huge success.
Okay. So why do you think so many entrepreneurs struggle for with asking for referrals, and how can they make it feel more natural? Yeah, it's a great question. I think part of it is as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, we spend all day every day thinking about our business, right? Like your business is your baby.
You're constantly thinking about it, but you have to remember that no one else is thinking about your business nearly as much as you are. So a big piece of networking, getting referral business is staying top of mind. And I think that can be really challenging for a lot of business owners because they think to themselves I already talked about my service, or I already launched this new project, or whatever it is for you, right?
But the truth of the matter is, we are all being bombarded with information just 24 7. And people are not going to remember what you do unless you have a really strong strategy in place to stay top of mind with them. So that can mean different things for different businesses. Sometimes that is picking up the phone and just saying, Hey, we haven't touched base in a while.
I would love to hear what you're up to. I would love to share what I'm up to. Sometimes that can be more traditional marketing channels like email marketing or like LinkedIn or Instagram or TikTok. Depending on your business model. But at the end of the day, I think that is a huge mindset shift, is remembering that nobody's thinking about your business as much as you are.
And so it's really important that you're staying top of mind and you're regularly talking about yourself. Not in a salesy way, but in a friendly like, Hey, reminder, I'm here. I'm doing full stuff. This is what my world looks like. Because then when people have a problem, you are already top of mind and it's very easy for them to either raise their hand and say, Hey, I'm ready to work with you, or refer somebody else and say, Hey, if you have this problem, here's the person you need to talk to.
I agree with that all a hundred percent. The only thing that I would add to it is when you talk to somebody through LinkedIn, through an email, something else you have to bring value to that conversation. So if you had an article or something say, Hey look, I just read this and I thought you might be interested.
Have at it. That type of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That will help them keep you top of mind saying, look, you know what she really. What I do and she really is thinking about my business. So here you are thinking, 'cause as you said, we think about our business a whole lot more than everybody else.
But now you're giving a little inside track to say, look, she's thinking about my business too. I'm gonna remember her. So that's a little something. Yeah, no, that's a great call out. Thank you. What's the difference between earning a referral and asking for one, and why does that distinction matter? Yeah, it's a great question.
So I think that there is room for both, admittedly. So earning a referral happens when you are not asking for a referral, but instead, like I mentioned, you're seeing top of mind and people are immediately thinking of you. So when a problem arises, somebody says, Hey, I need HubSpot help. All of the people in my network are going, you have to talk to jazz.
Jazz is the person to talk to. So that's earning a referral and asking for a referral, I think is okay in certain situations, right? We never want to be the person who's knocking on everyone's door saying, give me business. But I think there are appropriate times, for example, whenever you're having a catchup or a coffee chat with someone, if you can, to your point, Michael, lead with value and say, how can I support you?
How can I help you in your business? Listen, wait for their response, see if you can jump in to help. And then nine times out of 10, they're going to ask you the same question, right? They're gonna say, how can I support you? And you can say actually, here's what I'm looking for. I have some spots open right now.
I'm accepting new clients. Here's what an ideal client looks like for me. Do you know anyone? And when you're leading with value, and you're also just leading with that genuine human, authentic connection, right? We're not leading as a salesperson, but we genuinely want to help the other person. It makes it a lot easier for them to feel comfortable than giving you that referral and knowing, okay, if I pass this person over to jazz.
Jazz is not gonna be a sleazy salesperson and immediately get on the phone and try and start selling to them. She's going to be a genuine human, and she's gonna say, Hey, tell me about you. Tell me about your business. Let's chit chat. Let's get to know each other. Oh, by the way, I think you may be a fit for what I offer.
Are you interested? That's a very different approach. Absolutely. Because we have to go in with the mindset that we're a problem solver. They'll have a problem and we can solve it. So I say almost exactly what you said, but I put a little twist on it. I listen to them called active listening. I listen to them, I respond to them, and I say, you know something, I like you.
I like how you do business. I like what you do. How can I make you more successful? How can I be a good referral source for you? So that usually blows 'em away. Michael, I don't even know what you do yet. Why are you doing this? But, that's what's going with a giving, not receiving or going in with a servant's heart, saying, look, how can I help this person without even them knowing what I do?
And soon enough what goes around comes around. Okay. Can you walk us through what a referral worthy experience looks like in your business model? Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. So my business model is a very. Human-centric, right? I do consulting, and so I am in the weeds with my clients, right?
I'm digging into their sales process, I'm meeting their team, I'm doing training. I'm deeply understanding their revenue goals, and so they have to be able to trust me and that in the same way that I lead that way with my clients, I lead that way with referral partners. To me, it's all about trust. I don't sell a product, right?
It's not. Click and purchase. That's a completely different sales cycle, but in the consulting world, it's so human driven, it's so connection driven. It's so trust driven that however you operate in your sales process with prospects that should go hand in how you operate with referral partners.
And so I often lead by sharing the pain points that I address, and I think that is something that's really important that a lot of people skip out on as opposed to leading with what you do, right? I do HubSpot Consulting, I come in, I help you fix your HubSpot. I don't lead with that. I lead with, here are the pain points that my target audience is experiencing, that I come in and solve for them, because it's much easier for a referral partner to identify those pain points than it is for them to identify.
A person who needs the service that you offer, right? We all have fancy names for our consulting businesses now, right? I do operations or I do backend development, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Most of the time we don't really know what those things mean, let's be honest. But we do understand pain points. So if you say.
I help people whose websites are not converting. I help people who sales and marketing teams are arguing with each other. I help leaders who need more visibility into what their sales team is doing, and if they're selling, I help marketing leaders determine which of their campaigns are driving the strongest ROI.
Oh. Now I can identify, I know people who fit that bill. I know people who are struggling with that. Or I can be out in the world listening for people who are struggling with those problems. That very good. Very good. And that's a very good distinction. And that it definitely, it keeps you grounded, it keeps you in so that your client always will think of you without even thinking of you.
They have a problem. Oh, I have to go to Jan for that. Or I can give jazz a call and it's not gonna cost me anything, but to just gimme some advice. That's a kind of consulting that we all look for. How do you keep yourself top of mind in your network without sounding like you're constantly promoting something?
Yeah. Great question. So I think. That it's twofold. One is being super passionate about what you do, and I think when you're super passionate, that passion just shines through. And going hand in hand with that is storytelling. So I really challenge myself at the end of every day. To look at my calendar and think about what did I do today that feels like a good story that I can use to stay top of mind.
So for example, if I had a client call and they came to me with a very specific problem. That's a story that I can then tell via a LinkedIn post via an email newsletter in a networking call that I have next week. Whatever it is, that doesn't make me sound salesy, right? Because I'm not leading with, Hey, let me tell you about the services I offer.
But instead, I'm telling a story like, Hey, listen to how interesting this is. A client came to me, they had X, Y, Z problem, and at first we thought maybe we should do this. But then we tried it out and it didn't work, and here's what actually worked for them and here's how it moves the needle, and here's the results that they saw.
And that's a really tangible story that allows my passion to bleed through. That allows you to understand the problem and the solution without me explicitly saying, Hey, if you know somebody with this problem, please send them to me because I would love to work with them. That's absolutely the best way to do it because I know when I go on stages and I talk I talk in workshops, stories resonate with people.
People will remember the story above and beyond what you're trying to teach them. So if you can bring that story in, they'll say, oh, that's. I have the same problem, I have the same pain point, and that will draw them in that much faster. Okay. What advice would you give to someone who's new in business and doesn't yet have a strong referral base, and where did they start?
Yeah, great question. My biggest advice to people who are new in business is to start with a CRM. And the reason I say that is because when you are new in business, people love to help you, right? Everybody is willing to give you some time, give you some advice, have a quick coffee chat with you and all of those people that you're collecting.
Are now invested in your growth and they want to see you succeed and you need to stay in touch with them. But it's so easy as you're building a business to forget about those people. Let them fall through the cracks. Maybe you remember them, but you don't remember exactly what you talked with them about.
And if you have a CRM, it's really easy for you to keep track of all of those people. Take notes about what you talked about, even set yourself tasks maybe in a month or three months down the road to follow up with them and give them an update and ask what they're up to and continue that conversation with them.
So if you're able to build that really strong foundation from the beginning with A CRM and stay organized in that way, you can go just so much farther because there's people that honestly, right now, as a four and a half year business owner. Probably wouldn't give me the time of day, but whenever I was starting out, people are just so much more likely to help you, right?
They want to see you succeed. They want to give you that wisdom and impart some of what they've learned onto you, and so capture those people while you're young and fresh and new, and then take them on this journey with you as you're building your business. I agree, and that's part of my presentation is using a CRM.
I happen to be a HubSpot user, have been for about three years. So when you mentioned the tasks and keeping up and the notes and everything, I'm like, that's what I do every day. The first thing I do is I look at my tasks for the day, I accomplish them, and then I can move on, do new business.
But I look at my tasks so I can't agree more. For using A CRM, and of course I don't get any money out of it, but use HubSpot. Okay. Have you ever received a referral that completely surprised you, and what do you think made it happen? Yes, all the time, and I think most of my really surprising referrals will come from my LinkedIn present.
So I am very active posting on my personal LinkedIn. And what I have found over the years is that a lot of people are lurking on LinkedIn, so they never like a post, they never comment, they never share. And so I don't even know that they're reading my posts. I don't know that they're engaging with my content, but all of the sudden a lead will come through and they will say the most random thing to me.
Hey, one of your professors from whenever you were in college is my wife, and she's been seeing your LinkedIn presents, and I thought that I could use you. Hey. We haven't talked in, 10 plus years, but I see you on LinkedIn. I know exactly what you do. I know the pain points that you help people with, and I'm struggling with that, and so I want to work with you.
And so again, like so much of it is staying top of mind and it can feel like a slog because you think nobody's reading these posts. I'm not getting the engagement. The same four people comment on every single one of my posts. And they're my friends and I know that they already know what I'm doing.
But the truth of the matter is there are so many people lurking in the background that are not going to engage until they have a problem or they know someone with a problem and then they're gonna pop their head up and say, Hey, I'm ready to talk to you. I know the feeling. 'Cause I post on LinkedIn that, that's what I consider the business site of social media.
I post on there probably twice a day. Five days a week. And I guess about seven months had passed and I got a LinkedIn message from an event planner, like we were talking every day. And I'm like who are you? I didn't write that. Of course, but, and she just said, would you be interested in talking and doing this and speaking, and it's a short plane ride, and so on, so forth.
And it just co They just, but you're right, they're lurking. Lurking in the background just seeing what your next post would be, and they realize that they can use your. Exactly. And Michael, that's such a testament too to the tone and style of your post that people feel comfortable starting that conversation with you as if they know you, as if they've been talking to you forever.
And I would encourage our listeners too, to think in a similar way of how can you feel friendly? How can you feel approachable? Yes, LinkedIn is a professional network, but at the end of the day, we're all humans doing business with other humans. So if you can make yourself come across in a way that feels very warm and open, people are more likely to reach out to you and feel like they can approach you with questions or opportunities or problems or things that they wanna loop you in on.
I absolutely right, and one of the things I had to remind people is that, digital world and. Person to person world, right? The digital world, zoom. This is great, but I have to remember that Jazz, Joseph is a person and that I'm talking to a person. So you have the same things, but through Zoom, but you still have to follow the same rules as person to person networking.
When I say rules, I just mean that comfort feeling. Okay, so systems or habits do you use to track, nurture and deepen your referral relationships over time? I think I know the answer to this, but go ahead. Yes, we're back to hubs. Spot. Yeah. It really it's that all in one tool and honestly for anybody listening who is just starting out, the free HubSpot CRM is super powerful in and of itself.
You don't need to onboard to like these really expensive tiers right away. The nice thing about HubSpot is that it will grow with you, but I have clients that have been on the free version for years and years, and it's a very. Functional CRM, it gets you where you need to be. So yeah, as far as nurturing and keeping in touch with people, like I mentioned, I use tasks a lot depending on what level of HubSpot you're in.
You can use sequences, you can enroll people in automated emails that feel very one-to-one. So that you can just be nurturing these people in the background and so they don't fall through the cracks. You don't forget about them, and as soon as they respond, that lands in your inbox and then you take over.
So it's not all automated, it's just that's. First message in the background is automated again, so you don't forget about them so they don't fall through the cracks. But then you can take over as a real human and start having those conversations and booking those meetings. So it's nice to really pair the two.
A lot of times whenever I talk about automation, people get very sheepish and they think, oh no, I could never do that because I have a very human-centric business and people are gonna know, and I don't wanna come across sounding like a robot. But there's a beautiful way that you can pair the two because as a human, you are limited in your capabilities, right?
It's easy to forget about people. It's easy to get busy. It's easy to let your nurturing strategy or your networking strategy fall to the wayside when client work comes into play. If you're pairing that with the tools and systems in the background, then you know that's taken care of, that's working for you, and then you can jump in when it's necessary to have that human touchpoint.
Absolutely. Always keeping that human touchpoint with you available just, it's separating you from ai and if you do that, people can really. Notice that, there's a way to tell if you see an article or something, if it's AI written, there's certain buzzwords, right?
But you have to keep it more human, more personal. And even with the advent of ai, I still think this. Is much more important. It's more, more important when you walk into a networking event, you like to feel the vibe of the room, you like to feel the vibe of the person you're talking to. That's so important.
And keeping in touch with everything that you've been talking about that becomes very important. Okay. How do you handle referrals that aren't a good fit without damaging the relationship with the person who sent them your way? Yeah, so this is what's so beautiful about referrals is that as much as you want to be giving referrals, you should also be giving referrals.
And so I keep a list of. People who work in a similar space to me, but slightly different, right? So people who work with maybe clients that are B2C, I mostly play in the B2B world. I people who work with clients that are a little smaller than what I would like to work with, or the flip side. People that work with big enterprise companies that I just don't have the manpower to handle.
So I keep a list of people who work in adjacent spaces to me that I trust, and then I can send business to them and or partner with them. A lot of times, we can come in and we can work together on a project, but the more that you send business to someone. Again, the more you stay top of mind and the more they're willing to send that business back to you.
And so I've made some really great partnerships throughout the years, like I said, with people who work in an adjacent space like HubSpot developers. I have a HubSpot developer. And that's all they do is build websites on HubSpot. That's not really where I live. I live more in the sales and marketing automation space, but of course there's overlap and so anytime my clients have a development need, I'm saying, Hey, you have to talk to this guy.
Anytime his clients have sales and marketing automation needs, he's saying, Hey, you have to talk to Jazz. And we've built this really beautiful partnership over the years, and I know I can trust him. So any prospects or clients that come to me and need that help, I feel really confident referring to him and vice versa.
So I would challenge you to build your network, not just of potential clients, but of also collaborators, because that's gonna help you go farther as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Before I ask you the last question, I ask all of my guests this very same thing. You've had quite an extensive background.
Four and a half years ago, you decided to go out on your own. What major mistake have you made and how have you turned it around? Yeah, it's a great question. It's so hard because I think in hindsight we look back on our mistakes and we realize how much we've learned from them, and so I like don't even wanna call them mistakes anymore, but, so I alluded to it a little bit at the beginning of our call, but.
I for a while was hosting networking events for my target audience, and that was a really awesome way for me to build my pipeline and get my name out there. And I was really enjoying them and the people that were attending were really enjoying them as well, and I was enjoying them so much so that I thought, why don't I start a second business that is a networking group.
And so I put so much time and energy into building this networking group, and I'll tell you, a lot of people do it successfully, but I found that selling memberships to an online networking group was one of the most challenging things I've ever done. And it was very low cost, but it was just really challenging and it was, peak COVID times.
I think there was a lot of zoom fatigue and online networking fatigue going on. But we built this group. We ran it for two years, and retention was amazing, and our members absolutely loved it, but recruitment was such a slog and it was really hard for us to get new members. And at the end of the day, I had to have some really hard conversations with myself and with my team to say, Hey.
This business is not profitable. It's basically breaking even. And we have these members who absolutely love it, and it's really hard for me to make the decision to shut this down because I know they're gonna be so upset. But I have to think about my own time and energy and all that we've been putting into this.
And so after two years, we had to sunset the network and it was bittersweet, but. I would say that was one of the biggest, quote unquote mistakes. But like I said I learned so much from it. There was a lot of mindset shifts and growth that had to happen throughout that time. But yeah, that's, that would probably be my number one.
You can't grow unless you have mistakes. Exactly. Listen, you've been in business for four and a half years. You know that, Hey, look, I'm in business. Oh, I'm in business. I'm almost outta business. What do I do? Oh, I got another client. It's gonna keep me afloat. Oh, I'm out of business. You know it's gonna go up and down like that until you get all the way up and it'll solve serve itself.
Okay? Bring this podcast full circle. If someone listening wants to shift from a sales heavy model to a refer referral focused one, what's the first thing you'd have them change? I would say the biggest thing that you need to change is, number one, your messaging. And the best way to change your messaging is just getting yourself out there and just speaking to people.
So you heard me give my little spiel at the beginning of this podcast where I said. Agency owners, the shoemakers kids never have shoes and agency owners spend so much time building their clients' businesses that they rarely have the time, energy, or focus to work on their own business. It took me months to figure out that's what I needed to say, to get the head nod from people, and that is.
The best way is just go talk to a bunch of people and really pay attention to the language that they are using when they talk about their problems and figure out how you can repeat that messaging back to them. And once you get to a place where you start talking about your business and you get that.
Oh yeah, I've been there. I totally agree. Head nod from people. That's when you know you've hit the nail on the head, you've identified that problem. And once you have a really solid problem that you can solve for people, that pain point, that's when the referrals just start flowing in. Jess, I wanna tell you, this was a great podcast.
You are in such in line with what I talk about, what I speak about, and what I firmly believe in. If somebody wants to get hold of you either for coaching or to hire you as a consultant or whatever, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Yeah, so you can visit J-A-S-Z-R-A e.com. That's jazz ray.com.
Or you can find me on LinkedIn, jazz Ray Joseph. And I would love to connect in either place. Fantastic. Jazz, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast and I hope to see you soon. Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation. I'm happy we got a chance to do it. Good.
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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.
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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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