Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Neal Foard and Michael A Forman

 Welcome to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Connections, the show where the right conversation can open the right door. I'm your host, Michael Forman. Let me ask you this: Why do some people walk into a room and instantly connect while others struggle to be remembered? It's not just what they do, it's how they communicate, how they meet people, how they make people feel.

My guest today believes two things drive powerful relationships in business: storytelling and kindness. Storytelling gives your message meaning and makes you me- memorable makes you memorable. Kindness builds trust and keeps relationships moving forward. We're diving into how executives use stories to influence decisions, why facts alone don't create connections, and how something as simple as kindness can have a real return in business.

If you want to be more persuasive, more memorable, and more trusted in your conversations, this episode is for you. I'd like to introduce to the podcast Neil Ford. He is an expert in his field, and I am actually looking forward to this because I go around the country and I talk about this very same thing, so I'm very interested in hearing what he has to say.

So Neil, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. And why don't you give us a little the CliffNotes of how you got where you are today? Yeah. Thank you, Michael, for having me on. So I spent 30 years in advertising. I was on the creative side of the business. I started as a copywriter, and over time I learned I should say very quickly I learned I was not the most talented of the creative people in any agency I worked at.

So just like somebody who doesn't have the benefit of a beautiful face or a gorgeous body, I had to learn other ways to hold people's attention. And so I discovered often people don't know a good idea when they hear it. If everybody knew a good idea when they heard it, we'd all run movie studios and record labels.

We would all be early investors in Uber and and Airbnb. But you know what? People don't know a good idea when they hear it, and it really requires us, if you're selling a creative idea of any kind, to give it its best possible day in court. And so I learned that early and wound up in a competitive industry getting good at telling the story of what the idea was.

And I discovered along with that discipline that, there's more to making a decision than just the objective traits of whatever it is they're you're there to sell, and that there is enormous profit when people like you Because they want to buy from you. And I have lots of examples of that from my own personal experience, and I've watched it in the wild, and I see you nodding your head, so yeah, you understand that too.

Life gets so much easier when people like you. So in my travels, I did thousands and thousands of presentations trying to sell creative ideas to people, and I essentially distilled that 30 years of experience down into a kind of 27-lesson program. So where I am today is that I take the old thing that I used to do in the management training program at my agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, and I offer that to the public.

And I'm happy to say that people quite like it. Yes. It's something that is truly needed, especially now. Nowadays everybody relies on AI and things like that. They forget all about the personal touch. They forget all about the relationship between two people. And, you hit it.

You said everybody knows you and likes you, but you're missing that one piece, trust, right? Yeah. Because there's a mantra in networking: know you, like you, trust you, they'll do business with you. Because nobody's gonna do business with you unless they trust you. Yeah, it's much more- So you're leaving it

efficient. It's much more efficient- Much more ... to build relationships before you build profit. I knew a very successful car dealer whose unofficial motto was, "I'll lose a little money to make a friend." And the reason is that when you have a business that requires negotiation with every transaction, it is so much easier and faster and more profitable to just establish a relationship where I can trust you and you can trust me.

Let's not waste a bunch of time trying to squeeze that extra nickel out of each other. It's just too much energy. And it's too much fun, by the way, to do business with people you like. This is the part, this is the part of the formula that I call the return on investment of kindness. The ROI of kindness is it doesn't just benefit the person you're being kind to.

It benefits you too because it is exactly where you were headed, which is because it builds trust in people that are your clients, your customers, your suppliers, even your colleagues. Every time you are nice to people without having to be, when you go that extra mile to make sure that they know that there's a human being on the other side of this transaction or sitting in the next, desk next to you, that you reassure them that not everyone is out to get you and that maybe life is worth living.

Every time you do that, you actually refill your own you might call it a sort of karma bank, a 401of, of good turns coming back to, to haunt you. I call it social capital there you go. You have soc- you have social capital. Because what I teach when I teach the executives or teach a workforce do a workshop, I'm always teaching have a servant's heart.

Yes. If you go out and you give, and don't expect to receive anything, and that makes you a better person, makes the person you're trying to help a better person, and that level of trust automatically goes up when that wall between the two of you starts to come down, and it begins a beautiful relationship.

You've probably- Okay ... noticed, Michael how savvy people are about AI. The, it's not just that they know AI when they look at something that's rendered as a visual. They can also whiff it in an incoming email. They can smell that it's been touched by AI. And- Absolutely, and everybody uses it.

Everybody uses it. But people just copy and paste and say- Yes ... "Okay, I'm done." They don't put their own twist on it, their own feelings on it and that's where you can really tell the difference. Yeah. Okay. I'm very big, when I go on a stage and I'm speaking to the masses, I learned something a long time ago, how to get the initial, how to g- how to get their attention, and that is by storytelling.

Because storytelling, you, people learn so much more when you tell them a story than when you give them facts and figures, right? So you call storytelling a superpower. What does a great story do in a conversation that facts alone can't? So I've got so much to say on the subject. I'll try to keep it orderly.

Okay. I'll try to keep it orderly. I'll start with this. The basics are that bullet points are not remembered the way that stories are. Stories come in through a different part of the mind than bullet points. There are actually two ways that human memories are formed. One is through the amygdala. That's the emotional center of the brain, love, trust, jealousy, and so on.

And then there's the hippocampus. That's facts, figures, data, inputs. The problem is our neocortex is not formed to store endless amounts of data. You know this. Just like a computer whose disk is full, once you reach that full disk, it starts to break down. It doesn't function, it's slow, and so forth.

So what the hippocampus is really about is do I need to remember this? No? Goodbye. It sorts and discards information. The amygdala, by contrast, the emotional center of the brain, it's very long-lasting how you feel about somebody. You probably, you haven't seen somebody for 15 years, you don't remember their name, but the second you lays eyes on them, you s- get a galvanic skin response like, "I don't trust that guy," or, "Oh, she's delightful."

You know what I mean? That just that instant smile that is provoked from a reason you can't remember. Yeah, that's the emotional center of the brain. Stories attach to the emotional center of the brain. It makes them much longer lasting and repeatable. And you will doubtless have learned this lesson, which is when you give information in the form of a story, people remember it and they can repeat it.

Yes. Yes. Which means that once you've gone to the middle management of a company and you've explained something through the use of a story, they can then sell it up the line because it's so easy for them to remember what you said, and they remember the moral. And the piece of evidence I always use for that is you haven't heard the story of the tortoise and the hare in 21 years, and yet you can spit it back with very high fidelity and you remember the moral.

Brother, what else is like that? No PowerPoint presentation I ever saw do I remember unprompted 21 years later and can tell you what the conclusion was. A- absolutely. Absolutely. As a matter of fact I s- the first book that I wrote, I start off by saying, by telling a story about Marty and Fred and it goes on about a fishing trip and everything else.

When I talk to people about my book, that's the first thing that they bring up is Marty and Fred. Ah, nice. The story. And so what you're saying is so true, it's so factual that I hope everybody's paying attention. In a networking setting, how can someone use storytelling without it feeling rehearsed or performative?

So there are three answers to that. The first is never make yourself the hero of your own story because that, that self-aggrandizement sets an emotional tone for this and it makes you, A, you're not believable because, "Oh yeah, the fish I caught was this big." Yeah, no. Anytime you're bragging about yourself, we're all subject to exaggeration.

There's this great quote from George Orwell and he says that, "No autobiography is to be trusted unless it reveals something disgraceful because any man who gives a good account of himself is most likely lying. When you look at any life, when looked at from the inside, is really just a series of defeats."

And somebody telling the truth is more likely to explain something they did badly than something they did well. But the first thing is if you don't make yourself the hero of your story, here's what happens. When you tell the story, instead of them looking up at you with jealousy and incredulousness, they're standing side by side with you looking out into the view of the Grand Canyon.

You're both enjoying it at the same time And that starts to build a relationship. So the first thing is don't make yourself the hero, because if you simply observe somebody else being heroic, "Oh, I was there and I saw this person do this amazing thing. Isn't that wonderful?" Or you say, "You know what I was really inspired by was I saw this thing happen at a tire store."

And then what happens is you're telling them a lot about yourself, but you're not doing it in a way that seems like you are. If, for example, you say, "I was at a Little League game. I saw just the most beautiful gesture of sportsmanship I think I've ever seen from a 13-year-old umpire to a kid."

And okay, now I've tell you this really nice story. I didn't do it. I wasn't the hero. I was just an observer. But what I have told you is what's important to me, what I like, what I admire, and I've given you the chance to participate in the same emotions that I experienced. So I'll... Right away we're vibrating on the same frequency.

You were there. If I do a good enough job of telling you the story, you were there with me, and that's a marvelous way to be remembered, is, oh, they admire the same things I admire, or they're inspired by the same people and the same things I've, I'm inspired by. And ultimately, that's a real tool for trust.

But the way that I like to weave stories into conversations is just to say, I I've never been quite in a hotel this nice. And the funny thing that I find great about hotels isn't the b- isn't the building. I've never wondered about the greatness of a building, but I have always remembered the staff when they're really good, and I just met this gal at the front desk who is fucking fantastic.

Caprice. Oh my Lord. She will absolutely be the best part of this trip, and I didn't see that coming." So when you express your values by talking about people and things that have made you happy or surprised you, it's a really nice organic way of weaving them into your conversation in a way that makes them feel like they know you.

Yeah. And it's... That's a very good way to explain it also. You did a very good job on, on how you can not be the star of the story, but you're the star of the story because you're the one conveying that, right? You're the one conveying it, and you're tell- talking about somebody else. But the other person, they see it in you.

Yeah. They see it coming from you, and it means so much more. It re- it really does. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. What makes a story persuasive instead of just interesting? Th- this is where the Aesop's Fables are so instructive, and the parables from the Bible, for example, are very instructive.

Because they're all lessons. They, th- the reason for this tortoise and the hare is to say slow and steady often wins the race. Or, in the story of the Good Samaritan, it's a really brilliant way of saying, "Whatever you call yourself, whatever religion you say you go by, I will tell you who is admirable in the eyes of God," okay?

And it's not about the label, it's about the actions, okay? And so what makes it persuasive, I believe, is to strike an emotional chord in recognition. So I saw this wonderful restaurant. I caught it as a news item. I wish I'd been there. It's a restaurant in Japan called The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders.

Have you ever heard of this place? No. No. Okay. Oh, Michael, you're gonna love this. This guy Shiro Oguni had visited a woman in a home for people with dementia, and he s- he said to himself, "Oh, my Lord, these people are ... They're in a little, community, but it's more like a prison because they're being sequestered from society, and I can see this has a bad effect on them.

How much nicer would it be if we were to find a role for these people out in the world so they could continue to participate despite their affliction? And in fact, let's not even hide that fact. Let's just celebrate the fact that this has happened and they're still making a good go of it." So here's what he did.

He created a restaurant called The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders where all the elderly waiters and waitresses were suffering from some degree of memory loss. And nevertheless, they, th- m- he was forcing them to do a job which required a very good memory. And yes, 37% of the time the orders were wrong, but 99% of the time people left happy because of course they did.

They knew what they were getting when they walked in. They don't care if it's cod fish versus a taco. They don't really care. That's not why they're there. And you know what? You know that man does not live by bread alone? That was a really good example of something brought to life, which is you le- you leave with your spirit fed.

And these delightful people who are laughing and smiling, and they're not ashamed that they got it wrong. Everybody understands that this is likely to happen. And There's a wonderful folktale that's the comp- that's the complement to that story, and that is there was an old folktale about a woman who used to get riv- water from a river every day, and she would go and retrieve it with two buckets on the end of a bamboo pole.

So one of the buckets was brand new and it was solid, and the other was older and it had developed a few leaks. And when she would get the water back from the river the new bucket still had all its water, but the old bucket had lost almost half. And the old water bucket felt very badly about this and apologized to the woman for not being able to do its job very well.

And the woman turns and points back down the road and says to the old water bucket, "Do you see on your side of the road all those flowers growing? Every day you water those flowers, and my walk to and from the river is always filled with beauty." Now, as I tell you that story, and as I've told that story to other people, we are experiencing the same emotion at the same time, and that is, there is more, there's more to life than efficiency, and there is so much return on investment to being the woman who turns around and says, "You have value.

Don't think that you don't to me. It's not my charity that keeps you. It's my appreciation that keeps you." And that to me is a really marvelous way of being persuasive, is to have somebody be on your same emotional wavelength and go, "There is more to this decision than the objective criteria and let me point out some of those things."

And I ... You see this again and again in when you are able to establish a relationship with a client or a prospect, or you're in a, you're in a convention and you're meeting someone for the first time. There's an opportunity to see them as a human being and act like a human being to them. And in doing so, you will so advance your cause before they even know what you're there to sell.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it ... Through all my networking events and different things in life, that is it's true no matter how you turn. Because when you were telling me that story, I was visualizing her walking down the road with a bamboo and two buckets, one kinda leaking out and one staying put.

And I was visualizing everything as you were telling me the story. And when you said look at the flowers that you've watered," and I immediately turned and I looked, and I wanted to see the flowers. So- It's so real, and so what you're doing with that story is you're making me, you're making me understand.

You're making me feel what you're feeling. And if you can do that, and if you're selling something, you can sell almost anything. Yeah. You really can. The, people wanna buy- And it doesn't- People wanna buy from people that they like. And, and- Abso- absolutely. But, people love to buy. They do.

But they hate to be, but they hate to be sold to. Although you know who loves to be sold to is a great salesman. They're hoping that you're gonna do such a good job that they can buy out of respect. So I've ru- I've run into this. They, where I used to sell all the time to car dealers as they were my clients often, and there was a grudging kind of respect that they would give you if you were...

they knew you were there to sell something to them, and yes, you are absolutely right. Radar up, shields in place. I don't- ... I don't like to be manipulated, for sure. But a great salesman appreciates the art form in a way that civilians don't. And so they're gonna be, they're gonna be open to okay.

That was good. All right." All right. That was good. Listen, I have to buy from you just because you were so good. I have to- and- I have to support the cause. A- and I've done that so many times myself. Have you? I really have. Me too. Yes. I really have. Yeah. And that's just giving the other person the respect that they're due- Right

because they did such a good job. Yeah. All right. Why do people remember stories long after they forget what someone else does? Yeah. So it's traceable right to human biology. I wanna tell a very quick anecdote which is that when I was in my 20s, I used to go to my father all the time with some new business book that I've read, In Search of Excellence or, y- whatever.

And I would be so excited to impart these great grains of wisdom to my retired father, and he would shake his head and go, "Oh, Neil, the, y- brother, there's nothing new under the sun, okay? Can I give you a piece of advice? Instead of reading the b- the latest business book, and they're never gonna stop making these things, why don't you read books that are more than 100 years old?

And here's why. You read a book that's more than 100 years old, anything in it that's still true, that's always gonna be true. You will be building on a foundation of what never changes." And I thought, "Oh, that's good." And then he hands me Dale Carnegie, and he goes, "This was written 100 years ago, brother."

So I go, "Oh my God, Dale Carnegie was written 100 years ago. Oh my God, Michael." Carnegie's 100 years old. So when you read it, even now, even using the old, metaphors that he would use, not a dang thing has changed in all that time. S- human beings haven't changed in more than 100,000 years.

We are the same jealous, angry- Okay ... but also inspirational and creative. We are the same people that were sitting around a campfire talking about how we were gonna kill the buffalo the next day with sharp sticks. And we're subject to the same jealousies and the same motives, the same anger, but also, the same kindnesses and so forth.

They've got cave people from hundreds of thousands of years ago, and they're, Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, said that her first sign of civilization was a healed femur. So somebody 200,000 years ago had broken their leg, their femur, which takes about eight, nine months to heal. The fact that thing healed means that they took care of that son of a gun who was completely unproductive, and they took care of him anyway.

This is so the human species hasn't changed. If it hasn't changed, then what the smart thing to do is to go way back and say, "What worked then?" And what you find out is stories were the default operating system for human beings since the time when we didn't know what volcanoes were for, why we d- you know, we didn't know why there were seasons.

We certainly didn't know why people died. And we would sit around the campfire chewing on recently cooked meat and explain to each other through stories. We would try to make sense of it all through stories. It would, it was a way of exerting control over something we had no control over, the weather and locusts.

So what has happened is our technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, but we as a species, we haven't changed in all of those 100,000 years from the wheel to fire to sharp sticks to stones to iron and bronze, et cetera. And what happens is we are subject to thinking that we're smarter than the generation that came before because we have MRI machines and satellite TV and, oh they, they were sitting around reading books by candlelight.

Brother, you're not smarter than they are, and you're not wiser than the next generation. Did you ever hear of the book Raving Fans? No. Who's that? Who wrote that? There's a b- there's a book, Raving Fans, by Cl- Ken Blanchard. Oh, okay. It's out of print by about 15 years, and it's about a 45-minute read.

It is before technology truly came into it. It's all about customer service. Ah, yeah. I used to hand this book out with my business card, I was in the mortgage business, to every realtor that I came in contact with. They would look at me like, "Why are you handing me this book?" I said, "Read the book.

It's gonna tell you all about customer service. You read it as your nap. 45 minutes- Yeah ... you'll finish the book." Yeah. "And afterwards, it's the basis of all customer service. You will thoroughly enjoy it if you thumb through it." Yeah. Okay. How can executives use storytelling to build trust quickly in high-stakes conversations?

It's really important that, people need to know why you make your decisions, not just what it's gonna be. And there is such a... Lately, there is just such a wind of selfishness. "I n- I don't have to explain. I don't have to do anything. I can lay people off ov- over email. I can lay 11,000 people off and not even tell you why.

I'm not even gonna bother with the reason anymore." They used to make a show of it, and now they delight in laying 30,000 people off. They can't wait to tell the market, to tell the stock market, we just kicked out to the curb 30,000 more people. Woo-hoo. Aren't we great?"

Sociopath Incorporated. Yeah, and why it's important that people know why you make your decisions is they do have a choice about who they work for. And there... Do you know the term fifth column? No. Fifth column was a word for a saboteur. During World War II, if there were people of German descent bombing pir- fire stations, and so forth during the war, they would be called fifth columnists.

And you'll notice, that there are, say, for example, like warehouses are being lit on fire these days, and these are reactions to a... Clearly they know that the employer really doesn't care about them. But most of the time, the employers do care about them, and I've seen a lot of small businesses where it's extraordinary how much the employer cares about their people.

So wh- when you're asking, like, how does a CEO use a story to establish quickly things, they... it's very key that when they explain themselves, it isn't enough to say what we're going to do. You have to say, "Can I tell you the thinking that went into this?" Now, I'll give you an example. Boss says, and I saw this in Major League Baseball, I saw one of the teams do this brilliantly.

They said, "Look we want people to start coming back into the office. I'm not gonna force you. I'm not gonna be the parent who says because I said so. But I will explain that I think it would be in your interest to come back. Here's why. Y- look at me, you know how old I am now. I'm in my 60s, okay? I'm not gonna be long in this job.

And there's a v- very strange phenomenon that comes over you when you hit this age, which is you kinda wanna help young people. You wanna hang out with young people, and you wanna help them in their careers. I don't know why this happens, but trust me, all of my colleagues at the same age, it's always the same thing.

We're looking for young people that we can guide and support and help along. What's gonna happen is if you don't come back in the office, there's none of those chance meetings, there's none of that mentor-protege relationships get formed. You're leaving money on the table. There are people that can advance your career by f- they can put you five years ahead of schedule if you come in and you talk to them about all the institutional knowledge which is just gonna walk out the door in five years.

How would you like to get a graduate degree in what these people know after 25 years? It's all there for you." Yeah. "It's just there for the taking if you come back in and get it. I'm not saying come back in because I said so. I'm just saying this is a real thing. This is a real phenomenon, and I had it in my early career.

I had a mentor who easily leapfrogged me over two layers of management because of what I knew and because of the people he introduced me to." That's the key thing also, 'cause if you're that... If you're well-liked and he sees that you're a sponge, that you're taking in all the knowledge, then he's going to leapfrog you to the right places or introduce you to the right people.

If you weren't that sponge, if you weren't that... If you're just like, "Okay, all i'm here," they're like, "Okay," they'll keep you right where you are. Think of- because of- I'm sorry ... yeah think about that, that CEO delivering that message versus the other guy saying, "If you don't come back in, you're fired."

The f- there's a certain type of person that comes back in when they do return. You know exactly who they are. Like, they're gonna be those sponges. Why, right? Because they're going, "Oh, I see the logic of that, and I see the opportunity of that. I'm not gonna let somebody else take that opportunity."

Absolutely. Not gonna let anybody else take it where I could go in and take it myself. So- So he got- And I, I've always been that way ... he got double his results. He got double his results because it was a sort of- Yeah ... self-selecting process. But you understand. He was dead serious about it. He wasn't lying.

That was just the kinda cat he was. He was very generous in spirit. But- To me, any CEO, when they're gonna make an important announcement about a change in policy, new policy, or they're gonna double down on some old policy that may be unpopular or you really are going through a straits, where you're in financial difficulties and you gotta, and people have to tighten their belts.

In all these cases, you can't willy-nilly go in there and simply make an announcement as though you are the dictator of a country. You really do need to say, "This is a company made up of human beings. They can either cooperate and give me extra effort, or they can passive-aggressively be fifth columnists stealing office supplies and sabotaging, the AI adoption."

You'll see whether or not if there's a large turnover in employees, you know that the culture of the business- Yeah ... really isn't right. But if you find that business where employees have been there for 15 years, there must be something there that keeps them. Do you know- And that's what the- I've got one more level for you.

Okay. So there's the company where there's an 18-month turnover, and there, there are some people who actually like that because it keeps people from organizing. And then there's the culture where people have been there for 15, 16 years, which I deeply admire. But the... I think the higher level is this, and I've seen this, which is people leave after five years, six years, but then they come back three years later.

And it's because, yeah, they went out in the big bad world and they found out, yeah, no, it ain't that good out there. And by the way, I'm du- I'm gonna give you double effort 'cause I don't wanna ever lose this chance again. So that to me is like- Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Speaking of kindness, what does kindness look like in action during a networking conversation, not just in theory?

What... You have already espoused these things, so I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But when you go in with a spirit of giving and you wanna be a lifeboat and a r- ladder and a lamp. When you're going in there, not so much to get anything out of it as much to just make new friends to find people who have complementary philosophies and/or...

Or even competitors, and I saw this at the National Speakers Association meeting in Scottsdale. Everybody in that room is a competitor of everybody else, and it was the most generous, good-natured, s- cooperative environment I've ever been in, and they all know they're competing with one another. I love that

you explain that to me, Michael. I don't know. I d- I do know that it was magnificent it's like a brotherhood. I belong to the NSA here in Georgia. Okay. And- Okay ... right? So it's a, whenever there's a meeting or anything, people, if you go up and ask somebody questions about this speaking, this gig, this something, th- they just wanna tell you everything.

Yeah. Because you're in competition, but you're not in competition. They want to give you every, all of their knowledge so you'll be better, and that one day you're going to be better and bring them along. It's, it's- I, yeah ... it's a give and take. I was, first of all, I g- I go into that place and I was not prepared for 1,300 e- extroverts-

in one place. Oh, yeah. Michael, what happens is you've checked in. Even the woman at the counter is an ex- is an extrovert. You check in, you get on the elevator. I'm on the elevator with eight other people. Immediately people are asking you questions about, "Where are you from?

How'd you just get here? What are you gonna go see? Where are you, what's your specialty?" Boom. There, the number of times I have sat on that elevator with six other people and somebody is getting off of the floor but they're holding the door open 'cause the conversation's still going, and nobody's impatient.

Everybody's just no keep going. No, I wanna hear." Yep. I'm going- Nobody's interested in getting off the elevator. No. Nobody's interested in getting off. And then I was, I did have this thought. I was about two days into it and I thought, "Wow, if I suffered from chronic depression, I w-

this, you could prescribe this as a drug because- Absolutely ... everybody's gonna be interested in you, and everybody's gonna wanna hear your story, and every... You know how they l- you know how they listen at these things, right? A- absolutely. Everybody's listening like this. Yeah, and so I sat down with just the most delightful people, this Irishman and this woman from India and we're all learning each other's life stories.

And I... So in response to your ques- your query, which was how do you demonstrate kindness in a kind of networking thing, for me it's what they did for me, which was they were just really interested in what I was about. And of course you get caught up in it, and now you're the one on day three asking people about what they're there for in, in the lift.

And you just leave a kinder person, a more generous person because you've absorbed the culture. Absolutely. A- absolutely. And there is no better association than the NSA because everybody's out to help everybody else. And you, you can't help but be helped. You can't help but be thrown forward I got some really good advice.

I met some really fabulous people. I got three or four podcast appearances out of it 'cause as you can imagine, Michael, everybody that's in the NSA, if they don't have a podcast, they're thinking about one. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No it's, Listen I built this podcast from the ground up.

I did it all organically. I have about 15,000 listeners, and I thought that was so great. I thought- That, that- "Look how good I did." That is pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, but I go onto podcasts where they have 100 or 200,000 listeners and I go, "How did you do that?" And they go, "I don't know. I just, I just, talk."

I was like, "Oh, okay." So I'm I don't know about how to break that, but, my listeners truly listen to my guests, and so I... that's pretty good. All right, let me ask another question. All right. W- where do professionals unintentionally lose influence by focusing too much on being impressive instead of being relatable?

Oh, boy, you're asking all the right questions. So- Yeah ... i'll give you, I'll give you a story, which was from- Okay ... real life. I have... For a chunk of my career, I had worked for a woman boss. She was a very hard charger. She was super sharp. And she ran an advertising agency. And as you can imagine, Michael, when you are a woman in business, you have to walk a tightrope that men don't have to walk.

The tightrope you walk is if you exert a little bit too much forward pressure, if you're a little bit too hard on people, you're perceived as a bitch. And if you don't push hard enough, you're perceived as a pushover. So they walk this one centimeter wide tightrope. Now, every quarter, this woman would sponsor a kind of little woman's group, a klatch of people in New York City who were very successful businesswomen.

They would get together, much like the NSA, in order to support each other in their endeavors and talk about their common problems and so on. So I was brought in, usually once a, sort of semi-annually, to give an update to that group about what the agency was up to. This woman liked the fact that I would come in and I would tell a story.

I wouldn't just give them the facts. So I'm about to go on, and there's another guy there, except he's there to sell them something. And I'm gonna describe to you how he did his pitch, and then we're gonna talk about how do we think he did. So he gets introduced. He stands up. His eye contact is very poor.

He pulls a speech out of his pocket, unfolds it, reads it, gets halfway through. This is the only time he looked up. He gets halfway through it, he looks up- And he goes back down, finishes the speech, folds it back up, sits in his pocket, goes... He does... No, no clear call to action. Just sits back down in his chair.

Okay. Now, you and I both know that the odds of him selling out his inventory were extremely low, except that- Sure ... except that he sold out every single one of the boxes that he brought, and two of the women went out of their way to congratulate him on such a good pitch, because he was seven years old, and he was there to sell cookies that he and his sister had baked so they could fund their summer camp adventure.

Now, here's, here was the lesson. I saw it instantly. I go, "Oh, this is something to really learn." They don't care how slick you are. There's other things at work here. If he'd been slick, it would've been a little creepy. They might have actually not wanted to buy the cookies for fear they'd be poisoned.

Anyway, what they were really about was he gave them something, and the woman knew this. He gave the women in that room something that they couldn't have bought, which was for five minutes they didn't have to walk that tightrope. For five minutes, they could just be motherly and sweet and supportive and let their hair down, and all of them shared this moment when they go, "Ugh, we're not in competition with one another.

We're all just, we're just letting our real selves come out." That maternal, wonderfully supportive. And they did not want to leave. And I thought, "Oh, they don't really ca- It's not about you, is it? It's never about you. It's about what do you give them?" And it's really essential when it comes to being pr- prepared, is what you should prepare for is not how good you are.

It's how well are you gonna give them what they need? Are you- A- absolutely. And I- ... i just... Yeah. I, w- a lot of my clients, when they have a chamber of commerce meeting and they have to get up and talk for 30 seconds or a minute or something like that- Yeah ... I always tell them, "Listen, don't spout what you do, because a minute is not enough time."

And nobody's gonna remember it, right? But give a situation how you made your customer feel." "How your client felt." So you give up your name, what your company is, and how your client felt at the end of your last interaction. Yeah. That people w- will remember, and it goes right along with what you just said.

Yeah. They, th- they really do have to feel like, oh... A- and it's funny too, because more than one of these women kinda knew what this gal had done, and they're like- ... "Mary, that was effing brilliant." Yeah. Yeah that was g- thank you so much for doing that. And she's like- "tee-hee," because- ... she coulda just, s- she coulda just stroked a check for double the amount and said, "Go on your way." No. She brought him in. Why? First of all, because she knew they would enjoy it, and it would also be good for the kid to get up and do the pitch. But- Sure ... I think sh- I think she realized that the way she had felt about it when she first heard it was going, "Oh, I'm gonna do that for these women.

It'll be a really nice-" Yeah ... "fun break." Yeah. Also, I don't know, I- they didn't talk about it in my presence, but I wonder if that actually became a topic of conversation later, where they talked about the tightrope and they talked about, how- it could very well have been. Sure. 'Cause, because it made such an impact on them- yeah

that I'm sure that they had to bring it up. All right, let me bring this podcast full circle. Okay. If a listener wants to become more persuasive and more trusted in the next 90 days, what one behavior should they start practicing immediately? Okay. Now, I could just sell my course at this point because it's very good and it will do all of that.

But let's get right down into the dirt and say, here, let me just give you two tactics. The first is to recognize that storytelling as an art form, you gotta internalize this. Storytelling as an art form is a marvelous way to be more persuasive, to reach people emotionally, to make more of a human connection with people.

If you just recognize that, then you'll understand that maybe this is something I should work on. And if you do decide to work on it, then here's the first thing you have to be cautioned. Do you think people go to the gym and think, "I'll spend three days there and I'll be ripped"? No, they recognize you build this skill.

You don't go... You can't learn to ice skate at an NHL level in one week. This is something you have to practice and do a lot. Now, luckily for us, we live in the age of the f- the camera phone, which means you can rehearse with and tape yourself. Just like you go out and practice your golf swing or your tennis swing and you film yourself so you can see what you're doing wrong, then you can likewise do the same thing to say, I'm going to accept, in the words of Ernest Hemingway, the first draft of anything is shit, and I'm just gonna say, I'm not expecting that the first text that I write of a story or a sales pitch or recounting something, I'm gonna accept that the first draft of it is not what I'm ultimately gonna wind up doing.

I'm willing to write the first draft so that I can then start the process of reading it back to myself out loud, filming myself delivering it, tuning it up, saying, "I don't w- what I'm doing with my hands. Oh my God, is that really what my nose looks like?" You gotta get over the cringe, of what it's like to watch yourself.

Yeah. But this tool didn't exist for the orators of the past, and it's an enormous advantage. Now, here's point number three, and I think this is really worth walking away fr- with, and that is if you do these things, these simple things, one, let me use stories more in the conduct of business in sales pitches and so on.

If you do that, you are already ahead of 60% of your competitors. Now, if you also on top of that go, "I need to rehearse more, I need to prepare more, I need to spend more time on this. I need to not beat myself up when I do it so that I can watch myself and actually improve," you are ahead of 85% of all of your competitors now, and you have only done these two things.

But if you want to get to that elite level, and you know what I'm ta- the difference between an elite level and a really good versus a journeyman and so forth, e- elite soaks up all of the money and the attention and the, And so what I have found is I watched in real time executives at very large companies, the ones that were good at this who could get up on a stage at a company meeting with 3,000 people in the audience and they could just rock that moment, those people became instant candidates for the C-suite.

Because who el- it, it's it's like an athlete who goes out on the ice and then just five hole, boom. It's "Oh! Oh! Oh, really? That guy's a backup?" Yeah. Yeah. So you become an instant candidate. And y- you've heard this phrase pretty privilege. Pretty privilege is the unfair advantage that somebody who's very handsome or very beautiful have when they walk into a business meeting or a networking event.

I, I wouldn't know that, but that's all right. Yeah. So pretty privilege is a completely real phenomenon. But you know what? If you don't have... If you're not gorgeous or you're not super handsome and you're not ripped and so on, you can get your own version of pretty privilege, which is- Yeah

When you are a great storyteller and you can go onto a stage or in front of a room and you can captivate that room or at least be 50% better than you are now, brother, it's like you just got 15 IQ points and a nose job. Yeah. It's- Absolutely ... they stop seeing the physical person, and now they only see their perception of you.

There's... It's a funny thing about funny women, like really funny women, they're just better looking. They get better looking In your eyes. You look at them completely differently when they're funny it, I, it's the same way... Listen, I've been the 21st of May, I'm gonna be married 38 years Congratulations.

Wow And my wife is more beautiful today than when I married her. And she looks at me and she goes, "That's because you're in love with me." So it's just, everything is, it just, because that's the way that I feel, that's the way that I see her. And I don't believe that anyway. But it's true that if somebody likes you because of your humorous or anything else, they're going to forget about how ugly you are or a loser-

or anything else like that. They're you automatic- you get that automatically and you say, "You know what? I like this person. I wanna talk to him more." So it all goes on how you're perceived. So listen, Neal, you've been fabul- a fabulous guest, right? Thank you I could- Thank you ... I could probably turn this podcast, I could probably go for another two hours- I know

and just pick your brain and talk We could. Because we're kindred spirits, clearly. Absolutely. Yeah Absolutely. Yeah. But if somebody wanted to get hold of you, and tell us a little bit about your, your- Yeah, StoryFire ... workbook or book- Yeah ... or stor- whatever. Okay. And how to get hold of you, either to be mentored by you, coached by you, or to buy your product.

What can we do to get hold of you? I, it turns out that I'm easy to find because I spell my name strangely. So- Yeah ... N-E-A-L F-O-A-R-D. That combination is unique, which means that if you just spell my name right and Google me, boom, you've got a million ways to find me. I'm on Instagram, I'm on YouTube, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Substack, I'm on Blue Sky, but I'm also on LinkedIn, easy to find there.

And it's, if you wanna reach out to me, just, it's my email is nealfourd@gmail.com. Just if you just spell my name right, Neal Ford. And I also have nealfourd.com. The StoryFire course that I was talking about before what it is it's my distilled 30 years of advertising, taking the lessons of the advertising and stealing them to make you more compelling and more persuasive in your own communications.

So there you go. That's fantastic. Neal, this conversation is a reminder that influence isn't about saying more, it's about saying what matters and making it stick. When you combine a clear story and genuine kindness, people remember you, trust you, and want you to remember, and want you to continue the relationship That's where the real opportunity begins.

Take one step this week. In your next conversation, share a short, meaningful story instead of just explaining what you do, and pay attention how the other person responds. If you found value in today's episode, make sure you like, follow, and subscribe to Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections so you keep getting the best insights on networking and communication.

And share this episode with someone who wants to strengthen how they connect and influence others. If you'd like to improve your communication or building your relationships that lead to results, visit michaelaforman.com. Learn how I wo- learn how I work with professionals, teams, and organizations. So until next time, tell better stories, lead with kindness, and build connections that truly last.

Neil, thank you so much for coming on my podcast. Thanks, Michael, for having me. You're a delight

 Well, hold on, folks. Don't go anywhere. Let's hear from our sponsors. David Neal, co-founder, RevvD Up Kids. RevvD Up Kids is on a mission to protect children and teens from sexual abuse, exploitation, and trafficking. They provide prevention training programs for children, teens, and adults. To learn more, go to RevvDUpKids.org.

Henry Kaplan, Century 21. When it comes to making the biggest financial decision of your life, leave it in the hands of a proven professional, Henry Kaplan. Henry is a global real estate agent with Century 21, celebrating his 41st year in business. No matter where you're moving, Henry has the right connections for you.

You can contact Henry at 561-427-4888

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.

Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website, michaelaforman.com/podcast

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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