Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Sid Mohasseb and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Nov 14
- 22 min read
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Welcome to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, the show where relationships become results and connections turn into opportunities. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're exploring the future of networking through the lens of education, entrepreneurship, and technology. My guest is at the forefront of Ana basis academy's innovative approach to learning, blending leadership development with AI driven tools to prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs.
We'll dive into how emerging leaders can build meaningful networks, leverage technology without losing the human touch, and use relationships as the key driver for professional and personal growth. Whether a student entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, this conversation will give you strategies to connect smarter, lead better, and grow faster.
I'd like to welcome to the podcast Sid. I, we had a little problem connecting, but we're all here now, and I'm welcoming you to the podcast, and would you please just give us a little bit about your background? Of course, it's great to be with you and your audience, Michael, and sometimes a little bit of a connection problem gives us more anticipation.
Yes. So I'm happy to be here. In terms of background, I'll be pretty short because what I always believe is not me that count. It's it's the audience and it's you. I have, i'm an immigrant by by background. I came to the States when I was 16 educated here in college. Started my first company when I was in college.
And then at some period of time I was a partner of a consulting firm. Worked with very large organizations. Then I started my own firm and did turnarounds. We bought companies and sold them. Then started other companies mostly in technology. Bought four or five of them. A few worked and we got we we sold the companies and a couple didn't work.
And we learned a lot and in the past 20 years. And you can see that I'm an old guy. I've been teaching at the university of both in engineering and business schools and have been making investments in early stage companies. I was the president of TechCo Angels, which is the largest angel investment entity, had a venture fund.
Then sold the company and full circle to consulting as the strategic innovation leader for a very large advisory, a $26 billion advisory company. And now I do three or four things. One is I'm still teaching. Another is that I have a few books and I write a lot. If you search me, hundreds of articles.
I'm also, I'm very opinionated. I still serve on boards corporate boards and make investments and our latest, venture is is Database's Academy that you referred to, which is a fusing, a combination of mindfulness awareness, and entrepreneurship because everything begins in your mind.
And we are all unique. So we have to find that authentic way of of making progress. So that's me. Outstanding. Outstanding. And I'm sure you could have gone on for another half an hour. Just tell me about your background because it is so vast, but okay. So let's jump right into the questions.
How does the new approach at Ana basis is? Am I saying that correctly? Yeah. Ana basis. Ana basis, by the way, Anna is a Latin word, meaning moving up. Move up and basis is obviously the base. So Ana basis is moving the base up. Okay. See, I learn something new every day. How does the new approach at Ana Basis Academy prepare students to build meaningful professional networks from an early stage?
Here's. First, I've gotta explain how the world works now because it's important before I can say, Hey, this is how it's different in terms of education, whether it's students at colleges or or folks that are. Going through management training, leadership training, or mo even motivational stuff.
Everything that that you could see out there is based on a lot of how tos. That's, I'm gonna give you a skill and I'm gonna give you four things, and then you're gonna follow these four things and you're gonna get to nirvana. Okay, so if you go at school, when we go to school, they give us a lot of stuff to memorize and then repeat those in circular formats.
Whenever we face those situations, do these five things and it'll, it's gonna, it's gonna work. What that does, it's very good in increasing productivity because I'm getting you to do the same thing over and over, but it's not necessarily. Relevant or or conducive to innovation, creativity. Now we are in a world, if you look at the AI stuff that's happening, look at everything around us that we are.
We are at a transition point. We are at a transition point, and our evolution as human beings is moving towards creativity and innovation as opposed to. Tasks, the tasks, even the programming stuff AI is doing. So the tasks can be done by somebody else. You don't need a how to follow these seven steps and do this.
And by the way, they say practical advice to to do A, B, or C or become a trillion. Those practical advice are practical for who? Because you and I are different. I'm an introvert, you're an extrovert. I grew up in this place. You grew up in that place. You went to the military.
I never did. You there's so many different, there are 8 billion people on our planet. No two people are the same. So what does that mean to be practical? It just doesn't make any sense. So the idea is, yes, it's good to learn from other, there's a thousand books out there. A hundred thousand maybe on leadership, but no two leaders are the same.
No two situations to apply your leadership is the same. So it's how do you look at these skills and become skillful, which is different. It's how do I use my entirety to, to be able to do that now? So Aase Academy is about provoking you. It's not about, it's not, it doesn't think that your mind is like a vase or another container.
We, we don't wanna put more water in your mind. Your mind, if you would. We wanna be able to ignite a fire because the belief is you have all capabilities in terms of building. We're all built to create better. Michael, we're all built. It's in our DNA we're not just here to survive. We are here to be better.
We all wanna do that. The trick is to provoke. Folks and engage folks to be able to activate the part which is about being aware of your decisions, being aware of the surroundings, being aware, because if you are aware, you make better decisions. Absolutely correct. It's, that goes hand in hand, of course, with the networking, which I'm all about.
Yeah. But you have to be aware of your opportunities. Have to be aware of the people. As long as you're aware you can talk with anybody. Speak with anybody, correct. So here's, this is a very good, this is a very good segment or way to connect it to what your focus is, which is the networking.
A lot of people want to network to sell something. I have this, I want to give it to you, but let's think this for a minute. Let's think about this for a minute. Do you really sell or do people buy.
Do you sell people love to buy, but they hate to be sold to. Yeah. They love to buy based on their own decisions. So who makes the decision at the end? They're not you as a salesman, not you as a founder, not you. As they make the decision, they, for their own reasons, in a networking environment, I'm not there to sell.
I'm there to understand the reasons why they would buy, why they would engage. Why is it that? How can I satisfy what they're looking for? How can I provide the value because I don't have that decision? They have that decision now. It's the same thing about your employees. We think networking is about outside.
Networking is creating a network that produces a better result than an individual. And a network is an ecosystem that creates collectively but better outcome, right? So if you apply the same idea, Hey, my employees, they decide if they give me productivity or not, I don't decide how much productivity they give me.
I don't decide at eight o'clock at night or 10 o'clock at night or four o'clock in the afternoon. They're really thinking about doing something innovative or doing something better. They decide. So if I realize that, then I have created a network that is based on reasons. That drive decisions.
The same applies to your investors. The same applies to your partners in business and actually to the community that you thrive in. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense depending on who you are, it depends on what angle you're looking at it from. It's all the same problem, it's all the same outcome.
You're just looking at it from a different way. Absolutely. And that's fantastic. I never thought about it that way. Lemme go on. See people. Usually, this is the thing, if you really listen to what I've been talking about and writing, so they say this is really not rocket science.
No, it's not. None of it. Life is not rocket science. No. We make it all this rigamarole in order to have these 17 layers and then charge people to do this, and we make it this complicated thing. It's actually pretty simple. No I coach. I coach many people and I go and I speak on different stages in different companies, and I tell them all, it's not rocket science, it's all common sense.
And really the 20 somethings, the 30 somethings. They've never heard this before. They haven't been taught this, but the older people, the older, the forties, fifties, or even sixties, they say, oh yeah, I've heard of that. I don't do it, but I've heard of it. Full common sense. Okay. So what role does networking play in entrepreneurship and how can aspiring founders leverage it effectively?
So I talk about a few things and an entrepreneur. First of all, we have to build our own entrepreneurial philosophy. Each one of us. And by the way, entrepreneurship, by actual definition, I'm not making this up. This is, this word was defined in the 17 hundreds that is over 300 years ago. An entrepreneur is someone who has something who wishes to exchange it with something of higher value knowing that there is risk.
That means you have something. This could be your idea. It could be your your talents. It could be you are a basketball player, or you're a good musician, or you have a product that you will, you have something and you want to exchange it with something of higher value. You have this, you wanna give it to somebody else knowing that there is risk.
You may have this, you may not necessarily get what you wanna get. Okay. So we, with that definition, we all have this entrepreneurial ability, regardless of where you are, the seven, 7-year-old child that you have who wants to get an ice cream, they're experiencing their entrepreneurship. Okay.
The the mother who goes out and works all day and makes $12 an hour and brings that to their kid to go to Disneyland on vacation there, and Elon Musk is experiencing. The entrepreneur. Yeah. So let's take that as a, as. Now the question is, how can you experience that entrepreneur?
How can you practice it? Okay. You can define what you have. You can define what you, what is of higher value to you, but from here to there, there's risk from here to there. So how do you accomplish this? You cannot accomplish this without an ecosystem, period, because people buy stuff from you. People work for you.
People give you money and investment people partner with you and you live within a society. These are the five pillars of the it. Without these five, you don't you're not practicing entrepreneurship as it's defined in any way possible, whether it's at home or in a business. So an ecosystem and network is a must have.
Okay. Network has an ecosystem. That's good. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna steal that from you if you don't mind. No problem. Okay. Let's go to, let's switch it to AI a little bit. AI is reshaping industries. How can professionals use AI to enhance, not replace genuine relationship building? So this is a very.
It's a very obviously topical question of the day, because everywhere and the, yes, there are numerous studies that says that within, by 2030 we're gonna lose in the world somewhere around five around 800,000 or 500,000 jobs that are completely gonna be gone. And then if you think about it, that's about one, about.
A few percentage point of the total jobs available. So it is a challenge. Now, most of the things that are out there, there's a lot of noise out there. Everybody there tries to, oh, let's blah, blah. Let's do another element, a jet, GPT, or whatever. And mostly are focused on productivity. Mostly are focused on productivity, meaning, here's what I'm doing, let me do this faster.
Remember, if you do things faster, let's say just as an example, let's say we have a production system. We make these cups and we make 10 of them an hour, but out of 10, one is faulty, it's broken. Now if I just do this faster, I would do a hundred an hour, but I will have more errors, productivity in terms of replicating what you're doing doesn't necessarily mean that you got better. Now, there's multiple tools. Now if you wanna look at capturing people to come into your network, if you call it emailing stuff or but if the content, if the way you communicate, you don't meet the reasons, it doesn't matter how fast you do it.
It really doesn't matter how fast you do it. So just depends on how well you do it. Correct. How so if you are doing it well, you can use tools to do it well if you're not doing it well, just getting somebody else's practical. 1, 2, 3, doesn't make you that goes back to the old saying of garbage in, garbage out.
Yeah. So you put garbage in and you wanna make it go faster, that's great, but garbage out. Correct? But here's the thing. Heres the thing, Michael, this is the interesting part. We have so much noise and people trying to sell things to people out there. So much noise of how to do I, you get my point about, I'm against this how to business.
Everybody's trying to, how to this, how to that and charge people for doing the how to this or how to that. If it's somebody else's doing it and you just copy it, it's not authentic. It's not you. And people will see through that. Yes, they will. Yeah, because, so you're not being authentic, you are not being, you are not you are somebody else trying to be doing this.
And hey, a copy of a copy is just not as good as the genuine thing. Yeah. It's not. Okay. Lemme go on. From your perspective, what leadership qualities make someone naturally magnetic in networking situations? Listening. Very good. Very important. Active listening. Go ahead.
Listening. Listening to learn, not listening to empathize. I wanna EI wanna emphasize that there's a difference. There is a lot of hoopla. Oh, you listen to empathize with people? No, I listen to learn, so I improve my own decisions. This is a very selfish act. I'm not listening to respect others. It does do that, but it's a, that's right.
It's a side effect of things. I am listening because they have their own reasons, and if I know their reasons, I can be a better sales guy. I can deliver better value. I'm listening because they are giving me information that makes my life better. I could make decisions better. I'm not listening to reply.
I'm not listening to empathize. I'm listening to learn. You're a problem solver. Okay? So if someone has a problem, you have the solution, you're getting to that, but you can't get to that unless you first find out what the problem is. So by active listening, you're listening to them. And of course, when you respond.
Sort of what they said to you so that they know that you were listening to them. It's a whole big thing, but it works. Yeah. Okay. How can young professionals or students strategically network to open doors in entrepreneurship and innovation? Very good question. So this may vary from from most people's perspective.
There's two ways of looking at it. I have this product and or I have this mission. I wanna be X, Y, Z. And then I begin to find everybody in that environment and then send them emails and do this and do that and blast them with LinkedIn stuff and whatever to create this thing.
And I show up at every meeting everywhere. Now that is like taking a shotgun. And trying to hit a mosquito. Okay. For multiple reasons. It doesn't work because A, you can't do that at scale and be genuine. Okay? So yes, it's like having friends on Facebook. Okay? I have, I dunno, 15,000 people on LinkedIn or 10,000 people on Facebook.
I do, but how many of them are really my friends if I have a problem? Who would come to my, who would come to my assistant? Nobody. So there is this idea that if I have a broad network of people that would funnel down to something, this funneling down to something says I'm go as many as possible, and then, okay, I only need two people to make my business work.
So what happens is you waste a lot of time over here. You're not genuine. They understand that you're not genuine, and then you may get to two people. Now, entrepreneurship is not luck. People say entrepreneurship is about risk takers. Risk takers are in Las Vegas. Entrepreneurs are risk navigators.
How do you navigate risk by being attentive network with people? Not because you wanna get something out of them because you wanna give something to them. And when you do that and you're genuine about it, those build relationships that are that, that are rooted in trust and those trustworthy relationships.
Or the network that's gonna pro prosperity for you? When networking there, there's really a whole, there's a mantra. If they know you, if they like you, if they trust you, they'll do business with you. But when you go into a networking event or networking with a person, you're looking to give not to receive.
That's exactly. You're always looking to give, because the more you give, the more that they will respect you, but also they will turn around and want to give you something, but you're not gonna ask for it. You're going to sit there and say, how can I help you? How can I make you more successful? 'cause they make at the end because they make every decision.
This is a fundamentally different way of looking at business. I don't make decisions. They make decisions. Absolutely. They make decisions, so I have to understand why they're making that decision. Yes, at some point I have to make a decision to get engaged. Or not to get engaged.
I do have to do that, right? But it is their decision. That gives me money, that gives me prosperity, that gives me connections, that gives me help. It's their decision. It's not my decision, right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so are there common networking mistakes among founders or leaders, and how can they avoid them?
I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go back almost 40 years. Okay. There was a guy. He had a beard. We used to call him H Beard. He was, he was, he used to study. I went to USC, university of Southern California and he was a 4.0 all the way. He was very smart guy. A genius.
Super genius, whatever you wanna call it. And he had a beard, that's why we called him H Beard. And I remember in those days there were disco texts that people would go to. Sure. You may remember those days, but mostly a lot of your audience may not. I remember disco texts. Yes. I'm 63. Yeah. Okay so I remember.
We used to go there. We were college kids, so we would go there and, and then one night I noticed this guy came in the door. I was already there having a drink, and he came in the door and he went and he started asking girls, would you like to dance and then move on. Would you like to dance and then move on?
I said, Hey, what are you doing? He said, on the average, I have done the analysis. I get 22 nos before I get to a yes. I like to get the nos out of the way.
So one big mistake is people go to these meetings. And they think that I'm a good networker. So they go to people. To people and people. Hello, how are you? Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, let me get a card. Okay, so what did you accomplish? Nothing. You have a card and now you're trying to email the guy somehow or another and have a conversation with him.
Okay. You have a conversation now? What? Absolutely. So it's this idea that volume quantity is more important than the quality. I used to be in the mortgage industry and I would go to networking events. I'd come home with a shoebox filled with business cards. I'd say, look how good I did. Yeah, it's so completely wrong that it's unbelievable.
So now when I coach or when I do a workshop or anything else. I tell you, say, look, if you go to a three or four hour event, come home with about 15, maybe 20 business cards. And that's because you are creating that relationship with them and you actually have something to speak about during your follow up.
'cause your follow up is so much more important than meaning the person. Correct. Correct. So here's the thing, and this is the other mistake. They talk to people. I've seen this, and people come to me and they immediately, within the first 30 seconds, they is trying to sell me something. I'm in the business of this.
Are you interested in this? Not really. Okay, thank you very much. You buy, friend. Okay, so first of all, I don't know who the hell you are. Secondly, you don't know who I am, so why would I need what you have? For what purpose? There is no trust. There is no relationship. There's no this is not, you're not selling toilet papers that I'm going to, ramps and pick it up because I've gotta go to the restroom.
So the idea of knowing each other is more important than selling something. There goes the relationship part of the equation. Absolutely. We've gone from transactional. To a relationship based meeting. If you create that relationship, then you'll go much further. Okay, so how can someone balance tech-driven efficiency like AI tools with the human touch required for authentic networking?
So what I always, say about AI is, don't delegate your imagination to ai. Okay? Okay. Don't delegate your imagination. Meaning you have a lot of people now, everything they wanna do, they go to Chatt PT. What about, the, some problems are that people have committed suicide because they go to Chatt PT and use it as a psychologist.
Okay. That's, because, so they. Some people want the machine to tell them what to do. Because we are trained in this. Remember that, go back to our original, the conversation that we started with. It's this educational thing that we are used to. This tell me what to do. And if I'm good at following orders, I should get something at the other end.
So this is now a machine telling us what to do. Okay, call. I'll do this thing. Here's the emails. Send these three emails. Guess what? They gave exactly the same. This machine. Is giving exactly the same advice to about a thousand, if not 10,000 other people who are asking it about networking. So all those people out there are gonna get emails that looks exactly the same like everybody else.
So you just lost your edge. Yep. Absolutely. Don't confuse efficiency with effectiveness. Effectiveness. Comes from you and who you are and what you bring to the table. How you, how trustworthy you are, how you listen, how you address problems, how you build relationships. That's effectiveness.
Efficiency is how quickly you do it. Absolutely. And that's a, and it's a choice that people have to make, that's what it is, a conscious choice. It's a conscious choice, but you have to train yourself or themselves or to do it the right way to, 'cause when I said I went to the school of hard knocks, I did everything the wrong way because I have to train.
I had to train myself to do things the right way. And once I trained myself in doing things the right way, then I was successful. I think the key word there that I wanna emphasize is I have to train myself based on who you are. I am a horrible networker. I'll be very honest I'll go into, you put me in, you put me in a room with three people, four people.
I'm very effective because I can build relationships. You put me in a room with 200 people, I'm very ineffective. Okay. You gotta know you. You gotta know who you are. So my objective is when I go there is to find four people, not 25, not 50. My objective is to find a good conversation because I know I'm horrible at kidding.
This thing, I'm gonna fail at the end. So my success is, can I find a friend? I'm here for two hours. Can I find somebody to have a good conversation and learn with and trust with? And I'm looking for how can I help as opposed to taking, business card. But that's me. My point is you have to find your authentic approach.
Yeah. That's you. But that is the correct way in order to network in today's environment. So by you going there and wanting to connect with somebody, become friends with somebody that's called, that's building your relationship and you get far more, you get far ahead than far more ahead than that transactional.
So it go, it goes a long way. In the entrepreneurial world, how do you identify the right people to connect with versus just collecting contacts? We just went over it. I think we just went over it. But the key is if you listen and is there something I can do for somebody, you are a problem solver.
Always remember that you are a problem solver. Those are the people you have to connect with, not the ones that solve your problem. See, this is the thing we look for. Hey, I did cash flow, so I need somebody to solve. Let's go and find people who can gimme money. It doesn't work that way. Yeah, it doesn't.
It doesn't. Okay. What lessons from education and leadership training translate directly into a built into building a strong professional network? So all of us all of us are leaders. We may be bad leaders. Yeah. We may be ineffective leaders but we all lead something. We all lead our own life in some way. We may lead a team. We may lead, in the right environments that we create and we choose and we feel confident we lead. It's part of life.
Now, we may not have the confidence to lead properly because we think we, I don't know enough as much as Michael, so he's a better leader than I am. Maybe in some situations he's a better leader than you are. Now, I use the example of these, the Eskimo have used these dogs. The slate dogs or whatever they call 'em.
Sure. Yeah. So there's usually 10 or 12 or 16 of them. Now here's the thing. They each have a role, and by the way, in different terrains, they move the guy who's in the dog that's in the end, and that guy leads and they bring him forward because he knows how to lead in a situation that, and then they switch him around and some lead in a different way.
So the lead dog, which is a term people use a lot. The lead dog doesn't have to be the lead dog all the time. You lead based on situations. Now that comes from your confidence, that comes from your it does come from your education, it does come from skills, but every situation requires a different kind of a leadership.
You are in a war. That's a different kind of leadership than you're leading a five year old. You're a coach or a leader in a five-year-old soccer game. It's a different, it's a different leadership. You're a you're a mom and you're leading the efforts at home of who gets up at what time and who gets the stuff and who goes to school and what time, or who does what works.
It's a different thing. You lead Microsoft or you lead a donut shop. You lead 'em at different levels, at different areas. So connecting that. To your networking team. In every situation, every conversation we're either leading or following your boat. Being able to realize how to lead or follow, like this late doc, how to lead or follow in that conversation makes you a better network.
Very good. Okay, let's bring this podcast full circle. If you could give one actionable networking strategy to anyone looking to accelerate their career or business growth, what would it be?
One, tangible, actionable, so I would avoid to go out there and obvious those are obvious things. What I would say would be tangible is the practicing before your network. So let me explain what I think that you're networking with your mom's friends.
Or with your uncle's friends, or with your cousins, or with the person who's at the grocery store, practice listening. That's a safe place. You're not selling anything. Learn how to listen. Learn how to appreciate who people are and create a conversation. Do it in a safe place. And when you get that ability to connect with people.
In a genuine way, in your own way. Then you have the, then you have the skills and there are thousands of books and capabilities and experts like yourself in terms of how to do, how do get bigger networks and whatever. Then you have the skillset or the skillfulness to be able to apply.
That would be my advice. That was great. That was absolutely great. There's so much more that I want to ask you or talk about, but time won't let us. So if somebody wanted to get hold of you for whatever the reason, what's the best way for them to get hold of you? My email isid@moha.com, which is you see it on the screens at Mohas, my first name, at my last name.com.
I also want Michael to mention the VAC Academy, where you start, where we started which is where we provoke and engage. We have a lot of stuff and, the membership could be is $1 forever, and then the next level is something that people have paid forward and sponsor folks, because I believe that if I'm provoked and if I can put my own authentic self together, if I practice my entrepreneurship in the way I defined it, of realizing what I have and exchanging it for something better.
We will live in a much better world. I agree. So I like to invite everybody and they can go there es academy.org. They can listen to our wake up calls. They could become a member, they can apply to be sponsored by clicking on sponsor me and somebody would pay for them. So let's get engaged. Let's provoke each other.
And I and we say this is a learning platform. We learn from each other. I don't know. I don't have all the answers. I do not have, we at the academy do not have a 1, 2, 3 solution for you. I'm not gonna give you something that's gonna make you a trillionaire tomorrow, but we'll together learn how to evolve and how to be better in our own authentic way.
So that's a sustainable growth. It sounds fabulous. Sid, I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate everything you've told me, taught me, and I hope to speak with you again soon. God bless. It was a pleasure. God bless you and all of your audience.
Well, hold on folks. Don't go anywhere. Let's hear from our sponsors. David Neal, co-founder Revved Up Kids. Revved 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 RevD up kids.org.
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. A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today. Get out there and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
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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