Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Sébastien Night and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- 11 hours ago
- 21 min read
Welcome to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Connections, the show where real relationships create real results. I'm your host, Michael Forman. Let's be honest, most professionals have experienced networking that felt more like a sales pitch than a conversation. Too many people enter the room focused on closing a deal instead of building a relationship.
But the truth is, the most successful professionals often grow their business very carefully. They begin building further knowledge, ability, and a trust they build with others in their industry. My guest today believes that authentic relationships consistently outperform traditional sales tactics. We're talking about how deep industry knowledge positions you as a resource, how trust develops you through genuine conversations, and why people are far more likely to do business with someone they respect than someone who they're trying to sell them something.
If you wanna build connections that naturally lead to opportunity, this episode is for you. I'd like to welcome to the podcast Sebastien Night. He's gonna tell us more about his background and everything else, but Sebastien, welcome to the podcast, and could you give us the CliffsNotes of how you got where you are today?
Hi, Michael. Yes, of course. Thanks for welcoming me to the podcast. The CliffsNotes of how I got how I, where I am, so first of all, where am I? I am the leader of OneTake AI. We are a company that sells an AI agent that edits videos for experts podcast hosts and online course creators, and we have clients using our software in 119 languages.
And before that, I was the founder of the Free Entrepreneur Movement, which I started in 2010. We helped 300 fr- 200,000 French-speaking entrepreneurs in 41 countries to start and grow their businesses. And how I got to both places is by using video to share content, and also to create the relationships with the key people that were able to help us to partnerships to grow the businesses That's great.
That really sounds great. Sounds like you were a busy man for a while. For a while, yes, for the last 20 years since I started my first business, yeah. Yeah. You've mentored over three, 300,000 entrepreneurs. What patterns did you see in the people who successfully built relationships and opportunities versus those who stayed stuck?
One of the things that I think is important to realize is there are Different psychologies of entrepreneurs and since we are talking about networking and being in touch with other people that can help grow your business, most people will assume that this is an extrovert's game and that extroverts have a huge advantage because if you just like connecting with people in general, then of course you have a leg up in that game.
However, I was very lucky that I was part of the introvert group, so I had to figure out, like, how do you get these business relationships? Because when I started any of my businesses, I mentioned the two most recent, but I had several other businesses and every time I have needed to get those business started without a large amount of advertising budget and getting started in industries that were just starting to get into motion.
And every time you do that, then partnerships are your best bet because if you can partner with someone that has already the audience of the perfect customer that you need, then they can kickstart your business without you having to advertise to find the customers. However, if you are an introvert, then it might not be your like dream vacation to go tour all of the conferences and networking events that you can find.
And in my case, what really helps me is I realized if I don't have the natural inclination to try to open the conversations with hundreds of different pos- possible people, then the best option is to have these people know me ahead of time so that the doors are already open and the opportunities are already there.
And for my businesses, what has been the most successful is using video as a way to share my expertise. I was one of the very first people to have a, we called it a web television at the time. That was before YouTube existed. YouTube started in 2006. I started doing online video a couple years before that.
I was one of the very first people to use YouTube in the French market to grow. I had a dating advice coaching company, and basically packaging expertise into books, but using this, like all of the contents for my books, I packaged into videos so that you didn't need to buy the book, you could just watch the videos.
Created the opportunities where when I reached out to potential partners or when I was at an industry event, people already had- the knowledge of who I was, what my expertise was, and so those conversations were much easier to start Okay. Very good. You eventually shifted from mentoring in the building into building software.
What did the, what did that transaction teach you about scale, communication, and where entrepreneurs struggle most? So first of all, I did that change because I already had the experience as an engineer by training. I was a engineer from one of the, let's say, the French equivalent of the Ivy League in terms of s- training.
And so I knew what I could accomplish in term of the product. But then again, when starting an AI company, that was a year before ChatGPT came out, so nobody knew what AI was. The only way to get started and bring in customers since they didn't know... aI was not a thing that people were googling or talking about.
The only way to get that was to be in front of warm audiences. The best medium for us was to use webinars. I would do the demo of the software and then and then make an offer, and the best way to get people onto the webinars was not to advertise for them because you don't know yet how well the webinar is gonna convert, so you don't want to spend thousands of dollars or tens of thousands in advertising it.
So the best way to do that was I spoke at a few conferences. At those conferences I s- I just talked with other speakers and attendees who had the relevant audiences for the business, and those connections are what enabled us to get our first audience for the software. So when you're asking what I learned about that process, I think that one of the important things is if you want to, if you want to create lasting relationships, then you have to realize that even when switching from one industry to another, those relationships, as long as you've added value over the years to these people they will l- look out for you and try to help you with creating more connections.
So that has been very helpful for me. I have had people reach out and I use Signal, I don't use W- WhatsApp, and they would reach out on Signal and say, "Hey I want to connect you with because maybe they are looking to do webinars. Y- you've been doing them for a while. There's a potential connection there."
Without the person trying to be a middleman or earn commission for the referral or anything like that, but just because we had this positive, long-lasting relationship. And I think if you cultivate that, whatever your current business is, then it definitely will help for the next project you mentioned that you started this before ChatGPT actually came out.
Yeah. How do you see AI changing the way that entrepreneurs, they built trust with audiences?
So there's the positive and the negative part of how AI is going to influence how people create relationships. We have, at OneTake AI, we have a fairly contrarian stance regarding AI and video or content creation. Most startups that are in the space create generative
AI models. So the- their goal is basically to replace the content creator with a puppet or AI avatar that will speak instead of them which is very appealing, like from a deep-seated human desire to sit back and do nothing. This is a very appealing proposition, but it has one tiny drawback, which is nobody wants to watch those videos, and as soon as people realize that they've been watching a animated set of pixels, there's no human there they lose all interest.
There was a tiny novelty aspect to it, but people don't want to watch that. And so I think what's already happening is that as people are getting inundated with AI-generated content, there is a growing drive for people to be consuming- actual real information from whether it is a podcast, whether it is a straight face to camera video, but something that has the host's humanity and presence and history and stories in it.
So I do think that now is a great time if somebody is considering using video to create that relationship with their audience. It's a great time to have those videos. They don't have to be perfect. There are tools like our own if people just go to try.twontik.ai, they're able to try our software to edit their videos for free.
So those tools will make the video more professional-looking, but without removing the humanness of the video. And I think that would be the most important part because Michael, your audience, they are looking to create these human connections because they know that opening those doors are the key to growing their business, and you're not going to have those connections if all the content that people have seen from you is a generated AI avatar.
Because if they wanted to have synthetic content on whatever topic, they could just have asked ChatGPT or Gemini or Grok just, "Tell me something about XYZ," right? They could have asked the machine, so they didn't need the machine to have your face because that's not creating the relationship with you if the machine has your face.
Being the actual person behind it, infusing it with your actual stories, not just reading off generated script, but having your your real-life experience inside of that is, I think, what will make the difference in the coming years. I agree, and, yes the stories, AI can do, all the technical b- behind the, what you wanna talk about.
But when I put in stories and I put in emotion, and that's one thing that AI cannot do. So when I'm putting in the emotion behind the stories and everything else, it makes me much more interesting than listening to an AI-generated podcast, for instance. Yeah. So it goes. S- so y- you focused on, on video.
You kept on saying you focus on video. Yeah. Why are some creators highly visible but unable to build meaningful relationships?
There is a saying that people come from the co- for the content and stay for the personality or the relationship. I think this is an important part of it. You can be very visible the same way that a few years back you could have a website that had very good search engine optimization, SEO, and you could have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands pe- of people browsing or the website or hitting the website per day without ever having an audience.
And I think the best example of that in the real world if, is if you ever go to Paris. Paris is a great city, has some of the best restaurants in the world, but you might not want to go to any of the restaurants that are inside of the big train stations like Gare Montparnasse. They have a restaurant that looks great from the outside.
It's in the train station, so millions of people go through this station every year, and the service is probably the most awful of on the planet. Why? Because they know that you're there, you're captive, y- you're sitting here, you're gonna eat whatever they give you and then go take your train. And so it doesn't matter how long it takes for the food to arrive because worst case scenario, you'll pay without having finished your food.
It doesn't matter how bad the food is, it doesn't matter how the waiter or waitress spoke to you because in France they don't ex-
But once, and it was like the, one of the worst mistakes. And so it is
AI results or search engine results. You can have a large viewership of people who find your content on whatever social media or video platform like YouTube, TikTok, whatever. If that first interaction does not create this relationship, if that first interaction doesn't have a compelling story, doesn't have the empathy that makes the viewer feel understood and seen and talked, not talked at or down at- If you fail at this, then you can have a large viewership without ever having a large audience or an engaged audience.
And you would also lose those people really fast, like one day to the next if the algorithm changes. And so what I think is important is to, when you record content... So I focus a lot on video because today that's the medium that has the highest return on time spent. I've written books, but I also know that now if you don't also put all the content of the book in a bunch of videos, then it will not reach as many people as it could.
And what I've noticed is if you speak the video as if you're recording it for one single person from the audience, somebody from the comments of a previous video, someone you know, a client or customer you have helped personally, the video, like the warmth of it, the impact of it will be much more powerful.
I know that, for instance, we are doing this podcast, we are talking to potentially hundreds, thousands of people that are gonna watch this asynchronously from when we record it. But before I jumped on the Zoom call I tried to visualize one of my people, like somebody that needs the advice, somebody that needs the connection as Michael, you like to emphasize, like the importance of creating those relationships so that everything that I would answer to your questions would be relevant to that need and that person instead of trying to be generic, like we're talking to an audience.
And a good exercise that I've done for the last more than a decade is if I'm sending an email to my email list, 60,000 people are on it, but I still write it to one person and like I, I, intending it to one person. I used to have an audio, like a subscription where people would get an audio from me every day.
There was several thousand people were signed up to it. But what I would actually do is I would send the voice note to a single person. So I would select from my entrepreneurial friends and send them an audio, and then take that and forward it to the 5,000, 8,000 subscribers afterwards. Instead of recording it to the 8,000, I would make it a personal message without saying the name of the person, and then I would just send it to everybody so that everybody getting it felt like I was sending them a personal message.
And the same works for video as well Okay. Signals make investors or creators or even potential partners take someone seriously without a massive network. You were talking about your network of 8,000 subscribers or 60,000 subscribers. What if they don't have that type of network? What could they do?
To take them seriously yeah. First of all, everybody starts at zero. I guess everybody starts at one. Everybody has a mom for at least the first few minutes of their lives so there's at least one person that would s- that would be in connection with you, but that's the minimum.
And then you're on your own. So yeah. So I was mentioning I had these people in... I was sending them messages. It was to many chats, so that was Facebook Messenger. I had 8,000 people there. I've had tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, depending on which one of my businesses, of people on email lists, but every single time I had to start with zero subscribers.
And starting from zero subscribers, the key elements to focus on are what can I provide that is of value, and not in abstract, but that is of value in the current environ- environment? So I wouldn't be able to build these audiences today by giving the same content or PDFs or videos I did when I started my business, like many years ago.
Because if I did that now, the content, like some of the concepts that I created and I shared in the French language have become common words in the marketing space and the entrepreneurship space. And I- it's even happened to me once that I tried to trademark one of my concepts and the French trademark office said, "No, actually, this word is already in wide circulation, so you cannot trademark it."
I was... A- and then because they quoted to me the Google results on the keywords, and I tried to point out that all of, like the first 10 results were people interviewing me about those concepts. So it was still proof that it was, it came from me, but it was too wide open. And so if I came today with some of those ideas that were very fresh and new in 2010, nobody would give their email to hear about it because it sounds like it's been there it's been done a lot, right?
And so you have to figure out first- Looking at the current landscape, what's missing, where I can provide value for free. Usually, it would be a video because that's how people consume the content. But today there's also the opportunity to go further. Thanks to AI, you can create tools that people can use and implement straight away.
So one of the things that we teach our customers at OneTake AI is that you can create quizzes, assessments visual tools, things that help people implement what is taught in the free video or what is taught in the coaching program so that they get success faster. So that's one way, one way to create the value.
So because you create the value, you can ask for people's WhatsApp number, email, phone number, ask them to come to a Telegram channel or Signal or whatever But then you still need this audience. Before they become an audience, you still need the viewership in the first place, and the way that you get that is by bringing this unique value to the channels and the podcasts and the webinars and the online courses and the masterminds of those who already have this audience.
Just come up here and say I'm not trying to sell you something. I'm not try- even trying to sell your audience. I just want to contribute this to as many people as I can," and I think it could be a great value builder. I'll give an example. Recently, I did a presentation for someone who had a strong following on Skool.com, S-K-O-O-L in the platform.
And so they wanted me to do a presentation to their audience. So technically, this person is charging their audience to be part of this membership group. They... So they are getting compensated for bringing great content to that audience, so they are always looking for great content to offer to this, to these people.
They are not paying me to do a presentation to that group. So what are they, so what are they getting from inviting me as a speaker? They are getting new content that's really interesting to their audience. P- there are people getting more results, which helps drive more people. Being able to add my face and name to their roster of previous speakers in their marketing, which will drive them more sales.
And what do I get from this collaboration? I get additional people that get to hear me speak, present about Take AI, and some of those decide to jump in and take a subscription on our software as well. At the very beginning when you're getting started, y- you, you don't want to start hunting for customers.
Instead what you should be trying to do is figure out which value you can bring in the current zeitgeist. And second, find places where this audience is already congregating and where you can bring this value, because that's how you build your first audience. Very good. Ab- a- outstanding. Outstanding.
How can entrepreneurs avoid becoming trapped in content creation mode, and instead turn visibility into a real opportunity? I would say that first of all, being in content creation mode is great so they should still be in content creation mode. There are, again, two different types of psychology here.
Some people like my client and good friend, Eriko Hoka a legend on the Brazilian internet. He has more than 100 million people watching his content online in the Portuguese and now English language. Some people like Erico are great at saying, "I'm gonna do daily content, like every single day for the next..."
And he would say, "Okay, for the next 500 days I'm gonna do that," and stick to it and do 500 days and beyond. Some other people, I'm one of them if we decide to do that, then on day five we're gonna get tired of it, on day eight we're gonna get terminally bored with it, and on day 11 if offered the choice of sticking a fork through your hand or recording video number 12, you'd be like, "Ah, tell me more about the fork.
What's this option?" So if you're part of the first group, then it's amazing. Just decide now to do one day short video for the next year. This will grow your business tremendously. If you're part of the second group, then you need to learn like batching. And batching means you just decide what is your target of publication rhythm, but the creation rhythm h- can be completely separate from that.
So you could say, "I'm going to have three videos a week come out," and I did that for a while, like three long form videos per week. So I had three different, I call them podcasts but they were not like interview type podcasts, it was face to camera content. And what I would do is just spend two days every quarter and I would record a series.
So I had a series where in each video I would... it was on the Mondays. Each video I would give the top tips from one of the best 500 books that I've read. I had another one about how to get or to create new habits and the s- psychological and scientific effects of each habit. So I... One episode is one, one ritual.
And I had one where I would share, it was on Sundays Les entrepreneurs du dimanche. There is no good translation to that in English. It means it was about all the mistakes you can make as an entrepreneur. And I would have one different story of something that I did that cost me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And so what I would do is I would just take those two days, have a friend come in to man the camera, because I could do it myself but I would procrastinate, so I would just have somebody in there to hit record and hit stop, and we would record as many videos I could do and still be breathing by the end of the day.
So my record was about n- it was 93 videos in a single day, and so I would just do that, like two days of recording. And then all of my content is good to go for the next quarter. So this way I was never feeling pressure to record something for the next day because I already had enough content in advance that was already ready.
And also because it was batch, it was easier to do it in a format that was consistent. Having the same kind of intro, same kind of call to action at the end, just like being very consistent with it. And and it was easier to just be in that... Because you have to get in the mindset. Just like when you are going to a in-person networking session or going to an event, you have to set your mind.
Like I, I visualize it as s- putting your brain as- in a certain shape for the task that is gonna be required. And so it's always counterproductive to mold your brain in the I'm gonna talk to video shape, and maybe it takes you 10 minutes to get there, 15 minutes. For some people it takes them an hour to get like in the mood for it.
And if you just only do one video and hit stop recording and then go do something else, you've wasted so much of that potential and you will hate it very quickly. Whereas if you just said, "This is my video recording day. Yes, I took an hour of procrastinating and cleaning the house and whatever before I hit record, but now that I'm doing it, I can do 10 in a row, 12 in a row and be done for the quarter."
Ab- absolutely. And you're right on so many points. I didn't wanna interrupt, but you're right on point for just about all of it. Let's bring this podcast full circle. And if a listener wants to become more visible, credible, and connected over the next 90 days, what one habit would you tell them to start immediately?
So for someone who wants to become more visible, credible, and connected, I will say that, first of all, in terms of order of priority to get it done it's easy to be visible if you're well-connected because if you have the connections that have the audience, they will promote you to their audience. So you want to be connected before you become visible, and if you want to create those connections, then it's much easier to create those connections if you are credible if...
Because as, again, if you're the introvert and you don't want to spin yarn for hours until the person say yeah fine. Okay, I will open email," which might work but for some people, I don't know, it's that's not the way I think it's works. So if you want instead that when you reach out they say, "Oh my God, yeah, you're the guy that did the Seven Keys to to X, Y, Z or whatever," if you want them to already get who you are and why what you have to say matters, then you need the credibility first.
So in terms of order, I would go with that. And the way you build this credibility is not through your pedigree. It, it's great once you have built it. So today I'm able to say, "I built the French entrepreneur movement. We helped 300,000 entrepreneurs. I've written 11 books." Like I've done things, okay?
So it helps, it opens doors because in the French market at least, somebody... Like it has happened to me, I would go to a conference and go to the speaker and before I open my mouth it happened recently, that person said, "Oh my God I started..." Bas- they told me they started their business by being an attendee at one of my seminars like in 2016 And then it, she was a female speaker, and then her husband came in, and he said, "Oh my God."
He approached her when he was single based on a dating advice I had recorded in a video on my YouTube channel in 2009. So they were married thanks to that YouTube video. And so i- in terms of creating that connection I didn't need to do any effort in the 2020s because my content had done the work in the 2000s and the 2010.
So the way that you create this credibility is not to think, "Oh my God I'm at a disadvantage because I don't have this curriculum of content and things in, from the past," but instead start creating it today. Start figuring out today how do I show my expertise? How do I create that expertise if I don't have it yet?
One of the great ways is to hang out with the experts. One of the great ways to hang out with the experts is to reach out and to interview them for a podcast, interview them for an article, interview them, because then you create that first connection, but still the expertise and the brand name is associated to you.
So for instance, we are on Michael's podcast, and so even somebody that might have found the video because they Googled Sebastien Night interview or whatever to see if somebody from my audience now knows Michael Forman, and we on your podcast are talking about networking and connections, which is a topic that I haven't ever approached in the last year of different interviews that, that I've done.
So in the mind of someone that came in for me or randomly on this episode the topic gets associated with Michael because it's Michael home here. It's his podcast here. And so that's what I would say. If somebody wants to create this visibility, they need the connections. If they want to be connected, they need the credibility, and the way to create the c- credibility is to share from your own expertise about what's the unique need that's missing in the market that you f- can fulfill or connecting with the experts to grab this to grab the essence of that out of their brains and package it in a way that people can consume.
And some people have built empires by doing this Tim Ferriss, for instance. His podcast is a great example of that Absolutely. That's fantastic. Sebastien, this- first of all, this was wonderful. I'm so glad you came on my podcast because you have so much knowledge and you wanted to share it, and it was just spectacular.
If somebody wanted to get hold of you, what's the best way that they can get hold of you? Yeah. Two things. The first is if somebody is interested, because they're interested in creating videos and using our amazing AI they could go to our main website, which is onetake.ai. But if they go to try, which is T-R-Y, so try.onetake.ai, then they are able to try it for free on, on, on their videos.
And if they want to reach out to me, then it's really easy. It's my first name @onetake.ai is my email. Yeah, they can just reach out. It's... That's fantastic. Th- this conversation reminds us that strong business relationships are rarely built through pressure. They're built through trust, consistency, and genuine interest in helping others succeed.
When people see you as someone who understands the industry and genuinely cares about relationship, opportunities follow naturally. That's the power of credibility over tactics. Take one step this week. Instead of trying to impress someone in your next conversation, focus on understanding them and sharing something useful from your experience.
You'll be surprised at how quickly trust begins to grow. 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 believes relationships are the foundation of business success.
If you need help strengthening your, and communicate and build meaningful professional relationships, visit michaelaforman.com to learn how I work with professionals, teams, and organizations. Sebastien, I wanna just thank you again for coming on my podcast. You were a blessing. Thank you, Michael
That's a wrap, folks. 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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