Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Tim O'Hearn and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Sep 8
- 19 min read
📍 Welcome to another episode of Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections. I'm your host, Michael Forman, and today we're calling out the elephant in a room, the Ellucian of connection in the age of screens, scrolls, and social metrics. My guest brings a bold perspective on something we're all grappling with.
How misplaced confidence in likes, followers and digital popularity is eroding our ability to build meaningful, trusted based relationships. I. We'll dig into the consequences of screen addiction, the trap of chasing attention instead of building credibility and how news feeds. Yes, even the well designed ones have hijacked the trust we once gave to real journalists and real conversations.
So if you've ever felt the pressure to perform online, if you're questioning what real influence really looks like, or if you're ready to build relationships that don't depend on algorithms, this episode is for you. It's time to break free from the noise and reclaim what connection was always meant to be personal, powerful, and profitable.
My guest today is Tim O'Hern, and I would like to tell you about his background, but I'll probably butcher it, so I'm not going to I will allow Tim to introduce himself and give us a taste of his background. Tim, good morning. How are you? Good morning, Michael. I'm good. Good. Can give us a little taste of your background?
I'm a software engineer by training and software engineering as a very broad discipline has brought me to many different places. The most relevant for this conversation is that one of my side hustles, or side quests, if you will was involved with the Instagram underworld. So I built automation systems that got people more followers on Instagram.. That's great. I'm sure a lot of people are very interested in what you had to do. Okay, so let's delve right into a couple of questions. We live in a world where likes feel like validation. How do social metrics distort the way people approach real networking? It's very complicated because we always need something, we need some indication of this measure of social proof, whether that's in the real world.
There are certain things we look to establish someone at a very short a very short introduction. In the same way in the digital world, we don't have time to look through someone's post history, someone's friends, someone's interactions. We need something instantly. And what we found, at least since the days of MySpace, is that we can look to metrics such as friend count to understand this.
And once we went with this follower following model, which we saw on Instagram, we started to say, this person is more important, authoritative, authentic, if they have more followers. And that's what it all comes down to. Okay. Can you talk about the difference between digital visibility and actual influence and why they're not the same thing?
When you reduce influence or popularity to these metrics, you are trusting the platform or the user who has the metrics implicitly. So if I come on your podcast and I say, Hey, I'm Tim, I have 100,000 followers. You have really no way to validate that every one of those a hundred thousand followers is a real person.
And if you did, it would take an outrageous amount of time. You would basically need a team of private investigators. It makes no sense. So we place trust in these, some baseline trust. But what we find is that it doesn't necessarily represent real people or an engaged audience. For example, you may have.
20,000 followers subscribers on YouTube, but maybe they subscribed 20 years ago or 15 years ago, and they don't watch the videos. So while it might at a glance look like importance if we don't see those people actually engaging and buying into the current day messaging, then it's just as, it's almost as if they're not there at all.
Okay, so how has screen dependence changed the way we listen, connect, or even show up in conversations? It's really undermined what I think you've preached a lot in your work and your appearances where we talk about public speaking and then within public speaking, we also have this notion of just.
Social interaction, which has things like how to make eye contact, how to like structure sentences, like how to have a normal like bilateral conversation or discussion. When we look to what screens have done to society, there's no way that I could have captured it all in a book. But I tried my best.
The issues have really been magnified by cell phones. So the original issue, which was captured in books such as. The shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains is that because we could rely on the internet and search engines in general, it was pretty easy to just only know what you had to Google search, and that was the extent of your knowledge, and then you knew it to search.
You could look at those results and figure it out. But today, because we have these tools and more advanced tools, obviously in the AI space, and we have it on our phones, the question becomes. Do we really have to think at all? And so when we think about social re relationships and public speaking, marketing, when we think about different ways that we express ourselves everything has become completely different.
And nowadays, I. The people we're looking to as these kind of taste makers or thought leaders, even in the speaking space, are influenced by short form content, which I can say is even very divergent from what I grew up admiring and learning from. Yeah, it, you've said so many important things and I want to hit on every single one of them, but we'd be here for three hours.
I really feel that ever since the pandemic this has gotten even worse. Because people rely on the zoom the cell phones. And people, if you ask them a question, they immediately go to their cell phone and they look it up, they say no, that's really not quite correct.
Or, whereas before you had a little bit of leeway, but it just really, it's like it's in gratification and people are remote. They're trying to. Keep that engine gratification. And I think it's more so with the 20 and 30 somethings that they always, it's like the phone is tethered to their bodies.
Sure. The 40 somethings and 50 somethings, 60 somethings such as me, they don't rely on it so much. But it's all what you're talking about. And you mentioned a book, you did you write a book? Yes. The Shallows is not the book that I wrote, but my book published earlier this year is called Framed a Villain's Perspective on Social Media.
And it addresses my story of growing up with the internet. So having been born in the nineties. Learning how to actually write software. So to become a software engineer and then to create bots that earned me money, but that also caused chaos or disruption on social media platforms. Then it's all wrapped in this shell of now I have to deal with the consequences.
Not to say that I was the primary villain here, but I was definitely an enemy and now I have to deal with the consequences of living with an internet. That is so different from the one I grew up admiring. Okay, good. I just, I wanted to get your book in here somehow so you can talk about it and hopefully everybody will take a look at it and read it.
What advice do you have for professionals who want to build a, who want to build genuine connections but feel addicted to online engagement? This is a really important point. It's something that I added to the book almost as this bolt-on chapter and the chapter is called Getting Good. What I address in that chapter is considering the thousands of customers I had when I worked at this, social media startup called Shark Social, where we were getting people more followers.
Every one of these customers gave us a little bit of a backstory of why they signed up and what they were looking to do. And of course, we can make assumptions. Generally they equated more followers with more success, how we started this episode. But. Really like when it all comes down to it.
We found that a lot of these behaviors just came down to baseline addiction. So many business owners, you think it's a single person. They have their phone, they have their personal account, then they create their business account. And we found that many of them were falling into this trap where they would just scroll all day except on their business account because they found that was maybe helping them with competitive intelligence, it was helping them run their business better, where you or I could probably agree that you very quickly reach the point of diminishing returns.
So there's a very strong relationship between these addictive behaviors and then also pitfalls in the business space, especially for sole proprietors. Good. I, speaking as a sole proprietor myself I own brick and mortar businesses beforehand, it, it's very important to me to keep my brand up and I need to see what other public speakers are doing, but they're not necessarily competition, it's more because it's like a family.
We just like to keep up on everybody so we see what everybody's doing, but yes, that's a very good point. Okay. What impact do you think newsfeeds, as well as algorithm driven design have had on our ability to trust people and conversations? We can look at the name of the feature and start to draw back some of the consequences of this design and what we would say are even dark patterns involved with the implementation.
When Facebook came out with this concept of a news feed, I believe that they co-opted the trust that we had as Americans. In newscasters of the 20th century. So what I'm saying there is that we have this baseline trust for news and how we get news. And of course today that's very different. But the truth is that going into the new millennium, like we had very high trust for national newscasters, local newscasters, et cetera.
When we moved from a chronological feed, meaning every piece of content that anyone posts, you just see it in chronological order. When we moved from that to something that was constructed more intelligently, we started to use the term newsfeed to represent it, and in that case, you start seeing ads and you also start seeing content from other sources.
The issue with that is as more and more people began to use social media. They would log on their first day and say, oh, because this content is at the top of my page, it must be more trustworthy. It must be true. It must be the most important thing for me to see today. And it's a very unique, I would say, like hijacking of these distrust we would typically have.
Even when you think about print news. You open a newspaper and what do you have? You have the main headline. When we look at website design today or the algorithmic feeds, you do tend to look at the top first and it, we find a lot of news sites today. Are designed the same as newspapers. Were in the 18 hundreds.
So I think that the news feeds just by name suggest this co-opting of trust. And then a lot of the more underhanded software based stuff that goes on in exactly how they're constructed is a huge problem that nobody can unravel because not one person even knows how it works. Very true. Very true.
Okay, speaking of mistakes, do you think people are mistaking online presence for credibility? And how can we use help? How can we help our audiences to reframe that mindset? There are two sides to this coin. There's no doubt about it. No matter what you're doing, there is this pressure. To be online and to have some presence to support it.
Even with my book, one of the ironic parts about my book is that people say, oh, you did all this. Why aren't you on Instagram? And I'm not on Instagram because I've had hundreds of accounts banned on Instagram and I'm not allowed to have one. But in the more general sense, there is this this pervasive idea that you must be online and that it's important to construct.
Who you are or what you're saying, what you're saying you're doing in your craft or your business with your online persona. And I think that's becoming more and more difficult where everything's saturated, right? So like for me, there's thousands of authors trying to do the same thing. In the book review space, there's thousands of people just reviewing books.
So to introduce yourself here and to say, I'm not an influencer who created a product. I am a writer. I'm a writer who now has to be on social media so I can connect with like fans and people who are interested in it. I think it's really important for a business owner, for a musician and entertainer any type of personality to understand what the balance is between what they're getting from social media and what they're providing via their craft.
For me, I'm like 90% on my craft, which is writing and hopefully developing some speaking ability as well. And maybe 10% on, yes, I have a little bit of a hustle with my newsletter website and other social media profiles. You can really say that the average businessman, excuse me. The average business person with a brick and mortar store needs an online presence.
Okay? Because they want to sell their product, more than locally. Now, somebody such as myself, I have a website and everything, and I want to sell nationally because I'm selling myself and I travel to different parts. Where you have to really figure out that, where that line is, where your online presence and your business.
Come together, don't make yourself clear, yes. Okay. You really have to find that balance. And some people who just want to do business online, that's a whole different ball game. That's everything. Okay. So enough of that. What warning signs should we look at for when digital networking starts replacing real world relationship building?
I think the more we insert technology into this socialization that becomes more of a warning sign. And the more I don't wanna say it's suppressant one, but the more pressing warning is when we're starting to use ai for all types of interaction. So even in the last year the amount of.
AI driven or AI augmented emails I get is scary. But what's scarier is when you already have a relationship with someone. And then they're using AI to carry it out and they're using a scheduler and you're like, oh, that's interesting. It's exactly 30 days after we last had contact. All of this wrap up between automation and ai, it's not the digi, it's not like making it digital, that is the problem.
It's then inserting all these tools that actually remove. The the human element and maybe even the basic one, like the most generic, is how much easier it is to remember someone's birthday today compared to 10 or 15 years ago, right? Like that used to be the trick of the trade for anyone who was in sales or any relationship based business.
You have a calendar and you actually mark people's birthdays, and it takes some effort to push those birthdays from one calendar year to another. Now on your Google calendar, you can just say, okay, this is this person's birthday. I found it on Facebook, I found it on LinkedIn, and let's just make it recur every year and make sure I wish this person a happy birthday.
So I think, not to say that's disingenuous but technology has helped a lot. A lot of people now are leaning on it too much in ways that their actions in the real world are not reflective. I see the difference between AI and just using A-A-C-R-M. Okay. Yeah. To help your business.
And because I'm guilty of that also, I put it all the information I can about a perspective or current client. I. Into my CRM, so I don't have to think about that. So I'm thinking about other things and when it comes up, as my daily feed, I'll say, oh, I have to wish this person a happy birthday.
Yeah. And I write them a happy birthday. I don't have my CRM write it for me. Okay. So it's like in the middle. Sure. But, I think a person in business today needs a very good CRM. And whether or not they rely on ai, that's really up to them. But I am, look, I am more into the personal relationships the personal networking, the meeting of the people one-on-one.
So you can feel the vibe of the person, the vibe of the room. You can actually get the feeling when you walk into a networking event. There's nothing like it, there's nothing like feeling that, that vibe. When you do everything online or through ai, you lose it. You lose all that, yeah. I would say there is an important distinction to be made between CRM like actions, which we would say are almost universally helpful, and then too much ai, where AI is doing the thinking for you.
It's telling you how to feel and how to make other people feel. So that's a good shout. I agree a hundred percent. Okay. How can business owners and entrepreneurs use social media effectively without falling into the trap of digital vanity metrics? Organic connections are still very viable.
There's this emerging philosophy that to be successful today. All you really need is a dedicated fan base of a hundred people. And another podcast host actually introduced me to this idea and they're like, would you rather a hundred people who you know you can count on? Or would you rather maybe 5,000 on a mailing list who you don't even really know who they are?
And I thought about this a lot, especially as it was related to the promotion and debut of my book. And it's absolutely true in that when we start thinking about starting a business and how we can do our best today the idea of organic interactions is really important. And for me, with the book that means.
Reaching out to people like you and saying, Hey, I actually listened to your podcasts. I am familiar with these guests, and here's my product. Would you like a free copy? And that's about as genuine as you can get in today's world, it's actually accelerated by the fact that. I could send you a digital copy of my book and you could have it today.
So that's been really helpful compared to just shotgunning cold emails, feeling entitled to somebody buying your product or converting. When you remove a lot of these marketing terms and you just start thinking about, I. How would I like to be interacted with? That's the best way. And on the, and like I said, the other side of this is that now that I've had more appearances, now that the book is selling it's currently a number one bestseller on Kindle.
I get emails almost every day and usually one each day. Will be detailed to the point where the person knows me and they're like, Hey, I saw your appearance here. I read chapter seven of your book here. This is why I think you'd be a good fit for my podcast. So I'm thinking, I'm reaching out on one end.
These people are reaching out to me on the other end. This is what the internet was supposed to be. We just have to clear through a lot of the other a lot of the other fluff. Yeah, and trying to get through it is a whole nother story. But as when we think we're making a little headway, it's getting more and more cloudy because more and more things are getting in our way.
So it's becoming increasingly more difficult to do that. Okay. And that's where keeping the one-on-one is very important. Okay. What role does curation play in how we form trust today, and how can we shift from a curated persona to a credible presence? Sometimes they are one and the same.
Because there's a difference between you have this idea of discretion where maybe the realist or most authentic Tim O'Hern would be showing you my entire schedule every day, rather than just the curated part, right? The highlights. But does anybody really want to know that I woke up at 6:00 AM this morning and ran 10 miles?
Maybe, but it has nothing to do with me like appearing on a podcast or honestly selling a book. So even though that would be realer there's still this idea that I don't want to clog your feed with parts of me that are perhaps not as permanent or as relevant to the persona. Part of it is saying you need to choose what you want to do.
And if it's overall you're selling a lifestyle, then show your lifestyle. But for me. I really am just selling a book and some of the outgrowths of that. So thinking about being a little bit more precise there and saying, okay, I'm also a sports journalist and I'm also a fairly competitive runner. I can't come on podcasts and preach all of this at the same time.
'cause it sounds ridiculous. If I really want to, I would have to create different accounts on different sites. Or even we see YouTubers who have two or three different channels, that purpose can be served. So yeah, I think it's a delicate balance between what an audience wants and then coming up with it.
Because as for a writer, how do I actually give consistent content to someone? I. If I'm writing another book, it might take me another two years. So what am I gonna do? Re release a chapter every couple months? Sometimes it doesn't make sense. So depending on the content or what you're doing, it's not necessary that it is not necessary to have a daily update or even a weekly update.
So it depends with what you're conceiving there. And those are some ways you could do it with splitting the channel. That's great. As I'm listening to you you've been through a lot. Okay. You did your software engineering and you created this whole thing with social media, and you made a ton of mistakes that you had to either pay for or work through or anything else.
Can you give us your biggest mistake and how you worked through it? Yes, or perhaps my biggest regret when we look at framed and what I'm talking about, the kernel of the book is saying I stumbled into the Instagram growth space right before its heyday. I learned all the techniques needed on the software systems automation.
API hacking. I learned everything technical that I needed to know. We picked up all the business parts as we went. If my book is to be believed, and I'm not a liar about my, profit margin, about the customers, about the conversions, about the stickiness, my biggest regret has to be not just quitting my day job.
And going all in on shark social. Finding out years later that our competitors were making 10 times as much per month would've been the difference between me not having to work today and me still working today. So it has to be saying that I was doing almost everything at the same level. We had the search engine optimization, we had, everything was good.
But we actually just didn't have the maturity to know how big the pie was, and we didn't go. A team of three of us, all of us were doing other things and we just never really went into it. The benefit maybe to everyone listening now is that. You got a book out of it and it's very unlikely that I face legal action because I was such a small player and it happened so many years ago.
But that's definitely one regret we have to look at in that it was a mistake. We were naive and we were blinded by, money that was paying our rent when we were 23 years old. Do you ever think about going back into that realm? I. I do. And there have been some temptations where there's this difference between easy money and some of these newfangled, oh, we'll do AI for this and AI for that.
What people don't realize in a lot of these zero to one businesses, meaning you're creating a new business segment, you're doing actual innovation. It's very hard and it takes a lot of money. When you're in this gray area terms of service violation space, there is a high risk of just outright failure, but the cost.
It is relatively low and people like me working on a small team can do it in a bootstrapped manner, meaning we don't need to raise money. We could just start it up and see what sticks. So I still am tempted to do it even though in the Instagram space, it's really not possible. Right now it seems it's most common on LinkedIn actually. People have approached me and said, Hey, do you wanna do this and that? And I said, yeah, it would be quite, quite ironic for me to have written the book in the way I did and then to just be doing the shady stuff on the side. But I think it's a matter of like when times are rough.
If it is a time of famine and I really needed to eat, so to speak that is where I would go. And that's where I think we see some of the smartest people who maybe are willing to compromise their values and risk, take legal risks because it is quite profitable for what you are risking and you're not creating the next Facebook.
You're just creating a really useful tool that essentially leeches off one of these platforms. Okay. Okay so let's bring this podcast full circle. Looking ahead, what habits should we build now to ensure our networking efforts are rooted in trust and not just technology? Getting to know the person on the other end of the screen is really important.
And for me, I can give the evidence of. Promoting the book, doing podcast appearances. Treating people like humans rather than sales leads is really important. Taking the extra few minutes to get to know them and to read their work is is paramount. For me, I've pitched my book to everyone from scoundrels, who I used to work with, to journalists, and also to academics.
I've had relative success in every one of these realms of pitching the book to people and even getting good feedback on the book. But when you're pitching an academic, sometimes you have to actually read their paper, and that's not a five minute thing. So it's saying if you believe in what you're doing, what you're selling, perhaps.
It means actually taking the time to know who's on the other side of the screen. And that means respecting their feelings, but it also means reaching a much greater understanding of what they're bringing to the table and why the outreach is even relevant to them. That's great, Tim I can probably talk to you for another two hours because it's so interesting in what you're saying.
But due to time restraints we cannot do it. But how can somebody get hold of you? What's the best way for them to get hold of you either to ask a question for your book or wanna know more about you? How can they do it? I'm on LinkedIn, one of the few platforms where I have no restrictions. So I'm Tim O'Hern on LinkedIn.
Everyone looking to read my book or learn more about it. It is listed on Amazon. So framed a villains perspective on social media ebook as well as paperback, and the audiobook is coming later this summer. Okay. That's great. Tim, again, thank you very much for coming on my podcast. I hope everybody listening, actually listen to the podcast, pick up his book, read it, and maybe you might learn something about social media.
Okay, so Tim, have a great day. Thanks Michael.
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A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
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Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website michaelaforman.com/podcasts.
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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