to networking unleashed building profitable
connections. Come to the show folks. I'm your host Michael Foreman and you're
sitting to the podcast where networking is more than just an awkward handshake and
bad coffee. Yes, it's an art and a talent. But here's the twist. It's an art and talent
you can actually learn. Yes, even if you're the person hiding at every event
pretending to check emails. It's a game changer. When you get good at it, you'll
want to get it start sooner. More connections, more opportunities and more
profits. It's like unlocking a cheat code for life. So whether you're the life
of the party or just the let me stay at home and text type, we've got something
for you. So stick around. Let's turn those awkward small talk moments into big
wins. And I have he he's quite an interesting young man. He's 29 years
old. First of all, his name is Victor. Victor Katrina. He's 29 years old and he
runs ready for this a seven figure coaching business. Now you might want to
know how he got here. Well, he's teaching YouTube automation. I'm
doing amazing Michael. Thank you so much for having the show. Great. So listen,
Victor, tell me it up with a brief bio of yourself. Why don't you tell me what
you're up to? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting time. I've gone through a
lot of businesses like you mentioned and it's kind of led me up to where I am
now and I indulge a little bit more when I get into my story. But
realistically, yeah, I've gone to the point where I've really built this
coaching company. I've been able to make some massive impact influence a lot of
people, help a lot of people to generate income on the side or replace their
incomes with this YouTube business model. And it's really gone to the point
where I see massive vision, massive opportunity for the future where I could
really now go from, you know, hundreds to thousands of people and so on so forth.
So yeah, if you want to know what the future looks like, I really think it's
just continuing to do what I'm already really good at and what I'm seeing a
lot of impact on, which is just continuing this coaching company.
Well, that's an interesting segue because I want to know how you increasingly
digital. How do we build genuine connections?
We're a digital world. Now, I teach networking, networking events, feel the
vibe of the room, the vibe of the person, but how is it done digitally?
Good question. I mean, that's the big issue that's happening with the
evolution of the digital space is that the more connected we become, we
actually become more separated because the larger these networks get of these
conglomerates of people, the more difficult it is to connect everyone
because everyone's in their own continent and the influence of the world.
Now, what we do specifically in our community with our students is that we
have these live group settings. So these group calls have multiple purposes,
number one, of course, to be able to dissect everyone's YouTube channels and
analyze the statistics and strategy. But number two is to really bring people
together. So we have around nine group calls every single week with all of our
students. And that kind of opens up the doors for all the students to come
together to get to know each other on a face-to-face basis. Everyone has their
cameras on, everyone's engaging. And that in turn builds a lot of genuine
relationships. We've seen business partnerships come out of this and just
friendships and people connecting. I had some people meet up in person. The
requirement that we have where people have to show up to these calls has
actually opened up the digital space and brought it more into the material
plane, which is very cool. That's very cool. It's great the way that you're
bringing together, because across the YouTube channels and the way that you
bring the classroom setting, but you're teaching that one-on-one, which is so
important with the networking and networking world. Can you share a
specific example of a strategic networking relationship that impacted your
business? Yeah, I mean it would have to be, it was an intentional relationship,
which was actually me seeking mentorship. So me seeking mentorship directly
was how I was able to be under the influence of someone who had what I
wanted, right? They'd already gone through the process of building a seven-a-figure
coaching business. So I think that kind of strategic connection and relationship
was somebody who had the influence and the knowledge that I needed. And that's
just really the power of connecting with other people who have that influence or
knowledge base that you need, because they're able to really accelerate that
entire process. They have the roadmap, right? They know exactly what to do and
more importantly what not to do, which is very very important to learn from
other people's failures. But I'd have to say really I think it was my first
mentor who I hired and he was able to really streamline the entire process
and more or less open up my eyes and I was able to see things in a completely
different light and I was able to prioritize different things and focus
on the highest leverage levers that I had to pull to make the highest impact in
my business and with my community as well, which is a huge impact there. So I'd
have to say directly it was mentorship. So important with what we do. We handle
networking from different sides, but it's so important to find that person
or people to mentor you because listen, let's face facts, we don't know
everything, right? And we're trying to get as much knowledge as possible, so why
not go to somebody that has that knowledge and let us help us? So that's
very good. Some of the key elements, what are the key elements that you have for
effective communication with professional networking?
I think it really boils down to intentional question asking. Everything
comes down to how effective you can be in the communication through questions,
seeking to understand. We kind of emphasized it before, like we don't
know what we don't know. And so through intentional question asking, we're able to
harness other people's knowledge and then again, through effective application, use
that for our own instances and businesses. And so I think the most power comes
from your ability to ask the right questions. Asking questions in general
is a great thing, but how effective your question asking is really going to
influence the output that you get from any interaction with someone who you
want to have influence from or gain knowledge from. I think that's
kind of my opinion. That's great. Okay, so how would you recommend that somebody
who is afraid of networking, how do they go out there, jump in the game and
say, look, for my business, I need to network and I need to get my word out
there or I need to go out and find a mentor, but I'm afraid of going out there
and beginning my networking strategy. How would you recommend that a person does
that? Yeah, great question. I mean, if you are really introverted and you have
money, I would just go directly and pay someone and just have them teach you.
You know, if you want to gain the respect and trust of a mentor to have them
come to you or, you know, build some sort of relationship where they can be
influencing you and teaching you, I think there needs to be an exchange of value.
That's just my opinion. I really think that if you want someone to invest into
you, there needs to be some sort of mutual exchange. You just have to show
that you've done your due diligence. So by that, I mean spending the time, you
know, the private victories, like spending time to actually educate yourself, to
really just level up your knowledge base, to feel, to come to a place where if you
have a conversation with somebody that you want to be influenced by or taught by,
that you can actually hold a conversation and that requires you to go into the
darkness and spend time there to just educate yourself, read the books that
they're reading, right? Watch the videos that they're watching, read the articles
that they're reading, like basically at least have a way to connect with them on
a level where you're not just completely in the dark when they say things and you
have this mutual connection and you can relate and relay off of their
conversations. They will feel that you've done your due diligence and you're at
least in a place where you are privy and subject to their teachings versus if you
come and you're completely in the dark and you haven't done any work and they're
trying to give you information, they're not going to be as interested to be
vested in you if they haven't seen you've done anything. But if you've done some
due diligence or a lot of due diligence, it's going to give them a lot more
reasoning and desire to spend an input there at the time.
That's great. You know, when we first began the podcast, you spoke of failures, how
you really look at failures more so than what you've done well. So give me an
example or two of your major failures and you found a way to overcome it.
Yeah, you're absolutely right and that's something I love to emphasize is the power
of failure and I think it's really just something that's not emphasized enough.
It's such a thing that people are fearful of, I mean naturally failure, but
really it's such a building block to success. Success is not a straight road
as anyone who's been successful would tell you. So one thing just kind of an
analogy I like to bring up and I think it was from Mozi who brought this up but
every single failure acts kind of like a bridge that you're building across.
You have this river, this rocky river and you want to build a bridge across and so
each business that you have is like a stone that you place which eventually
failure after failure after failure. People look at it like the last brick was
late and that was the successful business and every other business was
irrelevant and not necessary but in reality each one was that building block
that led to the evolution and building of that bridge that got you there.
So all these failures really do act as prerequisites and fundamental knowledge
and so much like theory and application that's done through these failures that
you don't know when it's going to be used until the final thing, one thing that
finally takes off and that's kind of how it was for me. So I had all these
multiple businesses that I tried and I failed one and then I failed the next and
then the next but each one I learned something. I learned web design, I learned
ads, I learned something and each of these skill sets on their own didn't serve a
purpose but then finally I built a marketing agency where I needed all
those skill sets and they just came in perfectly because I just I had built
them and I was knowledgeable in them and I was able to scale my first company to
30,000 a month from never having seen really any money in any other business.
So I could have looked at it like wow I should have just done marketing this
whole time but I would have never made that money if it wasn't for everything
else that built up these skill sets. So that's kind of why I see this as
definitely the necessity, not for everyone maybe it's just me and a lot of people that
I know as well, failure but it's a powerful thing that you can really
harness because number one it's going to teach you a lot about yourself and
number two is going to build a massive amount of resilience if you allow it to.
It can tear you down or it can build you up and you just have to always look at
failure as an opportunity to go into the next thing or just grow. I truly
believe that failure is there for a reason to teach your lesson not to tear
you down typically and so the last thing there too is like failure is only when
you stop there's no such thing as failure until you quit that's the
definition of failure so no one really fails until they give up. That's
exactly the story where a gentleman had a pencil company and while he did
was make pencils and one of his workers said how difficult is this? I can make a pencil,
I can make the eraser, I can make the lead, I can go into business for myself.
Wait a second he's not paying me enough to do what I do I think I'm
just gonna quit or I want a piece of his profits and he brings it to the owner
and the owner said well you're talking about this business but what about all
my years of looking up how to do the business and all the money I lost after
doing the business so you're not looking at how I got here you're looking at once
I got here and that opened his eyes and said well you know what maybe he's right
okay what would you say you built up a lot of networking relationships how do
you stay in touch with them?
Yeah first of all I just want to say that was a great story it's definitely a
perfect example of why you know employees and business owners are paid
differently you know entrepreneurs are taking on a different level of risk that
the employees aren't and that's just you know risk compensation differences
we'll call it you know but yeah that's a great story how do we nurture
relationships I mean it's an active effort just like anything just like
nurturing relationships with your family and your friends it's just keeping a
close eye on your network so I have a pretty large network myself with some
pretty high-level entrepreneurs and I want to make sure I stay in touch what I
do really well is that I'm able to provide enough value through the
interactions that I have and they also know I'm very very busy so you know I do
make it known that I'm alive of course I post actively and stuff like this and
so they know I'm there and I try and just engage with them as well so social
media does really help kind of keep an eye on each other and kind of bump each
other a little bit so I like their stuff or I'll comment on their posts and then
vice versa so we don't actually have to have too many conversations to keep in
touch unless again it seems like there's a good vibe going on and we can kind of
find some mutual exchange then we kind of have some more active conversations but
I love to have connection calls with people I'll find an entrepreneur I'll
reach out and just say hey seems like we're in the same space love to just
get on a call see if we can exchange some value that is a great way to for me to
just kind of break that first barrier and if I feel like there's just more that
needs to be said and more conversations to be had we of course book more
otherwise is that like kind of small little I got on Facebook he used to be
like this person poked you they're just like keeping pokes on each other to let
each other know you're still thinking of each other and that's just how I keep
my relationships more or less active because it's difficult to maintain a
lot of relationships while still running the business we have hundreds of
students it's definitely a lot of conversations and then my have to keep
my girlfriend very very busy as well so that's an important one very important
always keep them happy yes within the networking world if there's a saying
that's very important if they like you and trust you they'll do business with
you right it becomes like okay yeah everybody does that well let's break it
down just a little bit further if to know you well everybody knows you because
you're out there and they see you now they like you well that's a different
story because not as many people are gonna like you as know you right easy
part of the three but trust you that trust factor is a major factor have to
build that trust in whatever time that you have now I talk about networking
events about how you have 30 seconds to build up that trust but you may have
five minutes on a on a phone call on a podcast whatever the case may be but you
need to build up that level of trust before you go any further so that level
of trust is it's crucial okay let's bring this to a different a little
inundating for an introvert it'll basically crush them but do you have
any tips or tricks that you use when you go to a networking event yeah I mean a
couple things great question a couple things you can do number one going back
to the original statement I made come prepared you know come prepared to have
conversation topics to be able to relate to people and levels really do do
diligence as well I go find out who's gonna be at that seminar and again
try and study their life a lot of times you can see what people are what they're
reading on social media what they're watching what was their political
opinions right educate yourself so you can have these initial conversations and
break the ice really easily so that's a diff that's a whole different level of
diligence is going and stalking people but it actually pays dividends it's a
crazy crazy way to just be proactive versus reactive really and secondly you
coming with someone really helps to you know if you come with a friend a best
friend or your partner or something you having someone else there that can just
push you a little bit from behind and say hey I know we're both terrified but
if you go together it won't be as intimidating so I really think yet
double-teaming it could be in a great way to overcome some of the initial fear
and then again coming prepared as a friend agree with you if you're an introvert
you need that person you need now I'm from the Air Force so I use an Air Force
term wingman and kind of push you when you need to be pushed but if you're an
extrovert if you're going out to do networking I always suggest go alone
don't go with somebody you don't want to use that crutch or you know if you if
you find a little weld in the excitement you're going to speak with that
person and take your mind away from networking when you're networking yet
be focused you have to treat it like it's a job and you have to be organized
that's intact and when you're keeping in touch with your relationships I would
suggest using a CRM because that way you can organize all of your
relationships so to bring this down a little bit give me a little tip that you
would give someone that like to improve their networking or sales skills okay
on someone trying to improve their networking I want us to speak one last
thing because the last point you made is really really intelligent to have this
CRM so what I have done for myself is I built a Rolodex and I did that actually
on chat GPT so basically when I have connection calls with people I because
you can go into chat GPT you can say something and you can say can you please
store this in your memory bank so I'd say this is the person and this is all
their qualities what they do for business their annual income any connections
that they have what they're good at and what they might need help on and you
just fill up that Rolodex and then I can pull it up at any time and populate it
and say I know this person who has this is anyone in my network able to help him
with this problem and it can sift through all those people and if you want to
kind of create that connection with somebody it's really easy to just
happen to say is so very important because one thing I stress is whenever
you go to one of these networking events you're looking to give not receive how
can you put two people together and you can bow out gracefully all you're doing
is putting them together so one of the things that I always recommend whenever
you get that person that prospective client you say to him I like you I like
how you do business how can I make you more successful how can I be good
referral source for you but you always look to give not receive so after
after everything we've discussed what's your favorite meeting again you kind of
kind of marketing tactic for what specifically marketing myself for my
business or your choice your business for my business specifically again being
social media based we like long form is I can't stress the importance of long
form with anything so we do short form with Instagram we do long form
marketing obviously through YouTube and it's statistically proven long form
will convert at a 30 to 60 percent rate higher than short form just because
people are able to spend more time with you on that content the longer they
spend watching you the more authority that you build the more you can
edify yourself and the more trust is built so by far you know long form
content is always going to be the winner is always king and then of course in
person is the best but it's just you can't multiply in person as much as you
know a video that can be sent out to millions of people at the same time so
that's one thing but if I have to of course in person is on absolutely
unshakable after that would have to be long form content because it's getting
long form and podcasts podcast is really nice too because the longer they can
spend with somebody the more they get to like know and trust them is really the
essence that's the essence of networking it really is how you slice it to know you
like to trust you that's how they're gonna do business with you okay yeah one
takeaway from everything we said that somebody within my audience can use
tomorrow what can they do yeah I think you said it before I did and I'm so happy
you did it's such a beautiful thing you said and that the supplies way beyond
networking way beyond business is life in general it's not about what we get
it's about what we give like you said it so beautifully and if you use that and
allow it to transcend into everything that you do especially business and
networking you'll be extremely successful you know so I do the exact same thing and
I ask a very similar set of questions which is you know once you've gone
through introducing each other like how can I be of service like how can I how
can I provide some value I want to just do something you know and that genuine
kind of without any expectation in return just very kind of altruistic
emotional you know messaging goes such a long way because people especially
people who have something to give if they're an eight figure entrepreneur or
something you're trying to connect with them a lot of people think when you want
to connect with them they want to leech off of you these people think that people
want to leech off of them and so when you are that one person that comes to them
and does the opposite wants to provide value and wants to give he usually takes
people off of there's not what people expect it's not what these entrepreneurs
and people expect and that's a beautiful thing to be that one person who just
when everyone goes left you go right so you set it perfectly and that's probably
the biggest takeaway when it comes to networking and it's a combination of the
two which is coming prepared because you can't just say I'm gonna give value and
have nothing offer right so that second part is the byproduct of the first so
really has to be due diligence is being intentional about educating yourself
putting yourself having the right kind of knowledge base so networking books is
great leadership books are amazing to read you know business acumen books are
incredible mindset books and just spending some time with yourself and
reflecting on learning like figure out who you are and just getting a good grip
on who you are so a lot of personal development has to go into networking I
don't think you can do effective networking if you haven't done effective
self-development that's part one then part two good value that's perfect Victor
I can't tell you this whole session was because you showed us what after you have
made it as a seven-figure entrepreneur moving it to a YouTube and showing
people how to do a YouTube company and everything else you're showing us network
why you've networked and so this is all been fantastic if somebody wanted to get
hold of you or wanted to hire or hire your company how would they do it
yeah my primary place for communication would be Instagram it's my full name so
Victor Katrina Katrina with a C would be the way to find me and it's YouTube
automation is what it's actually called and what's really cool and unique about
it is that we're able to create videos without showing our face or creating the
videos ourselves the essence and the beauty of the business is that we don't
create the videos we actually delegate that entire creation process out to
freelancers we use AI to create these videos and then when we create these
videos we post them and accumulate hundreds and thousands of millions of
views and then the ads they get placed on our videos and every time as an ad
that's played YouTube compensates us which is a really interesting business
model because again going back to the introverted people you know a lot of
introverted people don't want to show their face or put themselves out there
this is a really unique business model that's brought a lot of people who are
just afraid of the traditional business into business and able to make a lot of
money so it's a lot of introverted people let's just say it's a it's a hot
business model for them and it's it's opened up a lot of doors for people it's
a very interesting business model but yeah if you guys are interested in
learning a little bit more about it I do offer consultations and discovery calls
if you're at all interested in learning more so just message me on Instagram we
can set up a call see if it's a fit and go from there thank you very much this
has been wonderful Michael thank you so much been pleasure
well that's a wrap folks a huge thank you to our special guest 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 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 enjoyed
this episode 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 YouTube or my website
Michael A. Foreman doc remember until next time keep practicing keep connecting
and keep building those relationships this is Michael A. Foreman signing off
take care and happy networking