Hello and welcome to Networking Unleashed, Building Profitable Collections.
Yes, welcome to the show folks.
I'm your host, Michael Foreman, and you're listening to the podcast where networking
is more than just awkward handshakes and bad coffee.
It's an art and a talent.
Yes, but here's the twist.
It's an art and a talent you can actually learn.
Yes, even if you're the person hiding in the corner at every event pretending to check
his emails.
Work isn't just a nice play nice skill to have.
It's a game changer.
When you get good at it, you'll wonder why you didn't start sooner.
More connections, more opportunities, more profits.
It's like unlocking a cheat code for life.
So whether you're the life of the party or the let me just stay home and text type, we've
got something for you.
Stick around.
Let's turn those awkward small talk moments into big wins.
Now I've got a great guest today.
His name is Josh.
I'm going to let him introduce himself, but let me give you a little bit beforehand.
He grew up in a divorce family.
Money was always a negative topic.
He received a degree in actuarial science, and then he discovered that financial advisors
are in sales and really don't know the ins and outs of investing.
That's when he made it his mission to educate Americans on the best ways to grow their wealth.
Josh, welcome.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me, Michael.
Happy to be on the show.
Great.
Listen, I'm very glad to have you here.
I see that we both come from divorce families and we both made our way to better ourselves.
Let's say talking about networking, how would you approach building genuine relationships,
genuine connections with a world that's increasingly digital?
Yeah, that's the tough part.
Most people don't want to leave their house nowadays to go to events.
I'm actually one of those folks.
I'd rather stay home than go to events rather than focusing on putting myself in positions
that I don't thrive in.
I have figured out ways to put myself into environments where I could be my best self.
When you are your best self, that's when you shine, when you meet people, you're in a better
mood, you're more open to meeting new people.
It definitely opens things up.
Such as I started a podcast and I invite people that I think are going to be cool on the podcast,
such as yourself.
That's one way I can meet people.
I like to play golf, so I'll sign up as a single and I'll get paired with a random person
and we'll be stuck out on the golf course for a few hours.
That's another way to meet people.
As well as I've been working really hard to figure out how do you share your message with
the world, which is scary, hopping on a camera, being vulnerable, and figuring out how to
attract the right people rather than doing what a lot of people do is just bang the phones,
getting LinkedIn messages, bang social media messages and see who responds.
I see.
And you're really talking about being an introvert as opposed to an extrovert.
You know, an extrovert really, such as myself, I love going out to the places to network,
to meet the people.
The more people I meet, the better.
And there's a way to handle that.
If you're an introvert, I call that a wingman, but I'll go into that later on.
What do you think is the key element for effective professional network?
The key is not to expect anything from anyone, meaning you need to reach out to people like
genuinely, like people who you genuinely want to meet.
And it doesn't have to be just for business.
It could be in other facets of your life because if you just focus on business for 10 years
and you're like, I don't want to make any new friends.
I don't want to focus on anything else.
I'm going to be straight business for 10 years.
You're going to limit the amount of opportunities that you'll have in the future because you're
not nurturing relationships.
You're not creating other connections outside the business world, which you never know when
someone's going to call you up one day that you weren't even, you haven't even really talked
about business other than they know what you do.
They like you.
And then eventually you get that phone call.
Hey, I have a friend.
Hey, I need help with this.
I know you've been doing this for a while.
And it is in the short run, it could help someone get better results.
However, this is a marathon game and doing short term activities that have short term
results is a recipe for a calamity in the future.
So if I understand it correctly, which I usually do, first of all, you have to be yourself.
Don't try to be somebody else, but don't limit yourself to business activities because you
don't know because a friend of yours, you're not just talking to a friend.
You're talking to your friends network of people.
So even though you may not do business with your friend, you're doing business with his
friends and so on.
So you can't really cut yourself short.
You want to just, you want to make as many friends business or otherwise as possible.
Okay, so the biggest question.
Listen, you've been around the horn quite a bit.
What mistakes have you made and how did you overcome them?
In terms of networking?
In terms of networking, but this is precise.
Probably the biggest one was not believing in myself because when I left corporate America
and I didn't have a big company name behind me, I felt that my age would deter people
from working with me.
So I attempted to partner with people who were older.
So that way, if I ever got the objection, well, how long have you been doing this for?
I could say, listen, I've been doing this for X amount of years.
I partner with this person.
They've been doing it for X plus years.
So we have a whole team here.
I felt that was a good, a good cheat code.
Hey, like, I know what my downfall is.
People are going to ask how old I am.
How long have you been doing this for?
What are your credentials?
So I wanted to eliminate that.
Now I realize that no one really cared.
It was just something that I created in my head.
There are people who have those check marks that they want when they work with someone,
especially in the financial industry.
And I've learned that those are the sort of folks that are not my person that I want to
work with.
So I would say that was probably the biggest mistake, was just not having the confidence
and not believing I could do it on my own because I wanted to be part of a team.
And unfortunately, I struck out on all three partnerships I attempted to do.
That's all right, but you really proved yourself by having confidence in yourself.
And that's really the number one thing you have to remember when it comes to networking.
You have to be confident.
If you're confident in yourself, then you go out and you conquer the world.
But it starts with that confidence.
Trust is crucial, especially when you're dealing with finances.
But how would you establish and maintain a relationship with your fellow professionals?
Like the people that I used to work with?
Or like people in the financial industry?
People you work with, yeah.
Oh, like current clients or prospects?
Is that what you're talking about?
Exactly.
How would you stay in contact, stay top of mind?
But how do you maintain that relationship?
How can you create that authentic relationship and keep top of mind within your clients?
So what I feel like nowadays, and I've been told I'm stupid for doing a lot of the things
that I'm currently doing, and whenever someone tells me I can't do something, I just say
to myself, I've been hearing this for a long time.
So I'm just going to continue on this road and see what happens.
I would rather bet on myself and be wrong than take the advice from someone else and
be wrong.
That way I can hold myself accountable.
So what I feel like now in 2025 is if you are in business, the new cold call is social
media, posting a video, making a post, doing a picture.
You never know who's going to see it.
And even if you're getting no likes and no comments, when I went out for lunch with a
friend that I hadn't seen in a few years, he actually brought up, he's, I see all of
your posts, and I've never seen this person like it or comment it one time.
And you just never know who's watching.
Not all of the analytics online are going to tell you the full story.
So I mean, if you don't like cold calling, whip out your phone and just start talking
and post it and based on people's likes, interests, you know, you'll show up in the right people's
feed and you'll be top of mind in that sort of capacity.
So I mean, that's sort of my new age cold call strategy, just because cold calling for
me is something that is, I don't really enjoy doing it.
I can do it.
I'm pretty good at it.
However, right now I feel like if you create a video, you post the video, that video's
out there.
So when you get on a call with someone, they're like, Hey, like, I have a question about this.
Now you can send them a video.
You don't have to say the same thing a thousand times when you get the same question.
So you can start to make videos based on your questions.
You send, now you're working asynchronously to help you focus on working on the business
versus consistently in the business.
That's you bring up a very good point.
You're brought up a few very good points.
I'm just going to try to dissect this a little bit.
Yeah, let's break it down.
So really what you're talking about is an, again, is an introvert versus an extrovert.
First of all, nobody likes to do sales calls.
Nobody likes to do cold calls, let alone sales calls.
But in lieu of doing the cold calls by putting out those videos, you're not having to talk
to those people by putting a post through LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook.
You don't have to do those cold calls.
You're letting them, everybody see them.
And if they want, they're going to contact you.
So you're cutting out the middleman.
You're just allowing them to reach out to you and you can answer an introvert extrovert
doesn't make a difference.
When somebody approaches you, then it's 100% difference than if you just reached your hand
out to them.
So it works out very well.
So you know, and that's what you try to do with videos with email marketing.
There's a way that you attach a video in that email and you can send that email out.
There's a thousand different ways of you to market yourself.
But with social media, it's that much more, it's the easier.
Yet it's difficult because there are so many people out there doing social media.
But let's revert back to the networking event.
Okay.
A large scale gathering and it can really be overwhelming.
Do you have any tips for somebody if they went to a conference or a seminar like that?
What I like to do is typically find the person that no one's talking to first.
I find the person standing by themselves.
Probably that person who's a little shy.
I'm not shy.
I've actually read, I mean, there's like people who are like extroverted of the life of the
party, the class clown, and there's people who are a little bit more quiet.
I'm introverted in the sense where I recharge, I don't just talk for the sake of talking,
but I'm like extroverted, meaning I can sit in a coffee shop, not talk to anyone.
I feel energized.
So typically I like to start off by finding the person no one's talking to.
I was like, let me just go talk to this person and be like, hey, no one's talking to you.
Is there any, any reason why?
No, just haven't been, haven't started talking to anyone yet.
You're the first person.
And then boom, break the ice and see where it goes.
And that way you can get your lips and your tongue and all the mouth muscles moving and
working a little bit.
You know, there's a way I always suggest people join their Chamber of Commerce and go to that
meeting every week because it will help you tailor your message.
And they have their after hours meetings and usually the same people plus maybe five go
to those meetings.
And if you're going to those meetings and you see a wolf flower as you put it and you
walk up to them, don't just start talking to them.
But when you walk up to them and say, you know, what do you do?
How are you whenever?
Say, well, you know, I do graphic design or I do marketing.
Say you know something that table over there is filled with marketing people or graphic
designers or people that use graphic design.
Let me introduce you to them.
So you walk over, you walk them over, you introduce them and you back away.
You let them talk.
So you've done your part.
You've now elevated your process because our follow much more in that person's world.
Every event that they go to, they're going to remember you for doing that.
And it's very important.
Okay.
So what would you say is an essential skill?
What's an essential tip you would give for somebody looking to improve their networking
or sales skills?
What I'm working on now is figuring out how to remain present as possible with every activity
that I'm doing.
So like right now we're on this podcast, we're on Michael's podcast.
Nothing else matters.
There are no problems.
We're just here.
So whenever you're with someone, you have to work on and it's hard like focusing and
really engaging with each person because you never know when that person may come back
up.
You never know what it may or may not lead to.
However, if you are a jerk or if you rub someone the wrong way, you're guaranteed it to be
a shut door, a shut opportunity within the first, what is it, a couple seconds, you could
just basically boom.
The person's like, yeah, I don't, I'm never going to talk to that person ever again.
So that's what I'm working on is remaining present.
And what's really helped me is to make sure you're asking very thoughtful, open-ended
questions that help lead the conversation to where someone like walks away as well.
That was the best conversation I had at this event.
So that's what I'm working on.
It's a consistent journey.
You could always be working on it.
You could always refine your skills in it.
It's something that you don't just get good at.
That's it.
You've established what you have to work on.
So but let's change it around a little bit.
What's your favorite marketing tactic?
My favorite marketing tactic is actually, I've recently started just spending more money
on marketing.
So getting more paid leads, doing more, I'll do like a post on social media.
And if it hits a certain amount of reach, I'll then put some money behind it to see if it
can gain some traction.
And then from there, if anyone follows, send them a message like, hey, Michael, thanks
for the follow.
I do XYZ.
If there's any sort of content you want to see, just let me know and I'll make a video
for you.
And then I just see what they say.
Some people just hard it.
Some people you see, they read it.
They didn't respond.
Some people are like, hey, like I found your page.
Like it really resonated with me.
And then you see where the conversation goes and you put them in a little folder and say,
hey, like lead or opportunity.
And then you just start filling out the pipeline.
But that sounds fair.
Okay.
So let's round this whole thing out.
And I want you to give me one takeaway that my audience can use today to further their
networking skills.
I would say the one of the highest value skills anyone can have is public speaking.
So being able to speak and not stutter, not get so nervous that you pause and then you
freak out and then you forget everything you're going to say.
And by just talking to a camera by yourself, watching the recordings, you don't even have
to post the video if you're too scared and just watching yourself back and taking notes,
like actually writing it down.
Like I have a notepad that I like actually write down because if you write it down and
you're taking notes, now you're like instilling it into your mind.
So reach out to someone, get on a podcast or just five minutes a day, talk to a camera
and you could literally read a book or read anything.
And one of the things of becoming a new parent is every time at bedtime, I'm reading the
same books over and over.
And if you ask someone, hey, Michael, how do you feel about reading Jack and the Beanstalk
again for the 12th night in a row?
It could be like, oh, I'm tired of this book.
Well, I look at it as I'm practicing, talking out loud.
I'm practicing having the same positive energy every time I read the book.
And I think to myself, now I know why some famous musicians freak out on people when they've
sang the same song a bit Julian Times because they're just like sick of it.
However, when you're a performer or you're in business for yourself, you always have
to be on your game.
There's no minutes off.
You never know where that opportunity may be.
You could be in a line in the grocery store, you got your shirt on with your logo and
someone's, oh, what is that?
Boom.
You're in a sales call and you didn't even say anything.
And it's true because no matter where you are, you can always, you're marketing yourself,
but it's very interesting because when my boys were younger and my wife and I would tag team
reading to them.
And of course, I read the same books 150 times.
It didn't make a difference, but they loved it.
But what I would do is I would change the way that I spoke of each of the characters
and I would create a different voice for those characters.
And I would get better and better.
My first started, I was hard.
I, you know, but they didn't know it.
They thought it was great.
The kids don't care.
They don't know.
They don't care.
They don't.
What I knew and I got better.
So I know exactly what you're talking about.
That's the greatest way to practice is just to, I always say, start doing it regardless.
Listen, the first time you go out to a networking event or network or market, you're going to
suck.
There's no two ways about it.
But the next time you go out, then the next time you get better and better.
Like I said in the beginning, networking is a skill and you have to practice, practice,
practice in order to get better.
And I'm sure you'll do it.
You'll get better.
You're getting better already.
I can see that I read.
I'll tell you, Josh, if somebody wanted to get hold of you, wanted your services or learn
more about you, how would they do it?
Just Google Joshua Kraftjic and find my website, find LinkedIn, Instagram, whichever is your
preferred way of learning your website.
What's your website?
369financial.com.
Okay.
That's better.
Okay.
So that's the way once you articulate exactly where you want them to go, they will go.
So that's great.
Do you want to add anything else?
The key to anything is just showing up.
So if you're scared of networking, just show up to the event.
Don't even talk to anyone.
Be like, all right, I went.
Now the next time you go be like, all right, I'm going to talk to one person.
Okay.
That wasn't so bad.
And then just build it up from there.
You don't have to pay thousands of dollars, go to a huge conference and then become overwhelmed
like the first time you walk into Costco.
You're like, this place is huge.
Where do I start?
That's what I said.
Join a Chamber of Commerce or go as a guest because they are very small meetings and you
don't have to say much.
But each week you practice it and you get better and you go to after hours of it, you
get better.
And before you know it, you're a networker.
You're networking.
Josh, this has been great.
I thank you so much for coming on the podcast and we'll talk soon.
Awesome.
Thanks everyone.
We'll see you next time.
Thanks, Michael.
Well, that's a wrap, folks.
A huge thank you to our special 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.
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, MichaelAformand.com.
Remember, until next time, keep practicing, keep connecting and keep building those relationships.
This is Michael A. Formand signing off.
Take care and happy networking.