Hello, and welcome to Networking Unleashed, building
profitable connections. Welcome back 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.
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
in the corner at every event and pretending to
check emails. Networking isn't just a nice skill
to have, it's a game changer. And 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 just, let me just stay in a corner or
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. Now, my guest
today is Dima Rakeda. Yeah. Okay. And he is,
he is. an incredible, incredible guest. He's
a world -class expert in reputation management,
digital marketing, and international business
development. He's a member of the Forbes Business
Development Council and a two -time winner of
the Stevie Awards. And without further ado, let
me introduce Dima and let him tell you a little
bit more about his background. Dima, welcome
to the show. Thank you so much for having me
at your show. I'm very pleased. Yeah. My name
is Dima Raketa. Yes. And I'm over 15 years enhancing
and developing different companies all over the
world. My journey has started from the Hong Kong.
Actually, there I have established my consultancy
for different startups to help them. to get into
the acceleration programs or incubation programs.
And I have found very good people there who met
me with the world of reputation management. I
was... Honestly, when I first time heard about
the reputation management, I thought, who cares
about what do people say in Google? Who cares
about what do people say in comments in YouTube
and so on? But suddenly I have found very big
world of reputation. Now there are approximately
250 different websites and platforms where people
can leave comments. where people can share their
opinion, share their view, and they discuss.
And suddenly I have found that big companies,
they use special tools like social media listening
to know the voice of their customers, users,
and their clients. And this is incredibly interesting
because you can find a lot of things. For example,
when you work at the company, you think that
you create a good product, your customers are
satisfied, your employers are satisfied with
their work. But when you run social media listening,
you see how do people all over the world perceive
you, your company, and even what do your employers
write in LinkedIn or Facebook about working in
your company. many, many people start to be at
least maybe disgusted or disappointed because
the picture is not quite different. It has a
huge difference. And that's why already for eight
years, I worked in reputation management and
I have found a lot of interesting cases with
big companies, different brands, personas, sportsmen.
Cinema, movie actors, and so on. Yeah. Also,
my key expertise, I'm keen on raising companies
from zero to one. I'm not interested in doing
something routine, you know, operational works
and so on. I'm happy to convert idea in a working
business model. That's my passion. Very good.
Sounds like quite an extensive background you
have. Let me just start with, give me what role?
Has networking played in your success across
management, digital marketing, and international
business? I will tell you the story. It was 2017
or 18 or something like that. I came to Hong
Kong and even those times, I already understood
that I have to be impressive. I have to leave
a print. in the mind of the people which I met
and so on. But dressing red colors is not enough,
honestly. That's why I was bringing some special
presents in my backpack. It was caviar, it was
vodka, and it was incredible sensitive presents
for people whom I met. And during one of the
conference in Hong Kong, It was something around
something about blockchain or something like
that. I have met guys second time or maybe third
time who was greeting me from the entrance saying,
oh, there's Dima. He has some vodka. Let's talk
to him and so on. So it was a point of connection.
Yeah, it looks not professional. It looks like
not high business value and so on. But I was
the person who people like to meet. second time,
third time, and so on. By the way, with this
person whom I met those time at the conference,
still we have two companies. His name is Thomas
Chong. He's a very good friend of mine and consecutive
three years in a row, he's coming to my birthday
in any point of the world and we celebrate it
together. That's the value of imprinting into
the mind. Not about your business skills, not
about your hard skills, soft skills, and so on.
It's about what kind of impression you can give.
Yeah, that's my point. Okay, good. Give me some
key differences in networking strategies between
local and international. You mean local in UAE
and international? Sure. I know there are a lot
of key differences, but let me divide my answer
into two parts, okay? Number one, I divide all
countries into the straight nations and un -straight
nations. What means straight nations? It's people
from Germany, UK, US, sometimes Hong Kong. These
people will say directly to your face they don't
like the product. They don't like to work with
you. The price is high, or maybe it's not a good
time to sign a contract and so on. And there
is indirect nations like Middle East, like Chinese,
Filipinas, and so on, who never say to your face,
no, I won't sign with you. They will tell you,
let's wait a little bit. Yes, I have received
your agreement. I didn't have time to review
it. Blah, blah, blah. And it can continue for
months. So this is one of the things. Number
two, personally, let me bring value to your listeners,
okay? Personally, I do like to divide people
into three categories. And it takes for me around
30 seconds to understand which category belongs
to the person in front of me. I call it, thanks
for Peter Nixon, he taught me these tactics.
I call it RGB dialect. Red. Green and blue. Only
three times all the people can be standing in
front of me. Who is red? Red is always active.
Wearing red t -shirt. He's doing everything fast,
quick to move on. He's very demanding, competitive,
driving and so on. Another dialect is blue. They're
warm, friendly, caring. supportive. So they are
well connected. They are not about the profitability
of the business. They are about good, strong
relationship. Okay. You good, me good also. And
the green dollar, it's rational dialect. Okay.
They calculate every penny, thoughtful, methodological.
skeptical, critical. So it's rather hard to find
the proper keys, how to work with them. And for
each of these RGB dialect, I have a special script,
how to work with them. Okay. For example, with
the red category, you have to tell big picture.
You have to tell how you're going to strike the
moon shots. Okay. You should be very confident.
Keep talk very... short phrases and don't don't
make any big sentences or something like that
okay so for a blue dialect who is friendly and
warm you should be very fair and polite you should
never push you should discuss you should demonstrate
trust transparency and so on my one of the first
hints which i would like to share is right in
the first 30 seconds before the negotiation 100
% that 80 % of success for negotiation is your
preparation. So prepare before negotiations,
try to find out maybe, for me, it's three different
categories. Maybe for you, it could be five,
seven, 10, depends on the psychology or your
occupation or maybe event or something like that.
And spend around more than 30 seconds to understand
who is in front of you. Yeah, this is one of
the key things. That's great. That's great. What
are some effective ways to start a conversation
at an event or online without feeling awkward?
How do you start the conversation? The humanity
has a brilliant weapon and not many people use
it. This weapon is called smile. When you smile.
a lot of muscles all over your face are initiated.
And if we look to the past, for maybe 20 or 30
,000 years ago, women who were on a household,
they were waiting for men from hunting. And when
the man was back from hunting, he hadn't... He
hadn't to say even a word on his face was everything.
And now, nowadays, women, they call it sixth
sense or something like that, but it's bullshit
in my opinion. They see on our face, muscles,
how do they reflect on the current situation.
And without any words, nowadays, women know that
you're lying or you was with another woman or
something like that. That's not success. It's
genetics, DNA, something like that. So my perfect
weapon to start to initiate the dialogue, to
meet people, to perform an organic, very clear
smile. Smile with dice. Smile with your teeth.
Smile with your cheeks. Okay? And everybody would
like to start the conversation with you, even
if he's staying in 10 meters or something like
that. Look directly into the eyes and smile.
That's it. Very good. Very good. What strategies
have you found helpful for maintaining, nurturing
professional relationships over time? Let's be
honest with each other. If your connections become
cooler, if you don't keep your connections maintaining,
they become cooler. Relationships become cooler.
And there's a very good strategy, value number
two. There's a very good strategy. Big numbers,
okay? Let's imagine that from tomorrow, each
of you... We'll start do very simple thing. It
is called five connections per day. It's not
about new connections. Just open your LinkedIn,
talk to your previous employer, or maybe far
family or something like that, and do five actions
to restore the connections, to keep them warm.
Ask if their children graduated, how is their
wife? I don't know. Do they work in the same
place or something like that? And just imagine
if you do it five times a day per week, it is
except weekend, for example, per week, it's 25.
Per month, 100. Per year, 1 .2 thousand connections
you can keep maintaining. And it brings you a
lot of value. It brings you the opportunity to
be connected day to day. And one of my good friends,
obviously, I'm very impressed how he's doing
it. We were in friendship for more than 10 years.
And his phone book has around 3 ,500 addresses
and telephone numbers and contacts and so on.
And he reminds all birthdays. Every year, sending
a message, making a telephone call, sending a
bucket of roses to girls. And he said that it's
a very good tactics to remind to the people that
I exist. This one is very good. But it's rather
hard. No, but I could not implement it into my
life because my phone book is huge. And I even
don't have a time to find out their birthdays
and just print into the iPhone. I have tried.
I spent around a week and my result was around
25 or 30 contacts and said, oh, Jesus, no. Do
you use any type of CRM to any of your follow
-up? My bad. No, I'm not using any CRM. I'm not
using any CRM, but I'm using, we call it with
TutorNixon, Bulldog Opportunity Tracker. During
events, during the events, you can collect dozens
of different business cards, but it's very hard
after the event to remind who was who. That's
why we have created a short list. Where we have
printed like a form, okay, and you have to fill
into the form. You can do it during the event
or the next minute after. Where very simple questions,
like what is the opportunity working with this?
When you have to connect with this person next
time? And one of the key things during the first
conversation would be great to know some kind
of detail. What kind of dog he had? From which
city? Where did he live before? What college
his children have studied? So this is very small
detail will help you a lot when you wanted to
establish new connection or start the conversation
and so on. We should understand that personally,
I understand that I don't have clients. I have
a relationship. We're working with reputation.
It is very sensitive and intangible thing. And
very less people in this world will pass to you
their reputation to manage without being in a
relationship with you. So for me, it's vital,
important to have very strong and warm relationship
with my sorry clients. What I do is when I'm
at an event, if I'm having that. talk with somebody
or anybody, and I want that deeper relationship,
on the back of their card, I write down the date,
the name of the function, and something we spoke
about. So I have that. So in two weeks or so,
when I look at that business card, I'm going,
who is this? I turn it over. I know exactly who
it is. That's who it is. And that's all part
of my follow -up. And there is a secret sauce
to the follow -up because it's probably more
important than even meeting the people. But the
follow -up is very important. But let me ask
you a question. You've had such great success.
What mistakes have you made and how did you overcome
it? Yeah, it's always a good question. Yes, it's
a good question, but I feel a lot of... positive
emotions from this good question. Because personally,
I think that all great experience is coming from
the past. People say there is no color of an
experience. It could not be negative or positive.
I think it's a bullshit. It could be negative
and it could be positive. And negative is much
more better than positive. I have faced two times
bankruptcy. In that time when I faced it, the
next couple of months, it was, it's a very deep
depression. 90 % of my friends, they didn't answer
my calls, messages, and so on. Because I've been
everything and became nothing. That's it. And
it was terrible times. But after one year. or
two years when I did something like reverse back
engineering about what is happening, why I was
at that point. And that was the great experience.
That was the best experience I ever faced in
my life, honestly. But the next time I did mistakes
also, but it was another mistake. So I had an
opportunity to learn more and more. Yeah. So
I think, yes. And if we are talking about negative
experience, one of the worst experiences in my
life was in Hong Kong. I moved to Hong Kong with
a great project. It was my passion. I spent days
and nights developing this project, helping to
bring it into the market, find proper partners,
and so on. But my teammates, somehow, they decided
that I'm doing wrong things. And they, you know,
nearly... Nearly, frankly, two hours before my
key presentation in Hong Kong, they blocked my
access to the demo, to the MVP. And there was
a partner in Hong Kong and it was a breakfast
in Shanghai. I remember this day as today, honestly,
and it was a breakfast. And when I was going
downstairs for the breakfast, I had only one
question in my mind. Should I tell truth or should
I lie? Tell truth. Just put on the table everything
what happened. Or lie. We have technical error.
Let's postpone or something like that. I cannot
show at the moment. Or continue imagining the
good day or something like that. Yes. And my
decision was to say truth. I was waiting almost
any reaction. Any scenario I was waiting. But...
I was not waiting for the thing which happened.
He turned to me. He asked the waiter. It was
around 8 a .m. or something like that. He asked
the waiter, bring us, please, champagne. I asked
him, Chandon, what are you doing? He said, we
will celebrate the best day of your life because
let them do this at the stage of MVP, at the
stage of demo, when you're just starting. Neither
they will do it two years after. You should be
very happy that it happened today. You know,
it turned everything. I became very happy that
I have heard these great words from his mouth.
And for sure, I felt terrible. But at the time,
it was more than okay. And he said very, very
proper words for the situation. And even now,
when I'm facing the negative experience, I'm
saying better to happen today, neither in one
year or two years or something like that later.
Okay. All right. I was going to ask you if you
had an aha moment or a story that turned you
into a success, but I think that kind of answered
both those questions. So it's very interesting
the way you put that. Give me one simple mindset
shift or an action step that someone can take
today to make networking more enjoyable and effective.
Action step. Before I answer the question, let
me tell you four things which each networker
should have. in common okay i think the first
one you should be sociable you should be sociable
to sell well you need to be the one person who
is actively connects with everybody and people
should feel comfortable in conversation with
you you should be well dressed smiling as i said
before you should know your language and so on.
Another one thing is curiosity. You cannot copy
curiosity. Curiosity should come from your heart.
It's your mindset. You should be curious about
the project, about these people, who are them,
from where are them, why they wear these clothes,
who is accompanying them, and so on. And the
curiosity should come from the heart. You should
be very energetic. It should be like a fountain
from you, the energy. It's the key success for
negotiation, for business development, for expanding
your business, expanding your relationships,
and so on. And one of the key things, it's number
four for me, is self -confidence. You should
know what are you... talking about you should
be very insured and you should have a very great
expertise before you go to negotiation one of
my friends says you live your life the quality
of your life depends on how you negotiate and
this is very important because negotiations they
are everywhere in business with your family in
shop And the most hardest negotiations are against
yourself. This is the toughest thing, honestly.
I want to wake up at 6 a .m. No, I don't want.
I'm going to sleep very late. No. And you negotiate
with yourself to find out how to get what you
want. That's the point. And answering the question,
what kind of actions should be taken from today?
As I mentioned before. 80 % of success in negotiations
and business development and so on, it's all
about the preparation. And our preparation depends
on our knowledge. And first thing, choose three
books to improve your negotiation skills and
finish them before 1st of June or maybe three
months after. I don't know, guys, when you're
going to listen to this podcast. But let's set
up a target in the next three months with three
books about the negotiations. And you will get
more knowledge, you will get more experience,
more techniques, and you can use them immediately
on the very next day. Good. Let me ask you a
question. From everything that you've told me,
told my listeners, what's your favorite networking,
I'd say, tactic? What's your favorite networking
way that you always choose? Very good question.
Very good question. The best tactics when I feel
extremely cool is when you're going to some kind
of event. Who will be attending? The list. You
choose two or three personas with whom. You have
to establish connection. And then you create
a magic. You open Google. You start to Google
this person. You start to look into his social
media and so on. Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook.
It doesn't matter. And you find key discussion
points. For example, dog. Or, for example, the
last place they visited in Europe, for example.
Or maybe they like cars, watches, and so on.
Just study what do these people like. And when
you have an opportunity to meet them, use this
weapon. Just tell him, oh, I was late because
I was walking around with my dog, which is called
La La La. And suddenly he has the same dog. And
you have a topic in discussion in common. Or
maybe I have heard you were visiting Zurich last
month. And I'm going there in the next couple
of months. What restaurant do you suggest me
to visit there? Is it a good starting point?
I think yes. So find the list of attendees. Choose
your target. Spend 10 minutes in social media
to find out the things in common and start the
dialogue with this point. It's a magic. Outstanding.
Outstanding. Dima, this has been great. The time
flew right by. Listen, how can anybody get in
contact with you, either for coaching, for it
to be a client, or just to get hold of you? What's
the best way to get hold of you? You can write
me directly in LinkedIn. This is the best way,
I think. Or Google Dima Roketa, or just print
into LinkedIn. I answer all messages there, all
messages. Yes, there could be some delay because
of the traveling or something like that, but
be sure that in a couple of days, I will answer.
I would be very happy to help. with the negotiations,
to help with the business development, and for
sure with the reputation management. You asked
me what we can suggest to do the next action
for our listeners in terms of negotiations. But
I want to suggest one action for your listeners.
Try to Google yourself right now. What do Google
says about you? Many of you will find a lot of
interesting things. And it's not a fairy tale
and it's not magic, but you can change what Google
says about you. You can change what YouTube says
about you. And the instruments, the tools, they
are very easy to implement and very easy to do.
If you want to do something with Google search
results, just ping me on LinkedIn and I will
help you. I will send you some tools and some
instruments. You can do it by yourself because
we are working with big companies, big personas,
but I would be very happy to share absolutely
for free some kind of checklist or maybe some
kind of instructions of how you can do by yourself
Google result page about your name. It's great.
Dima, thank you so very much. You're a great
guest. And I look forward to speaking with you
in the future. Thank you so much. I appreciate
you having me on this podcast. Time has finished.
And I was thinking that it passed two minutes
or three minutes or something like that. We hadn't
even started yet. Thank you so much. You're welcome.
I'll talk to you soon. Well, hold on, folks.
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-U -P -K -I -D -S dot org. 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, michaelaforman.
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.