Welcome to another episode of Networking Unleashed,
Building Profitable Connections. I'm your host,
Michael Foreman, and today we're calling out
the elephant in a room, the illusion 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. 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 'Hearn, 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. 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. 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 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 100
,000 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 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 structure sentences,
like how to have a normal 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 what 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 relationships and public speaking, marketing,
when we think about different ways that we express
ourselves, everything has become completely different.
And nowadays, the people we're looking to as
these kind of tastemakers 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, you know, 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 instant gratification. And
people are trying to keep that instant 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. The 40 -somethings and 50 -somethings,
60 -somethings, such as me, don't rely on it
so much. but it's all what you're talking about.
And you mentioned a book. 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 90s.
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 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 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.
Speaking as a sole proprietor myself, I own brick
and mortar businesses beforehand. 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 and 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 news feeds, 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, etc. 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 the trust 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 we find a
lot of news sites today are designed the same
as newspapers were in the 1800s. 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. 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 pervasive idea that you must be online
and that it's important to construct who you
are or 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'm
a writer who now has to be on social media so
I can connect with 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. business come together. Do I make myself
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 ballgame.
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 a prescient 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 this wrap up between automation and ai it's
not the digit 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 CRM. OK, to help your business.
And because I'm guilty of that also, I put it
all the information I can about a prospective
or current client 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. I write them a happy birthday. I don't
have my CRM write it for me. Okay, so it's like
in the middle. 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 looking 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 vibe. And 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 100%. 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 100 people. And another podcast host
actually introduced me to this idea. And they're
like, would you rather 100 people who you know
you can count on? Or would you rather maybe 5000
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 how would I
like to be interacted with, that's the best way.
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 in the same
because there's a difference between you have
this idea of discretion where maybe the realist
or most authentic Tim O 'Hearn 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 6am 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 because 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? If I'm writing another book, it might
take me another two years. So what am I going
to do? 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 to have a daily update or even a weekly
update. So it depends with what you're kind of
receiving 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 create 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 work 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 have 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.
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 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. 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 want to 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 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
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... want to 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 'Hearn
on LinkedIn. Everyone looking to read my book
or learn more about it, it is listed on Amazon.
So Framed, A Villain's Perspective on Social
Media, ebook, as well as paperback. And the audio
book 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
listened 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. Well, hold on, folks. Don't
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