Blaze Your Own Trail - Why Your Network Score Matters More Than Your Credit Score with Eddie Konialian

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Jordan Mendoza sits down with Eddie Konialian, co-founder of Netwrk.VIP, for a conversation about resilience, leadership, and why networking should be measured by generosity, not extraction. Eddie shares how growing up in Beirut during the civil war, immigrating to Los Angeles, and building his career in finance shaped his belief that real success comes from helping other people win. They discuss Eddie’s path from sports and early jobs into banking leadership, the lessons he learned from managing teams, and why he built a platform focused on ownership, trust, and relationship quality. The episode centers on one big idea: in a world full of AI and automation, being human is becoming a competitive advantage.Key topicsEddie’s origin story: growing up in Beirut during the civil war and immigrating to the United States in the mid-1980sOvercoming language barriers and finding confidence and community through sportsLessons from athletics and John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success“Raise the floor, not the ceiling”: why results matter more than potential or promisesEddie’s reflections on college, completing what you start, and the value of educationHis early jobs, sales experience, and career at Countrywide Home LoansBecoming a manager at 23 and learning to lead and coach a teamThe 2008 financial crisis, rebuilding his career, and developing the idea for Netwrk.Chapters00:00 — Introduction to Eddie and the episode’s mission01:22 — Why Jordan wanted Eddie’s full story before talking business01:53 — Leaving Beirut because of war and starting over in the U.S.02:17 — Language barriers, being held back, and learning to belong03:13 — Sports as a bridge to friendship and confidence04:18 — John Wooden, sports culture, and lessons for business07:28 — “Raise the floor, not the ceiling”09:48 — Family pressure, a partial scholarship, and choosing work over college12:16 — Eddie’s perspective on the value of finishing school16:57 — First jobs, copier sales, and landing at Countrywide17:51 — Managing 30 loan officers at 2319:40 — Why helping employees and customers became the real reward23:20 — The hardest thing to teach is care24:47 — Leaving Countrywide, the 2008 crash, and rebuilding at Bank of America25:45 — Comerica promotion and leading 105 employees27:33 — Tracking referrals and spotting the Netwrk.VIP idea30:21 — Eddie’s definition of networking: “sum of all effort”33:29 — Why CRM data and social profiles need real action behind them35:15 — What Netwrk.VIP does and why it exists39:35 — Netwrk.VIP features: dashboard, global reach map, digital passports, and groups41:04 — The upcoming "netwrk score"42:45 — Measuring character instead of credit score44:03 — Where to find Netwrk.VIP and Eddie’s contact information44:27 — Final thoughts: “Be good people”Connect with Eddie:https://netwrk.vip/https://www.instagram.com/coacheddiek/   Are you an Entrepreneur, Coach, Author, Podcaster or Creative?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and the creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop with 29 tools to help you take action for just $97 per month! Join here: https://trailblazerecosystem.com/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I am your host and I've got a very special guest today. Eddie, welcome to the show, my friend. Hey, Jordan, great to be here, man. Appreciate the time. Yes, sir. And if you can just share with the audience, who are you, where are you from, and what are you up to these days?

Yeah, of course. So Eddie Cunyalion, you were really close with the last name. So I'm the co-founder of Network.Vip. that's network without a no. So networked that VIP. I came from the finance background, about 30 years in finance, banking, mostly in executive roles. I started managing early on. I was originally born in Lebanon, the Middle East, and migrated here in the 80s, living in Los Angeles, and it's kind of been out around the United States, whether it's virtually or in real life, trying to make connections, man. So again, Dylan introduced us. So really, really glad to meet you.

Yes, yes. I'm happy to have you on the show. And my favorite, part of this show is really taking a rewind, Eddie, getting deep context into my guest story and their journey. And so in order to do that, we got to peel behind the curtain. So let's talk about the early days. So, you know, elementary middle to high school year. So you mentioned that you were born in Lebanon. So let's talk about, you know, the early days, maybe the first 10 years of life. What was it like? And where were you actually born and raised? Yeah, of course. So I was born in Beir, Lebanon. In the late 70s, I don't want to give away my age, but put one-on-one together. We migrated here to the United States in the mid-80s, but we migrated because of the civil war, mainly.

So I grew up seeing war and everything that's going on now over there. I kind of saw an earlier version of that in the 80s. But we migrated here in the 80s. I didn't know the language. I went to elementary school. It was an Armenian elementary school. So early on is really hard for a child to make friends, not knowing the language. Fortunately, I was able to gravitate towards some people that helped me learn the language,

build some friendships. You're an outcast, not knowing the language when you move here, you're a new kid. So I got held back a grade just because I didn't know the language. Anyway, so elementary school was kind of difficult initially, but fortunately I had the blessing to be able to come across some good people. I went through elementary school. I never graduated elementary school. I skipped sixth grade.

They moved me up to junior high through some things. testing. I don't even remember what it was at the time. But yeah, so that was kind of the elementary school process, got into basketball, playing sports. I think that was a big opportunity or a big help for me to make friends. But yeah, it was a challenge, challenge getting to know folks and growing up in Hollywood, California in the 80s, huge drug problem, huge poverty issues. And some of your listeners might know. But Hollywood in the 80s was an interesting place, even more interesting than today. So that's where I grew up. I grew up in Hollywood, Hollywood, California, as a I agree. Yeah, and talk a little bit about, you mentioned sports, you know, that helping you make

friends. Is that something that you played through middle school and high school? And then, you know, what value would you say, especially coming to a new country, you know, you're trying to build relationships with people, then you're playing sports. I don't know if that was your first time, you know, playing organized sports or if you did that back, you know, back in Lebanon. But what value does that add to somebody's character, their life, kind of understanding team. Can you talk about the value of that? Absolutely.

I think sports at the core is a super important aspect of business as well. One of my mentors, although I never got to meet him personally, was coach John Wooden from UCLA. I think his pyramid of success and what he talks about is very applicable to business.

So growing up playing sports, I actually was introduced because of one of my cousins would play basketball. I tagged along. I was the little cousin that never really did anything. So building friendships,

building unity and commitment and communication, there's a lot of aspects to sports that apply to business as you grow older. Yeah, and so I played through elementary school, middle school, even high school. I played basketball and volleyball. I was always the smaller guy on the team, but there was something that I always pushed myself

that I think it also applies to business is I hated losing, right? I wasn't going to really get myself in a position to lose. So if I was on a team with a bunch of six-foot-seven guys, six foot eight guys, I was going to outwork them. My coach always said, I wasn't the tallest, I didn't jump the highest, I didn't run the fastest, but I worked the hardest. And it brought me into rooms and positions that maybe if I didn't work as hard, I wouldn't be there. If I had the God-given ability or the genetic lottery winner, I wouldn't have been able to push myself into

business and work as hard. So yeah, there's actually a really strong component of sports and business or correlation between sports and business. Absolutely. Yeah. And I love the fact that you, if you don't have, you know, the vertical attribute, then you dive into the bag and you figure out what gifts do I have, what can I leverage, you know? And for somebody that has determination and grit and heart, you know, and that's motivated, you're not going to give up, you know.

And so I love that you leverage those gifts and what you had to give to be able to make sure you could compete at a high level. And, you know, there's something about winning and wanting to be competitive that, you know, just keeps you fired up. You know, I was a breakdancer starting in 1995, watched the movie Beach Street, and I could not, you know, keep rewinding that VHS so many times just trying to learn the moves, the whole scene in the Roxy Nightclub. And eventually got into, you know, created a B-Boy crew in Portland, and we did competitions. and man, just being able to compete and then just be able to kind of showcase your art form because to me breakdancing is like it's art. You know, you have to be very artistic. You got to

think on your feet. And when you're competing, what does that do for you? Because it seems like that's translated also to the business world, the competition side, where you want to build things that are great. You want to surround yourself with great people. You know, you want to make sure that people have high levels of integrity. So talk about the competition. and how that's translated to business as well. So one of the things, actually what you're talking about is a matter of also being able to do focus on problem resolution, right? It's identifying problems to be able to solve problems.

You're presented with problems in competition all the time where the guy is faster than you, bigger than you or is better than you, right? You can imagine being a professional basketball player and having to guard a Kobe Bryant or or Michael Jordan, right? These are all-time grades, but they're also in the NBA with you. So for me, there's a component of business that, I thought about later on in the years after I started graying was the whole idea of potential versus actual results. Everybody was so interested in talking about their potential versus what they're really accomplishing.

So the ideology or the theory that I came up with was more about raising the floor, not the ceiling. The floor is where your feet are. And as the floor moves up, so do you. But the ceiling moving up doesn't really do much for you. Right. So that, I think, is something that came to me from sports. I actually was cut off of my volleyball team as a sophomore. And then I made varsity the following two years, all league, so on and so forth.

But that component of potential is no longer good enough. Help me a lot in business where you actually have to believe in yourself and drive your results, regardless of what anybody else thinks of you, right? Because you don't have enough potential or you do or whatever. At the end of the days is how you push yourself. So that's where the whole sports mechanism Help me in business. Conviction, you know, rough days, bad days, you break bones.

You get elbowed into face and things happen. I mean, you know, you know how sports are. But business often feels that way too. Sometimes you just get punched in the face And it's what you do after that that matters. Yeah, 100%. It's not about how hard you get hit, but it's about like how do you get back up to next time, right?

Or what are you going to, what decision are you going to make that can shift the next outcome. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And let's talk a little bit about after high school. Was college on the board for you? Was that kind of something that, you know, you knew you were going to go do after high school

and was sports, something that was still in mind after high school as well? So my senior year of high school, actually, I have a really interesting story. So I walk in to my house one day and my mom and my dad are sitting on the couch and my dad had recently just been let go of his job. And he had lost his vision partially.

And later on in life, God rest his soul. He lost his vision fully. So at that point, in my head, it was like, all right, you're the man of the house, right? It's whether or not your parents ask you to be, you just are. And you take on that responsibility and don't put that burden back on your parents saying, you are sorry, I'm going to go to college and be gone. My senior year of high school, I received a letter from university saying, we want to give you a partial scholarship.

But unfortunately, I wasn't able to take it. So I try to balance a job to support my family and school at the time I went to community college. But after a year, my mind was just working on what I could do to put my, I don't want to say God-given ability, but my God-given conviction, what I believed in myself, I wanted to put it to work. I want to grow. So I started seeing a pattern where I was having discussions with the professors rather than the students, right? I saw myself doing more than just being a student, more than just being a follower. I want to be in a position where I was leading. But I also understood that it's action.

You have to prove yourself to be able to lead because if people don't make the choice to follow you, how can you be a leader? So that's kind of my high school to college transition. I went to community college for a year, but then just focused on career after that. Okay. And what was the value in that experience for you? I mean, I hear all the time some people say, man, I feel like I wasted four years of my life getting a piece of paper that I've never used in my life, right? And then you have other people that say, man, there was a lot of value in that year that I went or that two or three or four years. So what was your personal experience like going to community college?

And what would you say in a world with all the technology that we have at our exposure where you can essentially get access to any problem that you can think of, you can get. result almost instantaneously now, where do you put college on the value ladder? The experience, the diploma, having the diploma and completing something in your life is where I put the value. It's not the lessons learned necessarily. It's not the books that you read. I feel like schooling is a lot of memorization, but having that gap in my life, so any room that I walk into, what university did you attend? Where did you get your diploma from? Not being able to answer that question or saying, hey, you know what, I didn't finish school. I think that's more of a challenge that you face.

So the experience that I could share is if you have the opportunity, if you have the means to be able to finish school, that should be a priority in your life. Because later on, you can't get that back, right? You can't have as a 19-year-old being able to go to university and being able to finish that. Regardless of how many times you go back to school, that you will never be 19 again.

You'll never be 18 again and be able to finish school. So that always, I carry something with me is that gap in my soul. No matter what I accomplish, I will never be able to say, hey, I went to school with all my friends. I've finished college. I think in hindsight, it's more of a lesson than at that day. That day was like, I don't have to do school or I just make money, but you will have regrets. That would be if you wanted to go in the first place.

Sure. I had zero interest. I was like, yep, no, I'm not going to college. I am starting to continue to work and continue to do sales. But I like the advice for people that have aspirations. What you're saying is don't be me that has a regret that he didn't go. Yeah, because it's always one of those things where I think there are, in 2026, I believe there are certain roles where you got to go to college.

Like you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be, you want to work on spaceships, like, please go to college. You know what I'm saying? But there's plenty of other things, Eddie, where I don't feel like you need college. Because I went to the school of Hard Knocks, which is I did door-to-door sales for five years. So I got like 16 degrees in all kinds of different stuff and how to handle when people pull guns on you and how to get yelled at and cussed at and still maintain a positive attitude and keep working and trying to sell more and getting rained on and getting yelled. And how to communicate with human beings in the wild, which most people can't do in 2026. They can't look people in the eyes and they can't say hello and smile at people. So I got kind of a five years worth of soft skills by Knock It On Doors, which has added more value to my business world life because I know how to deal with rejection and you know how to handle objections and situations.

And so like that was kind of my university was going out and getting punched in the face. It's not for everyone. I know that because we have so much attrition in sales. Not everybody can handle it and that's okay. But for me, that was a route I was willing to go do and take because I know. knew, A, my parents couldn't pay for college. B, I was going to go party and breakdance it away and not actually go to classes. So I would say self-awareness is really, really key. Having self-awareness of who you are and knowing yourself and being able to do that at a young age as easy. As you know,

it's not easy to make those decisions. But trying to be as self-aware as you can, that's my advice. I think self-awareness is also a huge gap later on too in life. I come across a lot of of people that lack self-awareness of who they are and they want to classify themselves as something they're not. So yeah, absolutely all point, man. I'm not for someone like yourself, and I would put myself in the same category is whether you're selling copiers or cars or selling a newspaper door to door, as kids these days are not going to grasp that concept.

But it's literally designed to create a stronger person in business today. So self-awareness is at the core of a lot of things is one of the quotes that I tell my clients is you have to identify the right problem to solve the right problem, which is a big issue, right? So people spend a lifetime fixing the wrong issues and then they wonder why things don't get better. So my hat's off to your respect, man. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Let's talk a little bit about what you got into. What did the workforce look like? What did starting, you know, your career look like? What were the early days? And I'd love just to find out, you know, what those first kind of two or three roles were. Yeah. So early on, I work retail. Any job that I could get, in some cases,

I remember getting a $47 paycheck for a week's worth of work. And it was part time after school, after high school, meaning I went to school until three o'clock. And at nights, at 9 o'clock, I was stocking shelves at a linen company, which is no longer around. And then I've done door-to-door copier sales for six months. That's why I mentioned the copier sales. Most miserable time in my life, just by looking back, again, built character, right? And then ultimately I got it into a little company called Countrywide Home Loans, which people already know. And I'm a little bit older than you, I believe. Yeah, Countrywide as a telemarketer, marketing to brokers around the country that countrywide services were the best.

That was about, I think I was 19 at the time. At 23, I was already managing a team of 30 loan officers. I had my own loan officers and a branch myself. But when the mortgage crisis happened, the LA Times article that was released, it was a little, I had direct quarrelation. It was out of my office. It was one of the, we had about 150 different employees working out of that office. So I could talk all day about the countrywide days. It was quite interesting. A lot of people did fairly well. A lot of people got homes and they were happy, but there was some not so up and up business practices that happened as well. So Countrywide was a great experience for me. A lot of lessons, a lot of people, a lot of different personalities. You had all sorts of extremes. And sometimes we were making a lot of money at an early age. And for a young man that came from poverty, lack of better words,

you know, you get a $15,000, $20,000 paycheck in the early 2000s for a month worth of work, really? So it was my first paycheck when I got from, as a countrywide manager. My parents were crying when they got it. Because at that time, in the cultural sense,

my parents would open my paychecks. It would get mailed home and it was for the family. wasn't for me. And I walk in and my mom thought I was either selling drugs or doing something illegal to make that money. And I was like, no, no, I actually did loans. I help people. Right. So that was early on, but it was very addictive to be not making the money, but coaching people. It's working with people. That was the addictive part of the job is when I saw somebody have a change of their lifestyle, right? They were able to buy their first car. And this is an employee of years, right? And I still say, you know, people's motivation motivates me. People being happy

motivates me. And that's why I dedicate my life to this networking aspect of things, because I really do believe that the success of one is the success of all. So if I can help you be successful, why not? It's, it's all good. Yeah, I love it. I mean, that's a famous Zig Ziglar quote, right? You know, help as many people get what they want and you'll get everything that you want, you know? Absolutely right. If you can add value to other people's lives and make their lives better, that changes the whole environment, right? Not just the environment in the workplace, but it could change their home environment. You know, I used to teach this six-month leadership program, and we took people through the Myers-Briggs personality assessment.

I'm a certified practitioner, and it was really amazing when people started to unlock and they're like, holy cow, like, my husband isn't an idiot, he's just, is wired different than me. People literally have these real epiphanies and relationships get mended and you're like, holy cow, like when people, you can create impact for people and when you can see that it's helping people, yeah, that joy that you get, you can't really put a price tag on that. Yeah, it's, you know what the funny thing is when you're asking, when you're talking about Myers Braggers or personalities, I think most people tend to consider their own problems at the greatest problems that ever existed.

But once you start realizing that there are so many other problems in the world and society, you can't say, hey, you know what, that's not my problem. Well, you live in a $5 million mansion. You drive a $200,000 car. You make $5 million a year. Yeah, you have those kind of problems.

But there's also a person that opens the fridge doesn't have food or the kids don't have shoes, right? They sleep on the floor or they don't even have a home. There's those kind of problems. So in reality is when you start, considering, which is the self-awareness part, right? You start considering, well, maybe, maybe you should just relax on your problems, right? So there's those kind of things, but it's all, it's all motivating, man. It's all good work and people helping people, essentially. You know, Zig Zigler,

good choice. Yep. Yes, sir. He was one of the great. You're at countrywide, you essentially grow up there, right, and in the industry is kind of how I would look at it. You're understanding how how to do sales for one. And I've done telemarketing. I remember in 1996 as a sophomore in high school, I was slanging those like six foot tall Nokia phones, the bricks, selling those over the phone. Like we had to get people's social security numbers,

all their pertinent information like over the phone. And I just remember being like, is this really, am I really doing this? And I was crushing it 600 bucks a week. I was making as a software. It was awesome. We got free pizza and they did bonuses and what a great way to understand how to communicate because you don't have much time on the phone.

Like if you don't captivate their attention from the get-go, if you don't have great icebreakers, if you don't know how to contextually build relationships with voice, you're dead in the water. And so talk a little bit about that skill set one. And then what was it like being able to teach and coach and train other people? You talked a little bit about kind of seeing people grow and seeing their revenue go up. But what was it really like to see people's lives actually change? So the hardest part to transfer is care, right? You can't teach people how to care.

So for me, the biggest epiphany early on was that every call that I made, every phone call that I was on, it was somebody else's life, not mine. I was sitting in the office. I was sitting in a desk. So it was the same way with my employees is I realized early on that my employees, that my employees were my customers. So if I was treating my customers better and my employees or vice versa, I was the one that was off. So as soon as you put your mindset that everyone I'm talking to has a life, they have to be able to pay the bills. They have to cover their kids medical bills, whatever the

case was, right? So the goal became no longer was the goal to make money. It was more about the other person. Similar to management or leadership, it was no longer, hey, I want to do well. It was like Zig Ziglar's quote, right? If you help enough people get what? they want, you'll get what you want. So that became my goal and that kind of bled into the networking industry, became in the relationship building industry. It was always about the other person. If I could help a million people get what they want and I get a little portion of those million people, then I have amplified my impact by a million. Yeah, love it. So let's talk about the transition. You know, you're there. You build up, you know, some really great skill sets, management skills,

leadership skills, what's the next kind of step on the trail? Actually, it was a regression. So I left Countrywide to open up my own brokerage company. And it was in 2006. So as we scaled up, 2008 came around and I had to regress back. I had to shut down my shop. Loans became really difficult to do. People weren't qualifying.

I had to go back and get a job at a bank. I started working at Bank of America. From there, I spent five years at BFA. it was just not enough for me. Somebody told me, or I might have been something I listened to, they said, I want my legacy when I'm alive. Right?

I didn't want to leave a legacy. I want to see my legacy transition. So I look for my next opportunity and it came in a form of Comerica Bank. And I'll never forget, I started in Comerica Bank. They want to walk in and I pulled the staff together.

I said, don't get used to me. I'm getting promoted in less than a year. And I don't know. looking back, I don't know why I would say that. I know it's ridiculous, right? But sure enough, I started in February, in November, I got promoted to a district manager. I was a branch manager at the time. So I got tasked with running 15 offices in all of LA. I was responsible for 105 employees. And then I could remember now thinking, I've never done this. What the hell am I doing? I have a lot of people's lives dependent on me. Right. So it became more of a relationship-building

opportunity, listening to all 105 people, understanding their goals, their challenges, what they've been programmed to be because they were all afraid to lose their jobs. So part of the process was how could I eliminate fear and drive hope in people? Because at the end of the day, those are the only two emotions that we make decisions on. Either you're scared of something worse or you hope for something better. So if people weren't performing for me, it was more about, hey, what are you afraid of? You're afraid to lose your job? Let's get rid of that.

There's no more write-ups. I'm not going to write people up. And if somebody from the company hears this now, they never knew, right? My bosses never knew that I eliminated that. So eliminated that. I really have greatest memories of Comerica Bank. The leadership team was fantastic. The executive team was fantastic.

Unfortunately, I got to move up. I got to do things with the CEO, the board. And that's actually where network was born. And I don't know if you want to get into that, but it was like 3 o'clock in the morning in Michigan. I'm sitting. and my brain is going because in reality, Comerica Bank investigated me for my performance. I got investigated twice because once me and myself,

once my team, they didn't understand how could the gap between my performance and everybody else be so wide, right? So I created an Excel spreadsheet. I was tracking my network. This is where I'm getting all my referrals from. And they wanted to know the strategy behind it. And I said, you know, we build relationships.

And at the time, the city where I was working out of, I knew a lot of the people that were going to refer me deals were gentlemen that maybe liked cigars, which is that it was big at the time. So I bought a humidor. I put a humidor in my office. I started ordering cigars. So everybody in the area would come and we would hang out and smoke cigars. I'd invite them to lunch and do those kind of things out of my own pocket. I was investing in myself. But I started tracking my network on the spreadsheet. I started understanding where my referrals were coming from. And at the end of the day, I knew what I had to give back to those people. That was the goal. It wasn't just a

tracking part. If Jordan was sending me five clients and trusting me, man, I can't let Jordan down. He trusts me. So the company really took a liking to that. We flew out to Dallas and Detroit, and we worked on the project. And unfortunately, at the end of the project, the company decided to back another project for a customer experience. Right. So I had already done the work. Again, three o'clock in the morning in Michigan, I'm writing notes to myself literally on the back of a napkin. And it is that story that people talk about, that was what was happening to me. So I went on GoDaddy. I tried to look for names.

And I came up with the name direct rope at the time. It was a direct connection. It was a life-saving device. You know, we throw the rope. We help people. And that was the connection that I made. And that's how a network was built is just basically to go out there and save people to help them grow in business.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So build you essentially, before you built the network, you had a network, right? you just needed essentially a silo, a place, an infrastructure to house the network, and then make it easier for people to network with each other through a vetting process. And I know there's lots of other features and things that are getting ready to roll out as we were talking offline. So before we get into the platform and talking about how awesome it is and how people can use it and what the value is for them to be a part of it and also what it takes to be part of the platform,

I'd love to get your take on what does networking mean to you? Like, what does it really, really mean to network with another human being? So a few months back, actually, I tried to answer this question for myself. And it's funny you're mentioning that because I have the answer. Networking is essentially broken down to some of all effort. Some net is the sum working is effort. So how can we work together towards a mutual goal? And it's not about me.

So the analogy that I always like to use with people, so networking is very much like hitchhiking, where people see you coming and you're dangerous and they don't want to pick you up because you're going to kill them, cut up their body and throw them in the desert, right? That's what's going to end up happening, so they're not going to pick you up.

But where the mind shift happens is how can you walk in the room with something to give versus something to take? And that's, I think, the biggest opportunity with networking is most people show up to events to get something. and they miss that. When you show up, you should show up to give something because if you give, somebody has to receive.

But if you take, nobody has to give you anything. So there's a bunch of takers in the networking room that completely say it opposite. And that's what I try to change with the former platform and even more now is how can I get people's minds to change into this giving mindset and show that as a scoring mechanism. So when you ask me the question about what is networking,

networking truly for me is how I can have Jordan, all of Jordan's friends, everybody that Jordan knows, how can I contribute to their lives? And it's not monetarily. Like for me, money is a byproduct of what networking does. So either I'm creating time for you, either I'm creating health for you, I'm building the knowledge for you, I'm improving your helping improve your character, okay, or opening the door to my community. Those are the five components of networking for me. So all about you. Yep, I love it. Yeah, because it's, it's, It's really about like how can this be a win-win-win for everybody involved, right?

Because the problem that a lot of people have is they think the world is not an abundant place. And they think that I need to have, I need to gatekeep everything. I need to gate-keep all my best tips. I need to gate-keep all my secrets. I need to gate-keep how to do things. And this is something, I did this before I even had any business. and now I have multiple, but I would just go and share my best stuff with people and give it away for free. Because I know the reality, most people aren't going to do anything with it in the first place.

But the people that are, it's going to add value to them and they're going to come back and they're going to want to be a part of what you're doing. So it's always a good thing to add value and it's always a good thing, in my opinion, work with clients to over-deliver because they're going to talk. Like you said, like if you make a great introduction to somebody or you do something nice, you give something to someone, then they're going to talk about that with their circle, and it's all going to come back into the ecosystem. I think there's a big issue in industry right now with data manipulation and persona manipulation with all the tools that are available out there, specifically with social media, all the AI tools that are out there.

It's so easy to manipulate data. I think industry itself puts a lot of emphasis on CRMs, especially in our world, right? It's existing in a CRM doesn't mean anything, right? It's not an activity management tool. CRM is a great customer management tool, but there's nobody managing the data entry portion of it. So whatever you put becomes real.

Same with other social media platforms. Again, we talked about this offline, right? It's who's to prove anything wrong on a social media platform? Yes, people are going to have doubt, but there's really no way, no one's sitting next to you and managing the data entry portion. And that was a big issue for me. I caught on to that early on with CRMs.

Why was that forcing my employees to put how many calls they put? Who cares? Like, how easily could they make that up? So then we shifted from that into managing action. So return on activities, which is what I said offline, is managing return on activity. It was about managing how you use your time and how we can duplicate that,

all the good things that you do. So reallocating resources from money to time. And that's how all of this kind of started coming together more and more. Yeah, I love it. So let's talk about it in kind of plain English for the audience. You have a website that people can go and they can create an account. And what's the exact purpose of them creating an account? And what have you seen so far in the early testing phase from a return, you know, an ROA perspective? So in terms of the platform, the platform is designed for you to own your own network, right? You have so many different platforms right now. And you have no idea how to consolidate all that, whether it's Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, CRM, spreadsheets, WhatsApp, your cell phone contacts.

You're using all these contacts. How can you centralize them, number one? Number two is how can you understand who you know? Right. So a lot of us have a lot of contacts or a lot of names in our databases, but we don't know who they are. But more importantly, is understanding how to activate those people. Just because you're not a client of mine doesn't mean you don't know the client of mine. So just because you don't buy from me doesn't mean you don't know somebody.

that will buy from me and vice versa, right? So understanding the greater reach or expanded reach of each other's networks and understanding that if I know two million people and you know two million people, together we each know four million people. So the power of community actually is visualized on network. So that's the thing is what we're doing is when somebody logs in, they're able to create their own profiles. No more business cards.

I don't want to hand out business cards. I think they're waste of paper, waste of use. If you're advice to your audience, if you're still taking business cards to events, I don't want them. don't bring them. There's no value to me or to you if we're exchanging business cards. Get my number. Let me get yours. Let's actually learn about each other because it does take a lifetime to build a relationship. So let's build that relationship if you want to do business with me.

So the platform is designed for you to own your network. If I'm giving you the power to build your own LinkedIn from ground up, that's what we're doing. So in terms of what I've seen early on is exactly what we know to be true in real life, which is, Everybody's ready to receive, but very few are ready to give. We live in a society of takers. What's in it for me, not what's in it for us. Changing culture is probably one of the most difficult things at the core that we're trying to do is that I think inherently people are good, but we've been trained to make it all about ourselves.

And how can we shift that model to say, hey, you know what? We can all go together. We can all rise together. So that's what we've seen early on. and we are seeing a transition, more traction. The good part is everybody sees a need to be better people. It's weird. When I talk to people like, yeah, this is great.

Everybody should use this. It starts with you. It starts with every individual, every corporation that speaks. We're community-driven businesses, yet they have no way of quantifying what they're doing. And I'm listening to this, Eddie, and I'm a juggler. Is this a platform for me? Maybe I'm a recording artist, or maybe I'm, A W-2 employee, like, who's the ideal avatar to build a network on network?

Or would you say that this is for everyone that wants to know more people that are good people? Yeah, so early on, I was told not to say this is for everyone. It's kind of not a thing in tech. You don't say this is for every vertical. But ultimately, I think it's designed for everybody that wants to be a good human. Right? Because this is a link between humanity and technology. as humanity moves or as technology moves forward,

humanity has to move backwards. We still have to meet people in person. We still have to shake hands, look each other into eye. But ultimately, if Jordan flies out to L.A. and he wants to meet, you know, a tire guy, right? He should know that Eddie knows the tire guy. And Eddie gladly will make the introduction

because Jordan and Eddie have a good bond. This is about building good relationships with humans and not just taking advantage of them. So it's all about reciprocation and character and all these words that we've said in the past or we've read in the past, but now we're actually putting a quantifiable database to that dashboard. Yeah, I love it.

So let's talk a little bit about some features that are, I think they're being rolled out pretty soon or maybe some of them have recently been rolled out. I know they're one of the ones I saw, I believe it was a webinar feature or an events feature or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about some of these features that the audience can look forward to check it out and what value do you think they will,

they will actually bring to the platform. Yeah, absolutely. Some of my favorite that I use all the time, obviously the dashboard, I like to highlight my dashboard, who I'm helping. So we quantify the people that you've helped in terms of referrals and introductions,

and vice versa, who've helped you, so your referral partners, introduction partners. I love our global reach map, which is essentially you can think of it as a Zillow map, but for your network. So where your network resides,

obviously not by address, for privacy reasons, but by city. So I'll know that if I come to Atlanta that I know 14 people in Atlanta, but I can also highlight that through my community saying, if you guys go to Atlanta, reach out to me. I know a person.

Digital business card. So we've created a digital passport, which is essentially a business card, but we've created the ability to have multiple digital passports, which is essentially if you represent a nonprofit and you have a business, so some events require you to have a digital business card that are related to your nonprofit, some are related to your business.

So you can actually swipe between each one of them to show the attendees of an event. We also have group creation. So you talked about siloing off your network. So if you have private networks all around the country or in your community, some people have dog walkers and they have, let's say, real estate agents that they connect with. And you want to keep those two separate. So you can actually invite people to those groups and it's all private groups. The cool thing about network, it's not designed to show the names of the people that you know.

So there's a huge aspect of privacy. But what it is designed to show is the impact of your network. So we are releasing in the next week your network score. And this is the first time I'm talking about it publicly is we are releasing a network score. What that network score consists of is mostly your effort in building up your network and how your network interacts with you. So how long it takes you for you to build your network. A lot of people dump information in the database. They're like, there you go.

That's how many people I know. But it's a living document. It's a living community, if I may. So we're releasing a network score where it's constantly. constantly moving and shifting. That way, if you're hosting an event or you want to connect with certain people, their network score is going to be super important to know that you are in a room with like-minded people and not people only that want to take advantage of you. So at the end of the day, is how can we put like-minded people together in a room,

whether digital or in person, that help each other out and not only take from each other. So there's a variety of different other components that we can talk about sending and receiving introductions and referrals and tracking those for a lifetime. events management page, AI tools that are coming that are in the works right now. There's a lot of different components that are being built as we speak. But I think those things right now immediately

is an absolute need for communities. And where we've, for NDA purposes, we've talked some professional sports teams, cities, government agencies, events spaces, banks and financial institutions, real estate companies. So there's a need absolutely across all different

verticals. Yeah, I love it. Love it. Love the future features. Love what's rolling out. Eddie is not interested about your credit score. He wants to know what's your network score, okay? How good of a human are you? How good are you at connecting people with other people? How good are you at opening your network, building relationships? That essentially sounds like what the network score is comprised of. Yeah, absolutely. It's be a good human. High level character is what I care about. I love it. Well, hey, this has been amazing. I know our audience is going to get value out of your story and your journey, you know, coming with your family, essentially trying to get out of a place

of war to come to a new land, you know, struggling to learn a language and build relationships and friendships. And then you fast forward to now where your only goal is how do I get people to be good people, build good relationships. build friendships. And I love how you started it in business. And now you're doing it at a high level and so many different verticals. So, you know, kudos to the journey to the success. I know our listeners are going to get value.

So where can we send them, you know, after the episode to come check out what you're building? Yeah, man, network. vip, N-T-W-R-K-V-I-P. It's always being updated. So come check us out, log in, create your passport. Would love to hear from you. And if you want to connect with me, I'm happy to share my personal email address on Eddie at network.V.IP, feel free to shoot me an email.

I would love to hear from you. Love it, love it. I appreciate you coming on today. Any parting words for the audience? Just be good people, man. Don't stop. Be good people. And the future of business is in humanity with so much AI tools being built.

Being human is becoming a niche. So keep that in mind. I never thought that I would hear that being human was becoming a niche. But it is pretty true, you know. It is pretty true because people are looking more robotic than robots in some cases. You can't go into a department store and have somebody greet you anymore because they're like playing candy crush or something. That's right. That's right, man.

Mattie, thanks for coming on this show, Eddie. I appreciate your time today. And I know our listeners are going to get value out of the conversation. So appreciate you. Awesome. Thanks for your time, Jordan. Yes, sir.