GNT #184: Networking has a number

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A couple weeks ago, I offered someone a virtual coffee.

I'd been wanting to meet him for a while. His work was interesting. The intro had been warm. But the week he suggested was a week I couldn't drive an hour each way for lunch. Kiddo activities stacked, logistics tight, a stretch of days where the margin just wasn't there. So I offered the thing I could actually give: a thirty-minute virtual coffee.

He wrote back. He doesn't do virtual networking.

Truthfully… I was taken aback for a second. Then I wasn't.

Because he was protecting something. And so was I.

If you're someone whose work runs on relationships you build one conversation at a time, this one's for you.

Let's get to it.

What too much of it does

When I jam pack a week with networking meetings, something specific happens to me. I don't come into the conversations with as much vitality and rigor as I usually do. I focus so hard on the person across from me that I get tired. Drained. By the fifth or sixth, I'm running on residue.

When I keep it to a few a week, the opposite happens. I come in energized. I remember the person. I remember what we talked about. The conversation takes a real seat in my week, and what I learn from that person shows up in the rest of my life.

Same activity. Different volume. Different output entirely.

The thing it converts to

It's a conversion question.

Below a certain number, networking is what I want it to be. Real curiosity about the person. A conversation I remember. The slow build of trust over years, where you stay in touch, where you connect people across rooms that wouldn't otherwise know each other exist.

Above that number, it becomes something else. Faster, thinner, harder to remember. Transactional, even when I don't mean it that way. The activity stops doing what the activity is for.

The number is different for each of us. I had to find mine.

What protecting it actually looks like

I push meetings out further when the week is full. I offer virtual when in-person doesn't fit. I say yes to fewer per week than I used to, and I mean the yeses I give. I'd rather meet someone in eight weeks at full strength than in eight days at half.

Sometimes the trade doesn't work out. The person who declined my virtual coffee was protecting his version of the activity. Mine looked too thin for the connection he was after. His looked too costly for the week I was actually in.

Neither of us was wrong. Our protections just didn't fit together.

A decline like that would have really got stuck in a negative place in my head, before I understood what we were both protecting.

Takeaway

I believe deeply in networking. Robust networks, built over years. Staying in touch over time. Being the bridge between rooms.

I keep it small on purpose. Not because I believe in it less, but because I believe in it too much to let volume hollow it out.

Find your number, and protect it.

I'm always rooting for you. See you next week.

-Colleen

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