I don't network. I've never been to a networking event and felt like it was time well spent. I've never stood in a hotel conference room holding a warm glass of wine, exchanging business cards with strangers, and thought "yes, this is how meaningful professional relationships are built." I've never come home from a LinkedIn meetup and felt energised, inspired, or any closer to the kind of work I want to be doing. Networking, as most people practice it, is theatre. It's performance without substance. And I would rather spend that time building something.
This isn't a personality thing, though it probably sounds like one. I'm not an introvert who hates small talk - though I do, frankly, hate small talk. This is a strategic position. I genuinely believe that the traditional approach to networking - collecting contacts, attending events, being visible in rooms - is one of the least effective ways to advance your career. And I believe there's a better way. A way that actually works.
The networking problem
Here's what networking actually is. You go to a room. You talk to strangers. You exchange information about what you do. You add each other on LinkedIn. You maybe send a "great to meet you" message the next day. And then - nothing. The connection sits in your network, one of five hundred identical connections, and slowly fades from memory. Six months later, you see their name in your feed and you can't quite remember where you met them or what you talked about.
This isn't connection. This is collection. You aren't building relationships - you're building a database. And databases don't hire you, recommend you, champion you, or remember you when the right opportunity comes along. People do those things, and people do them for people they genuinely know, respect, and trust. None of which can be established in a seven-minute conversation over canapés.
The networking industry - and it's an industry, worth billions - has convinced an entire generation of professionals that the key to career success is being in rooms. The right rooms, with the right people, at the right time. And there's a kernel of truth in this. Proximity matters. Serendipity is real. But the conclusion that most people draw - that you should therefore spend your evenings at events, your mornings on LinkedIn, and your weekends at conferences - is exactly backwards.
Show your work instead
Here's what I do instead. I build things. I put them on the internet. I write about them. And I let the work speak for itself. That's the entire strategy. It isn't complicated. It isn't a growth hack. It's the oldest professional strategy in existence: do interesting work and make it visible.
Every project I ship is a conversation starter that works twenty-four hours a day. It doesn't need me to be in the room. It doesn't need a warm introduction. It doesn't need a follow-up email or a LinkedIn connection request. It sits there, on the internet, being itself, and the people who find it interesting find me. That isn't networking. That is attraction. And attraction is infinitely more powerful than outreach.
When someone discovers Modern Retro and messages me about it, that's a real conversation. They've already seen my work. They already know what I care about, what my taste looks like, how I think. We skip the small talk entirely and go straight to the interesting part. Compare that to a networking event, where I would need thirty minutes of polite conversation to establish the same level of understanding that the project communicates in thirty seconds.
When someone reads a blog post and shares it with a colleague, that's word of mouth that no amount of networking could produce. It's organic, genuine, and comes with built-in credibility because the person sharing it's putting their own reputation behind the recommendation. No business card has ever carried that kind of weight.
The portfolio as a networking tool
My portfolio is the hardest-working networker I've ever had. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't take weekends off. It doesn't need a drink to loosen up before approaching strangers. It's out there, every hour of every day, representing my work, my taste, and my thinking to anyone who finds it.
And here's the crucial difference: the people who find it are self-selecting. They aren't random strangers at an event who happen to be standing near me. They're people who were searching for something specific, who found my work through a link or a search or a recommendation, and who chose to spend their time looking at what I have built. By the time they reach out, they're already interested. The filtering has already happened. I don't need to pitch myself because the work has already done it.
This is why I believe showing your work is the most underrated career strategy in every industry. Not just creative industries - every industry. The lawyer who writes about interesting cases. The accountant who shares insights about tax strategy. The engineer who open-sources their side projects. The strategist who publishes their thinking about brands and culture. All of these people are doing something more powerful than networking. They're building evidence. Evidence of how they think, what they value, and what they're capable of.
The quality of inbound
Here's what I've noticed about the difference between networking connections and inbound connections. Networking connections are broad and shallow. You meet a lot of people, but most of them are in a similar position to you - looking for the same opportunities, attending the same events, reading the same advice about how to network better. It's a room full of people trying to help themselves, dressed up as a room full of people trying to help each other.
Inbound connections - the ones that come from someone discovering your work - are narrow and deep. You meet fewer people, but the people you meet are exactly the right people. They're the ones who care about the things you care about. They're the ones who get excited about the same problems, the same aesthetic, the same approach. They're potential collaborators, not just contacts. And one real collaborator is worth five hundred LinkedIn connections.
What showing up actually means
I'm not saying you should be invisible. I'm not saying you should sit in a dark room building things nobody ever sees. Visibility matters enormously. The difference is in how you create it. Networking creates visibility through presence - you show up physically and hope that someone remembers you. Building creates visibility through substance - you put work into the world and the work speaks for you long after you've left the room.
Posting on LinkedIn, sharing your projects, writing about your process - all of this is showing up. It's just showing up with something to say rather than showing up to collect. Every blog post is a business card that tells people what you actually think, not just your job title and email address. Every shipped project is a portfolio piece that demonstrates capability, not just claims it.
The people who have had the most impact on my career aren't the ones I met at events. They're the ones whose work I discovered online and who discovered mine. We connected through shared interests and mutual respect for each other's output. That's how professional relationships should work. Not "I was standing near you at a thing" but "I saw what you made and I respected it." One of those creates a transaction. The other creates a relationship.
Build the thing
My advice to anyone who feels the pressure to network is simple: build the thing instead. Whatever your thing is - a blog, a product, a project, a collection, a newsletter, a body of work - build it, ship it, and put it where people can find it. Then keep building. The network will build itself, one genuine connection at a time, and every single connection will be more valuable than anything you could have collected at an event.
I have fourteen live projects on the internet right now. Not one of them came from a networking conversation. Not one of them was inspired by someone I met at a conference. They came from curiosity, frustration, passion, and the simple desire to make things that are good. And those fourteen projects have opened more doors, started more conversations, and created more opportunities than any amount of networking could have produced.
So no, I don't network. I build things. I put them on the internet. And I let the work do the talking. So far, it has had more to say than I ever could at a wine-and-mingle.
