The most valuable professional relationships I have all started the same way: someone saw something I built. Not a business card, not a LinkedIn connection request, not a thirty-second elevator pitch. A project. A piece of writing. Something I made and put on the internet because I thought it was interesting. That turned out to be the best career strategy I've ever stumbled into.

Building things in public creates a different kind of professional connection. When someone reaches out because they found your work, the conversation starts from a place of genuine shared interest. They already know what you care about, how you think, what your taste looks like. You skip the pleasantries and go straight to the interesting part. That kind of connection is worth more than a room full of handshakes.

24
Live projects
150+
Articles published
24/7
Portfolio working

Projects as conversation starters

Every project I ship is a conversation starter that works around the clock. It sits on the internet, representing my thinking and my taste, and the people who find it interesting find me. 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 excites me. We can talk about ideas immediately, because the project has already done the introduction.

The same thing happens with writing. When someone reads a blog post and shares it with a colleague, that's organic word of mouth that comes with built-in credibility. The person sharing is putting their own reputation behind the recommendation. That kind of endorsement is powerful because it's earned, not asked for.

This is why I think of building as the best form of professional visibility. You aren't just telling people what you can do. You're showing them. And showing is always more compelling than telling.

Build things people can see, and the right people find you. Every project is a conversation starter that works twenty-four hours a day.

The portfolio effect

My portfolio is the hardest-working part of my professional life. It's out there every hour of every day, representing my work, my interests, and my thinking to anyone who finds it. And the people who find it are self-selecting. They're not random contacts. They're people who were looking for something specific, found my work through a link or a search, and chose to spend their time with what I've built.

By the time someone reaches out, the filtering has already happened. They know my work, they find it interesting, and they want to talk. That's a fundamentally different starting point from a cold connection. It's warmer, more specific, and more likely to lead somewhere meaningful.

I think this applies across every industry. The lawyer who writes about interesting cases. The engineer who open-sources side projects. The strategist who publishes their thinking about brands and culture. All of these people are building evidence of how they think, what they value, and what they're capable of. That evidence compounds over time in a way that no single conversation can.

A portfolio works around the clock. Every blog post, every project, every piece of published thinking is an introduction that keeps introducing you.

Deep connections over broad reach

What I've noticed about connections that come from shared work is that they tend to be deeper and more specific. When someone reaches out because they found a project or a post that resonated with them, they already care about the same things. They get excited about the same problems, the same aesthetic, the same approach. Those people become collaborators, not just contacts. And one genuine collaborator is worth hundreds of surface-level connections.

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The best professional relationships start with the work. The work does the filtering. The work does the introducing. The work builds the relationship before you even know it's happening.

This is the compounding effect of building in public. Each project, each article, each thing you ship adds another node to your professional presence. Over time, the cumulative effect is far greater than any single introduction. Your body of work becomes a living, growing representation of who you are professionally.

Showing up with substance

Visibility matters enormously in any career. The question is how you create it. Posting on LinkedIn, sharing your projects, writing about your process, publishing your thinking: all of this is showing up. But it's showing up with something to say. Every blog post tells people what you actually think. Every shipped project demonstrates capability rather than claiming it.

The people who have had the most impact on my career are people I connected with through shared interests and mutual respect for each other's work. Not "I was standing near you at a thing" but "I saw what you made and I was interested." That's a starting point with real substance behind it.

Build the thing

My advice to anyone thinking about how to create better professional connections: build the thing. Whatever your thing is, whether it's a blog, a product, a project, a collection, a newsletter, or a body of work, build it, ship it, and put it where people can find it. Then keep building. The connections will follow, one genuine relationship at a time, and every single one will start from a place of real shared interest.

I have twenty-four live projects on the internet right now. They came from curiosity, from passion, and from the desire to make things that are genuinely good. Those projects have opened more doors and started more conversations than I could have predicted. That's the power of building in public: you create the conditions for the right people to find you, and the relationships that form are the real ones.