Traveling. ✈️

Making art. 🎭

Building cool shit. 🛠️

Publishing a book. 📘

Writing a newsletter. 📩

Nope — this isn’t a list of goals or hobbies I’m working on. These are the actual responses friends in my Entrepreneurship Mastermind gave when I asked them this question on Friday:

💡 “What’s the BEST networking move you’ve ever made?”

👉 Stop chasing. Start creating.

👉 Networking events are a lot more fun when your reputation precedes you.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

I loathe traditional “business networking”.

It conjures up images of name tags, watered-down cocktails, and awkward conversations (with people who have had too many of those watered-down cocktails). 🍸

It’s the cultish BNI chants that will make you think you’ve mistakenly stumbled into a church basement AA meeting.

It's the LinkedIn DM that feigns authenticity, and farts self-importance. 💨

It’s cheap.

It’s transactional.

And leaves even the most extroverted person torn between taking an immediate shower to wash off the bullshit, and cocooning into a snuggie for all eternity.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve participated in more traditional “business networking” than should ever be allowed in one lifetime.

When you’re an entrepreneur in the B2B space, it’s kind of a necessary evil. 

Looking back, I’ve spent cumulative months of my life forcing myself into networking opportunities, which rarely resulted in anything that positively impacted my business — or my humanity.

Instead, I connected with people like one particular “executive coach”, who after giving me her elevator pitch, insisted that I repeat it back to her, and scolded me when I failed to correctly articulate her value proposition.

“How are you going to bring me new clients if you can’t communicate what I do?”

Bitch, we just met. You’re a horrible human, and an unclear value prop isn’t what’s blocking me from referring clients to you. 🙄

And of course, I can’t talk about business networking without bringing up the countless unwanted sexual advances. I could write an entire book dedicated to those stories, but I’m choosing to unhealthily suppress them.

Back to my Entrepreneurship Mastermind on Friday…

I was sitting on a Zoom call with some of the most successful and truly badass business people I’ve ever known. I’m humbled to be able to collaborate with them every week.

And it’s very telling that not a single one of them said that going to a bunch of networking events was the “best networking move” they ever made.

What’s even more telling is that most of them gave slightly different versions of the same exact answer:

They CREATED something that ATTRACTED the best people to THEM.

Racing off to endless networking events is a chase. You’re chasing leads. You’re chasing opportunities. You’re chasing relationships.

But you know what’s far more effective?

Staying in one place, creating something meaningful, and attracting the right leads, the right opportunities, and the right relationships straight to you.

Here’s what some of them did:

👊 Blamah Sarnor published a book about marketing a decade ago, and it’s still connecting him with smart people and killer opportunities — more so than any other single initiative he’s tried since.

👊 Rob Capili wrote an award-winning short film that won multiple festivals, and introduced him to high-level creative leaders in the entertainment world who couldn’t wait to work with him on cool new shit.

👊 Gabe Salinas invented the “Brolo” — the world’s first sleeveless men’s polo. There was literally no better way to attract badass clients he could really vibe with to his digital agency.

And perhaps the most transformative of the bunch: Jacob Cohen Donnelly. 

👊 Jacob started writing a newsletter a few years ago about the media industry (as a hobby), and attracted enough enthusiastic supporters to turn it into a full-time business, including—

His own damn summit.

I was stoked to attend his summit last week here in NYC, and soak up panels with media rockstars like: 

Oh, and Jacob personally interviewed Katie Couric at the summit. No biggie.

Going into our Mastermind call on Friday, I already had an answer to the question “What’s the best networking move you’ve ever made?”.

Easy. Writing Drunk Business Advice.

(I stupidly believed that my answer would be unique, and my ego took a hit when it was my turn to respond after pretty much everyone else had already spilled out the “brilliance” I was saving for them.) 😘

In the 18-months that I’ve been publishing this newsletter, I’ve met more high-caliber humans, and been offered more exciting opportunities, than any other single initiative I’ve ever tried.

Here’s why I think this is:

When you create something consistent, valuable, and personal, it builds trust at scale — without ever needing to ask for it.

People don’t want to be sold on you. They want to see you. They want to understand how you think, what you stand for, what you’ve lived through, and what kind of energy you bring into a room. 

And when you show up consistently — whether it be through writing about your ideas or building cool shit — you give them the chance to opt in on their own terms.

That’s what Drunk Business Advice has done for me.

It’s not just a newsletter. It’s a body of work that reflects who I am, what I care about, and what I know how to do. 

And because it’s real, it attracts people who value the same things.

There’s no need to chase connections or prove my worth in some forced networking setting — because the people I reach through this insane medium already get it. They’ve already decided I’m someone they want to work with, collaborate with, or simply know better.

That’s the difference between networking through creation… and networking through desperation.

With all of this said — I still love cool events. Being in the same room with a bunch of impressive people is insanely energizing. 

But I can’t describe the bliss of what happened to me repeatedly last week at Jacob’s summit:

Networking events are a lot more fun when your reputation precedes you. ♥️

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin

P.S. — If this isn’t proof enough, I’m a real person who really wants to meet her readers. You can hit reply to any of my emails, and it comes straight to me. I’d love to connect with you, badass. 😎