Your Biggest Networking Mistake Right Now

Today on Ultimize Discover, you're getting a short practical sample from the Ultimize universe. Use this on its own, take one idea and apply it today, or go deeper at ultimize.com. Ultimize is the world's largest personal development podcast, audiobook, and online learning network. Ultimize. Here's something nobody in the networking industry wants to admit. The single most powerful thing you can do for your career right now has nothing to do with LinkedIn. It has nothing to do with your profile, your connections, your endorsements, or how often you post. Here's what it has to do with: showing up in person in a room with real people who care about the same things you care about. Hi, I'm your host TJ Walker, and this is The Real Networking Show, a limited series podcast Produced by Ultimize, the world's largest personal development podcast, audiobook, and online learning network. In this limited series, we're gonna talk about what real networking actually looks like, why the most connected professionals you ever admire aren't grinding it out on social media, why the worst time to network is when you're desperately in need of something, and why the best networking often doesn't feel like networking at all. If you've ever felt like you were doing all the right things and still not getting anywhere, this series is for you. Let's dive in. I wanna talk about the moment most people decide they need to start networking because it's always the same moment. They've just lost a job, or they can see the writing on the wall and they know a layoff is coming, or they've been passed over for a promotion one too many times, or they finally admitted to themselves that the current situation isn't going anywhere, or maybe they just graduated from college. So they panic quietly, professionally. They panic and they start reaching out. They start showing up all of a sudden. They start trying to connect with people they haven't spoken to in years. They start flooding LinkedIn with activity. They start accepting every invitation to every event they previously ignored. Well, here's the problem. Here's the fundamental unavoidable problem with all of that. It's often too late. Not too late to do anything. Not too late to eventually find something or find a job. People recover. People do find new jobs, new opportunities, new paths. But all of that network they're suddenly doing in a crisis mode, it's working against a massive headwind because every single person they're reaching out to can feel why they're reaching out. And that changes everything. Think about it from the other person's perspective. You get a LinkedIn message from someone you vaguely know, someone you haven't heard from in maybe 2 years, and suddenly they want to grab coffee and catch up. Okay, you know what most people think when they get that message? They think, oh, they must be looking for something, and they're not wrong. That's the biggest networking mistake most people make. They treat networking as a crisis response instead of a career habit. The professionals who never seem to struggle, the ones who always seem to land on their feet, always seem to know the right person, always seem to find out about the best opportunities before anyone else— well, guess what? They didn't build that by accident. They built it by consistently, genuinely staying connected to the people in their industry during the good times, during the busy times, during the times when they absolutely did not need anything from anyone. That's a very different feeling. When someone who's been showing up consistently, who you've seen at events, who you've had real conversations with, who maybe you grabbed breakfast with or lunch with a few times over the years, When that person reaches out and says, "Hey, thinking about making a move. I'd love to get your perspective," it feels completely different. First of all, you can't really say no. This feels like a friend asking for advice, not a stranger asking for a favor. See the difference? Now, here's the reframe I want you to really sit with because this is the one that changes everything for most people. Stop thinking about networking as something you do. Start thinking about it as something you are. The best networkers aren't people who are good at networking. They're people who are genuinely, authentically curious about their industry and the people working in it. They go to events because they actually find it interesting to talk to other people who care about the same things they care about. They follow people online because they're genuinely interested in what those people are thinking and doing. They grab coffee or breakfast or drinks with someone not because they need something from that person now, but because they enjoy the conversation. That's it. That's really the whole secret. When networking stops being a transaction and starts being a genuine expression of professional curiosity, and sometimes personal curiosity, it stops feeling awkward. It stops feeling cheesy. It stops feeling like something you have to force yourself to do. It starts feeling like just living a rich, connected professional life. And the beautiful irony is that when you approach it that way, when you're genuinely curious and genuinely engaged and really present, people want to help you, not because you asked, not because you need it, but because they like you, because they've spent real time with you, they're already comfortable with you, because when your name comes up in a conversation, they feel good saying it and talking about you in a good way. That's the goal. Not a long list of connections, not a more impressive LinkedIn profile— not that there's anything wrong with that— but getting people Real people who feel good saying nice things about you and using your name. Let me be clear about something before we go any further. I'm not anti-digital. I'm not telling you to delete your LinkedIn profile, abandon social media, and communicate exclusively through handwritten letters and carrier pigeons. Digital tools are great. I use them every day. We're using them right now. They matter. Used correctly, they can be extraordinarily powerful for building and maintaining professional relationships. The key phrase here is used correctly because most people aren't using them correctly. Most people are using digital tools to collect, to accumulate, to amass an impressive-looking number of connections that represent in real relationship terms Almost nothing. I want to talk about what using those tools correctly actually looks like. Let's start with LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is where most of the confusion lives. LinkedIn is not a networking platform, not really. It's a staying visible platform. It's a place where relationships that already exist in the real world can be kept warm. Kept current, kept alive between the times when you actually see each other in person. That's what it's good at. That's what it was genuinely built for. Where people go wrong is when they try to use it to create relationships from scratch, when they send connection requests to people they've never met, people they've never spoken to, people who have no idea who they are, and then wonder why nothing ever comes from it. Nothing comes of it because there's nothing there. There's no relationship to activate. There's just a number that went up by one. Big deal. Here's what using LinkedIn correctly looks like. You meet someone at an event, a real event, in a real room with real people. You have a real conversation. You find them genuinely interesting. Ideally, they think you're interesting, and then you connect on LinkedIn afterward. Now that connection means something. Now when your content appears in their feed, they remember you. They have a face to go with the name. They have a feeling associated with a profile. And when you comment on something they post thoughtfully, specifically, not just the thumbs up or great point exclamation mark, they'll notice you. They remember. The relationship stays warm. That's how you use it correctly, as a maintenance tool for real relationships, not a replacement for them. Now let me talk about something that people in digital communication almost never discuss, and that's the power of genuine, thoughtful engagement with other people's content. Not algorithmic engagement, not strategic engagement, but genuine engagement. If someone in your industry writes something interesting, an article, a post, a thread, and you read it and you actually have a thought about it, stay the thought. Write a real comment, a specific comment, something that demonstrates that you actually read what they wrote and what you thought about it, what you're adding to this discussion. Put that in, something that adds to the conversation rather than just good job, nice. You want to add something that isn't just applauding to it. Now, you want to know how rare that is? Do you know how much it stands out in a world of emoji reactions and one-word comments? A thoughtful, specific, genuine response to someone's content is one of the most underrated relationship-building moves in the entire digital toolkit. And it works across geography. It works across career levels. You can build a genuine, meaningful connection with someone who is 10 years further along in their career than you are, who lives in a different continent. Purely, purely through the quality and consistency of your engagement with their ideas. I've seen it happen many times. Someone starts commenting thoughtfully on another person's content. The person notices, they respond, a conversation develops, an email gets exchanged, a video call happens, and suddenly two people who've never been in the same room have a real professional relationship, one that could lead anywhere. But it has to start with genuine curiosity on your part. It starts with actually caring about what the other person is thinking and saying. You can't fake that at scale. I'm sorry, you can try, but it just isn't done. You can't automate genuine interest, and that's actually Good news, because it means the people who bring real curiosity to their digital presence will always stand out from the people who are just running the playbook. One more thing before we move on, and this is something I do feel strongly about. Even in a digital world, even with all of these tools available, nothing replaces the direct, personal human message. Not a mass email, not a newsletter, a direct message to one specific person that's clearly, obviously written for that one specific person, referencing something specific about them, asking something specific, saying something that could not have been copy and pasted to 50 other people. That kind of message, even digitally, lands differently. It feels different. It gets responded to differently because it signals something that all the algorithms in the world can't replicate. It signals that you actually see them as a person, not as just another connection, not as a number, but as a real, specific, interesting human being whose work and thinking and career you're genuinely paying attention to. That's what digital networking done right looks like. By the way, quick question for you. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to consume content and how hard it is to actually do anything with it? I mean, you can listen to 100 episodes, read 10 books, and your habits are exactly the same. That's the gap most people never close. So, if you're listening to this and thinking, yeah, I want to actually improve, go to ultimize.com. We've got free courses there for you, either on communication skills or building better habits, and it's designed to get you to actually use what you're learning, not just hear it once. No cost, no catch. Just go to ultimize.com and start. Ultimize.