The networking advice nobody gives you early in your career

Welcome to Nights & Wknds, a weekly newsletter for ambitious professionals building successful careers and lives.

Honest reflections. Practical frameworks. Lessons learned the hard way, written by someone who's been in the trenches and is still learning.

Whether you're learning to deliver under pressure or protect your energy during busy seasons, this newsletter is here to help you play the long game.

This week…

The networking advice nobody gives you in the first few years of your career, and what actually builds the relationships that matter.

Let's get to it!

Aaron

For the first three or four years of my career, I didn't do much intentional networking.

I watched peers make lists of people to reach out to. Schedule coffee chats with managing directors they'd never worked with. Map out their network like a project.

I wasn't doing any of that. Not because I didn't care about relationships. I did. But I had a clear read on what actually builds a reputation in that early stretch.

It was what you could do.

I understand why this question comes up frequently. But it's the wrong question for where most people are when they're asking it.

At year one, the question isn't how to build your network. It's how to become someone worth knowing.

In the early years, your deliverables are the job. Building models. Writing memos. Managing due diligence. Getting faster. Getting more accurate. The bar is clear. And clearing it is the fastest path to building a reputation that actually matters.

You can't engineer trust with senior people before you've demonstrated judgment. And the only way to demonstrate judgment is to do the work in front of people who are watching.

The mentors and sponsors who changed my career weren't people I cold-emailed for coffee. They were people who watched me work and decided I was worth investing in. That distinction matters.

At a certain point, something changes. Managers start facilitating relationship building for you. They bring you into rooms you wouldn't have been in on your own. Introduce you to people you wouldn't have met otherwise.

But they only do that once they trust your judgment. Specifically, your judgment on when you can operate independently versus when you need to loop them in.

The networking came when I earned it. And when it was beneficial for everyone.

Nobody opens doors for someone they're not sure about yet. The investment in you only makes sense once the people around you have seen enough to trust the outcome.

With more tenure, relationship building becomes a natural part of how you operate. You're in rooms because you belong in them. You're meeting people because the conversation has real stakes on both sides.

That version of networking looks completely different from the engineered coffee chat. It's bilateral. You have something to offer, not just something to ask for. And it pays off in ways that early career networking doesn't.

Most people try to skip to that phase before they've built the foundation. The result is conversations that go nowhere, because there's nothing yet to anchor them.

If you're in the first few years of your career, the most valuable thing you can do for your network is become excellent at your job and build genuine friendships with your peers. The relationships that matter most won't come from a list of people to reach out to. They'll come from someone who watched you work and decided you were worth betting on and people you have fun with.

Build the thing first. The network follows.

One of my favorite parts of writing this newsletter is hearing how these ideas show up in real life.

If something from Nights & Wknds helped you make a decision, navigate a challenge, land an opportunity, or simply think differently, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a quick testimonial here ↓