The Networking Mistake Nobody Talks About (And How to Fix It)

Networking advice tends to cluster around the same handful of suggestions. Follow up quickly. Have a clear ask. Don't make it all about you. Connect on LinkedIn. These are reasonable pieces of advice, and most people who attend networking events have heard some version of all of them.
And yet, for many business owners, networking events still feel vaguely unsatisfying. They leave with a stack of business cards, a few pleasant conversations, and a nagging sense that something was missed — without being quite sure what.
The problem isn't the follow-up. The problem is the lens.

It's worth pausing for a moment to think about the composition of a typical networking event. The people in that room are, almost without exception, business owners and professionals who want more clients. They have something to sell. They are there, at least in part, hoping to find buyers.

Which means that when you walk into that room looking for clients, so is everyone else. The collective energy of the room is transactional by default — even when everyone is being perfectly pleasant about it.

This is not a criticism of networking events. It is simply a structural reality. And once you see it clearly, it raises an obvious question: if everyone in the room is a seller, where are the buyers?
The answer, in most cases, is that they're not there. The client who has real money to spend on high-quality services is usually too busy running her business, her household, and her life to show up on a Tuesday morning and exchange business cards with strangers. She has enough going on. What she has is a problem she would pay well to solve — and she is looking for someone she trusts to solve it.

That trust is rarely built at a networking event. But it can be built through the relationships that networking events make possible — if you walk in looking for the right thing.

The most underused opportunity at any networking event is not a potential client. It is a potential collaborator.

A collaborator is someone whose services complement yours without competing with them. Someone who serves a similar client at a different stage, or from a different angle. Someone whose strengths fill your gaps and whose gaps you can fill in return.

Two or three professionals who trust each other and refer each other freely can reach clients that none of them could reach alone. They can offer a more complete solution. They can vouch for each other in a way that no amount of self-promotion can replicate. And they can share the weight of building a business in a way that solo practitioners rarely experience.

This kind of collaboration doesn't happen by accident. It requires walking into a networking event with a different question in mind. Not "who here could use my services" but "who here could I build something with."

That question changes everything about how you listen, how you engage, and who you follow up with afterward.

The shift from buyer-hunting to collaborator-seeking is not just theoretical. It has practical implications for how you approach every interaction at a networking event — from who you seek out, to what questions you ask, to how you follow up in the days after.

It also has implications for what kind of events you choose to host or organize yourself. A room curated around potential collaboration looks very different from a room curated around sales. The conversations are different. The energy is different. And the outcomes — for everyone in the room — tend to be significantly more interesting.

In Episode 63 of She Became CEO, I share my honest reaction to five common networking mistakes, including where I agree, where I push back, and what I think is missing from the conversation entirely. I also share a specific example of what business collaboration could look like in practice — one that might change how you think about the next networking event you attend.

You can find Episode 63 on your favorite podcast platform. To hear it on Podbean, click the link or image below.