Advice
Why Most Networking Events Are Just Expensive Business Card Swapping Sessions (And What Actually Works)
Networking events are complete rubbish. There, I said it.
I've been dragging myself to these awkward meet-and-greets for seventeen years now, and 89% of them feel like speed dating for suits. Everyone's got their elevator pitch memorised, their business cards perfectly arranged, and absolutely no intention of building genuine relationships. It's theatre, really. Expensive, time-consuming theatre.
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Last month at a Brisbane Chamber of Commerce breakfast, I watched grown professionals literally count how many business cards they'd collected. As if networking was some twisted Pokemon game where the winner has the thickest card wallet. Made me wonder what we're actually trying to achieve here.
The problem isn't that networking doesn't work. The problem is how we're doing it.
Most people approach networking like they're playing business bingo. Walk into room. Scan for important-looking people. Deploy rehearsed pitch. Exchange cards. Move on. Rinse and repeat until the wine runs out or someone saves you with a phone call you definitely don't need to take.
The LinkedIn Connection Explosion
Here's where it gets really ridiculous. Within 24 hours of any decent networking event, your LinkedIn inbox explodes with connection requests. Standard template messages that read like they were written by a chatbot having an identity crisis: "Great meeting you at [EVENT NAME]. Would love to connect and explore synergies in our respective industries."
Synergies. Christ.
These messages get deleted faster than spam emails about Nigerian princes. Yet people keep sending them, convinced they're "following up professionally." What they're actually doing is admitting they've already forgotten your face and conversation.
What Actually Works: The Anti-Network Approach
After years of wasting money on registration fees and uncomfortable shoes, I stumbled onto something that actually works. Stop trying to network.
Instead, become genuinely useful to people. I started showing up to events with the sole purpose of helping others solve problems. Not selling anything. Not pitching anything. Just listening and connecting dots between people who should know each other.
This shift changed everything. Suddenly, conversations became interesting. People remembered me—not because of my business card design, but because I'd introduced them to exactly the person they needed to meet.
Take Sarah from Melbourne's tech scene. She runs a cybersecurity consultancy and was struggling to break into the financial services sector. Instead of telling her about managing difficult conversations, I introduced her to Marcus, a risk manager from ANZ who'd been complaining about vendor quality just fifteen minutes earlier.
Six months later, Sarah's cybersecurity firm landed a massive contract with three major banks. Marcus got the security upgrade his board had been demanding. I got invited to Sarah's company celebration dinner and heard some brilliant war stories about corporate IT disasters.
The Coffee Shop Revolution
The best networking I do these days happens in coffee shops, not conference centres. Real networking requires real conversations, and real conversations need time and comfort—two things most events actively discourage.
I've started inviting interesting people for proper coffee meetings instead of trying to cram meaningful exchanges into two-minute speed rounds between canapés. These sessions run anywhere from 45 minutes to three hours, depending on how engaged we get.
Last Thursday, what started as a simple catch-up with David, a project manager from Perth, turned into a three-hour strategy session about change management in mining companies. By the end, we'd sketched out a training program that could transform how his organisation handles workplace anxiety during major transitions.
This is what networking should feel like. Collaborative. Energising. Useful.
The Follow-Up Fallacy
Everyone talks about following up after networking events. Most people do it terribly.
The standard approach is sending a reminder email within 48 hours, usually containing a company brochure or service overview nobody asked for. It's the business equivalent of a first date text that says "Here's my complete romantic history and marriage expectations."
Better approach? Reference something specific from your conversation and offer something valuable immediately. Not next month. Not after you've had time to "put together a proposal." Right now.
When I met Jennifer, a HR director struggling with emotional intelligence training for her management team, I didn't send her a generic follow-up email. I sent her three relevant case studies from similar organisations and the contact details for two trainers who specialise in her exact industry.
No sales pitch. No "let's schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help." Just immediate value.
Jennifer called me the next day. Not because she wanted to buy anything—because she wanted to understand how I'd connected those dots so quickly. That conversation led to a consulting relationship that's been running for two years now.
The Geographic Factor Nobody Mentions
Australian networking has unique challenges that overseas advice completely ignores. Our major cities are spread across a continent, making regular face-to-face relationship building expensive and complicated.
The solution isn't more Zoom calls. Virtual networking is even worse than in-person networking because it removes the only advantage events have: random conversations with people you'd never think to contact directly.
Instead, focus intensely on your local scene. Become the person who knows everyone worth knowing in your city, rather than having shallow connections across multiple states. It's better to be properly connected in Melbourne than superficially networked across Australia.
I learned this the expensive way. For three years, I flew to Sydney monthly for networking events, convinced I needed national connections to grow my consultancy. Total waste of time and money. The moment I focused exclusively on Brisbane relationships, my business doubled.
When Networking Events Actually Work
Some networking formats work brilliantly. Industry-specific roundtables with guest speakers. Masterminds with consistent membership. Working groups focused on solving actual problems.
What these have in common is purpose beyond networking. People attend to learn something, solve something, or contribute to something meaningful. The relationship building happens naturally because everyone's focused on the same challenge.
The Business Excellence Network in Adelaide runs monthly sessions where members present real problems they're facing and get input from other attendees. Half the room are competitors, but nobody cares because the focus is problem-solving, not business development.
These sessions generate more meaningful connections in two hours than most conferences achieve in two days.
The Authenticity Problem
Most networking advice tells you to "be authentic." Useless guidance that assumes people know what authenticity looks like in professional settings.
Real authenticity in networking means admitting what you don't know, asking for help when you need it, and sharing failures alongside successes. It means treating other attendees as humans with complex challenges rather than walking opportunities.
Last month, instead of pitching my consulting services to a room full of small business owners, I talked about the client project that failed spectacularly because I completely misread their company culture. Twenty minutes of honest storytelling about my mistakes generated more genuine interest than years of polished presentations.
The Long Game
Effective networking is a five-year strategy, not a quarterly sales activity. The people you meet today might not need your services until next year, or ever. But they might know someone who does, or become the perfect collaborator for a project you haven't imagined yet.
This long-term view changes how you show up. Instead of hunting for immediate opportunities, you're building a professional ecosystem that might surprise you years later.
The most valuable connection from my networking efforts wasn't a client at all. It was Rebecca, a graphic designer I met at a particularly dull property development breakfast in 2019. We stayed in touch sporadically, sharing interesting articles and catching up over coffee twice a year.
When I decided to completely rebrand my consultancy in 2023, Rebecca wasn't just the obvious choice for design work—she understood my business better than any designer I could have hired cold. The rebrand was flawless because it emerged from genuine relationship rather than a transactional brief.
The Bottom Line
Stop collecting business cards. Start collecting stories, insights, and genuine human connections. Show up to help rather than to harvest. Follow up with value rather than sales pitches.
Most importantly, remember that the best networkers aren't the people with the biggest contact databases—they're the people others think of first when opportunities arise.
Because when someone needs exactly what you offer, they won't scroll through their business cards looking for solutions. They'll call the person who made a real impression.
And authentic impressions can't be faked, scheduled, or systematised. They emerge from genuine interest in other people's success, one coffee conversation at a time.