My Thoughts

The Dark Side of Networking Events: Why I've Stopped Pretending They're Worth My Time

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I was standing in a hotel ballroom last Thursday, holding a warm beer and watching a bloke in a $2,000 suit tell a cluster of middle managers about his "disruptive blockchain fintech solution," when it hit me like a freight train. This entire industry of professional networking has become one massive, expensive charade.

And I'm done pretending otherwise.

Look, I've been running workplace training sessions across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane for the better part of seventeen years. I've seen every type of networking event imaginable - from swanky corporate mixers to "authentic" breakfast catch-ups where everyone's secretly checking their phones under the table. After literally hundreds of these things, I can tell you with absolute certainty: most networking events are brilliant at everything except actual networking.

The Great Business Card Shuffle

Remember when business cards meant something? Now they're just expensive confetti.

I watched a pharmaceutical sales rep collect forty-three cards at a recent event in Collins Street. Forty-three! She had this little metal case and everything, treating each exchange like she was conducting international diplomacy. Two weeks later, I bumped into her at a café, and she couldn't remember a single person she'd met. Not one.

The whole ritual has become performance art. You approach someone, make fifteen seconds of small talk about the weather or the canapés, exchange cards with the ceremony of a Japanese tea service, then immediately forget everything about them. It's like speed dating but with even lower success rates.

Here's what really gets me - everyone knows this is happening, yet we all keep participating. We've created this collective delusion that shuffling business cards equals building professional relationships. It's madness.

The LinkedIn Connection Circus

Then there's the post-event LinkedIn feeding frenzy.

Within twelve hours of any networking event, your inbox explodes with connection requests from people who spoke to you for precisely ninety seconds. The messages are always the same: "Great meeting you at [insert event name]. Let's stay connected!"

Stay connected to what, exactly? We barely made a connection in the first place.

I've started accepting these requests just to see what happens next. The answer is: absolutely nothing. These phantom connections disappear into your LinkedIn list like ships into the Bermuda Triangle. They're digital business cards, sitting in a virtual drawer, gathering electronic dust.

But here's the kicker - I know marketing consultants who measure their networking success by LinkedIn connections. They'll tell you they met "fifty new contacts" at an event, when what they really did was collect fifty business cards and send fifty generic LinkedIn invites. It's like claiming you've made fifty new friends because you said hello to fifty strangers on the street.

The Authenticity Paradox

Every networking event I attend now has the same theme: authentic relationships.

The irony is breathtaking. We're attending scripted events, having rehearsed conversations, exchanging manufactured pleasantries, all in the service of building "authentic" professional relationships. It's like trying to create spontaneity with a stopwatch.

I was at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast last month where the facilitator actually gave us conversation starters. Printed cards! With questions like "What's your biggest business challenge?" and "How did you get into your industry?" The whole room looked like they were playing an extremely boring version of Cards Against Humanity.

When did we decide that professional relationships should follow the same formula as speed dating? Real relationships - the ones that actually matter for business - develop organically over time. They're built on shared experiences, mutual respect, common interests. Not on whether someone can memorise your elevator pitch in thirty seconds.

The ROI Reality Check

Let's talk numbers, because that's what businesses care about.

I've tracked my networking ROI obsessively for the past five years. Time invested, money spent, actual business generated. The results? Underwhelming doesn't begin to cover it.

Average networking event: four hours (including travel and the event itself), $150 in tickets/parking/drinks, plus opportunity cost. I usually "meet" fifteen to twenty people, get seven LinkedIn connections, and maybe one or two actual follow-up conversations.

Actual business generated? In five years of dedicated networking, I can trace exactly three clients back to networking events. Three. That's roughly $15,000 in revenue from an investment of about 400 hours and $8,000 in direct costs.

Compare that to my effective communication training programs, which generate referrals constantly. Or my ongoing relationships with existing clients, which account for 78% of my business. The numbers don't lie - networking events are among the least efficient ways to build professional relationships.

Yet we keep going. Why? Because everyone else is going, and we're terrified of missing out on some mythical opportunity.

The Small Talk Torture Chamber

Can we please acknowledge that most networking conversations are excruciating?

"So, what do you do?" "I'm in marketing. You?" "Training and development." "Oh, interesting. What kind of training?" "Leadership, communication, that sort of thing." "Cool, cool. How long have you been doing that?" "About fifteen years. You?" "Marketing? Oh, about eight years now." "Great, great."

And then you both stand there, desperately scanning the room for escape routes.

This is not human conversation. This is a broken algorithm trying to establish relevance. We've reduced professional interaction to a series of data points: industry, experience level, company size, geographical focus. It's like trying to build friendships by comparing social security numbers.

The Extrovert Advantage Myth

Here's an uncomfortable truth the networking industry doesn't want to acknowledge: these events are designed for extroverts, by extroverts, with complete disregard for how the other 60% of the population operates.

I'm naturally introverted. Give me a one-on-one conversation over coffee, and I'll talk your ear off about workplace dynamics, team psychology, communication strategies. Put me in a room with two hundred strangers making small talk, and I become the human equivalent of a malfunctioning robot.

But here's what's interesting - some of the most successful businesspeople I know are introverts. They build relationships slowly, deliberately, based on substance rather than charm. They're brilliant at what they do, but they're fundamentally disadvantaged at traditional networking events.

We've created a system that rewards the ability to work a room over the ability to do actual work. It's backwards.

The Quality vs Quantity Delusion

The networking industry has convinced us that more is better. More contacts, more events, more connections.

It's complete rubbish.

I know a financial planner who attends three networking events per week. Three! She's collected over 2,000 business cards in the past two years and has a LinkedIn network approaching 5,000 connections. She's also struggling to build her practice because she spends so much time collecting contacts that she never has time to develop relationships with the few people who might actually become clients.

Meanwhile, her colleague focuses on building deep relationships with about fifty key contacts - existing clients, referral partners, industry specialists. Guess which approach generates more business?

The most successful professionals I know have small, highly engaged networks. They invest time in nurturing existing relationships rather than constantly chasing new ones. They understand that ten people who genuinely know and trust your work are worth more than a thousand LinkedIn connections who barely remember meeting you.

What Actually Works Instead

After years of networking frustration, I've discovered what actually builds professional relationships: shared experiences and mutual value creation.

The best professional relationships in my life didn't start at networking events. They started in training workshops, industry projects, problem-solving sessions. When you work alongside someone to achieve a common goal, you build real trust and understanding.

One of my strongest referral partners is someone I met during a particularly challenging team development training session three years ago. We weren't trying to network - we were trying to solve a complex workplace culture problem. The relationship developed naturally because we were focused on delivering value rather than exchanging business cards.

The Alternative Approach

Instead of attending networking events, I now focus on creating value for my existing network. I send relevant articles to former clients. I make introductions between people who should know each other. I invite interesting people to join me for coffee when I genuinely want to learn from them.

This approach takes more time per interaction, but it's infinitely more effective. When you focus on being useful to people, rather than collecting their contact details, relationships develop naturally.

I also invest heavily in my own expertise. The better I become at what I do, the more people want to connect with me. It's networking in reverse - instead of chasing relationships, I create value that attracts the right relationships to me.

The Emperor's New Networking

Here's my controversial opinion: the networking industry exists primarily to serve itself, not the people who participate in it.

Event organisers, professional associations, networking groups - they all benefit from perpetuating the myth that professional success requires constant networking. They sell tickets, memberships, coaching programs. They have a vested interest in making us believe that we're always one conversation away from a breakthrough opportunity.

But most breakthrough opportunities don't come from random encounters at cocktail parties. They come from doing excellent work, building trust over time, and being helpful to the people around you.

The networking emperor isn't wearing any clothes, and it's time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Look, I'm not saying professional relationships don't matter. They're crucial. What I'm saying is that most networking events are terrible ways to build them. We've industrialised relationship-building to the point where it's lost all humanity.

Real networking happens when you stop thinking about networking. It happens when you focus on being genuinely useful to other people, when you invest in relationships for their own sake rather than for what you might get out of them.

Maybe it's time we admitted that the best networking happens when we're not trying to network at all. Just a thought from someone who's finally stopped pretending that working a room is the same thing as building relationships.