How to Grow Your Personal Network 🍻
A no-nonsense guide for engineers and introverts.
For as long as I can remember, a good share of the people I admire have recommended me to grow my network.
VCs, other founders, people at conferences — they all seemed a lot into it.
The problem is, I am not a big networker.
I am kind of an introvert, and for the most part of my life I haven’t put much thought into meeting more people. I have a small, trusted circle of friends; I have a set of current + former co-workers who I respect—and respect me likewise—and that’s it.
That’s until a few years ago. In just a couple of years, the following things happened to me:
I started to work 100% remotely.
I started writing the newsletter as a side gig.
I quit my job to work full-time on the newsletter.
In hindsight, all these events gradually shifted the bulk of my work relationships from those with my co-workers, to those with… strangers on the internet!
This changed the game completely.
While at the office you may not need much effort to relate to people, because they are all around you, when you are alone at home every gesture is intentional. If you don’t put in the effort, you don’t get anything in return.
So, over the last few years I have developed routines that help me keep track of the people I care about. Things are not perfect, and what works for me might not work for you, but these principles and systems have served me well and I am now comfortable that, at least, I am not missing out big way.
It’s the classic 20% of the effort to get 80% of the results.
So, this article is my take on how you can create and nurture your network in tech. It covers:
✨ How friendships are made — backed by science™!
🌱 Three types of relationships — not all relationships are made equal.
🌟 Principles for networking — the non-trivial ideas that have been the most useful to me.
🔄 How to nurture relationships — what I do to meet new people, and to make sure I keep showing up.
✏️ Journaling + CRM — the personal system that I use every day for keeping track of people and events.
Let’s go!
✨ How friendships are made
If you search on Google for something like a formula for friendships, you will find plenty of books and papers, each with a slightly different theory.
However, even if some quality might get a different name, or something present here might be absent there, the main themes stay the same.
Two factors, in particular, seem to have the most impact on forming good, long-lasting relationships: Familiarity and Vulnerability.
🏡 Familiarity — is about repeated, physical proximity with the other person. In several studies, physical closeness predicts interpersonal attraction. This might be the result of the mere exposure effect: we tend to prefer things that are the most familiar to us.
❤️ Vulnerability — means being exposed to the possibility of being hurt, physically or emotionally. Vulnerability is key for meaningful relationships because it requires being open with each other, which in turn creates trust.
So, it is not surprising that the bulk of our relationships come from the environment where we share the most experiences with others, early in our lives: school.
At school, relationships form naturally. Familiarity is at an all-time-high, and so is vulnerability created by the turmoil of our own growth.
Things are so natural, that people never learn to seek and curate relationships intentionally, which instead becomes crucial at a later stage of your life when you have 1) less time, and 2) less exposure to other new, interesting people everyday.
So, fast forward to our adult age, let’s start with a basic question: who should you be friends with?
🌱 Three types of relationships
In the past I have written various times about the types of growth relationships, focusing on the three main ones: Sponsors, Mentors, and Coaches.
I often discussed the professional angle of such relationships, but I have found that the same dynamics can be found within your personal ones.
Here is a recap of what these roles are about:
📣 Sponsors — people who can help you reach your goals by doing something for you, like introducing you to somebody, or sponsoring you for a job. These people might be super connectors; prominent people in your space, colleagues or potential partners.
🎓 Mentors — experienced people willing to support your personal or professional development. They are those you reach out to for advice about specific matters, because they have gone through the same things.
🎯 Coaches — people whose judgment you trust and can help you figure out what the problem really is. They challenge you and help with introspection.
People in your life can play different roles at different times, so you can’t simply tag them into one of these categories. However, I have found that these types of relationships, in this order, often match with how close I am to somebody.
Most of the shallow connections I have can be described as light sponsors. We do things to help each other, create intros to other people, partnerships, etc.
With people I am closer with, there is often a mentorship relationship. This might be reciprocal — we give each other advice about the things we are respectively experts about. Also, such expertise is often the thing that made us get closer in the first place.
Finally, my best friends act as coaches with me, and I try to do the same with them.
I find it hard to coach / being coached by people I don’t have a close relationship with, unless we talk of professional coaching. I think that’s because good coaching requires openness, vulnerability, and regular encounters. These are the same key ingredients for good friendships. In fact, the opposite also works: I have often become good friends with people I have coached professionally.
So, what’s the point of all of this? This simple model is useful to ask yourself some questions:
What’s the role of this person in my life right now? And what is mine in theirs?
Is the relationship with them where I would like it to be? Can we do better? How?
I have found this model especially useful to reflect on the how part, which can be translated into more specific questions, like:
As a sponsor — can I create more opportunities for this person? What are their goals?
As a mentor — can I help them based on my experience? What do they want to learn?
As a coach — can I be more of a good friend to them? What are they struggling with?
This looks good in theory, but how do you apply it in practice?
🌟 Principles for networking
The book that was the most influential to me about networking is Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi.
Even though I generally liked it, not all of its ideas resonated with me. In particular, most of my networking these days is remote, so all the in-person parts about e.g. having lunch together, or tactics for conferences, do not really apply to me.
What does apply, instead, are the author’s more general beliefs about how networking works. I report them below, mixed with my own 👇
1) Relationships are reciprocal 🤝
Avoid being selfish — try to give back as much as you take.
To get good at this, ask people what their goals are and what they are struggling with. In many situations you will find that there are practical things you can do to help them, either with advice, or connecting them with others, and more.
2) Create relationships before you need them ↩️
Build rapport around common interests and the other person’s goals before you need anything from them. Be helpful and expect nothing in return.
This is not only the best behavior as a human being — it is also the best strategy for your goals! You never really know who will be able to help you in the future, so your best bet is to help almost everybody. This way, you are maximizing your exposure to good opportunities in the future.
3) Goodwill isn’t finite 🌱
Counterintuitively, the more you ask for help, the stronger your relationship with a person becomes.
You might say this is at odds with #1, but not necessarily, especially is you ask for advice and mentorship, rather than being sponsored. Asking for advice demonstrates to the other person how highly you think of them.
4) Be open about your goals 🎯
Be super upfront about what you want to achieve in your life. You will find that when people know what your goals are, something incredible happens: they help you with them!
Write your goals even publicly — on Twitter, Linkedin, your blog, or whatever. The more people know about them, the more chances you have of getting help and making friends.
5) Show up 🙋♂️
Finally, you need to put in the work. Check in regularly with the people you care about. There are almost infinite ways to reach out to people in a way that puts a smile on their faces:
Hey, I thought of you when I read this […] because […]
Hey, how is it going with X? Last time we spoke you told me you would […].
Hey, I did what you said and things turned out great!
Hey, I am struggling with this lately, what do you think about it?
🔄 How to nurture relationships
I have found that to do anything reliably, I need a system. Relationships are no different.
So, there are two main steps you should take care of:
🤝 Knowing new people — making sure you are exposed to new, interesting people.
👋 Retaining those you already know — showing up and growing your existing relationships.
Let’s see both:
1) Knowing new people 👋
This is the first step. Your best bet is mixing various strategies, that include both outbound (you reach out to people), and inbound (people reach out to you).
Here is what I do and can recommend:
💬 Outbound → hang out in communities — join communities around your interests (work-related or not) and chat with people there. I made some great friends this way.
📩 Outbound → cold-intro yourself — if you find anyone you would love to chat with, tell them and propose a quick 30-mins call. Be audacious! Don’t be afraid that somebody might seem too important. You will be surprised by how many people are happy to chat if you just ask.
✍️ Inbound → write online — they say that writing online is networking for introverts, because it makes people reach out to you, instead of the opposite. It is 100% true. And you don’t need a weekly newsletter for that. You may have a blog where you write seldom; a Medium post every once in a while; an idea posted on Linkedin. If you build the habit of sharing your ideas online, you will naturally attract people with the same ideas.
2) Retaining those you already know 🪴
Again, I believe in checking-in regularly with people you care about. You don’t need specific reasons — most of the time I just say hi, tell the other person what I am up to, and ask them the same.
Because that’s what friends do! You don’t reach out to friends only because you need something.
With close friends this isn’t hard to do. They are few, and I talk with them every week. But how does this scale with people I am not as close to? Those I would be happy to connect with, say, once a month, or once a quarter?
To do it reliably, I built a small CRM in Notion 👇
✏️ Journaling + CRM
I do daily journaling on Notion. I write down the main things that happen during my days, including meaningful conversations with people.
I don’t write down everything. Only the things that I think I may want to remember / search for in the future. Example:
✅ A friend of mine made an awesome website with Webflow and I didn’t even know he was good with it. Check.
✅ Two of my closest friends got married. Check.
❌ Watched a so-so movie last night. Pass.
I also use Notion as a lightweight CRM, so I have a separate view of people I met or talked with in the past.
For people I want to stay in touch with (a small minority) I have a column where I write how frequently I want to do so, as a number of days. For example, if I write 30, that means at least once a month.
On my Notion homepage, I have a view that displays all the people that have passed that threshold, so I can see at a glance who I should write to.
I also include a column for quick notes about what our next conversation might be about. It is useful for when I have some ideas to jot down but don’t have time to write a full email.
This process has been in place for four years now (*gasp*), and over time I refined it and removed parts that weren’t useful. For example, I don’t put tags on people related to their jobs, skills, or whatever. I did in the past but I never really used them, so I flushed them!
Now the process is simple enough that I can comfortably follow it, without being a burden.
The only labeling that I do is organize people into three main categories, in ascending order of how close I am to them:
⚪ Internet friends — people who I maybe talked to once, and with whom I might do things in the future. Maybe I know them from Twitter or the newsletter. They are those with the empty silhouette blue icon.
👤 Colleagues / Friends — people I talked with several times, or we worked together in the past, who I know I can reach out anytime. They are those with the full silhouette blue icon.
🔴 Board of Directors — I stole this from Gibson Biddle. These are my closest friends and advisors. It doesn’t necessarily mean we talk every week, but they are the people I trust the most and I know they will always be there for me. And vice versa. They are the ones with the red silhouette icon.
These categories help me check the situation at a glance and prioritize who I should reach out to.
And that’s it for today! See you next week 👋
Sincerely,
Luca
As an introvert engineer, leader and remote worker... that also started a newsletter as a side gig and is trying to board by personal network, I find this article timely helpful! Thank you, Luca and Nicola.