At the start of this year, I committed to 24 in-person events. I did not leave it open-ended or treat it as something I would get to if I had time. I booked the travel, locked in the dates, and built it into how I plan to grow the business this year. A number of these I am speaking at, which changes the dynamic, but a good portion of them I am attending purely to be in the room. A few are also tied to board meetings, which means I am already onsite and it makes sense to stay and connect.
I am six events in. I have two more this week, back-to-back, and a handful more on my calendar that I am already side-eyeing a little. Not because they are bad events, but because I can already feel the pace catching up to me. Energy is part of the equation, whether people want to admit it or not.
That said, I actually enjoy this. I like being in the room. I like meeting new people. Some of my closest business relationships started this way, and a few have turned into real friendships. There is also something to be said for the environments these events put you in. Vendor events, in particular, tend to take you to places you would not go on your own, and there is value in that. If I skip too many, I feel it. Not in a dramatic way, but enough to know I am missing something. The FOMO is real, and it is not always wrong.
Even this early, there are a few things that are already clear.
The first is that the quality of the room matters more than the size of it. Smaller, more focused groups consistently lead to better conversations. People are more open, more direct, and more willing to talk about what is actually going on in their business. You get context quickly, and that makes it much easier to understand whether there is any real alignment. Larger events are not useless, but they tend to create volume without depth. You meet more people, but you retain less, and most of those conversations do not go anywhere.
The second is that the value is almost never in the event itself. It is in the conversation, and more importantly, what happens after it. The only interactions that have turned into anything meaningful so far came from a very specific follow-up. Something that picks up the thread of the conversation and continues it. If that does not happen, the connection fades quickly. People move on, and so do you.
It is also worth saying out loud that most conversations are not going to lead to anything immediate. That is not a failure. That is just the reality of being in these environments. You can spend a few hours talking to people, have genuinely good conversations, and still walk away without anything concrete. Then, out of nowhere, one person circles back a week later or makes an introduction that changes the trajectory of something. The return is not linear, and it is definitely not predictable.
What does make a difference, and this is where networking either works or does not, is whether people actually want to work with you. That has very little to do with how much you know and a lot to do with whether they like you and trust you. You can be technically excellent, but if no one feels comfortable picking up the phone and calling you, it does not matter. These rooms are where that gets built. Not through a pitch, but through normal conversation over time.
Where I have had to adjust already is around how much I can realistically stack into a short period of time. Two events back-to-back sound efficient, and sometimes it is unavoidable, but it comes with a cost. By the second one, you are not showing up the same way. You are more tired, less present, and more likely to go through the motions. That carries over into follow-up, which is the part that actually creates value. When that slips, the whole effort starts to break down.
Because of that, I am looking at my calendar differently now than I did at the start of the year. There are events I was excited about a few months ago that I am now reconsidering. Not because they are not good, but because not every “yes” needs to stay a yes. If I cannot clearly explain why I should be in the room, it is probably not the best use of my time. If the audience is too broad, or if it pulls energy away from something more important, it is worth questioning.
I still plan to show up to most of what I committed to, and knowing myself, I will probably add one or two more along the way. But I am being more intentional about which rooms actually matter and how I manage the time around them. The goal is not to hit a number. The goal is to make the time in those rooms count.
Right now, the math is simple. Six events done, two more this week, and a calendar that is starting to get filtered more aggressively than it was in January. That is the real version of this, not a clean summary after the fact.
I will still show up. Just not blindly. Because at this level, it is not about how many rooms you are in. It is about whether you have the energy to matter once you get there.
