Reaching out to strangers is a daunting prospect for many, but Carly Valancy has a “really special love” for networking, she says.
Valancy, 30, has had a wide-ranging career so far: she’s worked in tech, theater and marketing, before becoming the co-founder of Momentum Growth, a growth consultancy for female founders.
Through each professional pivot, networking has been key to her success, she says.
When she faced a career crossroads in her early 20s, Valancy challenged herself to contact one new person every day for 100 days, an idea inspired by Molly Beck’s networking strategy book “Reach Out.”
The experience “totally changed my life,” she says.
“Not only did it give me so many incredible opportunities, jobs and mentors, but it really gave me such a belief in myself — that I could ask for what I want, and I could reach out to a stranger and actually make a genuine connection.”
Five years later, Valancy is trying the 100 days of networking challenge again. She began in October, and the challenge — which, she clarifies, only takes place on weekdays — will conclude in March on her 31st birthday.
This time around, she already has a strong network by her side, so her main goal is to “plant seeds for my future self,” she says.
Her strategy for the challenge
The first time Valancy tried sending 100 messages in 100 days, she felt “chaotic and desperate to make a change.” By the end of it, she was feeling burnt out, she says.
“A lot of people turn to networking when they’re in those desperate situations, which makes sense,” she says. “Maybe you were laid off from a job, or maybe you’ve moved to a new city and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to be networking.’”
This time, she’s being more intentional.
Having a concrete list of goals is crucial, Valancy says. Hers are to find “dream clients” for her consulting firm, make her personal brand “more visible” and to create “amazing experiences” for her family.
So far, Valancy has scheduled introductory meetings with potential clients, pitched herself to speak at a university, and secured sponsorship from her favorite baby brands for her son’s Formula 1-themed birthday party.
Valancy doesn’t plan who she reaches out to ahead of time, she says: “I don’t want it to feel like a to do list.”
Every day, she chooses a person to contact via LinkedIn, social media or email based on “just my curiosity of like, oh, this person seems really cool, or they’re doing work that I want to be doing in 5 years, or, they’ve written something that I really love.”
Valancy learned from her last attempt at the 100 days challenge that “the coolest opportunities came from the most random places and the most random people,” she says.
She logs every outreach message and response on Tether, an online platform she created to keep track of her networking efforts. Last time Valancy tried the challenge, she had a 70% response rate.
“It can be so easy to let these connections or attempts for connection just totally slip through our fingers,” she says, but Tether helps her stay organized.
How she overcomes networking nerves
Many people resist reaching out to others because they’re afraid “of being rejected or being judged,” Valancy says.
Even after sending hundreds of networking messages over the course of her career, Valancy still gets nervous: “The fear around putting yourself out there is so real, and to pretend it isn’t is such a lie,” she says.
Instead of letting that hold her back, Valancy chooses to be open about her feelings instead.
“It’s really disarming to just tell the truth, and to just say how you feel about attempting to connect with someone,” she says.
Valancy has found that people are more likely to respond positively when she openly acknowledges how stressful and awkward networking can be.
“I can’t tell you the amount of times I will reach out to someone and just be like, ‘You are way out of my league, and I feel so nervous to be reaching out to you right now,’” she says.
“The second that we can kind of like let our guard down, be honest, and share that with the person that we’re trying to connect with — first of all, the better it feels, the more genuine and truthful it feels, but also the better it is received,” Valancy continues.
Networking can feel “really icky” when people approach it from a transactional perspective, she says, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
She describes her networking ethos as “the anti-sales bro approach”: “I just want to like feel like myself when I talk to other people,” Valancy says.
The connections you make today can “have incredible effects on our life many years from now,” according to Valancy.
“Life really, really is about who you know,” she says. “The professional things, the personal things — all of the best things in our life are made possible by the people around us, and by the company we keep.”
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