Last week, I wrote about introducing women who should know each other.
But there’s another side of that conversation I’ve been thinking about.
What if nothing comes from it?
No collaboration. No referral. No new client. No opportunity that magically appears three weeks later.
You just met someone you liked.
Is that enough?
I think it should be.
We’ve gotten very good at making relationships productive.
Especially in business.
We meet someone and almost immediately start figuring out where they fit.
What does she do? Who does she know? Could we work together? Should I follow up? Is there a referral here? A collaboration? Someone I should introduce her to?
I understand it. I’ve spent a lot of my career networking, connecting people and building relationships. I’ve seen what can happen because two people met at exactly the right time.
But I also think we can get so focused on the potential value of a connection that we forget something fairly basic:
Not every relationship needs an ROI.
Sometimes you meet someone and the conversation is good.
Sometimes you have coffee because you actually want to have coffee—not because there’s an agenda attached to it.
Sometimes you follow someone’s work because you find it interesting.
Sometimes you send her something six months later because it made you think of her.
And sometimes you meet someone, enjoy the hell out of her, and absolutely nothing measurable ever comes from it.
That doesn’t make the connection less valuable.
In fact, I’m starting to think some of the strongest relationships in our lives and businesses happen because we didn’t decide what they were supposed to become too quickly.
We gave them some room.
We stayed curious.
And if something eventually came from it, great.
If it didn’t, that was okay too.
That’s something I want to be careful about as The Other Women grows.
Yes, I want women making introductions. I want collaborations to happen. I want business to happen. I want someone to walk into one of our events and meet a woman who changes the trajectory of what she’s building.
Absolutely.
But I never want every conversation to feel like everyone is quietly calculating what comes next.
Because there’s a difference between being open to possibility and looking for a payoff.
And maybe that’s part of what makes a really strong network strong in the first place.
You know people because you’ve taken the time to actually know people.
Not because you decided what they could do for you five minutes after meeting them.
Some of those relationships will eventually turn into opportunities.
Some will turn into friendships.
Some will lead to introductions you never could have predicted.
And some will simply be a really good conversation with an interesting woman you’re glad you met.
That counts too.
XO,
Cleo
