How to Network Without Feeling Fake or Salesy

“I really suck at networking.”

I hear it from clients every week. I hear it from people I meet at events. And for years, I said it myself, with total conviction.

It always felt as if everything depended on that one ✨magical ability✨. Whether you get promoted, land the role, or win clients. Follow any thread in a career and it leads back to the same spot. For aspiring leaders, job seekers and founders alike, that spot seemed to be the source of every misfortune: the ability to network, or rather, the inability.

For a long time I pondered this and today I can say, with some pride, that I don’t fear networking any more. I’m closing a year of networking that actually worked, and I think I’ve found the recipe. I’m going to share it with you!

Networking isn’t one skill

Here’s what I’ve learned, in my own life and in the coaching room: “I suck at networking” is not only about skill. Dig a little and it almost always turns into something else: “Networking feels fake. And I’m not a fake person.”

That’s where most people stop. They decide they’re simply not the networking type, and they stay away. But “fake” is a big word, and as a coach I always want to know what sits underneath it. So I ask: what exactly feels fake?

Is it the people in the room, all there to sell something? Is it the small talk, the awkward first line, the conversation that never goes anywhere? Is it you, standing there with a glass of wine, feeling like you’re performing a version of yourself? Or is it reaching out to someone after years of silence, when part of you suspects they don’t want to hear from you?

Here’s the good news: you get to make your own networking rules. But if you want some inspiration, this is my recipe.

✨Ingredient one: The name

Start with the word itself. It’s half the curse. So swap it. Call it meeting new people. Or, my favourite, asking for directions.

Imagine you’re in a new city, your phone has died, and you can’t find the train station. You ask a stranger. They know something you don’t, they tell you, and they walk away with that small warm feeling of having helped. It’s in our nature to be kind and useful to each other. Nothing about that moment is fake.

A professional conversation can work exactly the same way. You ask for directions, exchange ideas, and leave inspired.

So if networking feels inauthentic to you, don’t force yourself harder. Stop doing inauthentic networking, and start asking for directions.

✨Ingredient two: the right room and the right agenda

If networking hasn’t worked for you, chances are you were in the wrong room, or you brought the wrong agenda.

Where you network matters far more than we admit. At a huge conference where everyone is selling something, or a career fair where everyone is fighting for the attention of the right company, client or candidate, every conversation turns transactional. Of course it feels awful.

So I changed the room. I met wonderful people in my German classes for professionals, including a rhetoric course where we learned not German, but how to express ideas. Yes, after eleven years in Berlin I’m still pushing for real fluency. At Toastmasters I met people who spend their evenings getting better at a skill that matters to them, from every possible background, and talking to them was effortless. At a small workshop on how to post on LinkedIn without hating yourself, I ended up hugging more than five people. Connected by common enemy (LinkedIn) and sheer determination to use it more succesfully, we connected. By the end of the eveing it felt like we’d known each other for years. And Venture Café in Berlin, where every week brings a different topic and a mix of founders, builders and curious people you could never design in advance.

What these rooms have in common: people come because they care about something, not because they need something from you.

And that’s the second half of this ingredient. When you show up without trying to sell your product or yourself, without the silent “please hire/notice me”, and you’re simply interested in something, that’s when connection happens. Networking can be a sales skill. It is also the ability to build relationships. So ask yourself: did you walk in wanting to build relationships with people who inspire you and care about similar things? Or did you just want to talk to someone and get it over with?

I believe that is why I so often hear that networking never works for people. Look at what brought you into the room. In most cases, we ask the wrong people for the wrong thing.

✨Ingredient three: Talk to strangers

If you can’t remember the last time you spoke to a stranger, it might be time to start.

Every day we choose. On the bus, on the street, we can disappear into our phones, books or thoughts,  OR we can tell someone we like their jacket, or ask how old their dog is.

My aha moment came from a conversation between Esther Perel and Simon Sinek, two people I love listening to. Perel put it like this:

“You don’t talk to people on a plane. You don’t talk to people in a queue. You don’t talk to people while you’re waiting for your coffee. You don’t talk to strangers. And talking to strangers is improvisation, spontaneity, serendipity, surprise, novelty: an active engagement with the unknown. Which is what trust is. Trust is an active engagement with the unknown. If you don’t talk to strangers, you have less trust.”

She was talking about romantic relationships, but same is true of any other kinds. That landed hard. Networking is relationships building and it runs on trust. First we must trust ourselves that we can be ok in “uncontrolled” social situations.

So I challenged myself: say what I think, smile at strangers on Berlin streets, and accept that I might be ignored or that someone might get annoyed. Spoiler: nobody has gotten angry yet. Maybe I’m lucky. Maybe it’s still to come. I keep doing it anyway, because I don’t want to accept the collective grumpiness we like to call Berlin’s authentic charm. Plus I get to pet lots of dogs and now know the names of all four-legged friends in the building.

And it taught me something about small talk. It was never meant to be the goal! It’s just the means to get to a real conversation. Think of it as a ball of yarn. Sometimes you pull one string that is loose and it just ends; that’s the superficial chat that goes nowhere. But sometimes you find a nice, long string that you can keep pulling and making a decent conversation.

✨Ingredient four: Reconnect with people who inspired or influenced you

“If they wanted to talk to me, they would.”

This was the hardest one for me. That voice was the loudest in my head: we lost touch for a reason, they don’t reach out, so I’ll take the hint.

I try to catch my own assumptions and check whether they’re real. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I don’t. This year I tested this one. I reached out to former colleagues and people I’d lost touch with years ago. Not everyone answered, and that’s fine. But many did, and some of them have since pushed my growth, my business and my thinking forward more than I could have imagined. Several told me, “I thought you just didn’t like me” or “I assumed you were too busy.” We’d all been telling ourselves the same story.

The message doesn’t need to be clever: “You keep popping up in my feed, you’re doing great things and I’m clapping from the corner. If you’d fancy a coffee and a catch-up, I’d love that.” These are the warmest contacts you will ever have.

✨The secret ingredient: stop with the cringe

“Putting myself out there is cringe.”

Yes, it’s uncomfortable. But ask yourself honestly: what is the actual harm? We call so much of this cringe. Posting on LinkedIn, going to networking events, saying hello to someone we don’t know. I don’t think any of that is cringe.

What is cringe is silencing yourself. Keeping yourself small instead of going out there to build relationships, grow and create opportunities for yourself. Fighting for yourself is a sign of courage and passion, and one of the best things you can tell yourself about who you are.

So the next time you hold back because something feels cringe, remind yourself it’s the exact opposite, and ask what it could bring you closer to.

Demystify Networking

If you’re in a room and don’t feel surrounded by kindred spirits, it’s probably not the right room to network in. It may be a great place to generate leads, and a born salesperson will thrive there. But you don’t have to become a salesperson to build a network.

Great people are everywhere. In a city like Berlin, Meetup and Luma calendars are bursting with people inventing brilliant reasons to spend time together. Walk in as the person who asks a question, not the one already convinced nobody will want to talk to them.

That’s my recipe. Peel the beliefs, stir well, and the scariest word in your career might just become your ally.