Six months of networking calls finally paid off in Portland

I started doing weekly video coffee chats with other designers last January, 7 people at first. Around month five, one of those contacts passed my name to a studio lead who needed a freelancer for a 3 week gig. That single job brought in $1,800 and now they've asked me back for a bigger project next month. Has anyone else seen results take that long from consistent outreach, or did I just get lucky with timing?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_hall14d ago

...and honestly my success rate has been more like "six months of coffee chats to get one lousy referral that fell through" so you're already doing better than me. But yeah, @the_simon is right about consistency, I've found the people who remember you are the ones you didn't ghost after week two. My whole network strategy is basically just showing up enough times that people feel bad for me, which apparently works about 5% of the time. So you either got lucky or you're way more charming than I am, and I'm choosing to believe it's the timing thing for my own ego.

the_simon14d agoOG Member

Honestly, I've seen this exact thing happen with a buddy of mine in Seattle. He did casual check-ins with like a dozen folks in his field for almost a year, then out of nowhere one of them hooked him up with a two month contract that paid his rent for ages. Timing matters, sure, but I think consistency over that long stretch is what made his name pop when that gig came up.