Why I Write Before I Network and How I Plan to Do Both
Build something worth sharing before you ask anyone to share it.
Let me tell you about two people.
The first one spends all their time creating. Writing, building, thinking, publishing. Genuinely good work. Honest, specific, useful. The kind of work that deserves to be read. But nobody reads it. Not because it isn’t good enough. Because nobody knows it exists.
The second one spends all their time networking. Commenting on every post, sliding into DMs, showing up in every conversation, building relationships across every platform. People know their name. But when someone clicks through to see what they actually do, there’s nothing there. No body of work. No substance behind the presence.
Both of them are stuck.
One has the work without the reach. The other has the reach without the work.
The answer isn’t to pick one. It’s to understand how they work together and in what order.
Why most people get networking wrong
The word networking has been poisoned by the version of it that actually doesn’t work.
The cold DM that’s really just a pitch. The comment that’s really just self promotion. The follow that’s really just hoping for a follow back. The collaboration request from someone you’ve never spoken to who wants access to your audience before they’ve given you any reason to trust them.
That’s not networking. That’s transaction pretending to be relationship.
Real networking online works exactly the same way real networking works in person. You show up somewhere. You find people doing interesting things. You engage genuinely with their work. You share something of your own when it’s relevant. The conversation goes back and forth over time. Trust builds slowly. And eventually, naturally, without forcing it, you know each other.
That’s it. That’s the whole model.
The only difference between networking in person and networking online is that online you have access to people you could never physically be in the same room as. The rules of human decency are identical.
Be respectful. Be genuinely interested. Give before you ask. Show up consistently enough that people remember you. Don’t treat every interaction as a transaction.
The one liner problem
There is a version of this that looks like networking but is really just engagement farming.
The one liner post. Five words. A provocative statement. A hot take stripped of all context. Designed to get people to agree or disagree loudly in the comments.
And it works. The numbers are real. The engagement is real. There is nothing wrong with writing a one liner that makes people stop scrolling.
But here is what a one liner cannot do.
It cannot show you how someone thinks. It cannot reveal the depth of their reasoning or the quality of their judgment. It cannot demonstrate that they have actually lived through something and extracted real understanding from it. It gets you the reaction without showing you the person behind it.
I’m not interested in being a collection of reactions. I’m interested in building a body of work that shows exactly how I think, what I’ve tried, what I’ve learned, and where I’m going. That takes more than five words.
One liners get engagement. Essays show depth. Both have a place. But if all you ever write is one liners, you’re building an audience that knows your opinions without ever knowing your thinking.
And your thinking is the most valuable thing you have.
Why the body of work has to come first
Here’s the part most people skip.
You can network without a body of work. People do it all the time. But what happens when someone finds you interesting enough to click through and see what you do?
If there’s nothing there, the moment is gone. You had their attention and you had nothing to show them. They move on and they don’t come back.
This is why I spent the first weeks of this building articles before I started reaching out to anyone. Not because the articles are perfect. Because they’re real. Because when someone lands on my work they find something that took thought and honesty to produce. Something worth their time.
The body of work is your handshake. It’s the thing that speaks for you when you’re not in the room. And it needs to exist before you start trying to get people into the room.
Think of it this way. Networking gets people to look. The body of work gives them a reason to stay.
The leverage play
There is another side to this that’s worth being honest about.
Sometimes you pay to access an audience someone else has built. A sponsorship, a collaboration, a paid placement in a newsletter. That’s not selling out. That’s leverage. If the content is good enough and the audience is right, paying to get in front of them is just smart distribution.
But it only works if the work is there first.
You can buy eyeballs. You cannot buy trust. Trust comes from the work. From showing up honestly over time with things worth reading. From being the same person in your content as you are in your DMs.
The people worth knowing can tell the difference immediately.
How I’m doing this
Slowly. Intentionally. Without rushing it.
I’m not blasting DMs. I’m not commenting on everything that moves. I’m not trying to manufacture relationships before they’re ready.
I’m building the work first. Five articles in. A body of writing that represents what I actually think and how I actually see things. When I start reaching out more deliberately, and I will, I’ll have something real to point to.
The networking will be the same as it would be in person. Find people doing interesting things. Engage genuinely with their work. Share what I’m building when it’s relevant. Let the relationships develop at the pace they’re meant to develop.
No forcing. No faking. No transactional pretending to be relational.
Just two people who find each other’s work interesting, building something worth talking about, occasionally pointing each other’s audience toward something they think they’ll value.
That’s it. That’s the whole plan.
The thing that makes it all work
Content without network is a tree falling in an empty forest.
Network without content is noise with a friendly face.
But content and network together, built honestly, developed slowly, pointed at people who genuinely need what you have to say, that’s how things actually spread.
Not virality. Not hacks. Not growth strategies borrowed from someone else’s playbook.
Just good work, put in front of the right people, by someone who took the time to build real relationships before asking for anything.
That’s the game worth playing.
And it starts with having something worth sharing.
Which is why I write before I network.
Kal