How to Network Like Your Business Depends on It

A few months ago I was invited to a networking lunch for women entrepreneurs. Large group, well-established, impressive women in the room. At the start of the event, the membership lead pulled me aside to welcome me and explain how things worked.

One hard and fast rule, she said: no talking about business at the events.

Once I was able to get my jaw off the floor, I smiled and nodded.

Then checked to make sure it was 2026.

I sat through the lunch. I talked about summer plans and restaurants and (I think) someone's kitchen renovation.

On the drive home I kept thinking: would a man have agreed to that rule? Would a room full of male executives have sat through a standing policy that banned business conversation at a business networking event?

I then thought about my brother-in-law who sells health insurance plans. He has asked for introductions at every company I have ever worked for. When I asked him for an introduction to someone at his company, it was his jaw that hit the floor, and he immediately refused. I had crossed a gender line: one where women don't act like they are in business to make money.

The rules are different for men. But guess who wrote the rules? That's right, men did.

Without getting into a sociological discussion about why those rules exist, let's just decide: it doesn't matter.

What matters is recognizing how much we've tacitly agreed to them. And then choosing not to.

We know we can do hard things, so we absolutely can do this.

The Likability Training We All Received

Here's what most of us were taught, explicitly or not, over years in corporate: be likable above all else.

Be warm. Be approachable. Don't make people uncomfortable. Don't be too direct. Don't be too ambitious. Don't brag. Don't ask for too much. Be the kind of woman people enjoy being around.

Being the kind of woman who makes others uncomfortable has real consequences.

Smart, confident women in corporate know this training intimately, because we felt its enforcement.

The woman who offered alternative solutions in meetings was labeled difficult.

The woman who showed leadership qualities was labeled aggressive.

The woman who demanded excellence from her team was labeled a micromanager.

The woman who advocated for herself was labeled needy.

The one who owned her accomplishments was called smug.

We learned to sand down the edges. To make everything soft enough that no one could object.

The instinct that allowed us to keep our jobs in corporate will quietly kill your consulting business.

The Networking You Did Before Was a Different Thing Entirely

There's another layer here that doesn't get examined enough: the networking most of us did in corporate wasn't really networking for business. It was relationship maintenance inside a machine that already had business development handled by other people.

You kept in touch with colleagues. You attended industry events. You grabbed coffees with people you liked. You talked about kids, travel, the conference you both attended, the leadership off-site coming up in Q4.

It was warm. It was pleasant. It served a real purpose: staying connected, staying visible inside a system that already knew your value.

None of that translates to what you need now.

Now you are the business development function. There is no marketing department making your name known or generating leads. No sales team generating your pipeline. No company logo that opens doors before you walk through them. There is just you. And what you choose to do with the time you spend in rooms with other people.

That requires something completely different from the networking you learned.

What Intentional Networking Actually Looks Like

Intentional networking is not aggressive. It's not transactional. It doesn't mean leading every conversation with an ask or treating people as opportunities to be extracted.

And it doesn't mean pitching something to someone you've decided needs what you have.

It means being clear about what you do and who you serve. It means knowing what you're looking for when you walk into a room, and being able to say it out loud without apology. It means following up (specifically, promptly, with something real to say) instead of letting a promising connection go warm and then cold.

It means being okay with having business needs.

That last part is the hard one. Because the training runs deep. Acknowledging that you need clients, that you're actively looking for referrals, that this conversation has a professional purpose. It can feel presumptuous. Grasping. Like you're breaking a rule.

You're not. You're running a business. And the people across from you, the ones who built careers and companies of their own, understand that. Most of them are doing the same thing.

The soft networking (kids, travel, the kitchen renovation) has its place. Relationships are real and they matter. But when you are at a professional event, with professional goals, in a room full of people who might know your next client, being deliberately vague about what you need is not polite. It's just expensive.

Stop optimizing for likable. Start optimizing for clear.

You can be both. The women who build real pipelines through networking are not the ones who made the best small talk. They're the ones who knew what they needed, said it without apology, and followed up like they meant it.

Meg Crumbine is the founder of Heard and a go-to-market strategist for ex-corporate women building B2B consulting and service businesses. She helps women turn their expertise into clear positioning, smarter offers, and a lead generation strategy that creates strong revenue.