How Your Existing Network Can Open Your Next Career Opportunity

I’d been rethinking how I wanted to work. Then a series of networking conversations showed me that my next career opportunity would not be initiated from someone I didn't know. It would come through the professional network I’d already built.

After more than 20 years of bringing people together, I’m being more deliberate about what comes next.

I want to spend my time on work that energizes me, with people who bring out my best, on projects where I can make a meaningful contribution.

I call the model 24/7: working 24 hours a week, seven months a year. The point isn’t to step away from work. It’s to choose it more carefully.

The opportunity I wasn’t looking for

It began with Bruce Harley and Karin Lidner. They didn’t know the new direction I was exploring and yet their conversations eventually connected me with Judy Murphy and Ugo Dionne at the M&A Club Canada. It was professional networking at its most natural: trusted relationships having new conversations.

Our first meeting was exploratory. We talked about the M&A community, the value of bringing the right people into the same conversation and the kind of relationships that help good work happen.

One conversation led to another. The more we spoke, the clearer the fit became: they were building a connected community, and connecting people around meaningful work is what I’ve spent much of my career doing.

Then came the invitation to become the M&A Club’s Ontario Connector.

Beginning in October, I’ll facilitate conversations among professionals and help build valuable relationships throughout Ontario’s M&A community. It brings together the work I most want to do: connect people, create the conditions for useful conversations and contribute where strong relationships matter.

What makes this opportunity especially meaningful is that I wasn’t searching for it specifically. It grew out of conversations among people within my professional network. This experience reinforced something worth remembering: an existing network continues to evolve as people change roles, develop new expertise and begin to see possibilities.

Someone you know can open an entirely new path. So rather than focusing on meeting more people, I’m becoming even more intentional about the relationships I build and the conversations I choose to pursue.

How to put this into practice:

1. Start with purpose. I begin with what I’m trying to create, then consider who might have a genuine connection to that work. The question is no longer, “How can I meet more people?” but “Who do I need to have a conversation with?” As I design my life - which is a process - I think of who else I need to have a conversation with.
2. Choose where to show up. I don’t need to attend every promising event or pursue every introduction. I want to spend time in the places where the people, conversations and opportunities align with the working life I’m building. Recently, for example, someone new connected with me on LinkedIn and requested we meet. Now is not the right time so I politely declined.
3. Invest where value is mutual. The strongest relationships aren’t transactional. Reciprocity is key. I invest where both people can contribute, learn and help something worthwhile move forward.

These three ideas help me protect the model I’m creating. They keep me focused on the right opportunities – not simply more of them.

What are you creating next?

You don’t need to be designing a 24/7 working life to use the same approach (but if you like the idea let’s share notes).

You may be considering a career change, growing a business, developing new expertise or looking for more meaningful work.

Before you start building a larger network, look again at the one you already have: former colleagues, clients, professional acquaintances, collaborators and people you’ve introduced to one another.

Meet with them and discover: What are they working on now? What matters to them today? What might become possible if you reconnected?

I’m grateful to Bruce and Karin for setting the introductions in motion. Their role in this story is a reminder that relationships aren’t assets we store away until we need them. They are living connections through which we continue to discover - and create - what comes next. If we all think of others in the conversations we have, the better our life will be.

The next chapter of your career may not require a bigger network. Mine began with a better conversation among people I already knew and quite possibly so may yours.