Hi friends,
In last week's blog, we revealed our foolproof networking strategy: cheesy bread. Yep, you read that right. No, cheesy bread itself isn’t going to make you a better networker (though speaking from experience, it’ll probably make you more popular). In this case though, cheesy bread is a metaphor for showing up as your true, authentic self.
Not following? Let me explain. In November 2023, Sam and I attended NWSL Championship Weekend. We spoke on a panel for the league, announced a new partnership, and had the opportunity to attend several networking events, including the Just Women’s Sports party. Though exciting, we didn’t know what to expect. While we’d met a lot of people throughout the weekend, we didn’t know them well and weren’t sure who would even be there. But we love a party so off we went, determined to make some new friends.
Our first stroke of luck happened as we were walking out of our hotel to meet our Uber and ran into a group of NWSL executives and their families preparing to take a shuttle to the party. Recognizing us from the panel earlier in the day, they were nice enough to invite us to ride with them. Before we knew it, we had 10 new pals. While we separated briefly as we went to meet up with some other connections, we ended up reconnecting with several members of the group at the end of the evening and rode home together.
Upon arriving back at our hotel, we ran into yet another connection we’d made earlier in the day, the general manager for an NWSL team. She told us she was hanging out with several other league execs and coaches at the hotel bar and invited us and our newfound friends to join. While we were excited to be around such an awesome company, we had a dilemma. We were really hungry and had been planning to order cheesy bread to celebrate an awesome day. We were torn between being professional around these accomplished individuals that we’d just met and succumbing to our cheesy desires. Ultimately, hunger won out and we decided to order and ask the group if anyone would like to share. Thank goodness we did because everyone was on board. In fact, we ordered an absurd number of cheesy breads and garlic knots and instantly bonded over the fact that after a day of being “on”, there was nothing better than unwinding with some delicious carbs.
We spent the next few hours enjoying amazing conversation, laughs, and food. And while the cheesy bread itself didn’t help us build relationships, it taught us an important lesson about being yourself. Ask us about our dream day and it involves some combination of sports, networking, tequila-based cocktails, and cheesy bread. Take us or leave us So rather than trying too hard to impress or be something that we weren’t that night, we decided we were going to order the food and if people judged us for it, they probably weren’t our kind of people anyway.
If you take anything from these last two blogs, I hope it’s that it’s ok to relax in a professional setting. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is just be yourself. And of course, always order the cheesy bread.
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