I asked a room full of smart, ambitious professionals to rate how important relationship building is to their careers right now. On a scale of one to ten, the answers came back: Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

Then I asked a follow-up question: how does that actually show up in your day-to-day? My favorite response: “Actual importance: ten. How I’m treating it: three.” We all laughed. Because we recognized ourselves.

It may seem like that gap between knowing relationships matter and actually building them is an issue of will-power, discipline, or follow-through, but it’s actually more interesting than that.

Close the Relationship Gap with Timing

Here’s what’s really going on. We build relationships reactively. We reach out when we need something like a referral, an introduction, a favor, a job, an investment, or an opportunity to pitch. We fumble the ask, not knowing how assertive to be, or we over-index on small talk. We feel like impostors despite our knowledge, training, and experience.

The problem isn’t the ask. The problem is your timing.

When you reach out before you have an ask, the whole dynamic changes. You’re not a transaction. You’re a person.

Ditch Networking. Build the Relationship.

Relationship building isn’t networking. Networking implies a transaction with better branding. Relationship building is different. It’s deciding, in advance, who matters to your work and your life, and getting on their radar.

That shift in framing makes the energy of the outreach about building rapport. You’re not trying to extract something. You’re trying to meet someone and build a mutually beneficial relationship that doesn’t have an immediate timeline.

It’s so simple, right? But why don’t we do it?

The Five Things That Actually Stop You

I’ve had versions of this conversation with a lot of clients. And the reasons people stall on relationship building tend to cluster around the same five things. You may recognize a few as your own.

1. The fear of doing it wrong. When the fear of a bad outcome feels bigger than the cost of no outcome, doing nothing feels like the safer choice. But silence doesn’t advance your career.

One client said, “If I do it the wrong way, I’m going to sabotage a potential relationship before I even have a chance to have one.”

It’s paralysis masquerading as caution.

You know this: there’s no perfectly worded email that guarantees a response. There’s no flawless DM that removes all risk. There’s no single phone call that converts a stranger into your bestie.

Practice courage over perfection.

2. Waiting for the right moment. Another person described her pattern as this: “I love sending emails when I feel like I’ve just had a win and I’m like, yeah, let’s go. But on days when I’ve had a setback, I put that off and wait for the magical day to arrive when the sun is shining on me and no one can say no.”

If you’re only reaching out from a place of momentum and confidence, you’re leaving most of your calendar year on the table. Relationships get built in the ordinary weeks, the in-between moments, the days when you reach out anyway.

3. Never having your ducks in a row. This one is sneaky because it sounds responsible. “I’m just being thorough. I want to have something to offer. I want to be ready.”

But ready for what, exactly? A first email isn’t a pitch. It’s an introduction. You don’t need a portfolio, a deck, or a fully formed ask. You need a sentence or two and a genuine reason you thought of this person.

Real life example: I got a cold outreach from someone over LinkedIn who wanted to zoom for 15 minutes to swap stories from the front line as grief workers. There was no ask, but we shared enough information that we’ve agreed to chat again down the road.

You’re reaching out “early” as part of getting your ducks in a row.

4. Believing every reach is secretly transactional. This one hit me hard in a recent conversation. Someone said: “I feel like there’s always an ask, Laverne. I don’t know. It’s eventually… there’s always something.”

And they’re not wrong. Eventually, most professional relationships do involve an ask of some kind. That’s how collaboration works. But “eventually” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

The goal of early relationship building isn’t to pretend you’ll never need anything from anyone. It’s to build enough of a real connection that when the ask comes, on either side, it lands in a context of mutual trust. That context takes time. Which is exactly why you start before you need it.

5. Needing a reason to reach out. You don’t need an excuse. You need a sentence. And that sentence can be easy in the form of a low hanging fruit request.

Something like: “We haven’t met, but [mutual connection] speaks so highly of you. I’d love to grab five minutes to learn more about what you’re working on.”

Or, if you have no mutual connection at all, you can take a humorous approach by making the problem the solution: “We don’t know each other and I have absolutely no one in common with you, but … “ It’s amazing how owning the elephant in the room can create rapport.

Try It. One Move. This Week.

The practical version of this: keep a short list of people you want to build relationships with. People whose work you respect, whose path intersects with yours, who you’d genuinely enjoy knowing. Reach out to one of them this week.

Phone calls, by the way, are making a comeback. People are less inundated with them than they were six years ago. A short call can do more relationship work in fifteen minutes than months of email threads.

DMs are working too. More than you might think.

So pick one person from your list, or make the list right now if you don’t have one. Write them a three-sentence note. The first sentence introduces you or reminds them who you are. The second says something specific and genuine about why you thought of them. The third could be an ask so small it barely counts, like five minutes, a quick question, a resource swap. Or it’s simply a note of respect or appreciation.

Bottom Line

If relationship building is a seven, eight, nine or ten on your scale of importance, take one teeny-tiny step. Make the list. Even one name.

If it’s not a priority, then give yourself permission to stop thinking about it. Put a note in your calendar for three months down the road to revisit whether it’s the right time for you to invest in relationship building.

You’re not a transaction, you’re a person. Relationship building allows you to be that person.

Journal Prompts (for paid subscribers)

Here are 4 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. Use these to get clear about your relationship-building patterns and take one step forward.

* Who is one person you’ve been meaning to reach out to for months? Sit with that for a second. What’s the real reason you haven’t?

* Look at the five blockers. Which one feels most familiar? What story have you been telling yourself to make the stall feel reasonable?

* Think about a relationship in your life that started with no agenda, no ask, just genuine curiosity. What made it feel easy? What would it look like to bring that same energy to someone new?

* Write down three people you want a real relationship with in the next year. Now pick one and write the first sentence of the note you’d send them.

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