Feed Your Network, Feed Your Soul

A University of Queensland study suggests the average person will have roughly three to seven careers before retirement. (1) I fall into that statistic. My career path has taken me from agriculture to higher education to corporate America, and eventually into entrepreneurship in the field of belonging — the work of building cultures where every person’s full self is welcomed and valued. Every shift happened because of the network around me. My network did not appear magically. I nurtured it consistently. That investment returned to me at the moments I needed it most.

I often say that if you feed your network, your network will feed you. The reverse is also true: if you never pour into your network, you cannot expect it to pour into you during your time of need. Just as personal relationships cannot grow without intention, professional relationships cannot either. A community cannot thrive without nourishment. A network cannot function without reciprocity.

Before I go further, I want to offer my own definition of what a network actually is. Because the word gets used in ways that make it feel transactional, formal, or reserved for people who are already connected. That is not how I understand it. A network is everyone who has ever shown up for you, and everyone you have ever shown up for. It is your family. Your mentors. Your former colleagues. The professor who wrote you a letter of recommendation. The stranger whose mother-in-law gave you a room when you had nowhere to go. Your network is not a contact list. It is a living record of every relationship you have tended with care. And the single most important thing I can tell you about it is this: you have to pour in before you can draw out.

Whether you are two years into your career or twenty, the question this chapter is asking is the same: what are you putting into the people around you? Your network will not do the work for you. What it will do, if you have tended it well, is hand you the tools, open the doors, and stand with you at the threshold. You still must walk through on your own.

Looking back now, I realize there is an entire world of research validating what experience taught me. Sociologist Mark Granovetter published a landmark study in 1973 called “The Strength of Weak Ties.” In his research on how people found jobs, Granovetter showed that casual connections and loose acquaintances — “weak ties” — can be surprisingly powerful in opening doors. (2) This is now supported by many modern studies, and it matches my lived reality: a large portion of my opportunities came not from job boards or cold applications, but through people I knew — and often people they knew. (3)

What I have come to recognize, which was not apparent at the outset of my career, is that networking is not merely an optional enhancement. It is a fundamental component of one’s professional journey. Robust networks serve as the foundation that sustains individuals through periods of uncertainty. Keith Ferrazzi, one of the leading voices on the power of professional relationships, captured it this way in his book Who’s Got Your Back: we become the sum of the people we choose to keep close. The quality of those relationships shapes the quality of our lives. (4) Although I was unaware of this perspective early in my career, reflection on my professional development confirms its validity. Every stage of my progression has been shaped directly by the connections and relationships I have built.

Rooted in the Land: Where My Career Began

My career began on a farm. I earned a Bachelor’s degree in agricultural science, fully expecting to spend my life running our family farm. I envisioned a future working the land, growing fruits and vegetables, and being part of a multigenerational legacy. Then, during my college years, our family farm closed. The future I had counted on evaporated overnight.

Even then, I was determined to build a career in agriculture — perhaps by helping other family farms that were struggling to survive. That dream ran deep. It was rooted in soil and seasons and the particular satisfaction of growing something from nothing. I still carry it. I still find ways to work with organizations in the agricultural community, hoping to help shift its culture, at least somewhat, from the outside.

As graduation approached, however, I had a realization that arrived less as clarity and more as a gut punch. Staying in agriculture, as a gay man, would not bring me the success and joy I needed in life. The agricultural world I loved was not yet ready to fully welcome all of me. I had to grieve leaving a profession I had built my identity around — and I had to be honest with myself that the path forward meant going somewhere I could show up whole. That was not a small thing to accept. I still feel the weight of it sometimes.

So I made my first significant career shift: I pursued a Master’s degree in higher education, searching for a new kind of purpose.

Learning to Give Before I Knew Why

I spent the next few years working in student affairs, developing student leaders and building programs to help others create positive change in their communities. If there is a common thread throughout my career, it is this: I found meaning in helping others succeed in creating impact.

At the time, I did not have language for it. I only knew that pouring into others’ cups filled mine too. And I was learning something else in those years, something I could not yet name: the most important thing I was doing was not building programs. It was building relationships. I was acknowledging people’s bold, authentic selves — telling them, through my presence and my attention, that their fullness mattered. I was asking, constantly, how can I help? I was making introductions without expecting anything in return. That is what I was pouring into the cups around me, long before I knew what the investment would yield.

Then the economy collapsed between 2008 and 2010. Budget cuts hit higher education hard. I lost my job. In what felt like an instant, I found myself moving back in with my parents, feeling unmoored and unsure of the path ahead.

I want to pause here and say something about that moment, because our culture often treats moving home as a step backward. It is not. My family has always been the first layer of my network, the foundation beneath every other foundation. My mother, in particular, has been one of the earliest teachers of what it means to build a network — even if neither of us would have used that word at the time. She was the person I called when something extraordinary happened and the person I came home to when I had fallen hard. Moving back was not a failure. It was a reminder of where my strongest safety net had always lived.

That period tested me. It stripped away certainty. It also forced me to confront a question many of us avoid until we have no choice: Who am I when my title disappears?

It became foundational to my understanding of the strength of my network. I reached out to former colleagues, mentors, and friends — connections I had nurtured over time — and they reached back. I started to see reciprocity not as a moral slogan, though as a lived reality: when relationships are tended, people show up.

The First Time My Network Caught Me

Eventually, through one of my casual connections, I landed a role in corporate HR. This was the first time my network truly functioned like a safety net. I was not just “getting hired.” I was being held up by social capital — the trust, information, encouragement, and advocacy embedded in relationships.

I liked the work; however, I felt I could do more. I wanted to transition into the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. On paper, however, that was not an obvious career move. I needed insights from people already in that world. Once again, my network met me there.

To make the leap, I tapped into weak ties across my professional circle — people on LinkedIn and acquaintances from industry meetups. One conversation with a former colleague stands out: I told them I wanted to get into DEI and leadership development. They not only offered encouragement, though introduced me to someone I barely knew who was hiring for a role that could serve as a bridge into the work I wanted to do. Sometimes help comes from unexpected directions, and that weak tie effect played out in real time for me.

When Everything Changed in a Single Day

I took a job at a staffing agency just to gain HR experience — and soon realized agency recruiting was not my calling. I remember confiding to a friend on a Monday morning during my commute that I needed an exit strategy. That day, the agency let me go. Suddenly, I had no job at all.

In the first minutes after losing work, it is easy for panic to get loud. What mattered most, however, was not my ability to perform with confidence. It was my ability to reach for connection. I immediately texted the friend I had spoken with earlier to say, essentially: we need to accelerate the plan — today is my last day. By that afternoon, my friend had connected me with an interview for a temporary HR role in another city. My network was already in motion, working for me because I had worked for it.

I drove hours for the interview, landed the job, and needed to relocate within days. Then came the next hurdle: I did not know where I would live. Swallowing my pride, I posted on Facebook asking if anyone had a couch or spare room near the new job. That was a vulnerable ask — one that required me to be honest about my need rather than polished about my image. A friend replied that their mother-in-law had an extra room and welcomed me without charging rent. That kindness left me speechless.

Brené Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection: "Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection." (5) I had poured into my relationships, and now they were pouring into me in ways beyond anything I expected.

That temporary role became a turning point. It eventually led me toward deeper work in people analytics and into the DEI path I wanted to build. By that point, I had tangible proof of a life lesson: if you cultivate your network consistently, it becomes a safety net — ready to catch you when you fall.

The Leap That Proved Everything I Had Learned

After years in corporate leadership, I decided to step out on my own and become an entrepreneur. I want to be honest about what that actually means, because this book is built on honesty: I am still early in this journey. I do not have a product on a shelf. What I am asking people to invest in is my mind: my framework, my lived experience, my thought leadership. And asking people to trust your thinking is a different, more vulnerable kind of ask than anything I had made before.

For years, people could support me by recommending me for jobs, advocating for me inside their organizations, or connecting me to opportunities where someone else would ultimately employ me. That kind of networking felt comfortable for many people — no financial investment, no direct ask. Now, when I reach out to my network, I am asking them to hire me. To bring me in as a consultant, trainer, speaker, or advisor. I am asking them to pay me for what I know. That is a different level of vulnerability. It is also a different level of trust.

Part of why I am writing this book is precisely because of where I am in this journey. I need the world to understand who I am and how I think before they can decide whether to invest in my thought leadership. This is me feeding my network before I know exactly how it will feed back to me. That is the practice. That is the point.

And it has reinforced a truth I cannot ignore: feeding your network is not something you do only in a crisis. It is what you do so that when crisis comes — as it will — you are not alone inside it.

You Cannot Pour From an Empty Cup

Through every career shift, I kept learning the same lesson — sometimes gently, sometimes the hard way: you cannot pour from an empty cup. When my cup is full, I have the emotional, mental, and physical capacity to show up for others with integrity. When my cup is empty, even good intentions can turn into burnout or performative connection.

And here is something I had to learn that does not get said enough: not every relationship in your network deserves your investment. I have had to make intentional decisions about who I continue to pour into. Because if you try to feed everyone, you will nourish no one with intention. I have poured into people who I believed would pour back when I needed them — and some of them proved they were only here to take. I wish them well. I genuinely do. However, I also know that I have a responsibility to protect my own capacity first, so that the people who truly have my best interests at heart can receive the full extent of what I have to give.

This is not cynicism. It is stewardship. Reciprocity is not a transaction — it is a practice. And part of practicing reciprocity honestly is asking yourself: do I want to be part of this person’s legacy? When you pour into someone, you are becoming woven into their story. That is a meaningful thing. It deserves a meaningful answer.

There is something else I have learned about reciprocity that does not get said enough: sometimes the people you pour into cannot pour back right away, and that is not a reason to stop pouring. I have fed people in my network who, at the time, had nothing to return. I did not keep score. I simply showed up, made introductions, offered encouragement, acknowledged who they were fully, and trusted that the relationship mattered beyond what it could give me in the moment. Years later — sometimes decades later — some of those same people have come back into my life and said: Christopher, thank you for what you did for me back then. I am now in a position to help. What do you need? That question alone fills my cup. Not because I need something from them in that moment, however, because it tells me the relationship is held. The investment did not disappear. It was simply waiting for the right season to return.

The other side of that truth is equally important. There were people who poured into me first, when my cup was empty, and I had nothing yet to give. They were not waiting for me to be established or proven. They showed up when I was uncertain, when I was starting over, when I could not yet see the path. They gave their time, their connections, their encouragement, and their belief — before I had earned any of it in the conventional sense. That generosity shaped everything that followed. And now, with the experience and platform I have built, I try to do the same for others, starting from scratch. I do not wait for someone to demonstrate their worth before I invest in them. I look for the person who is hungry, who is showing up with courage even when they have nothing behind them yet, and I pour in. Because someone did that for me. And that is how the network stays alive — not as a ladder people climb alone, however, as a web that holds everyone who is willing to hold others in return.

Success Is Never Solo

This is where Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers sharpens the point: our culture loves the myth of the “self-made” person; extraordinary outcomes are rarely the result of individual achievement in isolation. Success is shaped by context — timing, access, community, cultural expectations, and opportunity windows — along with forces we may not recognize while living within them. (6)

That does not erase personal effort. It re-frames it. It reminds us that making it is not only about talent. It is also about whether the world around you created conditions where your talent could be developed, recognized, and rewarded. When we ignore those systems, we end up over-crediting individuals and under-crediting the communities, networks, and structures that made the path possible.

I also want to name something more uncomfortable: not every door that should open does. There have been times — even now, as I build this next chapter of my career — where I have approached a door that did not just stay closed. It disappeared. I did everything I believed I needed to do to nurture a relationship, and the relationship did not hold. And I have had to be honest with myself about why. Some of those doors closed because of someone’s biases and prejudices. Some closed because of forces I could not see or control. It is not my responsibility to convince anyone why they should open a door for me. That is their own journey to work through. While it may sting in the moment — and it does — what I have learned is this: go find the next door that is open for you.

I also recognize that my ability to build the network I built has been shaped, in part, by my privilege as a white man. There are people in this world who have tended their networks with as much care and intention as I have — and those networks have not returned the same results, because the people making decisions about open doors were looking at the color of someone’s skin, their gender, their socioeconomic status, their sexuality, or their disability and deciding accordingly. That is not a networking failure. That is a justice failure. Part of my responsibility is to use the access my network has given me to open doors for people who have been shut out of rooms they deserved to be in.

Not everyone enters the workforce with a network worth feeding. Social capital is not equally distributed. When we talk about the power of connection, we have a responsibility to ask who has been systematically disconnected — and what it would take to change that.

Feeding your network is more than a career strategy. It is a way of refusing the myth that we succeed alone. It is a way of choosing interdependence — building relationships sturdy enough to hold you when the economy turns, the job disappears, or the next leap requires more courage than certainty.

What Feeding Your Network Actually Looks Like

Feeding your network is not about transactional interaction. It is about nurturing relationships through genuine human connection — listening with care, sharing knowledge freely, offering support without keeping score, and investing in people with intention. A network is a living ecosystem. It needs nourishment. It needs reciprocity. It needs authenticity.

And, honestly, the most challenging part of networking is not introducing yourself. It is staying present when you have nothing to gain. It is reaching out when you feel embarrassed. It is letting yourself be seen when your plan falls apart. Connection costs something; however, isolation costs more.

The House You Are Building

I am profoundly grateful for the people who have supported me through every transition. Looking back, I can see that I did not only lay a foundation. I built a house. And when I sit with that image long enough, I realize I know exactly what that house looks like, and who is in every room.

The Front Porch

My dog is there. Waiting. People talk about unconditional love, however a dog does not describe it — a dog demonstrates it. On the hardest days, before I can even say what is wrong, there is a kiss and a presence that says: you are home. You are safe. Start here.

The Living Room

This is where the family gathers. To celebrate the biggest wins with the volume turned all the way up. And to sit together in the quiet of large losses, when words are not enough and presence is everything. The living room is where belonging is practiced before it has a name.

The Kitchen

This is where my grandmother is. She taught me how to cook. More than that, she taught me how to show love through food — and I believe, looking back, that this is where I first learned what it means to fill somebody else’s cup. She used to say: if you leave my house hungry, it’s your own fault. She always made room for one more at the table, even when someone showed up as a surprise. I watched her stretch what I thought was a meal for two into a feast for an army that just happened to appear on a Sunday afternoon. She did not plan for it. She simply always had more than enough to give.

The Garden

That is where my grandfather is. Teaching me how to use the earth, how to grow the resources you need, and how to feed others with what the ground gives back. He always said: plant more than what you need. Give the excess to those who need it. Growing up on the farm, anyone who came to visit left with a trunk full of whatever we were raising. That was not charity. That was the natural result of tending something with more care than you needed for yourself.

The Office

My mother is there. She is the person I call to bounce an idea off of, the one who will tell me the truth I need to hear even when I do not want to hear it. She is my loudest cheerleader and my deepest critic, and she holds both of those roles without apology. She is also the first example I had of someone who leads with both conviction and care. I learned from watching her long before I had language for what I was observing.

The Bedrooms

My children’s rooms. I know they will grow old enough to build houses of their own. The rooms will still be theirs. Because belonging at home does not expire. It is not conditional on how old you are or how far you have traveled. It is simply the knowledge, bedded into you early, that there is a place that is yours and that the people inside it are yours too. Whatever the world does to them, that will remain.

My Room

I thought I knew who would always be in this room with me. The universe had different plans. So I am in the process of figuring that out — sitting with the uncertainty, staying open, not rushing toward an answer I do not yet have. What I know is that this room, like every room in this house, is being built with intention. It will not be filled with anything less than what it deserves.

The Dining Room

This is where I invite colleagues, friends, and family to break bread. To engage in the kind of conversations that are too important to have standing up. Thoughtful, honest, occasionally uncomfortable conversations about how we build — and sustain — a society where everybody knows they belong. The dining room is not just a room. It is a commitment. Come. Sit. Let’s do the work together.

None of us are successful on our own. We are shaped by people, and by forces we do not always see. However, we do get to decide what we do with that truth. We can choose scarcity and isolation, or we can choose the brave work of nourishing relationships that nourish us back.

So feed your network. Not to collect favors, but to create a community. Feed your network with intention and authenticity, and you create the conditions for a life that is supported, sustained, and shared.

Reflection Invitation

As you reflect on this chapter, I invite you to consider your own relationship with networking, connection, and reciprocity. There are no right answers here — only opportunities for clarity and courage.

Who has poured into your cup over the course of your life and career?

Think about the people who offered support, advocacy, guidance, or opportunity — and what their investment made possible for you.

Whose cups have you poured into — and how intentional have you been?

Notice where your care has been consistent, and where it has been occasional or reactive. Notice also who you have chosen, with intention, to stop pouring into — and whether that decision honored your own need to remain full.

What does a “full cup” mean for you right now?

Identify what nourishes you emotionally, mentally, and physically — and what drains you faster than you realize.

Where do you need to reinvest in your network — care, presence, attention?

Who do you want to reconnect with, rebuild with, or recommit to?

What systems or forces have shaped your path — for better or worse?

Where did timing, access, culture, community, or opportunity open doors — or quietly close them? How might that awareness deepen your compassion for yourself and for others who have faced doors that were never meant for them?

Where do you feel called to use your network on behalf of someone else?

Think about who in your life is working hard and tending their relationships, however still facing closed doors that have nothing to do with their effort. What is one door you have a key to that you could open for someone else today?

Notes

University of Queensland. “How Many Career Changes in a Lifetime?” https://study.uq.edu.au/stories/how-many-career-changes-lifetime
Mark Granovetter. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology, 1973. See also: Stanford News, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/07/strength-weak-ties
Joburra. “What Percentage of Jobs Are Found Through Networking?” https://www.joburra.com/what-percentage-of-jobs-are-found-through-networking/
Keith Ferrazzi. Who’s Got Your Back. New York: Crown Business, 2009.
Brené Brown. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Hazelden Publishing, 2010, p. 52.
Malcolm Gladwell. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, 2008.

Updated: 02/20/2026