When I announced on LinkedIn yesterday that I started work at a new company, one of my connections messaged me and said, "You'll never believe this, I met your CEO on an airplane a year ago."
Once again, the small world rule applies. Be nice to everyone. Talk to strangers. Keep a good brand. You never know when it's going to come back around.
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What hit me about the message wasn't even the coincidence. It was the reminder that your career is constantly moving around in places you aren't paying attention to, through conversations you aren't part of, and with people you may never expect to matter again.
We like to make networking way more complicated than it needs to be. We think it has to be coffee meetings, LinkedIn messages, industry events, referrals, introductions, and all this other formal shit. Sometimes networking is just talking to the person sitting next to you on an airplane and not acting like you are too important to have a conversation.
The funny part is that those random interactions probably matter more than the forced ones because there is no agenda attached to them. You aren't trying to get something. You aren't wondering what their title is. You aren't calculating whether they can help your career. You are just being a normal human being, and people remember that.
Your brand gets built in those moments whether you realize it or not. It gets built in how you treat someone when there is nothing in it for you. It gets built in how you talk about your company, your boss, your coworkers, and your life. It gets built in whether you come across as someone people would want to spend more time with or someone they hope they never have to sit next to again.
Careers are weird like that. Someone you worked with ten years ago suddenly texts you about a job. A former customer becomes a hiring manager. A junior employee you once helped becomes an executive. A person you randomly met at dinner introduces you to somebody who changes the direction of your career. You just never know.
Your reputation keeps traveling long after you leave the building.
That is also why burning bridges is such a terrible strategy. You may feel like you're done with someone, done with a company, done with an industry, or done with a relationship, but the world has a funny way of bringing people back into your life when you least expect it. Sometimes they come back as a customer. Sometimes as a boss. Sometimes as the person who gets asked, "Hey, do you know Scott?"
I have always believed your professional reputation is one of the few things in your career that actually follows you everywhere. Titles disappear. Companies change. Compensation changes. Org charts get blown up. Your reputation keeps traveling long after you leave the building.
You don't need to walk around trying to impress every person you meet. That sounds exhausting and fake. You just need to be decent. Be curious. Talk to people. Help when you can. Don't treat someone differently because you don't think they can do anything for you.
The person sitting next to you on the airplane today might be completely irrelevant to your life, or they might somehow be connected to the company you join a year from now. That's the point. You have no idea. So keep your brand clean, be nice to people, and remember that the world is a hell of a lot smaller than you think.