Building a Studio When You'd Rather Not Work the Room
I'm shy. I know. People who know me personally think that's hilarious.
People who've worked with me have seen it. Put me in a room full of strangers anda different version of me shows up.
I'm not an introvert exactly… Put me in a small group and I'm fine. Come up to me at an event and I'll talk to you all night. Getting myself to walk up to you first? That's the part I'm still working on. And when I launched FifthHouse in 2025, I had to start working on it fast.
From the outside, creative leadership can look like confidence that comes easy.
You present work. You run reviews. You tell people when something isn't working. None of that looks like someone who'd rather be anywhere but a networking mixer.
But here's what those things have in common: they're purposeful. There's a reason to be in the room. There's work to do. Networking for the sake of networking, walking up to strangers and finding something to talk about because you're supposed to, that's a different skill entirely.
- The concept of ambiversion, the idea that most people fall somewhere between introvert and extrovert, was first introduced in 1923. Then it was essentially forgotten for decades before being rediscovered. (Source: Scientific American)
- Around 70% of CEOs describe themselves as introverts. (Source: C-Suite Network)
- Research from Lehigh University found that networking is a learnable skill. The biggest factors aren't charm or confidence. They're persistence and believing you can do it. (Source: HBR)
When the Badge Stops Doing the Work
When I worked inside Fortune 500 companies, the name on my badge carried weight I didn't fully appreciate until it was gone. HCA Healthcare. Ticketmaster. Amedisys. People took your call differently. The introduction was easier. Your credibility arrived before you did, at least partly.
When you go out on your own, that's over. Every email, every DM, every conversation at a creative event is just you showing up for something you built. There's no institutional cushion. If the conversation goes nowhere, there's no recognizable company name to smooth it over. It's just the work and whether you made a case for it.
The first time someone asked me "And what do you do?" after launching FifthHouse, it felt different than it ever had before. Not because I didn't have an answer. Because now the answer was entirely mine to own. I wasn't representing myself within an established brand. I was representing something I'd built from scratch. Every fumbled introduction, every conversation that fizzled, every event I left early felt like a missed opportunity I couldn't afford.
The pressure I put on myself was not small.
The Specific Weight of Owning What You Built
There's a particular kind of anxiety that comes with being someone who thrives in small groups but has to build a business through connection. Large rooms aren't where I do my best work relationally. I'm better one on one, or with two or three people where the conversation can actually go somewhere. That's where I'm comfortable. That's where I can be useful.
The approach is the hard part. Once I'm in a conversation, I'm fine. I'm genuinely interested in people, whoever they are, whatever they do. That part has never been the problem. It's the getting there that costs something.
Networking events are not built for that. They're optimized for surface contact, quick reads, and moving on. And when every surface contact is a potential first impression for a studio you built from scratch, the stakes feel outsized in a way that's hard to explain to people who find rooms full of strangers energizing.
I spent the first months of FifthHouse putting unnecessary pressure on every single touchpoint. Every LinkedIn message had to land perfectly. Every in-person introduction had to count. I wasn't networking. I was auditing myself in real time while trying to have a normal conversation.
It took a while to see that the pressure wasn't protecting the work. It was just making me smaller.
What My Mentor Got Right
My mentor told me the more you do it, the easier it gets. I nodded and filed it away and didn't fully believe it. It sounded like the kind of thing people say because there's nothing else useful to say about discomfort.
But they were right.
Not because I became someone who loves working a room. I still don't. I still prefer the smaller conversation. I still scan for the person standing on the edge of a group rather than the person holding court in the middle of one, because that's probably who I'll actually connect with.
But repetition builds something anxiety can't touch: evidence. Every conversation that went fine. Every cold message that got a genuine response. Every connection that turned into something real. They stack up. And eventually the stack gets loud enough to talk back to the voice that says it's not going to work.
I'm doing it more than I did six months ago. It's working more than it did six months ago. Those two things are connected.
Online Networking Is a Different Game
Building FifthHouse pushed me to show up on LinkedIn in ways I wouldn't have considered inside a big company. Putting opinions into the world under my own name felt risky when I worked for someone else. Easy to avoid. Now, not showing up is the risk.
That shift didn't happen all at once. I still second-guess posts before I publish. I still wonder if I'm being too direct, showing too much process while it's still messy, saying something that's going to land wrong.
But I've noticed the posts that actually connect are the honest ones. Not because vulnerability is a content strategy. Because people can tell the difference between someone hiding behind polished copy and someone actually talking to them. Small group energy, in writing. That part I can do.
Quick Answers
Do you have to love networking to build a successful studio?
No. You have to be consistent. The people I've seen build the strongest relationships aren't always the most comfortable in a room. They're the most genuine, and they show up regularly.
What's the hardest part of networking when you launch your own studio?
Losing the institutional cushion you didn't realize you were leaning on. When the work is entirely yours, every conversation feels like it carries more weight than it probably does.
Does it actually get easier?
Yes. Not because the discomfort disappears, but because you build enough evidence that the discomfort stops running the show.
The Takeaway
You don't have to be a natural at this. You don't have to love the room. You don't have to become someone who works every introduction like it's a performance.
What you do have to do is keep going, even when it feels like you're doing it wrong, even when you leave the event early, even when the message you sent three days ago still hasn't been answered. The rep count matters more than how any single rep felt.
If you're building something you believe in and quietly dreading the part where you have to go tell people about it: that's a normal, human response to real stakes. Do it anyway. The muscle builds whether you feel ready or not.
