Networking in the Spirit

When I first moved to L.A., I thought of networking as walking into a room full of strangers with a stack of business cards and attempting to swap info with as many people as possible. And, to be fair, sometimes networking is like that. But after ten years in L.A., I’ve realized that my best connections usually happen when I’m not trying to network at all. I’m just out in the world, living my life, doing things I personally find interesting. Not only am I generally more relaxed and gregarious when I’m not in meeting-strangers-mode, I’m also participating in something else that, for many years, I didn’t fully recognize for what it was: being led by the Holy Spirit.

I used to think being led by the Holy Spirit meant sitting alone in my room, praying for clear direction, and waiting to hear from the Lord. Of course, God can and does direct us this way. But the more I grow as a believer, the more I recognize that the Holy Spirit guides me in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a gut feeling about what events I want to attend.

Here are my top three networking-without-trying-to-network moments in L.A. so far.

#1 – The Concert
In 2016, I went to an outdoor concert with some friends. I was there to sing, dance, and get some fresh air in my lungs, but I also wound up swapping emails with a new Concert Friend, who said she’d keep me in mind if she ever heard of somebody looking for a writer. After a brief email exchange with Concert Friend to say hello, we didn't connect again for two years. In 2018, Concert Friend emailed me out of the blue and asked if I'd be interested in writing a short film script for a project her cousin was working on. The cousin turned out to be a film student, studying producing. I said yes to the project with my new Producer Friend, and she produced a beautiful short film out of the script I wrote.

Producer Friend was great to work with, so a couple years after that, when I wanted to film a sketch comedy short I’d written, she was the first person I reached out to. Producer Friend came on board, taught me all about producing, and helped me bring the sketch to life, alongside some other amazing friends. Here’s the real kicker for me: I wound up performing in the sketch because one of the actors got sick at the last minute. Not long after we released the sketch, it helped me land my first acting agent and became
the centerpiece of my first comedic acting reel.

#2 – The Retreat
In January 2017, I needed a reset after the holidays, so I signed up for a half-day retreat at my church. The retreat was restful, nourishing, and uplifting, but the real highlight of the day was making a new friend who lived in my neighborhood. We began meeting up regularly to grab dinner and talk life, faith, and entertainment. Over the course of time, my wonderful Dinner Friend got married and bought a house a few hours outside of L.A. Happily, we still manage to meet up and grab dinner when we can.

As an introvert/near-hermit, I find this to be a fantastic story regardless, but here’s the industry-related praise report: at some point, I realized I wanted to focus my writing on animation, and began reaching out to everyone I knew who knew anything about this area of the industry. This happened to include Dinner Friend’s husband, who I chatted with about my animation aspirations way back in 2020. Fast-forward to 2023, when Dinner Friend’s husband found himself working on a show that was looking to hire another writer. The short version of this story is that my writing samples were ready, I got hired, and, in a roundabout
way, a church retreat became the connecting point that led me to my first job in a TV writer’s room.

#3 – The Workshop
In 2018, Hollywood Prayer Network hosted a Saturday morning workshop about spiritual gifts. At the time, I had no idea what spiritual gifts were, but I thought it sounded interesting, so I signed up. I wound up having a work trip scheduled that same week, and got home late on Friday night after being gone for three days. I was tired from traveling, and in the back of my mind thought maybe I wouldn't make it to the workshop the next morning.

That night, I had a dream that my car wouldn’t start, and in the dream I immediately called an Uber so I could go to the spiritual gifts workshop. On Saturday morning, I woke and got ready to go to the workshop for real. But then I discovered that my car battery was dead and my car wouldn't start. I’d never had a dream like that before, predicting something so specific in real life. Normally, I would’ve called AAA and waited for someone to come give me a jump. But in the dream, I'd called an Uber--so that's exactly what I did in real life, even though Ubers were definitely not in my budget at the time.

I wound up getting to the event early, and had time to chat with a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in a while. As we caught up, we realized we were all working on various writing projects, and were all in need of readers and feedback. That conversation launched a writer’s group which met faithfully every month for five years. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of that writer’s group in my life. Without it, I definitely would not have been ready for my first TV writing gig when it came along.

What all three of these events had in common was that the moment I heard about them, I knew I wanted to attend. I wanted a fun night of music, a nourishing day of rest, a chance to learn something new about my faith. I had no idea that these events would bear the seeds of anything greater. Each of them would have been worth it to attend for its own sake.

But the goodness of God means that not only does he lead us to where we need to be right now—he’s also starting us down the right paths that will take us where we need to be in the future.