with Julie Brown Apparently, when you become a woman of a certain age, the entire world becomes VERY concerned about whether you’re eating enough protein. The peer pressure is absolutely OFF THE CHARTS. Every podcast. Every trainer. Every woman on Instagram with excellent biceps is screaming….PROTEIN. Eat more protein. Start your day with protein. Have protein with every meal. Protein before you work out. Protein after you work out. Protein while you’re thinking about your next protein. I weigh about 135 pounds, which means according to the guidance I have been following, I should be eating somewhere around 135 grams of protein a day. Do you know how much protein that is??? I feel like I would need to eat an entire rotisserie chicken while drinking a protein shake and carrying cottage cheese around in my purse. I CANNOT DO IT. I have tried. I eat eggs. Greek yogurt. Chicken. Fish. Cottage cheese. Protein shakes. All the things. And yet, at the end of the day, I look at my protein intake and apparently I need to eat another chicken breast before bed. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how I found myself in a hotel room in Orlando last week eating a cold steak for breakfast. There I was. I had just finished picking things up and putting them down at the gym 💪 cuz we are supposed to do that too, and I found myself sitting on my hotel bed, eating refrigerated beef like some kind of menopausal lion. And as ridiculous as this scene was, I realized there is 100% no way I am going to hit 135 grams of protein every single day. BUT there is a HUGE difference between saying: “Well, I can’t get to 135, so f&ck it.” And saying: “Okay. Maybe I can get to 80.” Because 80 grams of protein is still 80 grams of protein. And we do this EXACT SAME THING with networking. We hear all the things we’re supposed to be doing.
And suddenly networking sounds like another full-time job. So we look at everything we’re supposed to be doing, realize we absolutely do not have the time, energy or resources to do ALL of it, and decide to do none of it. I know this because I am an all-or-nothing kind of girl. I am 0 or 100% with no in-between! But what if we (and I’m including myself in the “we”) stopped letting the IDEAL become the enemy of the USEFUL? Maybe you can’t attend four events this month. Can you attend one? Maybe you can’t have five coffee meetings. Can you have one? Maybe you’re not going to thoughtfully reconnect with 20 people in your network. Can you text three? Maybe you’re absolutely NOT posting on LinkedIn three times a week. Can you spend ten minutes commenting on other people’s posts? Why? Because “some” is infinitely better than “none.” Your relationships don’t need perfection. They need attention. They need deposits. They need you to do SOMETHING. And sometimes I think we make networking so much bigger than it needs to be. We create these enormous expectations for what we’re supposed to be doing, and then when we can’t meet them, we convince ourselves we’ll start when we have more time. Next week. Next month. When work slows down. When things aren’t so crazy. The problem is…there is always going to be something. You don’t need to completely overhaul your networking strategy. You don’t need three coffee meetings, two events, five follow-ups and a perfectly curated LinkedIn presence. You just need to do one thing.
Because doing a little bit of something that matters is still a hell of a lot better than doing absolutely nothing because you couldn’t do it perfectly. And apparently that’s true for relationships, careers and protein.
P.S. If you like my work and want to support it, here are 3 ways! 1) Forward this newsletter to a friend and let them know they can subscribe here. 2) Buy my book 3) Bring me into your company to speak. (Either in person or virtual.)
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I ate a cold steak for breakfast.
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