The other night I was in a coffee shop in Beverly Hills sipping on a soy latte. I found myself surrounded by thin women in 6 inch heels, men with perfectly combed hair sporting $5000 suits and elderly women with their diamond bracelets perfectly wrapped around their frail wrists and their Maltese dogs running around at their feet. I was distracted by these artful patrons of the coffee shop but even more so I was intrigued by the energy in the air. Things happen at that coffee shop, big things.
I waited for my friend to arrive and imagined how this meeting might go. See I didn’t actually know this person. A mutual friend of ours has suggested that we might have a lot in common so we set a date to grab coffee and see if he was right. I anxiously awaited her arrival. Would I remember what she looked like? Would she be kind like I hoped or jaded and tough like some folks in this business? Would she feel that I was maybe wasting her time or would she embrace this new connection like I hoped to do?
The anticipation was killing me so I continued to look around at the glamorous elderly folks that I hope to be like some day. Each time that someone new would walk in the door I would glance up hoping that it was her but each time it was just another interesting stranger in their fabulous jogging gear or their snazzy business attire. I looked up one last time and spotted a woman with a kind smile staring back at me. Sigh, finally my stranger had arrived.
She was incredible just like every other person I have ever had an awkward kind of networking kind of becoming friends coffee date with. I learned that she had only been in LA two more months than me, that she was employed on a television show and was living comfortably in a one bedroom apartment near The Grove (jealous!). She asked if I was hungry I told her I had arrived early and already grabbed a salad because I didn’t want to offend her by eating when she wasn’t eating. Seriously? What a thing to say. Idiot! She ordered a salad of her own and we continued our discussion of West Coast vs Midwest and why stalking production companies is not necessarily a bad idea. Then she said something to me that was both enlightening and impressive:
“I just decided that when someone invites me to something, no matter how tired I am, I have to go. If they ask, I will say yes.”
The exhaustion immediately set in. If I said yes to every event or coffee date or cocktail hour or birthday party that I was invited to I would probably pass out in my car while driving on the 405 and my room would have silk blouses and tapered black trousers tossed in various corners and empty cans of sugar free red bull on the floor. I was overwhelmed at the idea of being her. Then she continued:
“I mean this business is all about networking. I’ve realized you never know when an opportunity is going to present itself. Things happen in the strangest places so I better be putting myself out there. It’s an exhausting business, but I chose it.”
She was right. Half of the reason I love this business is because you meet so many people and you are constantly discussing ideas and projects and talent and story. Since coming here I have met Cuba Gooding Jr. and his producer in a bar in Brentwood, David Anspaugh in an Irish Pub off Wilshire and taken meetings with producers as a result of cocktails with an acquaintance or a night out at The Bungalow.
The energy in that Beverly Hills coffee shop wasn’t a fluke.
That’s just Los Angeles.
Now, that energy can be a dangerous thing. That energy can drive some so crazy that they pack up and ride their horse back to where they came from and call it quits where the grass is greener and the talk is slower. Others it can drive toward drug addiction and self-destruction. Ideally that energy can drive you to the greatest job you have ever had working on the greatest movie of your generation.
The point is, networking is an art. As much time as you spend on OK Cupid or Match.com looking for your next love connection you should also spend at Chateau Marmont or at an invite only screening for the next big independent film looking for your career connection.
They don’t have young professional meet up groups and USC alumni happy hours just so you can reminisce about how easy it was to be a college student and how tailgates used to be “So much better when we were here”. Business deals get made at those things, get it together.
Start saying yes to that meeting at the coffee shop or that cocktail hour in NOHO (I know I know it is SUCH a terrible commute and you JUST worked a 14 hour Day and Hollywood blvd is TRAGIC but suck it up)
My friend is right; everything in this town, is everything.
Do you think the young Marilyn or Marlo spent nights cooped up in their apartment listening to records? Doubtful.
Go make things happen.
Teresa Sabatine 