Reader,

If you saw yesterday’s email, you know I took my 23-year-old son to a networking mixer at a nudist community without telling him where we were going.

The mixer. It was great.

People were warm, friendly, and yes, fully dressed.

Worth repeating. 😂

Someone handed my son a card about volunteering at their nonprofit, and someone else asked him to follow up about a possible opportunity.

In that one room, he found more real connection than most polished networking events ever hand you.

My son graduated with a degree in Statistics and Data Science, and he is the kind of smart kid who built a visualization from my business spreadsheets that made the numbers make sense to me, a very visual person.

Right now he is doing an AI contract gig while he looks for the right full-time role. He is great with numbers, has strong critical thinking skills, and can figure things out.

Walking into a room full of strangers is harder for him.
It's hard for a lot of us, myself included.

So I keep nudging him into those rooms, because getting more comfortable does not happen before you do the uncomfortable thing.

It happens because you did it.

That night was not really about whether he walked away with a job.
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It was about walking into a room he did not want to enter, talking to people he did not know, and realizing he could do it.

Sometimes the thing outside your comfort zone is exactly the muscle you need to work.
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Alpana

P.S. Apparently I have a thing for getting people to step out of their comfort zone, whether it’s getting my son out to network, a client stepping in front of my camera in a bold outfit, or me flexing my own muscle by stepping in front of the lens OR photographing mostly strangers like these capture on my iPhone.​
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P.P.S. Since this whole email is about getting in the room, if you know of a room my son should be in, send it my way. A job, project, connection, whatever comes to mind.
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