Do it the month before.


A photo of a woman sitting at home, in a brown oversized seat, wearing a blue sweater and looking at the screen of the smartphone in her hand.
“This looks like a good read.”

For my fellow introverted thought leaders trying to do too much at a 72-hour conference


Are you energized by crowds?


Do you feed off the electricity of five hundred professionals gabbing in a ballroom?


Is talking over the Top 40 playlist blaring in a hotel bar your preferred method of communicating with a new colleague?


Then this article is not for you. 🤨

This is for the CEO who wants a plan that does not require you to become someone else after you leave the stage.


For the leader who doesn't want to wing it at an event that looks more like a 90s rave than an executive summit.


For the author turned speaker who wonders if you can build better relationships from your desk chair than at a convention center.


(For the video version, watch here: https://youtu.be/-T0WykqAlh8?si=GoFeTIs7OXpvhplj )



Conferences are loud.


Primarily, they are audibly loud. The registration table noise makes introverted brains seek immediate evacuation. The networking lunch that sounds like a regional airport. The hallway clamor between sessions that is somehow louder than the session itself. 


Conferences are also visually loud. Emotionally loud. Socially loud. By the end of Day One, you have processed more stimulation than most people encounter in a week. Yet you are expected to show up for Day Two with the same energy, warmth, and authority, plus sparkle on stage during your fireside chat.


Then by Day Three, you are supposed to find and charm every decision-maker on your list.


You do not have to do that. The environment is not set up for you to succeed.


The best time for you to connect with the people who matter most at your conference is not during the conference. It is the month before you get on the plane.


What can the 28 days before your panel do for you?


Like me, fellow introvert, you do your best thinking in quiet. You build your best relationships one on one, with intention, without background noise, without the ambient pressure of three other conversations happening at the same standing table. You are at your most magnetic when you are rested, prepared, and genuinely present — not when you are overstimulated, overscheduled, and quietly calculating how many hours until you can be alone in your hotel room.


Therefore, let’s get you rested, prepared, and present.


Four weeks out, you have something the conference floor will never give you: time, quiet, and full control over your space.



A photo of a hand holding a pen, about to write on an unlined notebook page.
Write it down.


Week one: Build your list with intention.


Locate the conference speaker lineup, the attendee list if it is available, and the event hashtag on LinkedIn. You are looking for 10 specific people — not fifty, not the whole room, not everyone who might theoretically be useful. 10 people whose work you genuinely respect, whose organizations are aligned with what you do, and who have the kind of role that means when they say yes to something, it happens. People whom you want to converse with about partnerships, consulting opportunities, and future speaking engagements.


Make your own VIP list, preferably on a spreadsheet. Write their names down. Go to their LinkedIn profiles. If they are 2nd connections, then send them a connection request, no note. Read what they have been posting about. What are they struggling with? What are they celebrating? What is the question they keep coming back to? This matters, because you are going to send them a message that sounds like a human wrote it. You are that human.


Week two: Make your next move, from your couch, in your pajamas.


This is your natural habitat. This is where you are brilliant. You are not approaching a stranger at a speakeasy. You are sending a thoughtful, personalized LinkedIn message from the quiet environment where you operate best.


The message is short. Reference the conference, something specific about their work that you genuinely found interesting, and a question or observation that invites a real response. It is not a pitch. It is one thoughtful person reaching out to another. And it is 3 sentences long. Or fewer.


At the beginning of the week, send one message to each of your VIPs. Then put your phone down and go do something restorative, because you have just done more relationship-building work than many speakers do during the entire conference.


Some of those 10 people will write back. Of the people who reply and whom you like, request a 20-minute virtual coffee chat. You want to have a get-to-know-you conversation before you are both trapped in the conference current 🌊, being swept from panel to panel by a lanyard and a tight schedule.


You are not asking for much. You are offering a specific, low-commitment, easy-to-say-yes-to video call. And because you have already established that you are a real person with real thoughts about their real work, they may already want to have it.


A photo of a man with short, dark hair, sitting in a light blue wingback chair, with his right hand up, waving at the screen of the tablet he his holding up with his left hand.
“Hello, fellow conference speaker!”

Week three: Have the meeting before the chaos begins.


By the time you land at that conference, you already have warm relationships. You have people who will light up when they see your name badge, not because of your title, but because you already exist to them as someone worth knowing.


The conference floor is no longer a cold room. You have turned the heat on.


Week four: Prepare your presence, not just your panel.


Time for the inner work. Write and practice your positioning statement: whom you serve, and how you transform them. Prepare three questions you are genuinely curious about asking the people you are meeting. These questions may be different for your fellow speakers, heads of organizations, and future conference organizers.


Build your conference schedule with the recovery blocks already in place. You are not improvising your own energy management in real time while also trying to be brilliant. You have a plan.


Write the follow-up emails in advance. And, have a way for people to connect with you, that you tell them before you get off the stage. A labeled QR code, a URL, an email address. Something specific and easy. Because future you, the one who has just given a panel talk and shaken forty hands and navigated three days of sensory overload, is not going to have the words. Present you, calm and prepared and sitting at your desk, has those words. And the synonyms.


By the time you arrive at that conference, you are not hoping for opportunities. You are arriving to honor the ones you have already created, and open to meeting new friends along the way.


The noise will still be there. Along with the overwhelm and the people peopling. But you will walk through all of it knowing that the most important work of this conference was done thirty days ago, in the quiet, in your element, in your own time.


You do not have to be an extrovert to win at this. You need to be prepared.


Do the work before the room gets loud.


Once you eliminate the pressure of needing to meet every person you want to in 72 hours, you can actually enjoy being at the event.




A photo of seven happy, casually dressed women, sitting on a colorful staircase.
“We connected before the conference even started.”

Addendum: Happy Hour is optional. Follow-up emails are not. Recover, reflect, then reconnect.



If you are reading this and thinking, "Yes, that person is me! I want my conference networking to begin before I pack my bags," then let's talk. 


You do not have to create your relationship building strategy alone. 


Connect with me, Mahlena-Rae Johnson, Conference Optimizer for introverted CEOs and thought leaders, on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mahlena