There is a specific kind of person who seems to end up in the right place at the right time. Not always the most credentialed person in the room. Not always the most experienced. But somehow, consistently, they are closer to the opportunity than everyone else.
For years I watched this and called it what most people call it: luck.
Then I started paying closer attention.
Over coffee a while back, a friend who had made a quiet but significant career shift into a senior operating role at a fund told me something I have thought about almost every week since. I had asked her how she ended up there, expecting a story about a recruiter or a job board or a referral from a mutual friend. Instead she said, “I spent about eighteen months before that just getting myself into rooms where those decisions were being made. Nothing dramatic. I just kept showing up.”
I asked what she meant by showing up.
“Dinners. Events. Coffees. Things I didn’t get paid to attend and wasn’t invited to by default. I had to …
