When I go on social media sometimes, there’s a certain kind of content that consistently goes mini viral—founders, creators, solopreneurs, and business owners romanticizing cold outreach. Sending messages or emails to impressive people and not caring about the potential silence or rejection that follows.
It’s bold. It’s courageous. And they do it in volume to build up that mental resilience of theirs.
Having done my fair share of cold calls and emails during university for AIESEC (plus some cold outreach in my solopreneur journey), I have genuine respect for people who do this both for a living and to grow their business.
But I want to offer a different perspective.
Because the question I keep coming back to
Isn’t… are you putting yourself out there?
It’s…do you know what you actually want and who you actually want it with?
Those are different questions and most people are only addressing the first one.
(Sidebar: as I re-read those questions, I noticed they're the kind you'd ask yourself when looking for a romantic relationship, too. So this self-reflection isn't limited to business development, it applies to every kind of relationship in our lives.)
I know. I know. It sounds like the kind of thing you’d put on a tote bag. But stay with me here!
Most people skip the inner clarity work because there’s no immediate payoff. I mean…there’s no dopamine hit in sitting with a blank page and asking yourself:
What values do I want my collaborators to have?
What kind of work makes me feel alive vs. quietly resentful?
Who do I want in my corner not just who would look impressive on my landing page?
What would genuine alignment look and feel like?
I’ve done this work with enough founders and solopreneurs to know that most of us have a gap between what we say we want and what we’ve actually gotten clear on. We say we want aligned clients. But if you asked us to write down, specifically, what aligned actually means to us, the values we won’t compromise on, and the working dynamic we need to thrive?
Most of us get vague pretty fast and that vagueness is where the misalignment sneaks in.
And for my fellow overthinkers and perfectionists, I’ll be straight here that the exercise of getting clear with yourself isn’t about creating a rigid checklist. It’s about building a centre of gravity within you. So that when things get complicated, and trust me…they often will, you have something to return to.
You stop second-guessing your gut instinct aka your intuition. You stop reshaping yourself to fit a dream collaborator who turns out to be a nightmare to work with.
When you're grounded in your values and genuinely in alignment with yourself, your energy, your positioning, and even your outreach starts attracting something specific. And specific always lands differently than general.
Here’s where I want to be direct: impressive titles and big networks are not a vetting system.
I know that firsthand and also from hearing through the grapevine from people across industries. Some of the most impressive people out there might look great on paper as a collaborator or partner. But as a person? You'd want to stay far away.
And it’s no coincidence that we are living through a particular moment in history where the curtain keeps getting pulled back on business leaders, gurus, and high-profile figures who turned out to be not what they seemed.
And it’s not just the corporate world. Spiritual communities are actively telling people to stop outsourcing their personal sovereignty to teachers and gurus. Now is the time for people to develop their own internal compass and stop looking outside for the person who has all the answers.
Spoiler alert: no one outside of you has all the answers.
When you chase impressive people without knowing your own values then you become vulnerable to being swept up in someone else’s gravity. Their network, their vision, and their energy start to override yours.
And by the time you notice the misalignment—how they work and communicate with you, in their ethics, how they treat people behind closed doors, and what they actually stand for—you’re already in the room.
Discernment is the practice of reading that misalignment early. Not from fear or cynicism but from being so rooted in yourself that something off registers as off even when the person or opportunity looks extraordinary on paper.
Especially when it looks extraordinary on paper.
I’ve watched people get swept up by the big names. That dazzling, larger-than-life quality that makes someone seem almost otherworldly impressive. And then they quietly lose their footing in the process.
The goal isn't to become immune to being impressed. It's to stay grounded within yourself while knowing you’re impressed.
Alignment is not a wall you hide behind.
If you take the “only engage with fully aligned people” framework too literally, you’ll end up shrinking your world in the name of protecting it. That’s its own kind of trap. More sophisticated maybe but still fear dressed up in spiritual language.
The truth is that the universe works in ways that don’t always fit a checklist. Sometimes the person you’re meant to meet doesn’t look like what you expected. Sometimes an encounter that feels slightly off-centre turns out to be exactly the door you needed to walk through to get somewhere you couldn’t have found otherwise.
There’s a concept I keep returning to—that we each carry a kind of soul blueprint, a map of the people and experiences we’re meant to move through in this lifetime—and not all of those encounters arrive in your human life pre-labelled as aligned.
This is precisely why the inner work matters so much.
Not so you can filter everything out but so you can stay grounded while moving through the full range of what life brings toward you. So you can engage with the unexpected without losing yourself in it. So you can walk through an unfamiliar door and still remember where home is.
The goal isn’t a curated greenhouse where only the pre-approved can enter. It’s to grow roots deep enough to stand firm through the changing weather.
Before you reach out to anyone, spend some time with these:
What do I actually want from this collaboration, client relationship, or opportunity and what would make it feel wrong, even if it looked right?
What values are non-negotiable for me not aspirationally, but in reality, in how I actually want to work and live?
And when I imagine the people I most want in my orbit, what’s the quality of their character, not just their credentials and achievements?
These aren’t questions you answer once but ones you return to as you evolve in life. The clearer you get then the more useful your discernment becomes and the less likely you are to find yourself in rooms that cost you more than they give.
Eventually, your energy will precede you.
And you’ll find yourself naturally attracting people who also emit pure, honest, genuine energy that aligns with your values. At least that was the case for me.
It’s not about reckless boldness aka throwing yourself at every impressive person and hoping something lands.
It’s also not about fearful filtering aka only engaging with people who seem to be perfectly aligned with you.
The Middle Way is this:
Know yourself well enough to move through the world openly. Read people clearly. Be honest about what you want. Hold that line gently not rigidly even when something shiny is asking you to let it go.
Put yourself out there. Take real swings. Stay grounded and don’t let the shiny object blind you.
Because your focus shouldn’t just be about getting into the same room as that person. It’s about building something real with the right people, in the right way, and at the right time.
And when something doesn’t feel right even when everyone else is impressed?
Trust that.
Every. Single. Time.
This is the kind of work I do with my clients.
Helping them get clear on what they actually want before they go running after it.
If this post resonated and you want to go deeper, here are three different entry points for you to enter my world:
🧭 The Recalibration (1:1 session)
→ For when you want clarity on your business or marketing strategy so it actually feels good building the business with ease and joy (no more burnout or selling out!).
👩🏻💻 The Business Audit (custom project)
→ For founders and businesses who want to simplify, refine, and operate with more clarity, intention, and depth.
🤝🏻 The Connection (1:1 session)
→ You share what you’re navigating, where you are, or what feels stuck. Through thoughtful curation, I connect you to exactly the right person, resource, or support.
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