Been thinking about why some creators with 20K followers land better deals than creators with 200K.

It's not the numbers. It's that the 20K creator was standing next to the right brand manager at the right event, and the 200K creator sent a cold pitch email that got buried in a folder with 400 others.

DMs and media kits are a numbers game you'll usually lose. A room is not. When you're physically in front of someone making budget decisions, you stop being a line item in their inbox and start being a person they remember.

That's the whole thesis behind what I'm building with Network Nights — small, curated mixers where creators and the people who actually sign the checks (brand reps, agency leads, fellow creators looking to collab) end up in the same room. No stage, no panel, no 40-slide deck. Just enough structure to make the intros happen and then get out of the way.

If you're a creator and you've never been to one of these — go to one. Doesn't have to be mine. The ROI on a good night of real conversations beats a week of cold outreach almost every time.