My New Way to Network in 2025

On the flight home from Las Vegas my mind was swirling from the conference I’d just attended. It wasn’t just being inspired by the speakers and learning from the workshops, all the people I’d met had me buzzing with ideas.

When I got home I took one exhausted look at the stack of business cards I collected—and tossed them in a drawer.

Those leads I worked so hard to get… Gone. Out of sight and out of mind.

My name is Jordan Aspen

...and I believe introverts can be the best networkers in the world. We hate feeling fake, so we’re authentic even if it gets awkward.

It’s draining to put all my cards on the table though. I’m not great at small talk and it feels so pointless anyway. Why talk about the weather when we could be finding out how our strengths could complement each other and start planning some epic project neither one of us could accomplish on our own?

On the other hand, oversharing can push people away.

By nature, I’m socially awkward.

I had to learn how to fix that when I was still little.

When I was four years old the little old ladies at church constantly cooed over my long red hair. My go-to response of snapping, “Don’t touch my hair!” only took me so far. Soon I realized that being charming and sweet turned these ladies into friends—friends who could respect my personal boundaries because I found a better way to communicate with them.

I could make people understand me!

Figuring out the best way to draw someone out, see their perspective and help them see mine, became a game. When I could get someone to say something like, “That makes sense, I’ve never thought about it like that before,” or “I think I changed my mind,” I knew I’d won.

Last year I made it official:

My title became “Networking Coach” and I doubled down on teaching other business owners this game of social interaction. The goal was not only to help them increase their revenue through networking that would lead to more clients and collaborations, but to also increase their personal well-being by surrounding them with people who can celebrate and commiserate with them.

I hosted a dozen networking meetups and attended business conferences across the country, from Washington DC to Las Vegas.

It was so worthwhile, but completely draining.

Excitement charged me with ideas for collaborations and opportunities to further connect with all the people I was meeting, but arriving home exhausted meant follow-up was sorely lacking.

I knew how to connect with people, now I needed a better way to maintain these connections.

My husband is a tabletop game designer.

Between him and me we realized that there was a pattern to the connections that “clicked” and were easy to maintain. This wasn’t just a game I played with myself, this could be a game we could teach!

Imagine if a pocketful of business cards carried the same spark of excitement that a fresh Pokemon or Magic the Gathering deck inspires in a middle-school boy.

Our game that lets you “lay your cards on the table” instead of them ending up in a drawer.

Even better, making networking a game lets even the biggest introverts make connections without leaving drained. It crosses the boundaries between the outgoing and the wall flowers, giving the shy among us a game to hide behind, and keeping the chatty among us focused on constructive topics.

Games and stories make connecting easy.

Last week as we left the playground my three-year-old daughter turned back to wave.

“That’s my best friend,” she explained to me, swinging her arms.

“Oh? What’s her name?”

I had never seen the girl before that day.

“I don’t know!” My daughter laughed.

We used to connect like that—without email, website, or even a name. Kids connect over the games they play and the stories they tell.

It’s time to make connection natural again.

The world needs this game. 2025 is the year we launch it into the business world.

To make the game even more valuable than a simple ice-breaker, it needs to be built on a true network, so the deck isn’t a stack of cards featuring theoretical heroes and make-believe problems. It is a collection of real businesses, real challenges, and real collaborative opportunities.

My 2025 project here on Vocal is a series of stories about the businesses featured on our cards.

Don’t expect boring interviews covering the same talking points included on every page of social media associated with the featured business owners I’ll be highlighting. No, these will be stories.

I can’t give you a comprehensive list of who you can expect to see in these interviews—and on these cards. There are plenty of spots left to be filled.

What I can tell you is that they will be diverse, from multi-million-dollar CEOs to the owners of mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar establishments. The whole point of the game is to show how we all need each other in order to win.

That’s something that will come out in these stories I’ll be publishing here on Vocal: not just each business as an island, but the unlikely connections between them.

I might just do some collaboration match-making too!

Finding the flow between key collaborators is one of my favorite things to do. Key collaborators are businesses and individuals that are not direct competitors and so therefore can help each other to increase business by sharing resources and leads.

Think of it this way: Key collaborators serve the same audience, but solve different problems.

For example, an ideal key collaborator of a home cleaning service could be a meal delivery service. Both business help busy people who have disposable income to save time and energy, but one solves the “dirty house” problem and the other solves the “hungry again!” problem.

You can tell they’re ideal key collaborators because most people wouldn’t cancel a cleaning service just because they decided to try a meal delivery service. They’re not competing for the same customers because they can both win—no one has to lose!

This project isn’t small.

It will be a defining factor of not just my business, but my life. I already know that the connections I make with featured business owners will influence social networks that will change the world.

The best part is when I win the game, everyone wins.

I win when I get to feature another business here on Vocal. You win when you get featured and connect with the other amazing leaders in my network. The readers win when they discover their next favorite restaurant or feel seen and heard through the real, raw stories that we will tell together.

We are not alone.

This project will remind me of that fact every single day.

On the days when I look around the grocery store and wonder if any of the people around me understand what it’s like to be a wife and mother and business owner all at once and I feel overwhelmed, this project means that I will have names and faces and stories to prove it’s not just me.

The tabletop trading card game part of the project illustrates this beautifully. It’s not competitive. We all lay our cards on the table, we help each other out and make progress in our own lanes, all working toward a common goal: beat the market deck.

When one person wins, the whole table wins.

Likewise, the Vocal Stories side of the project will unfold in the same way: collaboratively.

Nominate a business owner you know!

I look forward to featuring their story as a part of this project—I’ll have over 50 spots to fill over the course of the year.

This is an opportunity for you to engage with your own network. Putting me in touch with someone you know lets you support their business without spending a dime.

So who should I interview next?