I’m done pretending that a $7 latte is a business investment. It’s a trap. A beige, caffeine-scented trap that we’ve all agreed to walk into because we’re afraid of looking unavailable or, worse, unimportant. We call it ‘networking’ or ‘picking someone’s brain,’ but let’s be honest: most of the time, it’s just a polite way to set your afternoon on fire.
I used to say yes to every single person who reached out on LinkedIn. I thought I was being a ‘good citizen’ of the industry. I thought that by being accessible, I was building a brand. I was completely wrong. What I was actually doing was outsourcing the management of my most valuable asset—my time—to anyone with an internet connection and a vague desire to ‘connect.’
The day I realized I was a volunteer consultant
It was October 2019. I remember it specifically because I was wearing a new jacket I liked, and by the end of the hour, I wanted to burn it so I’d never have to think about that meeting again. I was at the Blue Bottle on 2nd Street in San Francisco. If you’ve been there, you know it’s basically a factory for ‘synergy.’ I was meeting a guy—let’s call him Mark—who wanted to ‘chat about the industry.’
Mark wore one of those Patagonia vests that everyone in tech wears like a uniform. For forty-five minutes, I sat there while he explained his ‘disruptive’ dog-walking app that used blockchain for… actually, I still don’t know what the blockchain was for. He didn’t want my advice. He didn’t want to collaborate. He wanted a captive audience to validate his ego while I nodded and watched my inbox pile up on my phone under the table. I felt drained. I felt used. And the worst part? I paid for my own damn coffee because the line was too long and we ordered separately.
I walked back to my office and realized I had lost two hours including the commute. Two hours of deep work traded for a lukewarm oat milk latte and a lecture on crypto-canines. That was the moment I stopped being ‘nice’ and started being protective.
The math of the ‘Free’ coffee
People think a coffee chat is free. It’s not. I actually sat down and tracked this for a while because I’m obsessive like that. In Q3 of last year, I tested the ROI of 14 separate ‘introductory’ coffees and Zoom calls. I tracked the prep time, the travel, the actual meeting, and the ‘context switching’ cost—that mental fog you get when you try to go back to a hard task after talking to a stranger for an hour.
- Total meetings: 14
- Total time spent: 1,320 minutes (22 hours)
- Total cost in parking/transit: $112
- Total cost in coffee: $98
- Actual business opportunities generated: 0
I spent nearly a full day of my life and over $200 to achieve absolutely nothing. If I had spent those 22 hours writing, or working on a project, or even just sleeping, I would have been infinitely better off. I might be wrong about this, but I think the ‘serendipity’ of networking is a lie we tell ourselves to feel productive when we’re actually just procrastinating on the hard work that actually moves the needle.
The hidden cost of a ‘quick coffee’ isn’t the price of the beans; it’s the death of your focus.
Anyway, I digress. The point is that we’ve been conditioned to think that being ‘busy’ with meetings is the same as being successful. It’s not. It’s just noise.
I’m going to say something unfair about introverts
I know people will disagree with this, but I genuinely believe introverts are the worst offenders when it comes to wasting time on useless networking. Because we’re often terrified of being rude or awkward, we over-prepare for these coffee dates. We research the person’s entire history. We think of ‘insightful’ questions. We treat a casual chat like a job interview at Google. By the time the meeting actually happens, we’ve already spent three hours of mental energy on a person we’ll likely never see again. It’s exhausting and, frankly, a bit masochistic.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. It’s not that we shouldn’t meet people. It’s that we shouldn’t meet people without a specific reason. ‘Picking your brain’ is not a reason. It’s a request for free consulting, usually from someone who hasn’t even bothered to Google the basics of what you do.
The Calendly Problem (and why I hate it)
I refuse to use Calendly. I know, I know—it’s supposed to be a ‘productivity hack.’ But I actively tell my friends to avoid it. There is something so incredibly clinical and dismissive about sending someone a link to your calendar. It’s the digital equivalent of saying, ‘Here is a list of times I am willing to tolerate your presence. Please pick a slot that fits my superior schedule.’
I’d rather go back and forth three times in an email like a normal human than feel like I’m booking a dental cleaning. If a meeting is important enough to happen, it’s important enough to coordinate manually. If it’s not worth the effort of two emails to find a time, it’s definitely not worth the hour-long drive to a Starbucks.
How to say no without being a jerk
So, how do you stop the bleed? You have to get comfortable with being the ‘bad guy’ who doesn’t have time. I’ve developed a few rules for myself that have saved my sanity. They might seem harsh, but they work.
- No coffee without a specific agenda. If you can’t tell me exactly what you want to discuss in two sentences, the answer is no.
- The ‘Email First’ rule. If you have a question, ask it over email. If I can answer it in three minutes, I will. If it requires a ‘chat,’ it’s probably too broad.
- 15-minute Zooms only. If I do agree to meet a stranger, it’s a 15-minute video call. No travel. No parking. No $7 lattes.
I’ve found that 90% of people who ask for coffee will disappear the moment you ask them to send an agenda. They didn’t want your advice; they wanted your time. There’s a big difference. Most people are professional vampires. They feed on the energy of others because they don’t have enough of their own to actually build something. Don’t let them suck you dry.
I’ve bought the same $45 Moleskine notebook four times now. I don’t care that there are cheaper options or that digital is ‘better.’ I like the weight of it. I like that it doesn’t have notifications. And I use it to protect my time. If a meeting isn’t worth writing down in the ‘High Priority’ section of that notebook, it doesn’t happen. Total lie? Maybe. But it keeps me sane.
I’m still lonely sometimes. That’s the truth of it. When you stop taking every meeting, your calendar gets very quiet. You start to wonder if you’re becoming irrelevant or if the ‘industry’ is moving on without you. But then I look at what I’ve actually accomplished in those quiet hours—the projects finished, the things actually built—and I realize that the noise was never the signal.
Are you actually building something, or are you just talking about building something over coffee?