She Met 500 Strangers. He Built an Audience of One | Carly Valancy & Spencer Kier on Real Networking

In this episode of Just Press Record, Matt brings together two strangers with very different backgrounds and a shared obsession with human connection.

Carly Valancy and Spencer Kier explore how creativity, repetition, gratitude, and authenticity shape careers, relationships, and opportunities.

What starts as a conversation about networking quickly becomes a deeper discussion about practice, compounding effort, breaking rules, and finding the kind of work that pulls you forward instead of burning you out.

Topics covered

• Why creative people often follow rules that hold them back
• The idea of practice as repetition, not optimization
• Reaching out to people without asking for anything
• Gratitude as a powerful and underrated networking tool
• Building relationships for your future self, not immediate payoff
• Creating artifacts instead of transactional asks
• Authenticity, strangeness, and resisting social normalization
• Compounding habits versus compounding burnout
• Finding your edge through curiosity and compulsion
• Applying artistic training to business and professional life
• Long-term relationship building versus short-term outcomes

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction and why these two needed to meet
03:00 The Just Press Record format and guest introductions
06:20 Carly’s meet-a-person-a-day challenge
09:00 Spencer on podcasting as a tool for connection
13:00 Creating artifacts instead of asking for calls
15:00 Repetition, practice, and the power of doing simple things daily
18:30 Art, training, and learning through repetition
22:00 Breaking rules in networking and communication
25:00 Finding your uniqueness and resisting normalization
28:30 Searching for your edge and living in multiple worlds
31:00 Losing an old identity and redefining what it means to be an artist
34:00 Bringing artistic training into networking and business
38:00 Empathy, awareness, and engaging the other person
44:00 Asking better questions and creating meaningful conversations
47:00 Authenticity, strangeness, and standing out
52:00 Saying the risky thing and embracing vulnerability
57:00 Gratitude as the starting point for connection
01:02:00 Playing the long game in relationships
01:05:00 Deciding when to follow up and when to wait
01:08:00 Closing reflections on connection, curiosity, and practice