What Networking Actually Got Me

When I first moved to Atlanta in 2023, I went to every networking event I could find in the film industry. Over that first year, I met hundreds of people from those events, acting classes, and on film projects. Most of them I don’t remember. Some moved on to other careers or gave up on the film industry. Some are doing well. Some are in the exact same place they were when I first met them.

Every real thing happening in my career right now came from a person I met, not a submission I sent. So I want to be specific about what that has actually looked like, because the gap between “networking” as a buzzword and “knowing people” as a practice is wide.

Four names. Four different shapes. Four different outcomes.

Stephen Ruffin

Stephen was my first acting teacher.

That alone is not unusual. A lot of actors can name a first teacher. What is less common is that I stayed close to him. Three years on, Stephen is still the coach I call before a big audition. When something important comes through from my reps, the tape goes through Stephen first.

I did not plan that. I just liked working with him. I respected how he ran a room. When the first class ended, I kept showing up to things he was part of and kept asking him to coach me on material that mattered.

The payoff is not transactional, but it is real. When I started casting *Legacy*, Stephen read the script. He said yes to playing Danny. The actor who taught me how to break down a scene is now a lead in a film I am producing.

You cannot fast-forward that. You can only stay in touch with the people who are actually good and hope that one day you have something worth offering them. The time horizon on that kind of relationship is years, not weeks.

David Axe

David is the most useful kind of accident.

I met him sideways. There was a self-tape project a few years back, an actress who had written her own script so she could make a reel. It was not good and I would never use anything from it. I took the gig because it was my first year of acting and I needed money and reel material. The DP and I worked well together. Months later, that same DP recommended me to David Axe for a project called Stuntgirl.

David and I have worked together at least once a year ever since. Different projects, different roles, but a steady, building working relationship.

When I had Legacy and I needed a director I could trust, David said, you should meet John Valley. That introduction is the whole movie.

There are two lessons in this one. The first is that the bad project I almost passed on was the actual on-ramp. The DP was on that set, the DP saw me work, the DP made the call to David. If I had skipped that self-tape because the script was weak, I would not know David, and I would not be making Legacy right now.

The second lesson is what David himself does well. The most valuable thing a connection can give you is not a job. It is another connection. He pointed me at the right director and stepped back. That is the most useful thing one filmmaker can do for another, and most people never think to do it because they are too busy trying to be the person with the answer.

I try to do that for other people now. If I know two people who should be talking, I make the introduction. It costs nothing.

John Valley

I have not met John in person yet.

We have talked. We have exchanged notes on the script. He is directing Legacy. But the two of us have not been in the same room. He is signing on to direct a film for a producer whose face he has only seen on a screen.

That works because of David. I trust David’s eye. David vouched for John, and that vouch carries the kind of weight that an in-person meeting would not improve. If David says John is the right director for this script, then John is the right director for this script. I am not going to second-guess that to satisfy a personal preference for handshakes.

The lesson here is one I am still learning. A real network does not just connect you to people. It transfers trust between people who do not know each other yet. David’s relationship with John became my relationship with John, on credit, before any of the in-person stuff has happened. That is what years of doing right by people buys you.

It also means I have a responsibility not to spend that credit carelessly. If Legacy goes badly, the next time David recommends a producer to a director he trusts, that recommendation is worth a little less. Networking compounds in both directions.

Antonio “Toto” Suarez

Toto and I were in the same first acting class. We became scene partners. Then we became friends. I have known him for almost as long as I have been in Atlanta.

Over the last couple of years, he has built a TikTok following of around 300,000 people. That is not nothing for a small film looking for a marketing floor, and I am not going to pretend it does not factor into how The Session gets positioned. It does. I would be a bad producer if I did not notice.

But the followers are not why he is in the film. I wrote The Session with him in mind as Toby. The role exists because of him. The script is shaped around the specific way he moves through a scene, the specific tension he can hold, the specific reasons I wanted to be in a two-hander with him.

That is the part that gets lost in conversations about networking. The strongest version of working with people you know is not casting your friends because they are your friends. It is writing roles that only exist because you know what those friends can do. The character of Toby would not be Toby if I had been writing for a stranger.

The audience reach is real. The followers will help. But the foundation of that casting decision is years of watching him work, knowing exactly what he can do in a scene, and writing toward it. The reach is a happy coincidence on top of an artistic decision that was already made.

What This Actually Adds Up To

Four names. Four different kinds of value.

Stephen is continuity. A relationship I have kept warm for three years, which now shows up as both ongoing coaching and a lead actor in my film.

David is a chain reaction. A bad project led to a good DP, which led to a working relationship with David, which led to John, which led to Legacy having a director.

John is trust on credit. A working relationship I have not yet had in person, made possible because someone I trust trusts him.

Toto is the deepest version of all of this. A friendship that became a writing partnership in everything but title, where the work itself was shaped by the specific person it was for.

None of these came from a ballroom. None came from a cold DM. None came from me working a room.

They came from showing up in Atlanta consistently, taking the gigs that put me next to other working people, staying in touch with the ones I genuinely liked, and not burning anyone.

That is what networking has gotten me. Not a list of contacts. Four specific people, each of whom has changed what I can make.

I will take that over a thousand LinkedIn connections every time.