About

Where this comes from

Crosspoint Collective is a group in Sydney for university students and early career professionals. It runs a ten-week intensive, and it exists because of two rooms. One I got badly wrong, and one where I realised I hadn’t been the only one.

The first room

In 2023 I walked into a Sydney law firm for my first day. I had come from a small suburban practice, and I thought I had been taught good foundations. I thought everyone in that office could see a smart, resourceful paralegal who was willing to do the work and get it right.

I was wrong. People thought I was cocky and disconnected from how you were meant to behave in that environment.

The truth is I knew that underneath. I was scared that I would get something badly wrong and be pulled up on it, or let go. I wanted everyone to see I was capable so badly that I never stopped to watch what was actually happening in front of me.

What I eventually learnt was slower and less impressive than I wanted it to be. Watch how people work. Adapt to them before you ask them to adapt to you. Get good at anticipating what the person you report to needs, and put the time into building trust with them. Help them carry what they are carrying, and they are far more likely to help you carry yours. Not everyone will pick it up straight away. Keep at it anyway.

The second room

October 2024. A function, through the firm, with colleagues around my own age.

I spent the evening introducing myself to people: other lawyers, students, people further along than us. Every time I did, I noticed the same thing. My colleagues were standing just behind me, waiting to be brought into the conversation, hoping I would make the introduction so they didn’t have to.

I didn’t mind at all, and it plainly helped their confidence. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. These were capable people. They weren’t short on ability. They were short on a way in, and nobody had ever shown them one.

That was the night it stopped being an idea.

What nobody told me

Do the work. That’s the advice everybody gives, and it isn’t wrong. The work is most of it.

But in only doing the work, we become sheep, and you can’t tell one employee from the next. What nobody told me was how to let the people around me know I wanted to get somewhere, so that they could help me get there. That support, from the right person in the right place, is the part that actually moves you.

What help actually looked like

Not what I expected. Most of it didn’t look like help at the time.

The largest part was people noticing how I worked and then opening a door I hadn’t known was there. The rest was simpler. People sat down and talked to me.

I try to meet as many people as I can and listen to what they have been through. You learn more about how somewhere actually works from one person’s account of it than from anything written down. Long story short: the biggest help I ever got was people taking the time to sit down and talk to me.

Why “Collective” and not “network”

Networking, as most of us are taught it, is a room full of people each carrying their own agenda.

The groups that actually work do the opposite. Everyone leaves their agenda at the door, joins the bigger conversation, and helps whoever needs it. That’s where the value in Crosspoint Collective comes from.

Crosspoint Collective is built to bring people from different professions into the same room, so they can learn from industries that aren’t their own. Something you’ve never faced before has usually been solved already by someone whose job looks nothing like yours.

There’s a second reason, and it matters as much as the career one. Being early in your career can be isolating. Sitting with people who are finding the same things hard isn’t a small thing. I’m not going to dress that up as anything clinical. It’s simply easier when you aren’t doing it on your own.

What I will not do

I will not let this become a room that stops being safe to speak in. Most things are negotiable. That one is not.

What the ten weeks are built to do

Every part of it is built to make the room easier to walk into than the one I walked into:

• Put a small, deliberately mixed group in the same room: different professions, genuine conversation.
• Get people together in person, regularly. Not a mailing list, not a webinar.
• Set aside time that isn’t work. Ten weeks of nothing but hard conversations would be its own kind of exhausting.
• Use the ten weeks to help you work out what your actual next step is.

There is more I want to build beyond that. What happens once the ten weeks end, and how people stay useful to each other afterwards. I’m not going to describe it as though it already exists. When it does though, you’ll be the first to know.

If you’re wondering whether this is for you

People assume a couple of things about Crosspoint. That it’s a networking mixer with a nicer logo. That it’s for people who already have it worked out.

The second one is close to backwards. Doing well at school and university helps, but it isn’t the whole thing, and if your marks aren’t what you hoped, that isn’t the end of anything. You don’t need to turn up with a plan. If you had one, you probably wouldn’t need me.

This comes from a real and personal story, which is mine. I’m not doing it for any reason other than to help as many people as I can.