Netcaring: How Enjoyment and Care Can Grow Your Business

I wonder what has been your experience of “networking”. What follows describes the experience of many of us…

You walk into a networking event — maybe a BNI meeting, maybe a conference mixer — and within 30 seconds, someone is scanning your name badge while shaking your hand. The room hums with a kind of Shark Tank energy. Everyone has their elevator pitch loaded. Everyone is sizing up who can be useful.

You try to play along. You rehearse your 30-second intro. You exchange cards. You follow up like you’re supposed to.

And you feel a slow deflation…

Because this isn’t you. This isn’t why you became a coach, a healer, a creator. You built your work around genuine transformation. Around presence, and care.

And now, you’re supposed to reduce all of that to a series of transactions…

You’re trying to do something deeply relational, inside of a system built for extraction.

The tension is understandable. You need your business to work. You need clients, collaborations, income. But the conventional methods — the cold outreach, the “it’s a numbers game, just keep sending DMs,” the working-the-room pressure — feel very far from who you are, and want to be.

So what do you do?

There’s another way…

You don’t have to choose between growing your business and staying true to yourself.

There’s a practice — not a hack, not a funnel — that lets connection itself become the wellspring.

I call it Netcaring.

What Is Netcaring?

Netcaring is the practice of approaching every professional relationship as a human being first, and letting business emerge naturally from that. Not as a hidden agenda, but as a natural result of genuine enjoyment and care.

It applies to how you relate to prospects, yes. But also to peers, past clients, podcast guests and hosts, students, collaborators, community facilitators, and people you simply admire.

Widen your imagination about who “counts” right now. Everyone does, as long as there’s resonance.

Resonance — that’s the key word.

Netcaring isn’t dutiful niceness. It’s guided by what lights you up — by enjoyment, aliveness, a fuller heart. If a connection energizes you, lean in. If it drains you, you have full permission to step back.

Joy is not a luxury in this practice. It’s the guidance.

What Netcaring Is Not

This part matters. Without it, some readers might accidentally turn the concept into something it was never meant to be.

Netcaring is not people-pleasing, nor performing kindness for optics. It’s not unpaid emotional labor. Not endless availability. Not manipulation dressed in softer language. Not self-abandonment. Not forcing chemistry where none exists. Not maintaining every relationship forever.

And it’s definitely not “networking more, but spiritually.”

You are still allowed to want clients. You’re allowed to want collaborators, income, and growth. What changes is that you stop trying to force those outcomes through methods that feel fake or extractive to you.

Humans First… Roles Second

Think about how you naturally make friends.

When you meet someone at a dinner party, you don’t lead with your revenue goals. You’re curious. You listen. You notice if there’s a spark… or if there isn’t.

Netcaring brings that same organic quality into professional spaces.

What it feels like from the inside: spaciousness instead of urgency. Curiosity instead of calculation. The other person feeling seen, not scanned… and you feeling like yourself — not a representative of your brand.

Thankfully for soulpreneurs, this isn’t a new technique, but more of a homecoming.

You already know how to be genuinely present and hold space. Netcaring simply invites you to stop abandoning that gift every time “business” enters the conversation.

Why Netcaring Works

In a world saturated with pitches, templates, and automated outreach… authentic human attention is increasingly rare.

People feel the difference, and faster than you’d think…

They sense whether someone genuinely cares, or is running a connection strategy.

The person who cares gets remembered. Gets referred. Gets invited into collaborations they didn’t have to pitch for — not because they asked, but because they’ve become someone that others genuinely want in their world.

There’s no trick to it. Presence is just that uncommon now!

Netcaring Matters More Than Ever

Marketing is noisier than ever. Content is easier than ever to mass-produce. Inboxes are crowded with sequences written by machines.

In this landscape, genuine human presence resonates more clearly than ever, and is more valuable than ever.

Netcaring is a timeless practice that happens to be unusually well-suited to this moment. The more automated the world becomes, the more a real human voice… curious, caring, unhurried… resonates thoroughly.

The Heart of the Practice

At its core, Netcaring begins with a feeling of genuine giving — offering care and appreciation with the lightest touch and the lowest expectation of reciprocity.

You act purely from a desire to support another person. Not to get something from them. Not even to “open a door.” You’re showing up for netcaring just because something in their work, or their presence, moved you… and you want them to know.

This might look like leaving one thoughtful, specific comment on someone’s post — not to be seen, but because something genuinely resonated. Sending a voice note to someone you admire, with no ask attached. When someone shares a struggle publicly, acknowledging it privately. Celebrating a peer’s win as if it were your own — because in the Netcaring worldview, it kind of is.

The specificity matters. Generic praise is forgettable. “Great content!” disappears into the infinite scroll…

But “I loved how you framed the difference between grief and depression in your Tuesday post” — lands differently. It shows care.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: when we extend even one genuine message of appreciation per week — with zero ask attached — it tends to open doors we never even knew were there. Collaborations. Referrals. Friendships. Not because we engineered it, but because care, extended without expectation, plants healthy seeds.

And if any of these practices start to feel mechanical or performative… take a pause.

Return to the felt sense: Am I doing this from care and enjoyment?

The honest answer will recalibrate you every time.

Honor Your Capacity

You do not have to be highly social to practice Netcaring. You certainly don’t have to connect with everyone!

This is worth repeating, because many soulpreneurs carry an assumption that they’re doing it wrong if they’re not constantly reaching out…

Some of us are introverts who serve clients one-on-one. The high-volume, high-energy approach leaves us depleted — and we think that means we’re “bad at networking.” But when we give ourselves permission to go deep instead of wide — to nurture a handful of relationships with genuine care and consistency — those few connections often become our greatest business asset. Referrals. Collaborations. Clients who arrive already trusting us, because someone they trusted said our name with warmth.

Deep over wide. It’s a legitimate path.

And sometimes the room just isn’t right. We spend months showing up somewhere because it’s “where our ideal clients are”… except interactions often feel forced. The energy is off. When we finally give ourselves permission to leave and gravitate toward a space that actually lights us up… things shift. Not overnight. But steadily, and with a sense of ease.

Not every room is your room. Not every community is your community.

Your nervous system is not an obstacle to Netcaring — it’s an instrument. When it says “too much,” listen. When it says “yes, this person,” trust it.

Meaningful contact matters more than frequent contact.

The Ripple Effect

Netcaring doesn’t produce linear, trackable ROI the way a paid ad does.

It produces something harder to measure and far more durable: an ecosystem of people who trust you, think of you warmly, and mention your name in rooms you’re not in.

I’ve seen it happen again and again. Someone practices Netcaring for a few months — mostly small things. Genuine comments, a few voice messages, an introduction or two. Then one day, a stranger reaches out about a paid collaboration. It turns out that a colleague who received a thoughtful voice note months earlier had mentioned their name to a friend, who mentioned it to someone else.

One moment of genuine care… traveling quietly through a web of relationships we didn’t even know existed.

You can’t engineer ripple effects. But you can create the conditions for them — one real interaction at a time.

The soulpreneur’s business grows not by capturing attention, but by earning affection. Slowly. Genuinely. Consistently.

Nichemates, Not Competitors

Here’s a question worth sitting with: What if the people in your industry aren’t your competitors, but your best mirrors… and your best potential partners?

The word “competition” tends to make us anxious and avoidant. But the people who serve a similar audience are just other worthy human beings with families to feed and dreams to pursue. They, too, have hidden suffering that, if we only knew, would inspire our deep compassion.

Another example — a street full of restaurants doesn’t kill business — it becomes a destination. The same is true for your niche.

What if there really is more than enough for everyone? And what if the path to discovering that starts with how we think about the people alongside us?

I’ve written more deeply about this reframe — including how niche mates can become your best mirrors and your best partners: Niche Mates, Not Competitors.

A Path That Deepens Naturally

Netcaring isn’t just “being nice.” It’s actually a natural vetting process — a way of discovering, over time, who shares your values, your energy, and your commitment to reciprocity.

It begins with unconditional giving — the lightest touch, the widest net. And then, for the people who naturally reciprocate, the connection can deepen: into one-time collaborations, private groups, co-created projects, and eventually… deep partnership.

I think of this as the Collaboration Spiral — five levels that unfold organically, preventing the pain of jumping into a high-stakes project with a misaligned partner.

If you’d like the full framework — all five levels, with specific ideas for each — I’ve written about it here: The Collaboration Spiral for Soulpreneurs.

Netcaring as Spiritual Practice

For the soulpreneur, this might be the deepest invitation of all:

You don’t have to split yourself in two — the healer on one side, the “business person” on the other.

Netcaring lets business become part of your spiritual path. It lets your earthly work and your soulful work stop pulling in opposite directions. It is loving-kindness made practical inside your profession.

Bring your whole self. Lead with care and joy. Trust that what is meant for you will find you… when you stop grasping and start genuinely connecting.

The business grows.

But more importantly… you stay whole in your work.

Your Turn

Think of one person — a peer, a past client, someone whose work you admire — and reach out with one specific, heartfelt thing you appreciate about them.

No ask. No agenda. Simply enjoyment, and a bit of care.

…and notice how it feels. 🙏🧡

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To deep dive into Netcaring and connect with fellow soulpreneurs who enjoy this idea, check out the free Netcaring webinar