You Can’t Interview Your Way to the Right Consultant

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I got a frantic call from a family friend the other day: “My house roof is coming down. What should I do?”

The implication was clear—because I’m an architect, I should know everything about construction.

I’ve gotten versions of this message for years, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t annoy me a little. So I asked the obvious questions: How old is the roof? Any leaks? Anything visibly wrong up there?

Turned out it wasn’t the roof at all. It was the eavetrough—that part where the roof ends and directs rainwater down the downspouts. Once I figured that out, I suggested he contact a local roofing contractor to handle it.

Then came the follow-up question that revealed the real problem: “You’re an architect, you must know roofing contractors. I don’t want to call just anyone.”

Here’s what I realized in that moment: the people we trust most aren’t the ones who pretend to know everything. They’re the ones who admit what they don’t know and have the relationships to find the answer.

That’s actual credibility. Not perfection. Knowing where your expertise ends.

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The awkward truth about expertise

My first instinct was to be useless.

I don’t know roofing contractors. That’s not what I do. The roof type or material choices? Sure. But sagging eavestroughs? That’s builder territory, not mine.

I could’ve told him to Google it and moved on. Instead, I did something that felt slightly uncomfortable: I admitted I needed help too.

I went through my contact list (which, let’s be honest, hasn’t been updated in years) and pulled out a few structural engineers I’d actually worked with over time. Not randoms. People I knew. I sent them a quick email asking if they could recommend residential roofers.

Within a day, they responded. Most said they couldn’t help—they work commercial, not residential. But two came back with a few names and a caveat: “I can’t guarantee their work, but I know them. I like them.”

That’s when it hit me: those recommendations meant more to me than any online review ever could. Because they came from people who had actual history with me. They weren’t trying to impress me or prove their network. They were just being honest.

You can’t network your way to trust

Here’s what most advice about professional relationships gets wrong: it treats networking like a transaction. Attend events. Collect contacts. Build your “brand.” Then, when you need something, pull from the list.

That’s backwards.

The people who actually come through for you are the ones you’ve already spent time with—not because you were strategically building a pipeline, but because you showed up. You answered their emails. You remembered their name. You didn’t disappear when you didn’t need anything from them.

I’ve met hundreds of engineers over the years. Some I worked with. Some I didn’t.

But the ones I reached out to for help? They responded because there was already something there. A conversation. A project we worked through together. Enough history that asking felt natural, not like I was calling in a favor from a stranger.

The ironic part is that admitting I couldn’t help my family friend—that I didn’t know roofing contractors—actually made me more credible. Not less. Because instead of pretending I knew everything and giving bad advice, I reached out to people I trusted and asked them. And those trusted people vouched for someone new.

That’s the flip most people get wrong.

We think credibility comes from having all the answers. It doesn’t. It comes from knowing your boundaries and having built real relationships with people who do have those answers.

When you can confidently say “I don’t know, but I know someone who does,” you’ve actually proven something more valuable than expertise: you’ve proven you’re trustworthy enough that other experts will stake their reputation on your introduction.

Build relationships before you need them

The saying goes: “The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Same with professional relationships.

Most of us—myself included—don’t prioritize this until we’re desperate. We’re busy. We’re heads-down on work. Going to industry events feels optional. Responding to a message from someone we haven’t heard from in years feels like it can wait.

Except it can’t, not really. Because when you do need something, you’re starting from zero.

My family friend eventually picked one of those roofing contractors, got his eavetrough sorted, and thanked me. But here’s what actually happened: I wasn’t the hero. I just happened to know people willing to stick their neck out because we’d worked together before. My only real contribution was admitting I didn’t know the answer.

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Final Thoughts – The payoff

Unless you’re a writer who only needs a computer and coffee, most of us need to work with others—especially in fields like construction where you literally can’t build anything alone.

The conventional wisdom says: develop expertise, build your credentials, people will want to work with you. And sure, that’s part of it.

But here’s what actually separates people who get the best collaborators from those who don’t.

It’s not how much they know. It’s how comfortable they are saying they don’t know, and whether other people trust them enough to say yes when they ask for an introduction.

Think about the consultants you’d most want to work with. Are they the ones who pretend to have every answer? Or the ones who are clear about their specialty, honest about their limits, and somehow always connected to the right people when they need them? The second group. Always the second group.

That’s not luck. That’s credibility built on honesty, not pretense.

So if you’re sitting in meetings right now thinking “I should really network more,” you’re not wrong. But you’re also not going to fix that by collecting LinkedIn connections. You fix it by actually talking to people. By responding to emails. By showing up to things even when you don’t know anyone there.

My family friend’s roof problem? It turned out to be less about knowing roofing contractors and more about knowing people who knew people. And the only way I had those people was because I’d spent years showing up—sometimes awkwardly, sometimes when it wasn’t convenient—to professional events where I didn’t know anyone.

When you think about it, is a pretty solid business model. Get good at your thing. Admit when it’s not your thing. Stay in touch with people. Repeat.

Not exactly rocket science. Though if it were, I’d probably know someone who could explain it to me.

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