In a recent LinkedIn post, Ani Filipova explores a common piece of career advice – surrounding oneself with ambitious people – and offers a nuanced perspective on how to actually achieve this. Filipova argues that the conventional wisdom often misses a crucial element: personal ambition must precede the attraction of like-minded individuals. She shares her own journey, recounting years spent searching for her ‘people’ in various professional settings without success, until she shifted her focus inward.
Filipova highlights a pivotal realization: ambitious individuals are not found by merely seeking them out in external spaces like networking events or online forums. Instead, they emerge when one actively cultivates their own ambition and begins to build and share their work publicly. As Ani Filipova notes:
“Ambitious people don’t show up until you become one.”
This personal transformation, Filipova suggests, is the key to attracting the right connections. She details a shift from passively searching to actively creating and contributing. This involved sharing nascent ideas, acknowledging knowledge gaps, and putting imperfect work out into the world. This proactive approach, she found, led to the appearance of the ambitious peers she had been seeking.
Becoming a Magnet for Ambition
Filipova outlines a three-pronged strategy for individuals looking to attract ambitious collaborators and peers. The core principle is to transition from a passive search to an active process of self-development and public contribution.
1. Build Something Visible
A significant part of Filipova’s advice centers on making one’s efforts and progress visible. She encourages readers to overcome the hesitancy of not having everything perfectly figured out. Instead, she advocates for starting small and publicly. This could involve launching a newsletter, even with a small initial audience, sharing a single insight derived from recent work, or creating a simple offer and making it known.
“Stop waiting to have it all figured out. Start a newsletter with 10 subscribers. Post one insight from your work this week. Create a simple offer and share it with people.”
According to Ani Filipova, this act of creation and sharing serves as a signal, attracting others who are also engaged in building and growing.
2. Share the ‘Messy Middle’
Filipova emphasizes the importance of authenticity and vulnerability in connection. While many professionals tend to showcase only their successes, she suggests that sharing the struggles and uncertainties of the current process can foster deeper and more genuine connections. As Ani Filipova points out:
“Everyone posts their successes. Few people share what they are struggling with right now. ‘I’m figuring out how to price my first coaching package’ attracts more real connections than ‘I’m a certified coach.'”
This willingness to share the less polished aspects of one’s journey, Filipova argues, creates common ground and makes individuals more approachable and relatable to others facing similar challenges.
3. Ask Better Questions
The nature of conversations plays a crucial role in forming meaningful connections, according to Filipova. She proposes shifting the focus from superficial inquiries to more engaging and forward-looking questions. In Filipova’s view:
“Replace ‘What do you do?’ with ‘What are you building?’ Replace ‘How’s work?’ with ‘What are you excited about right now?'”
By altering the conversational prompts, individuals can move beyond surface-level interactions and uncover shared interests and ambitions more effectively. This method, she believes, helps to filter out superficial exchanges and cultivate more substantive relationships.
Building a Community Through Shared Ambition
Filipova connects these principles to her own initiative, the portfolio career accelerator, which she built to facilitate learning and preparation for individuals interested in portfolio careers. She concludes her post with a powerful call to action: instead of searching for a community, individuals should strive to embody the qualities that their desired community values. Ambition, she reiterates, is contagious, but one must first be a carrier of that ambition.
📝 About This Content
This article is based on insights shared by Ani Filipova on LinkedIn.
📅 Originally posted on January 12, 2026 | View original post on LinkedIn →