Scroll through Alissa Pollack’s Instagram and you’ll lose count. Picture after picture of artists, executives, programmers and friends — plenty of them famous, all of them people she can call by name.
Ask her how she remembers them all, and the answer is almost too simple. “I don’t know. You just do, right?” Pollack said. “I don’t know that I ever forget. I think that just comes down to genuinely caring and staying in touch.”
That idea — genuinely caring — runs through everything Pollack says about building a network. And she’s built one of the best in the business.
These days, she’s working on what she calls one of her favorite campaigns ever: a podcast with Nile Rodgers. It recently took her to London for an episode taping with Sienna Spiro. Anyone who has spent five minutes around Rodgers knows the challenge. “We’ve actually had some of the artists almost start interviewing Nile because he’s so interesting,” she laughed. “Everyone’s like, I almost want to talk about you, Nile. Forget my stuff.”
But a seat in a room full of Nile Rodgers stories doesn’t happen by accident. Hers started a long time ago, at Z100.
It Started With an Intern Who Cared
Pollack traces her success all the way back to the beginning. “I feel like any success I’ve had in my career has actually come from the fact that I actually care,” she said. “Even when I started way back in the day of being an intern at Z100, I always, always focused on building real relationships.”
She was curious. She volunteered for projects that weren’t her job. And she learned early that simply showing up mattered.
“Showing up, meeting people, and making relationships was honestly the best thing you could do for your career,” Pollack said.
Over time, those relationships became something bigger. “I joke it’s not really a job; it’s a lifestyle,” she said. Because people in this business work so much, colleagues become the real friends. Beyond her childhood and school friends, Pollack said, it’s clients and coworkers who make up her “real friend base now.”
The Best Networking Doesn’t Feel Like Networking
People hear the word “networking” and think of a job hunt. Pollack sees it differently.
“The best networking doesn’t feel like networking,” she said. “It’s really about being curious about people and asking questions and genuinely listening to the answers. It’s trying to figure out how can I help that other person, and how do I build a real relationship with them.”
This is a small business, and it gets smaller by the minute. The same faces keep showing up, just with new titles and new companies. That’s exactly why how you treat people matters.
“The assistant you need today could be running the company tomorrow,” Pollack said. “How you make them feel is always going to be more important than anything else you do.”
Her rule is simple: stop asking, “Where’s the win for me?”
“It’s really just about building relationships and finding the mutual wins,” she said, “and the rest kind of takes care of itself.”
When You Call, They Pick Up
Ask Pollack for the one call that paid off years later, and she can’t narrow it down. Starting on the Premiere Radio side and through a career that kept evolving, she’s leaned on a long list of people — Tom Poleman, Kraig Kitchin, Rich Meyer, Julie Talbott, Jen Leimgruber, Jim Ryan, Kurt Johnson, Tom Cuddy, Rick Cummings, Pat Paxton, Jeff Smulyan, Richard Palmese, Steve Bartels and Irving Azoff among them.
“Whether I talked to them the day before or talked to them the year before, when I called up, they took my phone call and they always took care of me,” Pollack said. “I always felt like I was so blessed by having cultivated relationships that were so real and so deep and so mutually beneficial that when I called out of nowhere, they still picked up the phone. I’ve always loved that my relationships extended far beyond just within my own company and carried over regardless of what company someone worked at.”
That’s the payoff. Not a favor on demand, but a phone that gets answered.
The Charity Room Is a Networking Room
There’s one door Pollack says opened more for her career than most: charity work.
She started doing it more than 20 years ago. Those events put her in rooms with people “two, three levels higher than me at any given time.” She was there for genuine reasons. But the relationships stuck.
“Meeting some of those people was a real game changer for me later on in my business career,” she said. “Those were people running companies that were important clients of mine. I normally would never have even gotten a meeting with them if it weren’t for the fact that I got to network and meet them around the charity part of it.”
It’s advice she gives interns and young staffers all the time. City of Hope, Musicians On Call, the T.J. Martell Foundation, MusiCares and UJA are all organizations full of industry people.
“I don’t want to say it’s an audition or it’s an interview,” Pollack said. “But if you’re young and you’re hungry and you get in front of some of these high-level people and they see that you’re able to creatively raise money or get things done, it can really impress people.”
Plus, you’re helping cure cancer or bringing the healing power of music to patients. “There’s really no downside in that,” she said.
And for anyone who misses the old convention days, Pollack has a pitch. She calls the Taste of Hope wine dinner, benefiting City of Hope and Musicians On Call, “one of the last conventions left that’s conveniently disguised as a charity event.” Her verdict: it’s “a networking event of epic proportions.”
The Biggest Mistake: Chasing the Short Win
So where do young people go wrong? Pollack doesn’t hesitate.
“They’re short-sighted in what true networking and relationships are,” she said. “It’s not good when you focus on the short-term win instead of the long-term relationship.”
Grab the best deal for your commission today, and you might lose a partner for the next 20 years. And people notice.
“People can also read it,” Pollack said. “If you go out in the world and people can tell that your agenda is just to get something, or you only pay attention to people for their title, I think those are the mistakes people make.”
Every relationship involves some kind of exchange, she added. “But if it’s one-sided and it’s not genuine, that never really worked.”
When You Need the Network
Then comes the hard part. You lose your job, and suddenly you need the people you’ve met.
Pollack says to start by being thoughtful. Think about who you’ve supported along the way. And don’t lead with “Do you have a job for me?” Instead, ask for ideas, or for someone else worth talking to.
“If you’ve done a good job, people will reach out to you and offer to help,” she said. “But I think it’s important to not make people feel like you’re leaning on them when you haven’t put in the work to be able to earn that opportunity.”
At Mediabase, Pollack and Josh Medleck put that into practice. When they read in the trades that someone has been let go or downsized, they reach out automatically. They offer a free password, along with love and support.
“It should never feel like you’re only reaching out to people when you need something,” she said. “That’s just not genuine.”
Artists, Don’t Forget Your Champions
Before wrapping up, Pollack added one more angle. Networking isn’t just for executives in radio and records. It matters just as much for artists.
She’s texted over the years with the likes of Alex Warren, Shinedown’s Brent Smith, Ryan Tedder and Garth Brooks. Sabrina Carpenter is in her phone too — someone Pollack has championed “from day one.” Smith, she said, is the kind of artist who really cares and never forgets.
“You’re gonna have people that champion you from the very beginning, and they care about you. And as you rise, don’t forget those people,” she said. “You’re not always going to have a smash every single time. If you’ve created good relationships and you’ve remembered the people that were there for you, they’re going to be there for you.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s been a week, four years or a decade since the last conversation, Pollack said.
“If you leave people feeling good about you, they’re going to be excited to talk to you,” she said. “You’ll always reconnect with those people.”
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