Creators That Crush Network In The Way That Works Best For Them
13 Feb 2025 · 12 min
Sean, a high-performance coach, shares how creators grow audiences through genuine partnerships instead of promotion. He joined a band after a cold DM and now works with creators like Jake Klaus and Brendan Burchard. Shift to authentic conversation, add value, and follow through on commitments.
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Welcome to Creators that Crush, the show that helps you move from crushed to crushing. As a creator, I'm your certified high performance coach and host, Sean. But now creators like Crush have partners and collaborators. And if you're a creator that has struggled to grow your audience or struggled to have an audience that was engaged with your work or struggled with feeling alone in your creative endeavor, then this episode's for you. Because we'll answer the questions. How do you build partners and collaborators? How do you understand your audience? And how do creators at Crush build partnerships differently from others? So let's get to it. Creators that Crush are constantly growing their network through coaching, through seminars, through social media. They're engaging with the world. And this can be a struggle for some creators like me. I'm a bit introverted, so the promotional side of creative work feels a bit awkward and forced. Part of the reason I started a podcast to begin with was to have a project I could invite friends and people that I was interested in to work on with me, like an interview as a way to network. And this worked extremely well for me and for my business. And I've made so many cool connections and strengthened friendships with cool people I've met in my coaching career. And guess what? To my surprise, I've been able to grow a small audience. And you never know the connections you'll make or how much help is in your current network until you start reaching out. Now, this became very pertinent for me recently. Part of expanding my network was to hire a podcast, someone that I admired that might have connections that I was interested in because the audience I thought might overlap. But he gave me some homework to reach out to folks in my social media and start conversations in hopes of letting them know that I coach content creators to help the coaching side of the business. So I went through my social media. I messaged a ton of folks, but I wasn't sure if I was annoying people by reaching out. So I had to change my mindset and give up trying to promote anything and just strike up conversations. And it was awkward. But then something truly unexpected, unexpected happened. I reached out to an old friend and noticed that she was in a band that recently played in town. So I asked her about their performance and through DMs, going back and forth talking about the band, she asked me if I play guitar. Cause I mentioned I was a musician because they were looking for someone to play lead guitar. And so guess what? Now I'm in a band as of recording this. And I love playing music with folks. So this is a really good, just like, personal thing that I was not expecting from this outreach effort. So fast forward to not even a week after joining the band. My friend's like, hey, we need to catch up. And so we did a quick meetup and she knows tons of people who know creators that want to crush it, so know people in my target audience. So now I have a bunch of people to reach out to and to collaborate with, all from this weird connection on music that was not related to the business. Every big creator that I followed or have coached have all had a huge network that they've built by reaching out. So the lessons here are sometimes your network can be strategic with joining programs or hiring coaches. Sometimes striking up conversations for the sake of conversations can lead to unexpected things, especially if you get out of that promotional mindset. You can focus on connecting with people based on what's going on in their life on social, because there's so much information out there. Or if you know them personally, just saying, hey, I haven't heard from you in a while, what's up? And then just being open to things you don't think would actually help your intended goal. Right. Or help you in your creative business because you don't know what's going to happen by reaching out and just connecting with people human to human. So that leads to the question, how do you find partners and collaborate collaborators that help you crush it? As a creator, that's a mouthful. First is you need to know your audience and you need to be talking to them. So I'm on Blue sky, so I'll have that link below in the show notes. So say hi to me. If you listen to the program or program, listen to the podcast, because I would love to know more about you, number one, because it helps inform how I can help you even greater. Right? And I know if you're listening to a show like Creators that Crush that you are someone that wants to do really good in your creative endeavor. It matters to you that you are making an impact or providing enough abundance for your family in your creative endeavor. And you're trying to figure it out. And I'm here to help you with the performance side of your creative career. So know your audience, talk to them. Like I said, engage me there. You know, people that I've seen do this to great effect. There are people like Jake Klaus or Brendan Burchard that have huge communities, but they're in the comments, you know, cheering people on and learning about the people that are attracted to what they're doing out there. And that leads to the second point is to just be cool, right? If you are not super pushy, if you're genuinely invested in people, if you are genuinely trying to help people better their lives, they'll want to be around you, right? And we have a culture now. I think we should be fighting against, as creators of being mean to each other as a way to gather attention and to score points. I don't like that behavior. And it's just not cool. Be cool. Be a cool guy or gal. And so how can you be cool? When you reach out to folks add value. And like I said before too, you want to reach out and genuinely care about what's happening in their life. If you can help them in a particular way, make a connection or give them some perspective or something that you're doing and just give it fully without any expectation of anything coming back, that's great. Uh, it's also, you have to, if you study persuasion, you have to be trustworthy and have integrity. So how do you build trust and integrity? You follow through on your commitments. Um, you do things that are worthy of trust, you know, so you're not lying all the basic things you're told. Growing up to be a decent human being is like, don't lie. Respect people, appreciate people. You know, politeness can get. You can go a long way. I don't know how many times I've gone out to a restaurant with family or friends and just say please or thank you or interacting with the waiter or waitress as a human being, like, get you free stuff or like a free appetizer or something. Like, it's not done for that. But it's just basic politeness is lacking right now. And you can stand out as a cool person and as one that is worthy of trust and full of integrity by being polite, which is mind boggling, but it warms my Midwestern heart. So the other way to build trust and integrity is to communicate clearly. And in order to communicate clearly, you need to know your audience and you need to be able to speak to them. So that's essentially know your audience and talk to them. So engage with them wherever they are. Um, find communities and talk with them. Go on Blue sky and say hi, DM them again, do that below. And so really like, the takeaways here are build your network and the way that works for you. If that is cold outreach, if it's going to seminars, if it's starting a podcast, so you have a collaboration tool to work with people and build something together, then do that. I think you'll be surprised how you know those basic skills of taking a genuine interest in people, respecting people, trying to help them out. Those three points will shift your career and your life in ways that you can't even imagine. Hey, if you loved this video episode of Creators Crushed, maybe you need some help with formulating how to reach out to people or to build your network. I would love to be part of that process and we can network together on a creator strategy call. I have Linked below where we'll go through your performance and analyze everything outside of what you do to create. So we'll take a look at your mindsets. Do you have imposter syndrome that is preventing you from fully committing to your creative endeavor? We'll take a look at perfectionism. Are you someone that is not releasing consistently because everything has to be absolutely perfect and usually there we work with what you're afraid of. Are you afraid of failing? Are you afraid of being judged by your family or friends or the Internet? And so we'll take a look at mindsets like that. We'll take a look at your habits and how you're taking care of your body and how are you actually doing the work and how are you connecting with people in order to have a creator business that you love, that you enjoy doing, that you could do for forever, that is providing the lifestyle that you want. We do this all on a free one hour strategy session where we co create a strategy plan for your creator performance. This is based off of certified high performance coaching work that I do. So these are proven strategies that have helped all sorts of people reach the top of their game. All starts with this one call that I know can be transformational so make sure you take me up on it. I only have 10 open spots this month and they go really quick so if you don't grab that right away, you'll get put on a wait list. So don't hesitate. It's free and the whole goal is for me to deliver an amazing strategy plan for you to co create that with you. So take me up on that, hit the link below in the show notes and we'll see you next time.
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