Creators That Crush - Why some Creators Crush it, And Others Don't
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Pain - Vision - Solution
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Shawn Buttner: Creating isn't just hard, it's one of the hardest things you can do. Why? Because it's open ended. There are no rule books, there are no step by step guides, there are no guarantees, there's no one way to be a creator. Are you a creator that struggles with deadlines because distractions steal your focus?
# Pain
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Shawn Buttner: Do you struggle with As a creator, get frustrated at the pace of your progress, not being as quick as you'd like because you're putting in the sweat, the blood, the tears, and you're not getting the results and outcomes that you want in your creative career. Or do you feel like you need perfection before you can release that podcast episode that YouTube video or that piece of writing out in the world.
# Vision
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Shawn Buttner: you're not alone. So many creators feel this way. What if you knew how to feel confident as a creator that looked forward to sharing your art and your message and progress [00:01:00] and you could progress at a quicker rate? Or you woke up excited and enthusiastic each day for your work, for the day, for the impact you have out in the world.
What if you, every day, could wake up and have the focus and motivation that you need? at will to create without distraction and to create at your highest level. What we're going to talk about in today's episode of Creators That Crush is this and more through the four areas that creators need to focus on, to get into the top 1 percent of being a creator,
# Solution
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Shawn Buttner: By the end of today's episode, you'll have a clear starting point with your definition of success as a creator. You'll know what separates a creator that crushes versus one that is constrained and you'll have an overview or framework of the creator crush path that'll help you thrive over the long haul in four major steps.
Show Intro + What Seperates A Constrained Creator From A Creator That Crushes?
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Shawn Buttner: [00:02:00] Because again, creating isn't just hard. It's one of the hardest things you can do.
# Show Intro
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Shawn Buttner: So welcome to Creators That Crush, the show that helps creators effortlessly create and grow every day. I'm your host, Shawn Buttner.
# What Seperates A Contrained vs Crushing Creator?
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Shawn Buttner: Now, what is a creator that crushes, right? The good news is there are learnable, definable things that make creators that crush.
So what separates that creator that crushes versus one that is constrained? let me tell you about my story a bit, right? I'm Shawn Buttner and a certified high performance coach.
# My Story - The Reluctant Creator
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Shawn Buttner: And I became a coach because I was not productive.
I fell in love with coaching in 2015 and started as a side hustle trying to grow a coaching business and inadvertently I became a creator that day and really I just wanted to focus on coaching and everything I do is to help me as a coach first, right?
That's how I identify myself, but eventually I started a podcast, started a YouTube video, and [00:03:00] The crazy thing is, 2015, channel. And up until 2022, I had 20 subscribers and 600 videos. And so I was doing, I was showing up every week, at least once a week to do a long form piece of content.
I was learning how to speak in front of the camera. I was learning how to operate a YouTube channel behind the scenes. And I was terrible at it, honestly. I probably, Spent too much time without, on it, without reaching out, trying to find some guidance. But, fortunately, I was trained as a certified high performance coach, and through that, I was able to apply the principles of the certified high performance coaching process to my career as a creator.
So that when in 2019, when I left my full time job at Apple. I was able to really start focusing in on what was, would get me results in my creative [00:04:00] career. And that's why I'm here. This is why I'm here with you because I want to share what I know from high performance and apply it to this creator life.
# The Constrained Creator
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Shawn Buttner: there are so many things that can, Stop us from being the vibrant, full, confident creator we can be. This is what I call being a constrained creator, right? And a constrained creator is a creator that is frustrated because their wheels are spinning, right? They're doing a bunch of work, they're not getting results.
Or they're trapped in perfectionism because they fear the comments section, they fear being judged by their family and friends, they fear being judged by the people that they currently work with or that they're just not going to get noticed at all. And so they spend hours and hours every year to create one YouTube video that might make a difference.
And that's it. They're so [00:05:00] terrified that it won't succeed that there's always a thing to improve before they release it, right? Or you might be stuck in imposter syndrome. I think every creator along the on their journey, myself included, feels like they're just faking it till they make it, that they're copying other people, and they're not able to share their voice fully, right?
There's a little bit of a confidence thing of, I don't know. I want to do something that's tried and true and not experiment for myself. And when you can authentically show up in the things that you create, videos, audio, writing, that's when the magic happens, right? That's when creator careers explode and your life has changed forever.
And that's what we want for you here in the show. You can also be stuck in the moment. in your current level of output and quality where you want to get to releasing YouTube videos every day, but you don't have the [00:06:00] capacity because doing one a week nearly kills you without all the other responsibilities you'd have.
And how do you manage your time there? How do you manage the mindsets or how do you open up more bandwidth, which either deleting things or getting efficient at things so you can up the quality and output? of your creative endeavors, right?
# A Creator That Crushes...
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Shawn Buttner: So therefore, a creator that crushes is able to beat normal results in their creative life without hurting their health and relationships, and they're able to sustain that over the long term so they can have an amazing creator career, right?
They wake up, they are energized, they're able to create when they need to create, and they can summon that energy, the creative energy, the motivation to turn on the camera and talk when they need to. They're able to,spend a little time feeling like an imposter before they're like, no, I got this.
And their [00:07:00] expertise, their perspective, their voice. comes to the paper and they're able to just crush it and connect with their audience and build their audience.
What is the path to Crushing it as a creator?
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Shawn Buttner: So the path to crushing it as a creator is mastery in four areas, That's what we're going to talk about in this episode. We're going to talk about how you develop a positive psychology, right?
Having a positive open mindset that is serving you as a creator and preventing you from burning out, right? So much. when creators fail or when creators quit, it's because how they've defined success isn't really, living up to its muster, They think it's going to be easy and fun and light and there's a slog and there's a work and there's a process and there's a cadence to it that they can't escape and so they end up making themselves miserable and they quit or a creative partnership falls apart.[00:08:00]
You want to develop A punchy physiology. You need your body strong so you don't conk out in the middle of doing a video or it takes you a week to just get through a whole video. Cause you keep falling asleep or whatever. We'll get into this a little bit better in a little bit.
third point, you need to develop a purposeful productivity, right? So many people start their creative journeys. to work on things that they find meaningful, the things that they find interesting, the things that they want to share with the world. And there's a lot that goes into putting that out in the world.
And some of it can feel like it's busy work, right? Especially if you're not getting the results that you want. You can be doing a lot of short videos out in the world that nobody's watching. It's taking up half of your week. And why are you doing it, right? If nobody's Getting exposed to the shorts. It's not growing your [00:09:00] audience.
It's not growing your connection with your audience. It's just busy work, and you'll burn out over the long term if you continue to do that. But what if you knew exactly what you needed to do to make ripples and grow and connect with your audience? Those are the things we need to focus on and When you're focused on those things, it's very now easy to let go of distractions, right?
If you know that if you always do your long for long form content, that you'll get sales for your services, for your courses, for your information products. I'll get two or three people to opt in and sign up as coaching clients. Everything changes. And That is purposeful work and you will not get distracted by Netflix.
If you don't know that, you will put off doing the video 100 percent of the time, because it doesn't matter, right? It's not getting you the results that you need, [00:10:00] right? And then, okay, fourth thing is to develop persuasive people skills. in order to connect with peers, with audiences, to do deals, to lead your space.
I think that one of the things that great creators do is they are leading how people think in a particular topic. They are leading how people feel in a certain area of their lives. So if you do like a comedy podcast, you are really great at helping people laugh. And because of that, you're able to, connect with people there.
you're able to move people into action. And having leadership skills to lead your team, to lead your audience, to lead your life is essential as a creator that crushes.Let's go into the first question.
Why do creators need to develop a positive psychology?
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Shawn Buttner: Why do [00:11:00] we as creators need to develop this positive psychology, right? It's because your habits, your beliefs, your behaviors are either helping or hurting you in your creative career.
And the things that we believe or things that we are paying attention to are essential, right?
Story - Jay Clouse's CreatorHQ launch in 2024
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Shawn Buttner: Let me share this story from a guy that I follow, Jay Klaus. He had this last year in 2024 launched a product called Creator HQ, which is a Notion template for organizing your creative business, which is really great.
Shout out to Jay. big fan, but this is what he shared, right? He had been doing creator stuff for about eight years. And, on one of his podcast episodes, he was doing a debrief of this launch of Creator HQ. So in eight years, he's been doing it. His biggest launch. Making the most amount of money for him and his family was this Creator HQ launch.
And he was disappointed. And you're [00:12:00] like, why are you disappointed? this is the biggest launch you had. And he was explaining that he had this big number of what he wanted the launch to do, which was big and ostentatious and, a big stretch. And he's and I know it was a big stretch. And we fell short.
And so because I didn't meet the goal that I set out, the big crazy goal, I started beating myself up over this launch. When in reality, this is the best launch in my business and the history of my organization. And so it is if I had set milestones to celebrate along the way to say, Hey, this is making money at all.
And then, Hey, we made, enough to cover costs. I'm like, Hey, we made. The most of a launch in our organization ever and now we've made double that and now we've made our big goal He'd be cheering himself along the way and He would [00:13:00] have realized sooner that he did an amazing job This was a by all means and metrics a huge success for his business but again didn't measure up to that big goal and I think Shawn
Psychology Lesson - Build excitment in your creator journey with milestones
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Shawn Buttner: The lesson here as a creator that crushes is that psychology of how can I get excited as things are moving and things are growing and, I'm starting to, connect and, grow the audience in a particular way or whatever your metrics are.
is to have that psychology so that you can enjoy the ride, right? If you're always like, I'm always missing my big goals, you're going to start to dream a little bit, smaller. When you start to dream smaller, that's when you're in trouble and eventually you will stop being a creator.
Psychology - Three Questions to build a positive mind, so you can stay exited, motivates, and break through challenges
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Shawn Buttner: So here's a quick framework for creating a clear, positive, and resilient mind.
There's just three daily questions. So write these down if you can, and spend a [00:14:00] minute or two to think about it or, whatever. But first question is, what am I excited for today? And just, start the day looking forward to something and you'll see that your day changes immensely on how productive you feel, on how connected to the work you feel.
second is to write down what one to three moves will move your life and your creative career forward today. And then the third thing is what things are going to get in my way, what struggles, what hurdles, what setbacks, and how can I plan to get over them, right? If you journaled for 10 minutes on these three questions every day, you will notice a change in your mindset, how you're approaching your business.
How you feel as you do the work, and to get back to the lesson, you'll celebrate along the way, because if you're excited for something, you know what you gotta do, and you do that thing as soon [00:15:00] as possible in the day, the one thing that'll move your life and career forward, you'll feel momentum. And when you feel momentum, you'll want to do more.
direct your mind to keep your creative momentum, ask yourself these three questions every morning. Next, again, second point. So the first point is why do we need a positive open psychology? or what did I say? It's a psychology.
A positive psychology.
WHy do creators need to build a punchy phisiology?
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Shawn Buttner: Second point is to develop a punchy physiology, right? So in physiology, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the people you serve your audience. You can't provide for your family. You can't have the impact you want out in the world. And let me tell you this story.
Phisiology Story - The purpose driven Youtuber Who Faints From Exhaustion
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Shawn Buttner: I'm in a group with a big YouTube creator who tells you how to do YouTube. [00:16:00] And, he's a bit of an introvert like me, which is why I like him that's inside. but we're good. Every Thursday is when he does his extroverted stuff. So he does interviews, he runs his communities, does the YouTube stuff.
And, we get on one Thursday and he's Hey, like last time I went live for three hours, I had a cold, and I'm sorry I wasn't, around for a week. But I did the three hours. I didn't take any breaks, didn't drink any water, didn't have any food, and I passed out. after the second meeting I had, and I had to shuffle everything around.
And the high performance coach in me was like yelling at the Zoom, and I was on mute so he couldn't hear me, but it's,you need to take care of yourself. And his point of view, and I think a lot of people who love creating and love connecting with people and love, having an impact and serving people, are like, this is my purpose.
I'm going to give it my all. And [00:17:00] if I pass out. But I really want to deliver high value here. And if that gentleman fell and hit his head and passed away, there's a whole rest of my life, he wouldn't be able to help me. and there's simple things that we can do to take care of our energy to physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
And That's the lesson, right?
Phisiology Lesson - Take Breaks so you don't pass out
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Shawn Buttner: Take breaks so you don't pass out. he could very easily have scheduled in the three hour community extravaganza that he had, two five minute breaks where there's a breakout, people are meeting each other and sharing ideas. he could get water, he could go to the bathroom, he could get a snack, he could take some medicine, or meditate, whatever you gotta do.
and For you, as a creator that crushes, I want to challenge you. are you the kind of person that sits down in front of your desk for 12 hours and you're skipping meals or skipping the gym? You're not seeing family and friends. or are you someone that is, [00:18:00] cultivating your energy along the way, your physiology.
Phisiology Takeway - Plan And execute Macro and Micro Breaks
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Shawn Buttner: So where you're taking micro and macro breaks that are rejuvenating enough to keep you in the highest, most connected gear with your audience, with their teams, with the people around you. And so,it could just be taking walks or it could be again, drinking water, bio breaks, getting coffee, There's so much here and it's so unique to each particular person.
and I have to do the disclaimer, talk to your health professionals before you make big changes here. I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on TV. I don't do any of that. and so we have to call that out, are you sleeping enough? Eating nutritious food, moving your body, seeing the sun, like some basic things that can help you out there.
as my, one of my mentors says quite a bit, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates it. Are you generating the energy you [00:19:00] need to crush it as a creator every day?
CTA - Go deeper with my email course at creatorsthatcrush.com
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Shawn Buttner: And again, you can do some of the things we just talked about as a baseline. I'll throw in here, if you want a little bit more detail of any of these pillars that we're talking about today, I have a Creators That Crush In 5 Days.
email course that'll go into some of these in a little bit more detail. Just go to mini or, sorry, just go to creators that crush. com and it will direct you to the right place on my site at shawnbuttner. com. but just remember creators that crush in the URL, all one word. It'll, you can sign up for an email that'll walk you through in five days, each of these pillars and a little bit more context.
Okay, cool. All right, so after developing a positive psychology, after developing a punchy physiology, the third pillar we need to do is to develop a purposeful productivity. [00:20:00]
Why do creators need to cultivate their purposeful productivity?
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Shawn Buttner: Now, purposeful productivity means that we're here to do our life's work and not busy work. at the top of this video, I talked about making 700 YouTube videos with very little audience gains, wheels spinning, Don't do that, right?
Productivity Story - Spending too long without a coach + illistrations of busy work vs life's work
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Shawn Buttner: You can do this in much less time. I will say, in all those videos, for me as a creator, it was, again, working on camera skills and being a little bit more lively and a little bit more relaxed in front of the camera. But, whatever. So that wasn't busy work, maybe for the first 200 videos or 300 videos.
But after that, like I should have gotten a coach much easier. And the gentleman I was just talking about that passed out was the guy who started working with him in 2022. About 20 subs on YouTube to [00:21:00] 2023 and the 2023 had about 40 at the end of 2024, about 80. So the audience growth is now happening.
It's still slow for my tastes, but it's happening, right? It's because I hired a coach and, so much of Creators That Crush 2.there's so much to learn about being a creator, about the craft, about the thing that you love, like making a podcast or a YouTube channel, writing a book, writing an online course or creating an online course or community and all that kind of stuff.
And then there's the time management. There's the beliefs and the things around it. And so how are you managing your time?
Two productivity tips to help you focus on your LIFE'S work
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Shawn Buttner: And two quick tips that I can tell you right now on. managing your productivity is number one, the first hour that you work should be the most important task for the day that moves things forward so that you feel that you're progressing your life's work, right?
If [00:22:00] you have a bunch of like taxes and stuff that you got to do later since we're in that season as of recording this video, if you know you have the creative work that you love and then you have all this admin work. do the creative work first and then devote resources to the admin stuff because it's a it's so important because if you feel that momentum right off the bat you're more likely to do the admin stuff and then oh but I have some momentum I got to do more creative stuff or maybe you do a whole half day of creating podcast episodes and videos and then you're like when you're a little bit more brain dead oh I'll do the Admin work now, but it's a game changer.
That one particular habit and having coached so many people, I can tell you it's so important. So,yeah, do have the power hour. It's the first hour of your work day after your morning routine or whatever. And then the second thing is [00:23:00] in high performance coaching, we talk about And here's another quote from, one of my mentors, that the inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing tool for other people's agendas, right?
And this is also true for social media. So if you opened up your calendar right now, and once in the morning you went over emails and you did social media, it could be at the same time or different time. And then in the afternoon you had one time to do emails and social media. And he turned off all the notifications, all of the banners, all of the beeps, bops, and boops that happen when, somebody sends you a message on social media, you will live a calmer life.
I tell you, it's so distracting to be working on making a video and then see something flash across the screen. Or like right now, I'm recording this podcast [00:24:00] episode. I have. a special work focus that nothing gets through right now. So if somebody tries to call me, I'm not, talking and then like getting distracted.
It allows me to focus on the work. And so with emails, you should be, I need to reach out to these people. I'm waiting to hear back from these people. and then a time to just catch other things that come in. It makes your day so much more.just vibrant, right? You can pour yourself into the creative work that you love or the career that you're doing and knowing that you're not going to drop stuff, that there are certain times in the day, whatever works for you, that you'll handle the social media, you'll handle the emails.
It's a game changer. So check that out. Schedule those two times on your calendar or four times one for email, one for social. If you're that crazy, I like to do them together. You'll find a [00:25:00] change, right? So if we're a creator that crushes, that has a positive psychology, a punchy physiology, we have purposeful productivity and a way to manage some distractions in our life.
Why do creators need pursuasive people skills?
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Shawn Buttner: The last thing we need to do is. Develop our, Our persuasive people skills. Now, why do creators need persuasive people skills? It's because high performing creators are leaders that move people into action. It's buy my book, it's eat healthier,it's. Remove this harmful chemical from your house.
And I think at its heart, all content is persuasive by nature.
People Skills Story - Frank Kern Conference in San Diego Dec 2024
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Shawn Buttner: so let me share this story. So in December, 2024, I ended up going to San Diego to go to a conference with Frank Kern. And he does this state of the internet [00:26:00] address.
And he drills into everyone. He can talk to you from the, he shouts it from the mountaintops. Like you have to help people and then selling becomes easy. It's just provide a lot of value, help people along the path and sales happen. But in the state of the internet address, he talked about.
How all content is essentially persuasive. And there's a lot of bad content out there that is not either doing a good job persuading people or is trying to persuade people to do stuff that is just dumb, right? To be outraged, to there's good content that helps you live your life better and there's stuff that feeds the division and the vitriol and all that kind of stuff.
And What's really important and got me thinking about that is like if you do like an entertainment podcast, you're trying to persuade people to disassociate with their life, to enjoy the [00:27:00] comedy, to enjoy the play, to get bought into the story of the movie. So it's the escapism that you're persuading people to do.
And that could be fun, right? As long as it's not overused, it's a totally great thing. If you are. A high performance coach and you have a YouTube channel and podcast. You're trying to persuade people to Think about their lives in a way that helps them move forward or to encourage them to step into their power, into something greater than they think they can do themselves, right?
Or, if you're,
yeah, so if you're a doctor and you have a YouTube or social media presence that helps people not get sick during the winter, right? There's all these different angles, but all content is trying to persuade you the most punchy pieces of content are helping you think through things like AI or crypto or whatever [00:28:00] it is and What that means is you need to be a leader And you can't, and you are a leader, right?
People skills lession - You need to pursuade people to follow your leadership to create long-term
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Shawn Buttner: Whether you think so or not, and persuading people to see your vision,to join your movement is essential. If you're going to make a business of being a creator, which I think everyone, I believe in entrepreneurship. It's hard. It's not for everyone, but, I think, At the very least, you should be leading the change and have the impact you want out in the world.
People Skills Framework - Teach people how to think
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Shawn Buttner: So how do you do it, right? you have to appeal to people in three ways. You have to appeal to why it's good for them. Like, why is it good for you to figure out how to crush it as a creator? that's a question I hope you have in your head. And the answer is If you're a creator that [00:29:00] crushes, it can change your life.
It can change the life of your family. just from. the business side of it, but also the impact, the fulfillment, the ability to be, you hear the phrase, be the change you want in the world. Like creating content that shows people the way is a way that can happen. And so it's so important.
So what's good for people, what's good for their families. So you've heard me mention that a couple of times how it impacts other people in your life, your team, your family, their lives, and how it helps society, which I haven't addressed yet. And so the self, the people around them and the world at large, I believe if we had more creators that were crushing it, we'd have more people that were helping other people that.
it'd be more uniting, people more as humans than as enemies. If you're constantly helping [00:30:00] people improve or you're constantly leading a change that benefits everyone. So a little bit idealistic, but that's the basis of any type of thought leader show is teaching people how to think about themselves, about how their relationships with others, and about society at large.
Wrapping up
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Shawn Buttner: That's the four pillar framework. again, if you'd like to go into a little bit more in depth, I have an on our email course called Creators That Crush In Five Days. Just go to creators that crush. com. It'll direct you to where you need to go to sign up for that. And, I hope you loved this first episode of Creators That Crush.
this is the pivot from the Meaningful Revolution podcast. So if you were with me on that, I thank you. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I'm really excited to explore how creators crush [00:31:00] and help provide you tools to get over the things that constrain creators. Because, a lot of what helped me break out of just doing a bunch of stuff that wasn't, Super impactful.
And I don't want that for you. I want you to thrive. I want you to have an impact. I want you to grow your audience and I want you to put your good out into the world. So with that, this is Shawn Buttner saying, see you guys next time.
