I Had No One to Ask

Hey friends, welcome back to Creator Etiquette™!

This week's issue is in partnership with Blomma! As a paid partner, I'm writing about something I actually care about on a personal level…what it looks like when coaching isn't gated by a title you don't have yet. #BlommaPartner

This newsletter lives alongside the YouTube channel and the podcast for those who prefer reading over watching. If you'd rather listen in, make sure to follow along on YouTube and Spotify!

I was 22, sitting on my bed in May 2020, with a podcast pitch deck open on my laptop and my thumb hovering over the send button on an Instagram DM to someone at Spotify.

I sent it. That's the part of the story that usually gets told. The cold DM worked, the meeting with an executive happened and the door opened.

But here's the part I don't talk about enough. All of the hours before I pressed send, I wasn't stuck because I didn't know what to say. I was stuck because I had no one to ask whether I should say it at all at once, no one to proof my pitch, and just spiraling in my head about what the right ask was, as a new grad. 

Not my parents — who were worried enough about me graduating into a pandemic that "should I cold-DM a Spotify exec" was not a productive dinner-table conversation. Nor was the subject of telling them I wanted to start my own business. 

Not my professors — who had been generous, but whose careers had not prepared them for a world where my social media feeds on Instagram and TikTok were becoming a key part of my résumé.

Not a mentor — because at 22, fresh out of school, I didn't have one yet.

Everyone I knew was guessing, when it came to advice on my “new” and inventive career of being a full time creator.

So I pressed send. Many times, and to my surprise worked. And then I proceeded to make every other decision of the next few years with that same methodology…figure it out alone, send it, see what happens.

I built Hosts of Influence® without a coach, which meant I learned by doing, which meant I paid for every lesson with time I couldn't get back.

I learned how brand deals actually work by losing money on a usage rights clause I didn't fully understand I'd signed. The fee looked great. The contract locked the content up for longer than the fee justified. I found out the hard way.

I scoped my first hire by guessing. At the scope, the pay, the reporting structure, all of it, and I figured it out eventually. But the months I spent not-yet-figuring-it-out were real months and they cost real things.

Coaching, until very recently, has been gated by three things:

The cost of figuring it out alone compounds. Every one of those Hosts of Influence® years, every usage-rights mistake, every fumbled hire — the cost wasn't one bad decision. It was four years of slightly-worse decisions stacking on top of each other before anyone, including me, had the language to name what was missing.

Not more advice on the internet. The internet is saturated with advice. LinkedIn will tell you how to run a one-on-one. Podcasts will tell you how to negotiate. Threads will tell you what your first hire should look like. You can spend six hours a day consuming career advice and still not be closer to a decision.

What was missing was a structured place to think before I acted. Not a friend group chat, not a Google search, not a generic AI answer that was confident about everything and useful for nothing. Somewhere that could hold the actual specifics of my situation and push back on them.

That is, genuinely, what coaching has always been. It just has not historically been priced for the people who need it most.

You might be thinking, Gigi, why are you partnering with a coaching platform — you already figured it out. So let me explain it.

Blomma is the closest thing I've seen to the version of coaching I would've actually been able to pay for in 2020, if it had existed at a price that didn't require an executive title. It is not therapy. It is not a chatbot. It is not self-care rebranded as productivity. It is structured coaching access, built for the career stage that historically got none of it — the stage where you are making the decisions that will compound, without the infrastructure that the people one rung up take for granted.

If this had existed in 2020, I probably still would've hit send on that DM. But the four years after? The compounding cost of figuring every next thing out alone? That, I think, would have looked different.

No question from the DMs this week. Instead, I'm asking you one:

What's the question you've been carrying around that you haven't asked anyone yet?

Reply to this email with it. I'm reading every single one. And if you want to do something with it, put your name on the Blomma waitlist → [waitlist link]

Then ask the question.

Next issue, we will have our first guest! I will be talking to AJ Eckstein, the founder of Creator Match.

We will be talking all about everything that you need to know about becoming a LinkedIn creator, landing partnerships on the platform and the grit that it takes to leave a corporate environment and becoming a founder. See you then.

Welcome to Creator Etiquette™. I am so happy you are here.

Xo, Gigi Robinson

Founder, Hosts of Influence® | Creator, Educator, Speaker, Author, Dog Mom

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Sponsored Content Disclaimer: This edition of Creator Etiquette™ is brought to you in partnership with Blomma. While this post is sponsored, all opinions and insights shared are my own. I only collaborate with brands that align with my values and bring genuine value to my audience. Transparency matters, and I appreciate your trust! 💙