Author: Franz Malten Buemann

This post is a part of The Crisis of Disconnection, a thought leadership series examining the latest research and insights to uncover how businesses can meet their growth goals, even amidst unprecedented changes to the way we work.
It’s no secret that reaching customers has become more challenging in recent years. Interested in going a few steps further to develop meaningful, lasting relationships? That’s an even taller order. To sustain business growth during trying times, many of us are realizing we need to reimagine how we attract, engage, and delight the communities we serve.
Until recently, it’s been equally tricky to pinpoint a root cause for what feels like an uphill battle. The struggle, as they say, is real.

When we zoomed out, we discovered that disconnection is widespread across internal systems, among cross-functional teams, and — increasingly — between brands and their customers.
Yamini Rangan, Chief Executive Officer at HubSpot, sums up the Crisis of Disconnection best:

How did this evolution come to our attention? We’re glad you asked!
Research we’ve conducted over the last year has helped us bring these trends to light, and we’re eager to share our top findings. After all, overcoming The Crisis of Disconnection starts with understanding the challenges ahead. Let’s start with some high-level commentary on growth, or what’s top of mind for most in our current macroeconomic climate.
Growth Challenges Are on the Rise
Are times tough for most small businesses? All signs point to yes.
The economy is on a rollercoaster ride, the stock market is giving new meaning to the word “volatile,” geo-political conflicts are escalating, and a global pandemic may have more unprecedented times in store. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Tried-and-true methods for effective lead generation and organizational growth are becoming less and less reliable.
HubSpot’s Research Team found that 63% of businesses agree that growth strategies they used in the past are less effective than they used to be. Other top concerns for businesses right now include:

Increasing expenses
Increasing costs to reach customers and prospects
Slowing growth

While growth challenges can be attributed to many factors, the heart of the problem stems from the same place: a lack of connection. New chasms between proliferating systems (leading to disconnected data), siloed teams (leading to internal friction), and companies and their customers (leading to disjointed experiences) are forcing businesses to evolve existing strategies and rethink their growth playbooks:

A mere 22% of businesses report excellent data connectedness.
Only 49% of U.S. workers feel their teams are working effectively in a hybrid environment.
64% of businesses agree that sales engagement is struggling more now than pre-pandemic.

Looking for a silver lining? The challenges we’re facing can pave the way for us to reconnect — with each other and our customers — in new ways. To understand how early adopters are (re)connecting the dots, let’s take a look at the main drivers behind The Crisis of Disconnection, starting with the biggest pain point for scaling businesses (and the first of three emerging workplace trends threatening sustainable business growth).
What’s Driving Disconnection?
1. Internal systems are disconnected.
When COVID-19 first broke out, we shifted many of our daily activities from in-person to online. We did it out of necessity, both personally and professionally. Now, as companies embrace increasingly digital ways of working on a permanent basis, streamlining systems to increase efficiency, decrease friction, and accelerate connectivity is more important than ever.
Spoiler alert — achieving that aim is proving to be easier said than done. Disconnected systems are the #1 pain point for companies in our market.
According to our research:

74% of businesses report they need to switch between many different tools to get their jobs done. (Fun fact: the average growing company uses 242 SaaS tools).
While 65% of businesses have invested in creating stronger connections among their systems in the past 12 months, only 26% currently have all their tools seamlessly integrated or built into one core platform that would truly enable those stronger connections.
“High data quality” is the #1 desired feature of a new CRM platform.
77% of marketers say that data is important to their overall marketing strategy (to help them reach their target audience, understand which marketing strategies are most effective, and create more effective content), but only 19% have access to “very high-quality data.”

So what does this mean, in practical terms? Teams are spending more time finding, consolidating, and verifying data from various point solutions than they are on enhancing the end-to-end customer experience.
To enable teams to do their best work, businesses must first acknowledge that the status quo isn’t cutting it. For business owners, proliferating point solutions can make managing total cost of ownership a bear. For senior leaders, manual/complex reporting can eat up time ideally spent on analysis and action. For individual contributors, constant context-switching between tools can lead to productivity loss at best and burnout at worst.
The path to sustainable growth — and more connected customer experiences — starts with a streamlined tech stack and centralized customer data. When teams are aligned around a single source of truth, everyone — including your customer — wins.
2. People are working in silos post-pandemic.
Remember life pre-pandemic? We were in the office five days a week, regularly chatting with co-workers and likely complaining about having to commute into the office. Those days feel like a lifetime ago, with 81% of businesses believing that the global pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we live and work.
If you’ve tried leading an annual kickoff on a Zoom call, you know connecting and collaborating across teams has fundamentally changed. With many organizations shifting to either a hybrid or entirely remote workforce, it’s no longer always possible to swing by someone’s desk for a quick conversation. In our post-pandemic world, 81% of businesses believe it’s imperative that we find new ways to connect with one another.
According to our 2022 Hybrid Work Report:

40% of remote workers miss spontaneous, in-person connections with their colleagues.
49% of in-office workers found staying motivated and connected with their team to be the biggest challenge.
31% of flex workers cited relationship-building as a difficulty for them.

The stats don’t stop there, either. Only 31% of marketers and 23% of sales professionals report strong sales and marketing alignment at their organizations, with a lack of effective communication, visibility across teams, and complete data on customers all factoring into this sentiment. While 55% of marketers and 45% of sales professionals say alignment became more important in 2022, neither go-to-market team says they’re working in lockstep. 
Think the tides will turn when more employees are called back to the office? This may not happen — particularly if employees have anything to say about it. HubSpot research reveals that 36% of employees would rather visit the dentist once a month than work in the office five days a week.
Employers don’t have it easy either, with employees simultaneously vocalizing their need for connection and expressing their desire for remote/flexible work environments. If your people are a big part of your value proposition, it’s just about impossible to overstate the importance of building bridges between siloed teams and facilitating communication across geographic lines.
3. Connecting with customers has never been harder.
Disconnected systems and people are clearly two impediments to rocketship growth, but how is our “new normal” affecting the way we connect with customers?
Research consistently shows that customer experience is critical to an organization’s short and long-term success. 57% of businesses measure customer satisfaction as a way to track performance, making it the most commonly used performance metric.
So how’s it going out there on the sales floor? 31% of sales professionals say building trust and rapport with prospects became more crucial in 2022 vs. 2021, but it’s getting harder — and more expensive. Recent sales engagement data backs this up:

46% of salespeople say remote selling is less effective than in-person sales (and 68% of companies are doing at least some remote selling in 2022).
49% of businesses say that Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) has increased in the past year.

With approximately one in four companies citing a lack of depth in relationships with customers as one of their top challenges this year, it’s clear that the strategies we’ve all relied on in the past won’t carry us into the future. This isn’t to say that all old methods are now obsolete — it simply means that modern-day challenges require modern-day solutions. To win in this new world, we need new go-to-market strategies, new ways to think about our technology choices, and ultimately some new playbooks that don’t exist today.
Feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand? Take heart in these words from Jon Dick, Senior Vice President of Marketing at HubSpot:

Next Up: The Crisis of Disconnection and Your Business
First, there was The Great Resignation. Then, there was “quiet quitting.” Now, there’s The Crisis of Disconnection, driven by rapidly growing gaps between data and systems, cross-functional teams, and companies and their customers.
You’ve seen the research. You might [already] be living the experience. So what does The Crisis of Disconnection mean for you and your business, exactly? In the next installment of this three-part series, we’ll analyze the consequences of being disconnected, and how those might manifest in your cost of doing business, customer experience, and growth trajectory.

Over the last 18 months, the creator economy has been all the rage — and it’s proven to be incredibly lucrative. In fact, as of 2022, the creator economy’s market size is estimated at $104.2 billion.
The creator economy is made up of bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, newsletter writers, TikTok and Instagram influencers, and others who are trying to build real businesses by creating and distributing valuable and entertaining content.
Think of these content creators as little media companies.
Many of these content creators work with bigger brands rather than sell their own products or services. If you’re a marketer whose interested in working with content creators to expand your audience reach, keep reading — we’ll dive into everything you need to know when working with a content creator, backed by data.
(Alternatively, you can also take a look at the complete Business of Creators report we at the Tilt created in partnership with HubSpot by downloading it here.)
To start, let’s explore what we know about content creators.

The Creator Economy: A Content Creator’s Interests, Challenges, Revenue Streams, & More [New Data]
Who are content creators?
Although many like to focus on the “content creation” part, content creators are individuals who are also entrepreneurs and business owners. I like to refer to them as content entrepreneurs who:

Deliver consistent information to a group of people with plans to build a loyal audience and then monetize that audience over time.
Create content to build a long-term, successful business (not as a hobby).
Begin primarily on one channel (e.g. as a podcaster, a blogger, a YouTuber) and then diversify into many channels.
Generate revenue from their audience in multiple ways, including sponsorship, subscription, courses, speaking, consulting, and even products and services.

Take Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast. Jimmy started creating YouTube videos about 10 years ago. After years of testing and trials, Jimmy found a regular schedule of videos after three years and began to build a following.
By 2016, he had 30,000 subscribers. The next year he hit one million subs.
Today, he makes more than 54 million dollars a year, launching products such as MrBeast Burger and a thriving snacks business called Feastables.
Although MrBeast may be an outlier, the model is simple: Build an audience on one platform, create a strong differentiation area, and consistently publish over time. Once an audience is built, then the creator monetizes the platform with diverse revenue streams. It’s the combination of being a content creator and an entrepreneur that makes the model work.
Whether that platform is a podcast, a blog, a book, an Instagram series, or a YouTube show (like MrBeast), the model works the same. It happened at Morning Brew. It happened for the Hustle. It’s happening everywhere all over the world.
Why the Creator Economy is Booming
Today, anyone with just a smartphone can become a content creator. There are no barriers to entry in becoming a content entrepreneur.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. On average, it takes a full-time content creator 17 months just to break even. Just think if Jimmy Donaldson quit after two years and a handful of YouTube videos?
The creator must deliver consistently over a long period of time just to start to build an audience that can be monetized.
Why do content creators choose this kind of business?
Although some of these businesses look like side hustles, about 40% of content creators have built financially sustainable businesses (i.e. they are supporting themselves or others). Of the content creators we surveyed, the average individual has been creating and monetizing their content for at least three years.
These entrepreneurs want to make money — but it’s more than that. 80% of content creators do it because they enjoy it. Although it’s challenging, it’s a fun business … one that can be done at almost any location on the planet with minimal expenses.
In actuality, content creators may be some of the most satisfied with their chosen profession out of anyone. A full 96% of creators say they do not regret their decision to become creators.
Of all the reasons to become content creators, one in three do it because they can be their own boss. The next three highest reasons include:

the enjoyment of the work
the ability to pursue a passion
flexible work hours

What are the key challenges for content creators?
The key challenges are two-fold. First, the creator must find what we call a content tilt. The content tilt is an area of differentiation where the content creator can actually break through all the informational clutter and gain attention.
Simply put, is the content different enough and targeting a niche enough audience where the possibility exists to be an expert?
Ann Reardon, known as the baking queen of Sydney, Australia, started a video blog in 2011 where she discussed step-by-step food recipes. Food is one of the most competitive content areas. How does someone break through with minimal resources?
Ann decided to do something different to stand out. Every week she created videos on “impossible dessert creations”. At that time, no one was doing that, and she quickly gained a following.
Today, she is a successful content entrepreneur with five million YouTube subscribers and a best-selling book.
The second challenge is consistency. I’ve been working in the content marketing industry for over 20 years. The sheer majority of programs fail because they stop. The content program (a blog, a podcast, a YouTube series) typically gets canceled before the business can build any kind of regular audience.

We launched Content Marketing Institute in 2007. It took 22 months of regular blog posting to get to 10,000 email subscribers. We delivered consistently, five days per week, and built a loyal and trusting audience. In 2011 we hit a million dollars in revenue. By 2015 we were a $10 million dollar company.
To be successful, content creators can’t stop. If you stop, even for a day, you give your audience an opportunity to look elsewhere for their information. Sadly, you might never get that audience back.
How do content creators make money?
Almost 60% of content creators have a coaching or consulting practice. For this category of content, consulting is “low-hanging fruit” revenue.
But it doesn’t stop there. Content creators seek to diversify revenue streams as quickly as possible, adding revenue lines such as:

Affiliate revenue
Online courses and memberships
Speaking fees
Sponsored content
Advertising and sponsorships on their emails and podcasts

According to our report, nearly seven out of 10 content creators are not satisfied with their revenue streams. So, even though the creator economy industry is growing, most creators have a long way to go.
How much time do they spend actually creating content?
For a content entrepreneur to be successful, they can’t focus on creating content all the time. content creators spend about 45% of their time creating their content, and then about 20% promoting and distributing their content.
The other 35% of the time they are working on the business, including marketing and sales, operations, and administration. As a content creator becomes more experienced, they begin to spend less time creating content and more time monetizing their content.

How do content creators initially fund their businesses?
As we discussed, it usually takes about a year and half or more just to break even.
Content creators need to support themselves and their families over that time, or treat the business as a “side hustle” until the business becomes profitable.
Funding generally comes from a variety of sources, including personal savings, credit cards, loans from family members and (per the term “side hustle”) income from another job.
Now that we’ve covered what we know about content creators, let’s discuss why you should care.
Why Marketers Should Care About Content Creators
As a marketing professional in a small-to-medium-sized business, you wear many hats. You probably create vast amounts of content yourself. The problem is, you can’t focus on only doing that. That’s where it becomes valuable to work with a content creator in your industry.
These creators have engaged, loyal followings, so working with a content creator enables you to reach new audiences quickly. And the good news is that the majority of content creators are extremely open to working with brands, helping you reach your audience through their channels in exchange for money or other benefits.
These partnerships could look as basic as you sponsoring their email or podcast — or as complex as a joint research project or ebook.
How Marketers Can Start Working with Content Creators
First off, you’ll want to develop a list of creators that reach your target audience. Do some qualitative research with your audience to find out what they are reading, listening to, or watching. Additionally, you might leverage tools that can help you identify content creators in your niche, such as podcast directories for podcasts.
Next, I’d advise you to start with a list of five to ten creators. Consider all the different platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, newsletters, books, and even a streaming service like Twitch.
Once you have the list, make sure those creators align with your company mission and brand values. This is critically important. Just look at Adidas and their relationship with Kanye West. This was a billion dollar partnership and the program worked spectacularly, but Adidas was affected by everything that Kanye said or did outside their program. Basically, when you partner with a creator, you get the entire package, good or bad. So vet your list to only the creators that make sense.
Once that is complete, test out a partnership with one or two. It makes sense to start simply by sponsoring a creator project or running an advertisement in one of their offerings. How did it go? What were the results? Is it really the correct audience for what you are trying to do?
A few years back, we were interested in partnering with a creator on an event. Before we did that, we attended multiple events run by this creator. We even sponsored one. When the results came back positive, we decided to create a formal partnership.
Once you’ve identified, vetted, and tested a program with the creator, you’ll want to develop a partnership agreement. Here’s a good example of one.
Generally, a partnership agreement includes the expectations of both parties, the timeline, the budget, promotional efforts, approvals and permissions, and any legal documents necessary. Best advice? Plan for the effort NOT to work. Make sure you put an easy out (for both sides) into the agreement if things go south. If it works, fantastic, but best to plan for the worst.
Consider Acquiring the Creator’s Business
The good news is that this method can be used for an extra opportunity: Acquiring the creator’s business.
Let’s face it, creating compelling content and building a loyal audience is extremely difficult. Hopefully, if you’ve done your homework, you’ve identified a number of creators who have already done the heavy lifting. So if your partnership and test projects have passed with flying colors, you may be interested in the next step.
According to The Tilt, 20% of creators are actively looking to sell their content business. In many cases, they’ve done the hard work and want to be compensated a bit more. If you have a budget set aside for something like this, it could be a match made in heaven.
While at Content Marketing Institute, we needed a west-coast technology event and an awards program. Instead of investing six figures and waiting two-to-three years for us to organically grow these, we went out and purchased both.
If this is in your wheelhouse, use the same process as above to vet your creators. At the same time, meet with whoever owns the M&A budget in your organization and talk through the opportunities.
Although these types of deals are becoming more ordinary, this is still a new muscle for most organizations. Simply put, marketers think organic growth instead of acquisition growth. Although this is changing, the process is still new to most.
Start Engaging with Creators
If you are new to the creator economy, working with content creators will take some time. There is some added pressure because most organizations today realize the opportunities and are committing resources to this area.
That said, at minimum, start engaging with the creators in your industry. Listen to their podcasts. Read their newsletters. Watch their YouTube channels. That may be enough for now. The opportunities will come.

I spent a lot of years not showing up authentically in my career and business. As a Black, queer man who had dreams of being a professional baker, I was afraid my identity would hold me back. I didn’t see people who looked like me in the food industry. When I entered professional kitchens, I just wanted to be seen as someone dedicated to learning and advancing, without being “othered” because of my sexuality or burdened by the negative stereotypes that are often put on Black people. So I did a lot of code-switching, stifling my true self and presenting what felt like a more buttoned-up version. I would never disclose my sexuality, and I would never get too close to any of my colleagues for fear of them discovering more about my personal life. I was trying to come off as a masculine man who had it all together, and I ended up feeling small. Plus, keeping up the act was exhausting.Everything changed when I realized that masking my identity was not only harmful for my mental health, but it was also potentially holding back other people in my community. This was right after I had my first major TV appearance competing on Bake It Like Buddy with the Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro. I had so much fun doing it, but I held back showing off my full personality. It struck me that there was nobody who represented my intersection in food media—someone who was Black and queer and loud and proud about both. I thought about how much having a role model like that could help younger people like me see a place for themselves in this industry. I grew up watching Emeril Lagasse and thinking how I wanted to be like him: What if a young Black or queer kid could watch TV and say, “I want to be like Kareem?”Suddenly, it felt like my duty to show up fully as myself. I’ve spent the past six years doing the work to be okay with the man that I saw in the mirror so that I could fully share that person with others. Now, when I walk into a room to represent my business, the energy is entirely different. I walk in smiling, I take up space, I feel strong and full of life, and it shows.Instead of trying to hide my identity, I intentionally look for ways to show it off, whether it’s a little feminine movement or using phrases from the Black vernacular. I look for opportunities to bring representation into my work, such as by insisting I make a Mr. and Mr. Claus cake for a holiday special I participated in. And now, all the energy I used to put into hiding myself, I get to put into supporting others, such as through my work with C-CAP (a nonprofit that provides underserved teens a pathway to success in the culinary world) and The Queer Food Foundation. It’s important to me to be part of changing the face of my industry. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mr. Bake (@mrbakesweets) Other business owners of underrepresented identities may hear my story and wonder how I do it: How do I feel confident bringing my whole self to the table? How do I have enough energy to also support others? And how do I do all of this while dealing with the daily needs of running a company and supporting my own boundaries and mental health? Here are some of the steps that have helped me take care of myself so I can take care of others while taking care of business.I Found a Network of SupportThe single biggest thing that has helped me on this journey is therapy. That may not sound that groundbreaking given how much more normalized going to therapy has become in recent years, but I think it’s especially important to call out given how much of my Black community still shuns it. Therapy was so valuable in carving out dedicated time to understand myself better, giving me a sounding board to process things, and helping me realize the tools I already had for taking care of myself (along with teaching me some new ones). While I always advocate for seeing a professional if possible, there are other ways to find support systems. For me, it was the teachers, family, neighbors, classmates, and friends who supported my identity and were happy to help me build my dream in any way they could. Not everyone was so accepting of me, but the love I did receive helped me ignore the haters.Finally, in being more open about my identity, I’ve been able to connect with communities of people like me, which has been invaluable. I always tell people that supporting my Black and queer communities doesn’t feel like work to me, and part of that is because our time together builds me up as well. By hosting or participating in events that center Black or queer business, for example, I not only get to uplift their voices, but I also leave with some new advice to bring into my own work or meet new people who I know will have my back.   View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mr. Bake (@mrbakesweets) I Choose Carefully Where to Invest My EnergyAs I started giving more of myself to others, I had to work hard to create the boundaries that would make this sustainable for myself. A big lesson was learning not to pour outward into vessels that have holes in them. What do I mean by that? It meant avoiding spaces and relationships where I didn’t feel accepted, and instead finding opportunities where I love the people and the energy. Even better is if I can surround myself with what I call “rocket booster friends”—people who actually fill me back up when I invest time and energy in them. It also meant being mindful about who within my own community I was choosing to support. I used to try to pressure people to grow, to show up for them even if they didn’t want it or weren’t ready for it. Now, I make sure they want my help before giving it.For instance, I recently opened my first brick and mortar kitchen as part of Le Fantome food hall in Riverdale, MD, and I was able to hire three queer employees as part of the expansion. My goal as a manager is to not just help them succeed as employees, but to help them grow as people. But I have to make sure that’s what they want, too, before investing in doing that work together. Otherwise, I’m just wasting energy on someone who doesn’t want to take it.I Carve Out Time to Just BeBetween running my business and supporting others, I reached a point where I felt like I was constantly running on empty. I was a champion for everybody but not really for myself. That’s when it struck me that if I wanted to be a vessel that is pouring out love, I had to pour back into myself.Now, the first two hours of the day and the last two hours of my day are always dedicated to me. I try to spend that time doing things that fill my cup and help me learn more about myself: meditating, listening to a motivational speaker, reading a good book, speaking to my ancestors, and strengthening my body, which I believe also strengthens the mind. I also sometimes try to just let myself be during that time—to sit in my backyard without an agenda. As high-achieving business owners it can be so tempting to attach a goal even to our relaxation, but I’ve found it so beneficial to my mental health to create time to let my thoughts be free. I’m not saying that every BIPOC or LGBTQIA business owner has to bring their identity in their work. But, if you dream of being able to show up authentically in your business or hope to help improve representation in your industry, here’s my advice: It’s gonna take a while to get to where I am, to have the confidence to walk into every room proudly and fully yourself. It’s going to be a lot of work, and it’s going to be scary sometimes. But do the work scared, because I promise that what’s on the other side—this freedom, this comfort with who I am, and this sense of wellbeing—is so much greater than living in fear.

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