I have been thinking a lot recently about networking and how much the way we connect professionally has changed.
I have been self-employed for a large part of my career, and like most people who run their own business, I have been told many times that I should network more. Go to events, join groups, attend breakfasts, introduce myself to people and generally get out there. I understand why. Some of the best opportunities in my career have come through people, introductions and conversations rather than through an advert or a carefully planned marketing campaign.
But traditional networking isn't always easy, particularly when you work for yourself. You have to find the right event, pay for a ticket in many cases, travel there, give up several hours of your day and then hope the people in the room are actually relevant to you. And if you're somebody who hates walking into a room full of strangers and introducing yourself, the whole thing can feel like hard work before you've even arrived.
The more I look at LIVE streaming, the more I wonder whether we are overlooking something much bigger than another social media tool.
Could going LIVE actually be one of the most accessible forms of networking we have ever had?
You Don't Have To Work The Room Anymore
Think about what we are actually trying to achieve when we go networking. We want people to know who we are and what we do. We want to meet potential clients, find people we could collaborate with, build relationships, create referrals and sometimes simply have interesting conversations with people working in a similar world.
You can now do all of that from your phone.
If you're a psychic, therapist, coach, healer, astrologer, hypnotherapist, nutritionist or another kind of wellbeing or personal development expert, you can go LIVE and start a conversation around something you genuinely know about. People can find you, listen to you, ask questions and get a much better sense of who you are than they ever could from exchanging business cards at an event.
And unlike traditional networking, you aren't limited to the twenty or fifty people who happened to buy a ticket that evening.
Your room can potentially keep growing while you're speaking.
People Get To Experience You Before They Ever Work With You
I think this is particularly important in the spiritual, therapy and wellbeing industries because people aren't only buying a service. They are often choosing a person.
You might be an incredible therapist, psychic or coach, but a potential client still wants to know whether they feel comfortable with you. They want to hear how you speak, see how you respond to people, understand your approach and decide whether there is a connection.
A website can tell somebody about your qualifications. An Instagram post can show them what you believe. A photograph can make your business look professional. But none of those things communicate you in quite the same way as watching you speak for twenty minutes.
LIVE removes a lot of the polish, and I actually think that can be a good thing. People see how you think in real time. They see how you answer a question you weren't expecting. They hear your humour. They notice whether you listen. They begin to understand what it might actually feel like to work with you.
That is an incredibly powerful way to build trust.
Your Next Collaborator Could Already Be Watching
The part I find even more interesting is what happens when we stop thinking about everybody watching a LIVE as a potential customer.
Some of them could be potential collaborators.
Imagine a relationship therapist going LIVE to talk about why we repeat the same patterns in relationships and a psychic Medium happens to find the conversation. They start talking in the comments, connect afterwards and realise that they approach some of the same human problems from completely different perspectives.
That could become a joint LIVE. It could become an interview. It could become an event. They might introduce each other to completely different audiences or refer clients to one another when appropriate.
An astrologer and a Human Design expert could explore the same question together. A hypnotherapist and a manifestation coach could discuss why somebody can consciously want something while continually behaving in ways that move them away from it. A nutritionist and a wellbeing coach could talk about energy from completely different professional perspectives.
Suddenly, networking isn't something that happens before or after the work. The conversation itself becomes the content.
And everybody watching gets to discover both experts at the same time.
Collaboration Doesn't Have To Mean Competition
I think this is something the spiritual and wellbeing industries could become much better at.
There can be a tendency when you're self-employed to protect your audience because you've worked incredibly hard to build it. If another psychic does what you do, they can look like competition. If another therapist works in a similar area, why would you introduce them to your clients or followers?
LIVE streaming can completely change that dynamic.
Two experts don't need to agree on everything to have a brilliant conversation. In fact, sometimes the differences are what make it interesting. You can compare approaches, ask each other questions, demonstrate different techniques or take a question from the audience and explore it from two perspectives.
Your audience gets something they wouldn't have received from either of you alone, and both creators are introduced to new people.
That feels much closer to networking in the real world. If I meet somebody interesting at an event, I don't immediately worry that everybody I know is going to abandon me and work with them instead. I think about whether there is a reason for us to know each other.
Maybe we need to start bringing more of that thinking into social media.
We Have Spent Years Broadcasting At People
For a long time, social media marketing has largely been about posting.
Create a piece of content, put it online, wait for people to like it, then create another one. We have become incredibly good at broadcasting at people without necessarily having very many conversations with them.
LIVE changes that because somebody can answer you immediately.
If someone asks an interesting question, the entire conversation can change direction. If another expert joins you, you can bring them into the discussion. If people keep asking about a particular subject, you suddenly know what your audience wants to hear more about.
It feels much more human to me.
And perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. Long before social media existed, businesses were built through conversations. People recommended people. Someone introduced you to somebody else. You met somebody at an event and six months later they remembered you when an opportunity came up.
The technology is new. The principle really isn't.
What If You Don't Have A Big Audience Yet?
This is another reason I think LIVE is particularly interesting for small businesses and independent experts.
People often think they need to build an audience before they can start doing anything useful with it. They wait until they have enough followers, enough content or enough confidence before they go LIVE.
I think we may have that backwards.
Going LIVE can be part of how you build the relationships in the first place.
You don't need thousands of people watching for a LIVE to be worthwhile. If ten people are watching and one becomes a client, one introduces you to somebody interesting and another comes back to your next LIVE, something has happened.
We have become slightly obsessed with big numbers online, but anyone who has ever run a small business knows that the right relationship can be worth far more than a thousand people scrolling past a post.
There Is Still A Skill To It
Of course, pressing the LIVE button doesn't automatically make somebody a good broadcaster or networker.
I spent more than twenty years working in television and interactive broadcasting, and one thing I learned very early is that being knowledgeable about something and being able to communicate that knowledge to an audience are two different skills.
LIVE streaming is no different.
You need to know how to start a conversation when the room is quiet, how to keep people involved, how to ask questions, how to acknowledge comments without completely losing your train of thought and how to make somebody who has just arrived understand what is happening.
You also need to learn how to collaborate well. Bringing two people onto a LIVE with no idea what they are going to talk about isn't necessarily going to create great content. Give that conversation a purpose, a question or a format and suddenly you have something people might actually want to watch.
The good news is that these are skills. They can be learned.
Maybe We Need To Rethink What Networking Looks Like
I don't think networking events are going anywhere, and I still believe there is huge value in meeting people face to face. I certainly don't want a future where every human interaction happens through a screen.
But I do think LIVE streaming gives small businesses and independent experts something we have never really had before.
You can be sitting at home on a Tuesday evening and find yourself having a conversation with a potential client, another practitioner, a future collaborator or somebody who introduces you to an opportunity you didn't even know existed.
There is no room hire. No travel. No standing awkwardly beside the drinks table wondering who to talk to next.
You bring your expertise and start a conversation.
For spiritual and wellbeing experts in particular, I think there is an enormous opportunity here because these are industries built around people, trust and connection. Perhaps we shouldn't only be asking how many followers LIVE streaming can generate or how much somebody can earn in gifts.
Perhaps we should also be asking:
Who could I meet?
Because your next client, collaborator, referral partner, interviewer, event organiser or business opportunity might not be standing in a networking event across town.
They might already be watching your LIVE.
Want To Start Building Your Network Through TikTok LIVE?
This is one of the reasons I created The Conscious Creator Network. I wanted to bring together psychics, spiritual practitioners, therapists, coaches and wellbeing experts who have genuine knowledge to share, and help them learn how to communicate that expertise through LIVE broadcasting.
We help our creators develop their LIVE skills, build their authority, understand their audience, meet and collaborate with other experts and create a wider business around the community they are building.
The Conscious Creator Network is free to join. There is no joining fee and we don't take commission from your TikTok LIVE earnings. TikTok pays us directly to support and develop creators within our network.
You can find out more about how we work and apply to join here:
Claire Anstey
Founder, The Conscious Creator Network
Broadcaster | Therapist | Creator Trainer