The Highest ROI Skill Every Creator Should Practice

If you want more replies, relationships, subscribers, and clients on Substack.

One of the highest ROI skills a creator can develop is learning how to build genuine relationships.

Those relationships lead to collaborations, referrals, paid subscribers, coaching clients, and friendships that make building your business way more fun.

Unfortunately, a lot of creators assume they’re just “not good with people.” I don’t think that’s true, and I have a few reasons why.

Weirdly enough, one of the things that made this click for me was Starbucks.

I’ve been coming to the same one a few times per week since 2022. In that time, I’ve watched dozens of baristas come and go, and I’ve noticed something interesting.

Many of them start out quiet and reserved. They take your order, call your name, hand you your drink, and that’s about it. There isn’t much warmth or personality.

Then a month or two later, they’re noticeably different.

How Working at Starbucks Changes Your Social Skills

At first, I assumed the baristas were just getting more comfortable around me because I was a regular.

But there’s a different type of change you notice when someone is simply becoming familiar with you. This wasn’t that.

When someone gets to know you, they might remember your name or your drink, and they might greet you a little more enthusiastically.

This was different.

They started smiling more. They asked personal questions. They shared little things about themselves. And they seemed genuinely interested in talking to me.

But I also noticed it wasn’t just with me. I’d watch them interact with the person in front of me, who they almost certainly didn’t know, and they showed the same warmth and confidence.

By this point, I’d watched it happen with five different people, so it didn’t feel like a coincidence anymore.

Then I remembered an old Reddit post that made the whole thing make more sense.

How Scripts Become Social Skills

A few years ago, I read a story on Reddit from someone who said working at Starbucks changed their social skills.

I don’t remember every detail, so I’m paraphrasing from memory, but the basic idea stuck with me.

When they first started, a lot of the training felt like standard customer service stuff. Say this when someone orders. Smile here. Use this phrase when a customer is upset. Remake the drink if something is wrong.

At first, it all felt like normal work behavior. But over time, something interesting happened.

They’d smile because they were supposed to, and customers would respond more warmly. That made the interaction feel better, which made them open up more. Then the conversations started becoming more natural.

The same thing happened when dealing with upset customers.

Instead of getting defensive when a customer complained, they had specific words and steps to fall back on. Apologize, stay calm, fix the problem, then move on.

It became easier because they weren’t inventing a response in the moment. But after doing that enough times, it stopped feeling like a script and became how they handled people.

Eventually, the same skills started showing up outside of work. Friends noticed they were warmer, easier to talk to, and better at handling tension. They became less reactive and better at solving problems.

The story stuck with me because it confirmed a belief I already had.

Social skills aren’t some mysterious personality trait. They’re made up of specific behaviors you can learn, practice, and eventually make natural.

I Thought I Had Learned Social Skills. Then I Actually Tried.

I know this is true because I’ve lived it too.

Growing up, I wasn’t a loner or anything. I had friends, hung out with people, and did normal fun stuff.

But I never felt like the social one.

I never felt especially interesting. I never felt like the guy who could walk into a room, start conversations, and make people want to keep talking to him. Especially when it came to meeting new people or talking to women, I had almost no confidence.

Then, after college, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I knew basically no one.

I saw it as a chance to start over socially. I had read books and blogs about social skills, and I loved the idea that this was something I could actually learn.

Then I tried to apply it.

And for the first month, I completely failed.

One night, I went to a bar specifically to talk to people. Someone sat down next to me, and I wanted to say something so badly. But I couldn’t get myself to do it.

So I sat there, drank a beer by myself, said nothing to anyone, went home, and screamed into my pillow because I was so pissed at myself.

That night was embarrassing, but it also forced me to make a decision.

I could keep telling myself I was bad with people, or I could start getting reps.

How I Finally Got Past My Fear of Starting Conversations

To improve my social skills, I started making it stupid simple and stopped trying to make every conversation turn into something.

Before, I would think, “Okay, if I say this, then what do I say next? How do I turn this into a friendship? How do I make this person like me?”

That made every interaction feel way too big, so I changed the goal.

I didn’t need to make a friend, get someone’s number, or become the most interesting person in the room.

I just needed to say something. Literally, that was the goal.

If they responded, great. I’d keep talking. If they didn’t, no big deal. I’d move on.

It’s hard to articulate how much pressure that relieved. Almost immediately, talking to people felt significantly easier.

So I started going out and talking to people everywhere I could. Bars, restaurants, the plaza downtown, random events, anywhere there were people.

I also started saying yes to more things, even when they felt a little uncomfortable or random. And that’s when things started to click.

Over the next month, I talked to nearly 1,000 people. I did the math at the time and know it was roughly in that ballpark.

And the crazy part is how much better I got in that short amount of time.

Reading books and blogs gave me the belief that social skills could be learned. But 30 days of practicing the actual skill changed everything.

A Month Later, It Looked Like I Knew Everyone

As I kept saying yes to things, my social circle started growing.

One random yes led to another. A guy I barely knew invited me to an event called Zozobra. Then he invited me to a college football game in Albuquerque and brought a friend named Logan, who I clicked with immediately. Then Logan invited me to a barbecue, where I met even more people.

It started to snowball.

But the bigger change was how I showed up once I got to these places.

A month earlier, I couldn’t even talk to the person sitting next to me at a bar. Now I was walking into rooms full of strangers and starting conversations like it was normal.

I still remember meeting a woman named Pauline at a party. We ended up dating for a bit, and one night I asked her what made her interested in me when we first met.

Her answer blew my mind.

She said something like, “You just seemed to know everyone. I saw you talking and laughing with one group, then you’d bounce to another group, and they all seemed to like you too. You looked like you owned the place.”

The funny part is that I barely knew anyone there.

That was the moment I realized how much had changed.

I hadn’t become a different person. I had practiced starting conversations enough times that it began to feel natural.

You Can Learn Online Social Skills Too

I eventually realized the same thing is true online.

The behaviors are different, but the principle is the same.

At Starbucks, the reps were smiling, asking questions, handling tension, and making customers feel taken care of.

In Santa Fe, the reps were starting conversations, saying yes to things, and learning how to be comfortable and curious with strangers.

On Substack, the reps look more like leaving thoughtful comments, replying warmly, sending DMs, remembering what people care about, supporting their work, and making people feel like there’s an actual human being on the other side of the screen.

That might sound simple, but most creators don’t practice those things very intentionally.

They publish posts, drop a few comments, and try to “engage.”

But they don’t always practice the skill that makes relationship-building work, which is making people enjoy interacting with them.

And that skill matters.

When creators enjoy interacting with you, they’re more likely to reply to you, share your work, invite you into conversations, recommend you to others, subscribe to your paid work, or eventually become clients.

That’s how relationships create ROI.

People support people they know, like, trust, and genuinely enjoy interacting with.

Building Relationships Is More Learnable Than You Think

I’ve watched enough people transform socially to stop believing that some people “just have it.”

Yes, some people are more naturally outgoing than others. Some people have had more reps. Some people grew up in environments where they learned this stuff earlier.

And of course, it will be harder for some people than others.

Some people have more fear to work through. Some people have more awkward reps ahead of them. Some people are starting from a harder place.

And I don’t think everyone can become as charming as George Clooney.

But I do think almost everyone can get a lot better than they are right now.

The Starbucks baristas weren’t born better at making people feel welcome. Some of them actually seemed pretty uncomfortable with it when they started.

But they learned specific behaviors, practiced them every day, and eventually those behaviors became natural.

I wasn’t born knowing how to walk into a room full of strangers and start conversations. I practiced it until it stopped feeling terrifying.

And building relationships online works the same way.

If building relationships on Substack feels hard right now, that doesn’t mean you’re not interesting enough, warm enough, or social enough.

It might just mean you haven’t learned the right behaviors yet.

With consistent practice and the right training, you can make far more progress in a few months than most people realize.

And if you’re trying to grow a creator business, that matters.

Because better relationships lead to more replies, more shares, more referrals, more paid subscribers, and more people thinking of you when someone needs help.

That’s not magic or luck, even though it looks like it in the moment.

It’s a skill.

And skills can be learned.

-Rob

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If you want to build deeper relationships on Substack and have opportunities start showing up out of nowhere, here are two ways I can help:

1. Free — DM me where you’re at and what you’re stuck on, and I’ll share what I’d do if I were in your situation.

2. Make Friends Get Clients — My coaching program for creators who want to get better at building genuine relationships that lead to referrals, collaborations, paid subscribers, and clients. Shoot me a DM, and we’ll see if it’s a fit.