🔴 The four stages of creator community building

Community is a buzzword rendered increasingly meaningless by overuse. Many of our podcast guests this summer have built successful, thriving, beloved communities — today, we present the definitive framework. Four stages of successful community building.

Hint: communities work best when the creator sits not at the center but holds a fluid host role, building connections among members rather than being the sole node.

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

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By Natalia Perez-Gonzalez

Your personality is your product. Your taste is your currency. Your network is your equity. Content monetizes attention — a scarce, depreciating asset. Community monetizes relationships — an appreciating asset that compounds in value over time.

A viral video might reach 400,000 viewers, but the creator can’t contact any of them directly without the social platform as an intermediary. Meanwhile, a community builder with 1,000 email subscribers and 50 regular event attendees can communicate directly with their audience, nurture in-person relationships, and create lasting economic opportunities.

This shift from renting attention to owning your relationships is what Andrew Roth, founder of Gen Z research firm DCDX, calls the rise of the “host economy.” As he explains in Vogue Business, traditional influencer culture is hitting diminishing returns as audiences trade polished performance for authentic, IRL connection:

Roth’s research shows that Gen Z, despite being digital natives, increasingly prioritizes in-person experiences and genuine community over parasocial relationships with distant creators. The creators who thrive in this new environment understand their highest value lies not in content production but in community facilitation — transitioning from performers to hosts to facilitators, and building infrastructure that compounds value long after any single piece of content disappears.

It’s an evolution that requires intention and understanding the stages of community growth, along with the necessary infrastructure to transition from one stage to the next.

Creator communities evolve through distinct stages, each requiring different strategies, infrastructure, and mindsets from their creators. Understanding these stages helps creators identify their current positioning and what they need to advance.

Most creators start here: building an audience that primarily consumes their content.

At this stage, creators are essentially broadcasters. Their value comes from consistent content production, and community interaction is limited to likes, comments, and shares. Connection is completely dependent on the creator's ability to maintain constant output.

Former Spotlight guest Sydney Graham's early TikTok experience exemplifies this stage. When she began documenting her sewing process in 2023, the response was immediate, but like any creator starting out, it was fundamentally one-directional — people watching and occasionally commenting on her content.

This stage is characterized by:

The transition to Stage 2 requires creators to shift from broadcaster to facilitator. This requires intentionally designing community experiences and often, better infrastructure.

Former Spotlight guest Colin Rocker demonstrates this evolution perfectly with his community, For the Firsts, which he describes as a guided networking experience for people doing something for the first time in their family.

His first attempt at community creation — an internship mentorship program — fell short of his expectations despite engaged participants.

This experience taught him a crucial lesson about community design. The internship program was structured as "come and learn from me at the mountaintop," putting Colin at the center of all value creation. For the Firsts deliberately inverts this dynamic. Colin intentionally chose to call it "a professional meetup club" rather than a networking event, because club implies continuation and creates ongoing momentum rather than one-off interactions.

This stage is characterized by:

At Stage 3, your focus is primarily on creating systems that enable others to succeed. Your value comes from connecting the right people and facilitating the right opportunities.

Take former Spotlight guest Tiffany Yu's Diversability Leadership Collective. What began as Georgetown's first disability student club in 2009 evolved into a sophisticated professional network, one that she measures not by engagement metrics but by member outcomes.

Since 2021, her Diversability Leadership Collective has secured nearly $40,000 in paid gigs for its members, ranging from $250 content gigs to $12,000 speaking engagements.

Her approach represents a sophisticated infrastructure: When brands approach Tiffany for partnerships outside her expertise, she redirects them to community members. When speaking bureaus need topics she doesn't cover, she connects them with relevant members. For higher-value opportunities, Diversability takes a small commission.

Grace Ling's Design Buddies operates with a similar resolve, demonstrating how peer-led value creation can scale. Her Discord community of 150,000 designers operates on a continuous loop of knowledge transfer — junior designers who joined in 2020 are now senior designers mentoring the next wave of talent. In her Discord's feedback channels, members are encouraged to provide feedback on others' work before seeking feedback for themselves, which creates a culture of mutual support.

This stage is characterized by:

The ultimate evolution: your community operates independently of your daily involvement. Members lead, govern, and create value for each other without your facilitation. You've built infrastructure that outlasts you.

Colin captures this sentiment perfectly: "Half the people that show up [to my community events] have no idea who I am, which is what I want." His community has reached the point where attendees self-organize based on other sub-interests.

Last Tuesday’s Spotlight guest, Milly Tamati, shared her three-year evolution with Generalist World, revealing how Stage 4 communities develop:

After three years, Milly has successfully stepped aside from running her community.

Liz Kelly Nelson's Creator Journalist Bundle also represents a community in its actualized form. Rather than just offering parallel newsletters, she and collaborator Lex Roman provide access to a buzzing Slack group, live sprints, and cross-promotion tools to engage subscribers. As Liz describes it: "It's become their office on the internet. They show up every day."

This stage is characterized by:

Traditional influencer models optimize for reach — more followers, more views, more scale. Today’s community-first creators optimize for community depth and member outcomes.

The 2025 community playbook is comprised of three things:

Mastering the transition from host to facilitator represents perhaps the most significant step in leading a thriving creator-led community. As content becomes increasingly commoditized in our attention economy, the ability to create genuine human connections becomes the ultimate differentiator.