I’ve spent thousands of hours studying hundreds of creators over the last 19 months.
There are 3 things I’ve found that they all have in common. Two of those are quite obvious, but one is not as much.

Without burying the lead, let’s jump into it:
1. They Put Out Good Content
Good content is the most obvious one – and nothing else really matters if you don’t get this right.
Of course, there are varying degrees of this. But for the most part, if your content is “decent”, you should be okay.
I’d argue that if you spent the time to put out great content, you wouldn’t have to work as hard at promoting it. But that’s a topic for another day.
“Good” is the minimum.
2. They Show Up
Of course, this is one you hear about most: “Be consistent.”
And it’s true. The creators who win are the ones able to stick with their craft for years.
You don’t have to publish every week, but you are still working on “your thing.”
Tim Urban might only put out a few articles a year, but they are so good people will drop everything to go read the new edition, even if it’s been months since he last posted.
When you’re just starting out, you’re going to need the grit to stick it out even when no one is reading in the early days. And you’ll need this when the tides shift and you’re not getting as many replies to your emails.
It happens, and it’s just part of the beast.
3. They Know the Power of Connections
This last one is the one I think is most powerful here. And it’s something I rarely get asked about – which makes me think people are overlooking this in all of the wrong ways.
Connections, relationships, and community – in a way, they are all very similar.
But for the creator/newsletter space, I want to break these down into two buckets:
- Connections with your audience
- Connections with your peers
Both of these are important, and there might be some overlap between the two.
1. Connections with your audience
These are your fans. The people who read your emails and comment on your social posts. They are the ones sharing your work with their friends and co-workers.
These relationships are critical and it’s important to nurture them.
If a musician doesn’t care about their fans, they’re going to have a hard time getting people to show up for their live events.
On the other hand, Taylor Swift is someone who genuinely works at making her fans feel part of something. As she grew her following, she was replying to every single comment she got on Tumblr.
People don’t forget that kind of effort and care. And that’s why she’s built such a massive base of raving fans.
Even if you’re not a “Swiftie” you can appreciate what she’s built.
So these audience relationships are very important. They help you build deeper connections with the fans you have.
2. Connections with your peers
The other bucket of people to focus on is your peers.
Other entrepreneurs in the space, or people in adjacent industries.
The creators who win are not the ones building in silence by themselves. They are experimenting, sharing their ideas, and collaborating with other creators.
Peer relationships are those that can help you grow and expand your reach exponentially. These can be people you met on social media, or other writers/creators in your industry.
These relationships are critical for a ton of reasons. Here are a few ways these peer connections can be powerful:
- They can help with ideas
- You can share new growth “hacks” you’re seeing
- You can share experiments you’re both working on
- You can give and get feedback on your work
- Maybe you work together as co-founders
- You can create a mastermind together
- Collaborate on a piece of content
- Maybe you introduce each other to relevant peers
But I think one of the most important ones is that they can be a friend.
As a creator, most people don’t understand what we do.
Ever tell someone you write a newsletter and have them look at you crazy thinking you print out a mini-magazine and mail it out?
Yeah, me too.
And trying to explain why brands sponsor the newsletter? Forget about it.
It’s all just magic internet money to a lot of people.
Having someone there to talk to about the intricacies of this stuff is so important. Having someone there who understands what you’re going through can be the difference that keeps you from giving up.
How to Be Part of a Community
So how can you be part of a community and start building these relationships?
Well, if you’re just getting started, find 10 people in your space and start sharing their work, commenting on their posts, replying to their newsletters, and build a relationship that way.
It takes time but it’s worth it.
If you want to level up and speed this process up a bit, I think there are two awesome ways you can do that. And I’ve seen these come up time and time again in my research.
1. Create a Community
One way to be a part of a community is to create your own.
While it does take a lot of effort, the results can be extremely rewarding. Here are some of my favorite examples of this in the creator space.
Dickie Bush
Dickie Bush started writing online in February 2020. After 9 months, he had 1,856 followers to show for his work.
That’s not a ton in the grand scheme of things. And honestly, most of us would have given up at this point.
Instead, Dickie did something interesting. He sent out a tweet asking if anyone else wanted to be part of a group where each person writes every day for 30 days.
And even though he had only 1,800 followers, he got a great response from that tweet.
He didn’t know how to run the group, but he just figured it out along the way. Remember that grit and determination I was talking about above? This is a prime example.
That one tweet led to Ship 30 for 30, which is now a multi-million-dollar business.
He and his business partner Nicolas Cole, have now brought together thousands of students who might not otherwise have met one another, including myself and ADHD Jesse.
Even though the course only lasts 30 days, there are numerous examples of people who met through the course and stayed in touch.
Some even opt to take the course multiple times to continue learning and meeting other writers.
That’s powerful.
Type House
Nathan Baschez, founder of Every, started a group called Type House.
It was a play on the TikTok group “Hype House” where creators came together in person, some even living together, to collaborate and make videos together.
Type House had a bunch of notable members you can see in the list below.
I don’t know the extent of the group or what it involved, but being part of a group of people who are working super hard at a similar problem has got to be rewarding.
Of these people in this group, a number of them are creators you’ll recognize, and people who I wrote deep dives on:
I’ve found multiple examples of people in Type House collaborating, being on each other’s podcasts, etc. And Nathan Baschez was able to bring that to life.
The 100k Club
When Sahil Bloom had around 30k followers, he knew he wanted to grow his audience much bigger.
He and a few other guys who had around 10k-40k followers were looking to grow their accounts to 100k+. They decided to create a Whatsapp group to keep each other accountable and share tips.
Kind of like Mr. Beast and his friends who focused on YouTube for 8 hours a day, these guys would share thread ideas, support each other’s posts, and get feedback on hooks.
They called it the 100k Club. Now, a few years later, they each have over 250k followers.
Communities evolve, and some of these guys left pretty early on, but the point is that they came together with a goal and stuck to it.
2. Join a Community
The other way to be part of a community of peers is to join an existing one. This can be a course with a community on the side, or just a straight-up community.
Dave Kline, Zain Kahn, Nathan Baugh, and others were all part of Sahil Bloom’s Twitter growth course. They learned alongside each other, experimented, and shared their findings.
Luca Rossi attributes more than 8k subscribers coming from communities he was a part of. A few he mentioned were Lenny’s Newsletter, The Generalist Community, Dev Interrupted, and Blogging for Devs.
Eric Partaker joined Ali Abdaal’s Part-Time YouTuber Academy – which led to him having to get Ali on his podcast, and eventually becoming his coach.
Eric was also part of the Unignorable Challenge group, created by Katelyn Bourgoin and Neal O’Grady from Demand Curve. This helped him connect with those two creators and grow his LinkedIn following as well.
These are just a few examples of creators I’ve written deep dives on where we see this trend of having other creator friends.
Find Your People
There is no shortage of these examples. That’s because relationships are the foundation of any business, not just in the creator space.
Here are a few specific ways I’ve benefited from building relationships:
- Texting my mastermind group that I’m having one of those “entrepreneur emotional rollercoaster days,” and having one of them reply with “That was me yesterday, you’ve got this.”
- Getting feedback on an idea
- Asking if they’ve seen their metrics drop lately or if my email just sucked that week
- Having a friend share ideas on how I could do X, Y, or Z better
- “It’s been a day – want to grab a beer?”
- Sharing the most ridiculous reply you got to your email that day
- Asking for help and getting immediately connected to an expert in that area I didn’t realize they knew.
These are just a fraction of the ways having people who understand what I’m going through has helped.
So please, do yourself a solid and start building relationships.
It takes effort, but being a creator is freaking hard. Don’t try and go it alone. Plus, it’s way more fun to help other people on their journey.
PS – This is why I am building Growth In Reverse Pro. I want to bring people together and build these connections in a collaborative way.