This year has been all about experimenting in public for me - I’ve tested everything from office hours, to paid newsletters, to live workshops - all trying to see what people are actually interested in and what I genuinely enjoy doing (which is very important to me!). 

It all comes from this desire to be truly embedded in the creator economy and learn from the inside out what it's like to build this kind of business.

By far, my favorite thing I've done is these original Creator Diaries interviews. Talking to community builders like Brett Dashevsky and Milly Tamati, newsletter experts like Michael Kauffman and Lex Roman, and so many people who inspired me in between. I've gotten the most energy from learning about their businesses and how they're building as creators, solopreneurs, and founders.

There’s so much wisdom I got from these convos, so I wanted to pull together some common themes & lessons I've learned from their stories that I keep coming back to.

This is probably the most common thread I see across every creator business I've studied. You never really know what's on the other side of building a platform. And I think a lot of people feel hesitant to start until they have that end goal clearly in mind.

But actually, the reverse is true for the people who've built really cool businesses. They didn't know what it would turn into when they started.

When Brett started Creator Economy NYC, he was literally sending BCC'd RSVPs to bar meetups. He was personally hauling beer around in Ubers, breaking even or losing money, with no real business plan. Now he's turned Creator Economy NYC into a full brand, partnering with companies like Teachable, Shopify, and Pinterest. He's built the leading creator community in New York.

As he told me: "I had no intention of turning it into what is now a thriving business. The goal was just, I wanted to be a connector in the space and meet people."

Milly Tamati is another example of this kind of explosive growth that started from something small. She built Generalist World from a personal pain point — feeling like she didn't fit into any of the traditional boxes at work. So she just started posting on LinkedIn: "I'm a generalist—is anyone else here like me?"

That simple question became a magnet over time, attracting people with similar experiences and skill sets. Which became a community. Which is now a major business with 40,000+ newsletter subscribers and 600+ paying members.

Jerrica Long's whole philosophy — "Greenlight Yourself" — is built on this idea. Don't wait for permission to start. Just start building the thing you're passionate about and see where it goes.

I see this in my own journey too. I'm still trying to figure out what the end goal is for what I'm building. Does it become educational courses? A community? Something else entirely? The truth is, I don't really know yet. I'm creating content and building expertise in the creator economy, and I'm letting that guide me forward rather than waiting until I have a perfect plan.

This is so apparent in the creator economy because you're constantly looking at people who've put in years of effort and work that you don't see. You just see the visible end product — the polished brand, the cool partnerships, the exposure. But you're not seeing where they started.

When you're starting out, you need to follow advice that's actually relevant to your stage.

Brett shared this story about when he and his brother were building Healthcare Huddle. They tried to replicate everything Morning Brew was doing — same tactics, same strategies. The problem? Morning Brew was five years in. They were at year one.

"Eventually we had to zoom out and ask: what were they doing in their early days?" Brett told me. "Oh, they had an ambassador program. Okay, let's start there. Let's take the early steps, not the late ones."

The better question to ask yourself is always: What was this person doing when they were at my stage? What can I learn from that?

Every creator I've talked to agrees on this. You have to start, get reps in, and learn from it, rather than trying to create some perfect, polished product from day one.

This is also why I love doing in-depth interviews so much, because you get to learn more about how someone started and what it took in the early days to grow. I think that can be 10x more valuable than just seeing where they are now.

I think this will actually be one of the most important things we take into 2026: the power of community and how we can intentionally build it.

If creators don't want their business to be so centered around them, they actually have to build a meaningful community where people find value in meeting other members, supporting each other, being active without always having one person at the center of it all.

And that's a lot harder to build than you might realize.

Brett put it simply: "Community is not your audience. Audience is one-to-many — it's me speaking out to a bunch of people. Community is many-to-many. It's when the people in your ecosystem are actually interacting with each other."

Milly described Generalist World the same way: "We're essentially a group of friends who are there for each other, who will go out and bat for each other, who will share opportunities, who will mention each other's names in rooms that we're not in."

People are hungry for these super niche communities, spaces full of people who are interested in the same things they're interested in. It makes your world feel a bit smaller in the best way possible.

This has come up in so many aspects of my work this year. From going to personal brand conferences, to talking to creators, to conversations with people who want to build something but haven't started yet. (I even wrote about it for Stan here!)

It keeps coming back to this: fear of being seen. Fear of putting yourself out there. Fear of feeling cringe.

That word — cringe — is such a big scary thing for people.

But I always like to reframe it this way: If you achieve the thing you want - if you build a successful business, if you create the life you're imagining—and you look back at those first few months and think, "Okay, yeah, that was a little cringe," would you still say it was worth it?

Of course you would.

Jerrica calls this "Cringe Mountain." And her point is that your first attempts might actually be a little cringe. That's okay. You can't get to the good stuff without getting through the awkward beginner phase.

Milly's early days were the same. She was DM'ing strangers on LinkedIn, asking them to pay for something she couldn't even fully describe yet. Of course something like that will feel uncomfortable.

I think a lot of people come to me wanting tactical advice — how do I grow, how do I get more subscribers, how do I land brand deals. But so often, when we dig in, it comes back to this mindset question: Are you actually comfortable putting yourself out there?

That's what people are often more uncomfortable with than they realize. And until you work through that, no amount of tactics will help.

This is something I see all the time — people want to build presence at scale, chasing follower counts and subscriber numbers. But it actually doesn't matter as much as you think.

You could have a few thousand people who really care what you have to say and build a very successful business from that.

Michael Kauffman is a great example. He's done multi-six-figure revenue with Catskill Crew on a relatively small subscriber base. His take is blunt: "Give me 100 engaged subscribers over 10,000 that don't care what you say."

When you're purely ad-driven, sure, it becomes a numbers game. But when you think about creative monetization (more on that below!) — building products, hosting events, creating real relationships with your audience — quality is everything. And you can continually expand on that. You're not limited to just one type of revenue.

Lex Roman made a similar point when I asked them about paid newsletters. They don’t think about readiness in terms of subscriber count. Instead think about trust. "You don't need thousands. You need like 100 people who really trust you."

What matters most is building trust with your audience. Add value. Do that above anything else.

You can chase more gimmicky things to grow really fast, but is that actually going to get more people to trust you? If not, then it doesn't seem worth it to me.

This goes back to the power of community. What some people miss is that you can have this genuine two-way relationship with the people who follow you. And they'll literally tell you what they want.

I've done some work with beehiiv where I've seen creators run really savvy surveys and audience interaction points. They let their audience tell them what to build. It's market validation before you even start.

Michael with Catskill Crew has done everything in his business this way. He asked his community about local products — then built Catskillopoly, a board game that ended up selling multiple six figures. He invested in a fly fishing shop because people kept DMing him for guide recommendations. Now he's moved on to writing a book and hosting dinner parties. All of it came from listening first.

Jenni Gritters operates the same way. Her community program is basically her listening lab. "If ten people asked me for coaching on the same topic in one week, I thought, 'Okay, something's going on here.'"

Creative monetization is honestly the most fascinating part of the creator economy for me to learn about. There are so many ways to earn money that's not just landing ad deals. Michael’s advice is to think about revenue as a pie — ads can be a slice, but there's room for products, events, memberships, consulting, and things you haven't even thought of yet. The ideas are already in your conversations. You just have to pay attention.

I love this one. It goes back to Jerrica's advice about greenlighting yourself, and Brett's friend Danny put it perfectly: "It's not the person who does it first. It's the person who does it loudest."

This applies to everything — attracting sponsors, getting speaking gigs, finding collaborators. You want to be unmissable.

This also connects to what I talk about with platform building. It's not about self-promotion for its own sake. It's about elevating your visibility and your ability to share your message — to share what you want to do in the world.

I love Taylor Harrington's approach to dreaming in public. She posts her goals on LinkedIn— whether it's wanting to become a professor or going on a podcast tour — and opportunities just materialize. A guy she'd met at a retreat reached out after seeing one of her posts and invited her to speak at Stanford. Then NYU.

"That one LinkedIn post — just me saying, 'This is what I want to do' — led to a real opportunity," she told me. "I've had so many examples like that, where I put something out there and someone was watching, listening, or reading."

You're not chasing opportunities when you build in public. You're creating surface area for them to find you.

BTW, one of my favorite articles I published this year is on this topic. In 2026, let’s do more dreaming in public. 👏

Maybe this is the key point to emphasize from everything I've learned: you're not just trying to get a follower count or a customer count. You're using the power of the internet to build relationships you wouldn't otherwise have.

And I think when AI is everywhere — when we're questioning the authenticity of things, when we're reading content that might have been produced by a computer — what we still want is human relationships. I think that's going to matter no matter what.

So I would be doubling down on this: your own unique take, your voice, your relationships, your community. Those things can't be replicated by literally anyone else in the universe other than YOU.

Michael said it directly: "I don't think content is your defensive moat anymore." AI can aggregate news faster than any human. What it can't do is build trust, show up at events, create belonging.

The creators who will thrive are the ones who actually care about the people in their audience. Not as metrics, but as people.

I think about this a lot with my own experience building Creator Diaries. I don't really have a clear monetization play for it right now. Does that mean it's not successful?

No, actually. Many people do this for years before they see the end result.

Creator Economy NYC existed for three years before Brett went full-time with it. "Community takes time," he told me. "You can build an audience really fast. You can't build community fast — at least not a real one."

I love Jenni's approach to sustainable solopreneurship, too. She doesn't subscribe to the normal marketing pipeline mentality. She has a system where people might be following her newsletter for four or five years before joining a paid program. And she says she actually prefers it that way.

"It feels really safe to know there are hundreds of people making their way through that process."

Milly's advice is similar: "Taking a long time just means you're building something of value."

So yeah — don't try to rush it. Don't compare yourself to someone else's timeline.

This is what it all circles back to for me.

The creator economy gives you this uncanny ability to build a business around the things you love most. But that doesn't make it easier or quicker. It just makes it possible.

And when things feel slow, or you're wondering if it's working, or you're comparing yourself to someone who seems further ahead — the thing that keeps you going is knowing why you started in the first place.

For me, it's this genuine curiosity about how people build things. I want to understand the creator economy from the inside out. I want to learn from the people actually doing it. And I want to share what I learn along the way. That's enough for now.

Have you crystallized your clear why yet?

After a year of these conversations I’ve learned (spoiler alert) everyone I interviewed is still figuring it out. There is no master secret or growth hack you can take to build a successful business. It takes time and failure and experimentation and pivots, sometime also a stroke of luck in the algorithm.

Brett doesn't have a five-year plan for Creator Economy NYC. Milly is still experimenting with what Generalist World can become. Jenni is rethinking her business model in real time. Michael is constantly testing new ideas to see what sticks.

None of them arrived at some destination where everything clicked into place. They're all still in motion.

And that is the thing I think that’s been the most liberating thing to learn.

There's this narrative in the creator economy that you need to have your niche locked down, your funnel optimized, your revenue streams diversified—like there's some checklist you complete and then you've "made it."

But that's not what I've seen. The people building the most interesting things are the ones who stay curious, keep experimenting, and aren't afraid to change direction when something isn't working.

For me, Creator Diaries started as a way to learn. I wanted to understand how people actually build businesses in this space — not the highlight reel version, but the real version. The messy beginnings. The pivots. The things that didn't work before the things that did.

I still don't know exactly what this becomes. Maybe it's a community. Maybe it's courses. Maybe it's something I haven't thought of yet. But I've stopped waiting to figure that out before I keep going.

The best thing I can do right now is keep showing up and having these conversations, and to keep sharing what I'm learning.

Build trust → Add value → Create surface area for opportunities to find me.

That's the whole philosophy of platform building that I hope you’ll remember. You're not chasing opportunities; you're creating the conditions for them to emerge. And that only works if you actually start. If you're willing to be a little cringe at first. If you're patient enough to let trust compound over time.

So if you're reading this and you've been sitting on an idea, waiting for the right moment or the perfect plan: this is your sign to just start.

You don't need permission. You don't need a complete picture or a revenue roadmap. You just need to care enough about something to keep showing up for it.

The rest will follow.

For the entire month of December mostly, I’m in reflect + dream mode, thinking about the lessons I’ve learned this year and what I’d like to take (or leave) going into 2026. If you’re doing something similar I’d love to hear from you! Especially if you’re doing more dreaming in public 🤩

Reply here and let me know what you’re working on!