How I Grew an Online Community to 30,000 People Without a Single Paid Ad

Apr 6
3 min read

Let me be honest with you about something.

I did not grow Women for the Culture by cracking some secret algorithm code. I did not go viral overnight. There was no one big moment that changed everything. What I did was make a decision early on that most people are too afraid to make, and then I stuck to it no matter what.

I knew exactly who I was building for. And I never folded on that.

Not when the likes were low. Not when the reach dropped. Not when the algorithm shifted for the hundredth time, and everyone was panicking about what to post and when to post it. I knew my audience. Black women. Women of color. Women who wanted a real space, not a highlight reel. Women who needed to be seen, heard, and celebrated without having to perform to be seen, heard, and celebrated. That was always the assignment, and we never changed it.

But here is the part people do not talk about enough.

I could not do it alone. And I knew that early.

One of the best decisions I ever made as a founder was building a team of women who could elevate in areas I knew nothing about. I am not an expert in everything and I have never pretended to be. What I am is smart enough to know the difference between what I am great at and what needs someone else's greatness. So I found those women. I brought them in. And together we built something that none of us could have built on our own.

That is the real secret behind 30,000 people choosing to be part of this community. It was not a strategy. It was sisterhood in action.

We also did something that sounds simple but is actually hard to do consistently. We changed with the times without losing ourselves in the process. When the platforms shifted, we shifted. When the content formats evolved, we evolved. When the conversation in culture moved, we moved with it. But our core, our why, our people, that never moved. We bent, but we did not break. We adapted, but we did not abandon.

A lot of brands and creators lose themselves chasing numbers. They start pivoting to whoever seems to be getting the most engagement that week. They water down their message, trying to appeal to everyone and end up connecting with no one. We refused to do that. There were seasons where our numbers were not impressive on paper. But our community was engaged, loyal, and growing in ways that data cannot always capture.

Community is not built in a campaign. It is built on consistency. It is built to show up the same way on a bad day as you do on a good one. It is built on creating content that your people actually need, not just content that performs well for a week and disappears.

If you are building something right now and you feel like it is not moving fast enough, I want you to hear this directly from me. Stay the course. Know your people. Build your team. Change with the times, but never fold on your foundation.