Stop Chasing Followers. Start Building a Community.

Why community is the overlooked growth + Unpromptability engine, and the exact steps to build yours.

We’ve been sold a myth about thought leadership

We’re told that thought leadership is a lone figure on a digital stage, followed by millions. The guru with a megaphone, the influencer with a stadium-sized audience. That’s the picture most people chase.

But that model is wrong. It traps you in a constant game of attention-chasing, where your “power” depends on an algorithm, not on real connection.

The truth is:

Followers ≠ Community.

Attention ≠ Trust.

In this article, we’ll discuss a better way. The third step to becoming truly antifragile: community building.

The fragility of chasing followers

Most creators treat audience growth like a scoreboard. More likes. More impressions. More subscribers. But those numbers are a mirage.

Chasing followers makes you promptable

When you optimize for followers, you bend toward the algorithm — not your mission. You start chasing virality instead of clarity. Your words become interchangeable with every other creator gaming the same system; flat, predictable, and stripped of the depth that makes your mission unique.

The more you contort your message to fit the trends, the less it carries the weight of who you really are. What once felt like a fire in your chest will read like recycled noise, and become lost in the scroll.

That’s dangerous.

• For your business: One algorithm tweak and your reach can evaporate. You end up with an audience misaligned with your mission, which weakens leads, sales, and collaborations. And every social media has an algorithm (yes, even Substack), and algorithms change all the time.

• For your mission: Your voice gets diluted in the noise of trends. Instead of shaping culture, you’re shaped by whatever performs today. You become promptable — easy to replicate, easy to replace, and ultimately forgettable.

If you chase followers, you end up with a fragile brand, a fragile business. A mission that doesn’t multiply, because it has no carriers.

Instead, build your community

Step three of Unpromptability is simple: Find Your Community.

Because community is what transforms your mission from a broadcast into a movement.

A community is not just your follwers. It’s:

• Audience: ICPs who resonate with your mission — and who engage with each other, not just you.

• Peer network: Adjacent founders and creators who become collaborators, not competitors.

• Partners: The businesses, suppliers, and allies already in your supply chain, reimagined as part of your ecosystem.

Think about how a real-life community works. In the physical world, people who want to lead don’t climb onto a podium and shout down at their neighbors. They show up with casseroles when someone is sick. They lend a hand when a roof leaks. They listen, they encourage, they celebrate other people’s wins.

Over time, that quiet consistency becomes magnetic. Trust accumulates, and before long, the people others look to as “leaders” are simply those who cared the most.

That’s the parallel online. True digital community isn’t about broadcasting louder than everyone else. It’s about nurturing, supporting, and showing up so reliably that your presence becomes a force people naturally gather around.

This method of healthy community building leverages social proof: when people see others they trust engaging, they’re more likely to lean in themselves. Trust compounds socially, and it’s the foundation of real influence.

And this is where Unpromptability comes alive. In a true community, the leader isn’t replaceable in people’s minds. No one can just step in and swap them out, because what binds the community isn’t just content, but relationships, history, and shared emotion. Those bonds take time and actual labor (physical or emotional) to develop.

Consequently, when you build a strong, engaged community, you’re not just winning goodwill. You’re winning the thought leadership game itself: more conversations, more opportunities to pitch your products, more people who carry your mission forward because they believe in you, not in the algorithm.

How to build your community (step by step)

Contrary to popular belief, community isn’t just a website locked behind a paywall.

Paid communities have real value. They can create depth, accountability, and structure. But that’s not the only kind of community that matters.

Organic community is just as powerful, if not more. It’s the kind that grows naturally: people talking, sharing, and supporting one another in open spaces. It thrives on social bonds, not just transactions. On social media, the strongest communities aren’t always the ones gated by membership fees; they’re the ones that feel alive, where people see and hear each other regularly, and where participation itself becomes the glue.

When you have a strong, organic community, you become unpromptable.

You’re no longer at the mercy of algorithms or trends, because your influence lives in people’s trust and relationships. That said, building this kind of community isn’t easy. It takes intention, consistency, and care.

So in the steps below, I’ll show you exactly how to start doing it, just as I did it with Write10x.

Turn your mission into a vehicle

Your mission isn’t just words, it’s the proverbial campfire fire people gather around.

Clarify it aloud, make it magnetic, and show up consistently so others can ride along with you. A mission that’s lived and shared becomes a vehicle. It turns casual readers into active participants, riders.

And when your community bonds around your mission, no algorithm or competitor can replace the role you play.

Here are some tips:

• Make your mission visible: Post your mission as a pinned statement on your main platform and invite replies with how people connect to it. For example, I shared and pinned my updated mission statement on Substack.

• Do a recurring mission-related feature: Host a short weekly feature where you talk about your mission and engage directly with audience questions. You can do this through community chat or a short live Q&A (15–20 minutes).

• Host community events: Create one recurring ritual (like a weekly discussion thread or “mission Monday” post) that your community can look forward to and participate in. This is what I’m starting with the Unpromptability Sprint.

For other examples, I see my Substack friends Daria Cupareanu and Joel Salinas host spotlight events for their subscribers to support each other:

Mission-aligned community event prompt:

You are an AI strategist helping me design high-leverage community engagement activities.

First, ask me:

1) What is my mission?

2) How am I currently marketing it?

3) What capabilities (skills, resources, relationships) do I already have?

Once I answer, analyze my responses and recommend 3–5 practical, high-leverage community engagement activities that will mobilize my ideal audience to participate.

Engage adjacent founders and creators

Community grows stronger when you build bridges to peers. Adjacent founders and creators can collaborate with you and expand your reach. These are peers who operate in nearby spaces — not direct competitors, but people whose missions complement yours.

Think of a newsletter writer serving the same audience with a different angle, a coach working in a parallel niche, or a SaaS founder building tools your audience already uses. These are people you can learn from, collaborate with, and co-create value alongside.

Examples: a leadership coach partnering with a productivity app founder, or a health blogger collaborating with a nutritionist. Engaging peers creates cross-pollination of audiences and opens doors to fresh ideas.

Collaboration ties your work into a broader ecosystem, making your voice central to a living network.

• Map your ecosystem: Build a list of 3–5 peers whose audiences overlap with yours and log them in a simple spreadsheet or CRM.

• Reach out personally: Send a short, personalized voice note or video DM introducing yourself and pointing to one specific area of overlap.

• Spotlight them publicly: Restack or remix one of their posts while tagging them and adding your own perspective to spark dialogue. You can also feature their stories on your publications, and socials. For example, this is what I’ve been trying to do with the Think, Build, Brand series. Here are the stories so far:

  • Joel’s 3-AI newsletter team

  • Jenny’s AI brand building journey

• Start small but specific: Propose a low-risk collaboration (like a joint thread, co-hosted live, or newsletter swap) with clearly stated mutual value. As an example, here are some of the collaborations I’ve done: Why Leaders Must Write to Lead in 2025 (Part 1).

• Anchor it in consistency: Commit to one engagement action (comment, share, or DM) every week for each peer to keep the relationship alive.

Networking strategy prompt:

You are an AI strategist helping me expand my peer network. First, ask me to describe my niche, mission, and the type of audiences I want to reach.

Then brainstorm a list of 5–10 categories of adjacent founders and creators (examples: coaches, newsletter writers, SaaS founders, service providers) whose missions complement mine.

For category, recommend a detailed engagement plan — how to interact with their content, how to add value to their audience, and how to propose a collaboration that feels natural and mutually beneficial.

Partner with your supply chain

The businesses and providers you already work with are natural allies. They can strengthen your community if you bring them into your story. Highlighting suppliers and partners adds depth and credibility. It roots your community in real-world connections. These relationships create layers of trust and collaboration that no outsider can easily replicate.

• Showcase their value: Feature a partner or supplier in your content by highlighting how they help you serve your audience. You can make articles about the tools you’re using and how they’re helping you serve your audience better. For example:

  • I’m planning to write about how I’ve been using Fabric as an ideation tool.

  • Daria has also written about how she used an email management tool.

• Co-create something tangible: Develop a joint offer, package, or resource that combines both your strengths and provides clear value to your shared audience.

• Pull back the curtain: Share a behind-the-scenes story — such as a process walk-through or day-in-the-life collaboration — that highlights your relationship and builds trust.

Supply chain leverage prompt:

You are an AI strategist helping me identify high-leverage partners in my existing supply chain.

First, ask me to list the suppliers, service providers, or logistical partners I already work with.

Then analyze where our goals and audiences align.

Recommend 3–5 high-leverage activities I can initiate with them — such as joint content, co-branded offers, or community events — that will deepen trust, create mutual value, and expand our reach together.

The growth engine of community

When you stop chasing followers and start building community, three things happen:

• Resilience. Your work spreads even if the algorithm ignores you, because people carry it forward on your behalf.

• Unpromptability. In a true community, you’re not just another name on a feed. You’re embedded in people’s trust, history, and shared emotion. No one can simply step in and replace you, because relationships can’t be faked or fast-tracked. That makes you unpromptable — your value exists in the bonds you’ve built.

• Opportunities. Partnerships, collaborations, and referrals come naturally, because community members advocate for you. Every new door opened is multiplied by the people who believe in your mission.

This is how community helps you win the content game. It’s not about "hacking" attention, but about anchoring your work in relationships that compound over time.

Building community isn’t optional if you want to run a healthy, unpromptable content business. It’s the growth engine that compounds every effort — and the vehicle that carries your mission farther than you ever could alone.

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PS. Want to put this into practice?

Join the Unpromptability Sprint inside my community. Now on it's second week, in the remaining 7 days we’ll publish together, use AI intentionally, and build the habit of sharing mission-driven content that connects.

It’s the fastest way to experience what community-powered growth feels like. And to start becoming truly Unpromptable.