How to Earn a Salary from Your Community in 2026

Yesterday one of my clients emailed me to tell me that he’s finally quit his day job! 🥳

All because his community has become profitable enough to sustain him and his family reliably enough that he can afford the risk.

It’s my mission to help 1 million people become self-sufficient in this way - and to do it through community building must be the absolute CHERRY on the top of the cake. 🍒

This was the part of the message that excited me the most:

Our first call was on the 13th of June 2025 when they had ~400 paid subscribers and yesterday we had our final workshop to discuss their plan for 2026 and I’m fired up to see what the next 6+ months’ holds for them and their growing team!

Here’s what we did that I think worked really well!

The first win wasn’t a new platform or a new offer. It was getting brutally honest about what was happening inside the community already — and building a plan that matched reality.

We started by mapping the current member journey (the real one, not the “in my head it’s beautiful” one). Where members were dropping off. Where the hype died. Where the experience was confusing. Where the founder was spending energy for zero return.

A community can’t scale on vibes. It scales on repeatable paths: join → understand value → participate → feel progress → stay → bring friends. If the path is muddy, marketing just pours more people into a leaky bucket.

This is the bit most founders skip because it feels slow. But it’s the step that stops “more effort” from becoming “more chaos.”

Growth doesn’t come from posting more. It comes from knowing what members actually want badly enough to prioritise.

After our sessions, they did the discovery properly:

This is where community marketing gets its bite. Because once the research is real, the messaging stops being generic. It starts sounding like, “I’m in your brain and I brought receipts.”

Without that discovery step, it’s easy to build an experience for the founder’s preferences… and then wonder why members ghost after week two.

Once the research was done, the plan got sharper — and the positioning got meaner (in a good way).

We refined what they stood for, who it was for, and what transformation the community actually delivered. We tightened the promise so it didn’t try to be everything to everyone.

Positioning is community management too. Because the clearer the promise is, the easier it is to:

A fuzzy promise creates a fuzzy experience. And fuzzy experiences don’t get renewals.

This is where most founders stall: they love the plan… but they don’t build the machine.

But my clients didn’t just “learn” systems. They implemented systems:

This is the unsexy truth: growth is a community management sport. Strategy gives direction. Systems give repeatability. But scale comes from the weekly grind of executing what was designed — even when no one claps.

They had focus. And they had horsepower. That combination results in scale.

Here’s the bit that matters (and gets skipped): they didn’t just plan this. They followed through.

They did the unsexy work that makes “go full‑time” possible:

That’s why the jump happened.

If you want a profitable community, you don’t need more motivation.

You need focus, a plan that actually fits your members, and the guts to implement it all the way through.

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🧪 “Annual bloodwork” for your biz: One check-up, five key markers, and suddenly the vague dread turns into “oh, that’s the thing.” My new freebie, the 5‑Fit Gap Analysis asks 35 questions, scores your Founder, Model, Channel, Product, and Market Fit, and tells you what’s working and what’s not — so you can be chill, not chaotic. → Get your Systems Scorecard

🧰 Your tech stack is a Jenga tower: It’s “fine” until one tiny piece moves and suddenly everything is on the floor and someone’s crying in Google Drive. Venessa Darroll built a 3‑minute Tech Assessment that shows where the friction is hiding (and what can wait). → Get your snapshot

💊 Most communities are paracetamol: Richard Millington basically says what we all know but avoid admitting: the easiest communities to grow are the ones that replace an existing behaviour (support) vs trying to create a new habit (growth). Founder Hivemind is aiming for “grow”… maybe “transform”. That’s the hard mode. → What’s your model?

🎙️ I replaced my keyboard with a microphone: My brain just honestly moves faster than my thumbs, and I’ve finally found a tool that can keep up. Wispr Flow is my #1 tool of 2025 — I’ve dictated 50,000+ words in just over a month, which is probably… medically concerning. → Try it yourself here

🧠 The Barbie movie wasn’t about Barbie: It was about manufacturing desire in real time. Turns out, it is the same with sales. This clip is a clean example of “creating a customer” (not begging one to exist). → Watch and steal the move

In last week’s newsletter, I spoke about our 2025 community challenge to just f*cking DO it — and boy did you lot make me proud!

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🚀 Launched before I felt ready (33%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 Raised prices and didn’t die (16.6)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎤 Went public: spoke/podcast/posted anyway (1.6)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧨 Had the hard chat, finally (1.6)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✂️ Quit something that drained me (1.6)

If you’ve done the 5‑Fit Systems Scorecard and thought, “Cool… so now what?” — this is the now what.

Next week we’re hosting the Annual Accountability Workshop: a 90‑minute working session where we turn your score into an actual plan for the year.

The secret weapon in the room is Simone Snedorf. I’ve personally dubbed her an expert in human integration, which is a fancy way of saying: she helps you build a business that works with your brain, not against it.

In my lived experience, working with Simone helped shift my business from something I had to fight daily into something that supports me.

It’s the difference between “I’m drowning in the work” and “I’m actually working on the business”.