Hey honeys and hustlers,

After countless questions about how I've built my newsletter community, curated my network, and leveraged relationships to grow my creative business, I've channeled all my knowledge into a comprehensive digital book (with an audio version) that serves as your complete operating system for community building. Whether you're looking to cultivate a dedicated audience, create meaningful connections, or transform casual followers into engaged community members, CommunityOS provides the frameworks, strategies, and real-world tactics I've personally used and refined. In this article, I'm pulling back the curtain on why I created this course, how I developed it from concept to completion, and the exclusive bonuses available for early birds who jump in during our pre-sale period.

By the end of CommunityOS, you will operate like a creator with a working community system – not just ideas. You will have a documented publishing cadence, a repurposing pipeline, a collaboration engine, an analytics dashboard that drives decisions, and a validated offer or sponsor path—so growth, engagement, and revenue become consistent and compounding instead of sporadic and reactive.

The CommunityOS course is now available for pre-order (link below). It will go live on Monday, September 29th. If you buy the course during pre-sale, you’ll get the most benefits:

The whole kit and kaboodle, available now.

P.S. Bonuses scale with speed. Pre‑order for 3 bonuses + a discount code. 72 hours after launch, the number of bonuses drops to 2. First week after launch, the number of bonuses drops to 1. After that, none.

I’ve known I wanted to make a course for some time, but the topic and the format have been the toughest parts to nail. They’re arguably the most important parts to get right. There’s no point in making a course about something people don’t want in a format that isn’t suited for that information. I originally thought the format for any course I did would be a video course. But after being on YouTube and creating so many films for myself and others, I realized that I put so much pressure on myself when I show up on camera. And that pressure was giving me paralysis.

After writing this newsletter for a little over a year and seeing some cool written and audio courses, I decided to change up the format to more of a book format. Now, the pressure has lessened a bit. What should I write about? What do people ask me about the most?

So I decided that community building was a common theme. I felt that I had quite a bit of proof outside of these casual questions to back up my expertise in this area. I’ve hosted over 100 entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, creators, and startup founders on my show, Honey & Hustle. I’ve been a guest speaker on other podcasts, in business accelerators, at creative events, and in college classrooms. I was an inaugural fellow in the ECOMAP and Forward Cities Placebuilders program. I’ve built and leveraged a LinkedIn following of over 12,000 people. I’m also a board member on 3 nonprofits. With this ~internal validation~ in mind, it was time to start.

I started planning my course content with these two guiding questions: How can I leverage my expertise to teach what I know? What are the things I would want to teach and the questions I want to answer? I started with brainstorming topics, potential chapter titles, and browsing my notes for all the questions I was asked during my talk at Podcast Movement Evolutions. Then, I looked for inspiration for similar courses structured as books. The Pricing Design Book by Dan Mall and That Portfolio Book by Dann Petty were early inspirations (blame it on their names?).

As one does, after settling on the chapter titles and topics, I started with the website design. I sketched with pen and paper first, then vibe-coded in Bolt. I knew I wanted to create this course as a drip course, so that limited my course hosting options. I decided to go with PayHip for this as I could launch the course for free in exchange for slightly higher transaction fees. Low risk, high reward (potentially).

The only thing left to do was write the course. I wrote the first draft in Notion. Then, I left it alone for a while because I knew it was imperfect (a while = 3 months). I started the process in April and picked up back up in July. Something about stepping away from a screen, writing with pen and paper, and then typing my words back into Notion really helped me focus and write more freely. I was able to identify gaps in the content more easily and fill those at a faster pace.

Because I knew the process would take a while, I wanted to generate excitement online in the meantime. I shared screenshots on social and added a waitlist form to my newsletter articles. I definitely could’ve done more to validate this course idea, but I didn’t have a tentative release date until this month, and I would rather put out a product that “flopped” than stay in analysis paralysis/idea mode forever and never publish anything. We love a good flop.

The first iteration of the course landing page opened directly into the book. After starting the process of building out the course in Payhip, I realized this would be better kept as a landing page. This meant creating an onboarding experience that shared information about the course and its value proposition.

But before all the final landing page design happens: EDITING EDITING EDITING

With the writing, audio recording, and editing done, it was time to think about the learning experience. What experiential elements could I add? I decided on homework for each chapter (an idea Justin Moore shared in a podcast episode) and a resource tool to complement the topics in the course. I knew that creating a self-paced course came at the risk of people not finishing the material, and that creating a cohort-based course meant allocating time I didn’t have to weekly live sessions. I decided to go with the drip course format so that I could schedule regular email checkups as people go through the material, homework assignments, and resources. I respond much faster to email, and people are already used to seeing me in their inbox.

But wait, there’s more! How could I reward early buyers of the course? I want to make the people who invest early feel special and valued. So I decided to create a bonus structure that allowed facetime with me and other students taking the course, alongside a resource I wish I had when I started my newsletter.

Writing? Check. Audio? Check. Additional resources, bonuses, and experiences? Check. So there’s only one thing left to do….

We are here. I am here. Putting myself out there and sharing this course with the world. Aka you, the folks who follow me on LinkedIn, my podcast listeners, and my YouTube subscribers (my marketing channels of choice). I crafted a few email sequences for this course, set up a posting schedule on LinkedIn, recorded a launch day podcast episode (with a special surprise there as well), and made a launch day video. You’ll see all of this rolling out soon, as I try not to lose my nerve and delete everything. I’m glad you’re here. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about the course. I truly believe this will help you build a community around your business, creative projects, and services without burning out.