Ep. 54: She built a 150K-member, $1M/year community ft. Grace Ling

This week on The Creator Spotlight Podcast we are joined by Grace Ling, founder of the thriving Design Buddies community, which turns five years old this month, has over 150,000 members, and generates $1 million in annual recurring revenue. She is also a talented content creator and has found particular success on LinkedIn where she has nearly 50,000 followers. She is also the cohost of the How Creators Make Money podcast. __ Follow Grace on Instagram and LinkedIn Check out Design Buddies and How Creators Make Money __ 00:00 Introducing Grace Ling and Design Buddies 01:52 What is design? 03:30 What makes the Design Buddies community different? 05:46 The first 1,000 members 08:31 The first 150,000 members 12:00 Maintaining a healthy community at scale 15:46 $1M in revenue — what’s the breakdown? 18:18 Rizz as a service 20:39 Gatekeeping, use it wisely 22:40 How to spend $1M 24:49 LinkedIn’s untapped potential for growth 35:51 A lesson in diversifying your revenue as a creator 39:37 How Creators Make Money, the podcast 42:16 The two labor models of content creation 45:00 From creator house to party mansions