Hi,
Every business scales differently, but most business advice doesn’t account for any of that. It assumes everyone’s building the same way, at the same pace, with the same goals.
That’s why you keep breaking yourself trying to follow tactics that weren’t built for how you actually grow.
There are five core growth paths that founders, creatives, and entrepreneurial builders follow. Each one based on how you operate, how you show up, and how you scale momentum.
(S)potlighters go deep, compound slowly, and build legacy work.
(C)ollaborators grow by building aligned ventures with equally powerful brands.
(A)rbiters are fast, tactical, and ruthless with execution.
(L)aunchers thrive on sprints, public stakes, and launch-based calendars.
(E)vangelists lead with resonance, story, and community trust.
These paths are based on how you move, how you actually get things done. How you gain traction, and how you build a business that doesn’t burn you out.
Pick the one that fits. Build from there. Now, let’s explore each one in more detail.
The (S)potlighter path
Slow. Strategic. Built to Last.
Spotlighters don’t look flashy at first glance. And yet, when you look a little closer you’ll find that some of the most stable, sustainable, and quietly profitable businesses out there are built by Spotlighters.
These entrepreneurs aren’t trying to win the short game. They’re planting roots.
Spotlighters are thinkers, planners, builders. They don’t just ship a product; they build a body of work. They release strategically, often obsessively, around one central idea, genre, theme, or worldview. Their power comes from depth, consistency, and a clear sense of their lane.
If Arbiters win by shipping fast, Spotlighters win by becoming undeniable over time. They’re the ones who create definitive guides, cornerstone series, and content ecosystems that compound year after year.
A healthy Spotlighter can spend ten years talking about the same topic from a thousand different angles and still feel energized by it. Their joy isn’t in the pivot; it’s in the iteration.
Traits of a Spotlighter
Evergreen-minded: Spotlighters love content that holds value over time. They’re in it for the long haul.
Focused on mastery: Rather than hopping between niches, they go deep into one niche until they become a known expert or voice.
Consistency-driven: They prefer sustainable habits to sprints. Give them a solid routine, and they’ll thrive.
Big-picture thinkers: Spotlighters often have a larger mission, brand, or thesis behind their work.
Reluctant to launch: They sometimes struggle with perfectionism and “not ready yet” syndrome.
Spotlighters often overlap with nonfiction authors, long-form content creators, and serial educators. If you’ve ever said, “I just want to help people understand this one thing,” you might be a Spotlighter.
What Success Looks Like
Success for a Spotlighter begins quietly. A podcast appearance here, a guest article there, a deep-dive interview tucked into a niche newsletter.
None of it seems explosive in the moment, but each appearance plants another breadcrumb trail back to their hub. A curious listener becomes a subscriber. A subscriber becomes a steady consumer. A steady consumer becomes a client, student, backer, or fan.
Over time, these links and placements start stacking on top of each other. Their work begins arriving in front of new audiences without them forcing anything. They don’t need the adrenaline of big launches or the stress of constant visibility because their ecosystem is visible on its own. Discoverability is the natural consequence of the depth they’ve built.
And as their visibility expands outward, Spotlighters get asked onto bigger platforms, and when they host their own summits, roundtables, or collaborative series, the best people in the space agree to show up.
Their hub becomes a gathering point, a reference library, and a kind of authority center for the entire niche.
They don’t become famous overnight, but over time they become the place people go when they need answers.
Where Spotlighters Struggle
Spotlighter struggles creep in slowly, accumulating quietly until something stops working and they can’t quite pinpoint why.
A Spotlighter sits down to write a blog post or outline a new guide, and instead of finishing it in a sitting, they begin researching “just a little more.”
Spotlighters don’t procrastinate because they’re lazy. They procrastinate because they’re building for the future, and the future feels like it deserves perfection. And with each delay, the ecosystem they’ve built starts to lose momentum.
Another struggle lives in the tension between depth and visibility. Spotlighters are brilliant at creating frameworks, archives, and libraries, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy being seen. They prefer the comfort of structured work to the vulnerability of stepping onto a stage. So while they excel at being the expert, they hesitate to declare
And then there’s burnout that comes from carrying too many unfinished ideas at once. Spotlighters rarely have one project; they have fifteen. Half-built funnels, partially drafted series, archived interview notes, unused collaborations… all of it sitting in a mental holding pattern, quietly demanding attention.
At their lowest, Spotlighters feel invisible, as if no matter how much they’ve built, none of it matters. They start wondering whether they’ve wasted years building systems nobody will ever fully experience.
But nothing is wrong with them. Nothing is wasted. The work they’ve created is sound. The depth is real. The only thing missing is momentum, and momentum is the easiest thing in the world for a Spotlighter to rebuild once they see where the system broke.
Best Platforms and Strategies
Spotlighters thrive in systems that reward depth, reliability, and cumulative value. That means:
Substack and Email Newsletters: Perfect for slowly building trust and showcasing expertise.
SEO Blogging: Spotlighters can dominate long-tail keyword traffic.
Podcasting & YouTube: When planned strategically, these channels become legacy content.
Spotlighters grow the fastest when they combine their depth with the reach of other people’s platforms. Guest lectures, podcast interviews, collaborative essays, anthology participation, virtual summits, and the like become powerful distribution engines. Every time they show up in someone else’s audience, they leave behind a breadcrumb trail that leads directly into their ecosystem.
Spotlighters build quietly and in layers, but once their ecosystem is in place? It’s incredibly hard to uproot.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
The (C)ollaborator path
Co-Creation. Co-Ownership. Shared Momentum.
Collaborators don’t just sell products. They build partnerships and work together with others to build ventures together that grow through mutual trust, shared execution, and brand-aligned launches.
They think in terms of relationships, opportunity stacking, and win-win business models. Collaborators don’t need to be the star of the show, but they do need to bring something of their own to the stage.
When you build like a Collaborator, you don’t just expand your reach.
You expand your influence, your audience, your IP, and your impact — by building with other real builders.
Traits of a Collaborator
Co-equal builders: They partner with others who already have traction — not followers looking for handouts.
Strategic operators: They don’t “jump into collabs.” They design shared value.
Brand-forward thinkers: Their own brand is active, healthy, and evolving — they bring it to the table.
Execution-minded: They build real things. Launches, offers, products, movements.
Mutualist by nature: A good Collaborator wants both sides to win, and they make sure it happens.
Community-aligned: They seek partners whose values and audiences resonate with their own.
If you’ve ever said, “We could build something incredible together,” or “I’m not looking for clients, I’m looking for co-creators,” you might be a Collaborator.
What Success Looks Like for Collaborators
When they’re in sync, Collaborators are powerhouses of momentum.
They don’t grow by accident. They grow by launching real things with real people they trust. Not endless ideas. Actual offers, ventures, and experiences that scale faster and further than any solo effort could.
They do well with:
Co-created product lines or experiences
Cross-branded launches (email swaps, bundles, events, anthologies)
Shared subscription or membership programs
Strategic crossover projects (e.g., one universe, two creators, three entry points)
Joint crowdfunding or co-owned publishing imprints
Dual-platform campaigns that allow both audiences to co-invest
When Collaborators hit their stride, they’re not just running launches — they’re building shared IP, shared equity, and shared worlds.
They’re not asking, “How do I get more eyes on this?”
They’re asking, “Who can we build this with so we can grow together?”
Where Collaborators Struggle
The danger of being a Collaborator? Unequal energy.
If one side isn’t showing up — with time, brand power, or execution — everything starts to wobble.
Common traps:
Unbalanced ownership: One person drives. The other coasts.
Undefined expectations: Nobody’s sure who’s responsible for what.
Lack of brand momentum: A partner with no platform can’t carry their weight.
Unspoken misalignment: One partner wants quick cash. The other wants long-term equity.
Overcollaborating: Saying yes to every offer without assessing fit or ROI.
Resentment cycles: Doing the work for two, then pulling back too late.
A failed collaboration hurts the project, your relationships, and sometimes your audience’s trust, too.
That’s why strong Collaborators only build with other strong brands.
Best Platforms and Strategies for Collaborators
Collaborators thrive on platforms where relationships and shared value can be made visible. Top tools for launch and growth:
Kickstarter & Crowdfunding: Excellent for co-branded launches with tiered rewards, lets both audiences “buy in” together, and works well for joint editions, bundled offers, or crossover events
Email + Newsletter Collabs”: The core of every collaboration. Use shared onboarding sequences, co-authored newsletters, or swap campaigns. They are especially powerful when each party has a healthy list
Substack or Patreon (Dual Ownership Models): Run serialized stories, shared posts, or co-managed content, share revenue. or direct people to dual funnels and invite both communities into the collaboration in real time
Direct Sales Stores (Shopify, Payhip, etc.): Allow each party to cross-promote and bundle products. Perfect for collaborative product lines or launch-specific storefronts
Cross-Platform Projects: Anthologies, podcasts, digital magazines, collaborative world-building. Each creator takes one channel — podcast, YouTube, print, event — and brings it all into one central offering
The Collaborator path isn’t about being the loudest or the biggest. It’s about being the most aligned.
You don’t need to create everything alone, but make sure to choose partners who can carry the weight with you — not on your behalf, not behind the scenes, but right beside you.
You’re here to connect and make new things real.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
The (A)rbiter path
Fast. Focused. Ruthlessly Efficient.
Arbiters are survivors. Tactical, lean, highly adaptable. They thrive in resource-scarce environments by doing more with less. Their superpower is efficiency. Arbiters look at an opportunity and ask, “How can I win today?” They don’t need it to be sexy. They just need it to work.
And it can work. Some of the most profitable businesses of all time are Arbiters. They’ve built systems, dialed in their customer, and scaled their catalogs into revenue machines.
But not everyone is built to be an Arbiter. If you’re not an Arbiter and you try to force yourself into that model? You’re going to break.
This path isn’t about depth or slow-burn community-building. It’s about execution and velocity. It’s about being faster, leaner, and more data-driven than the competition.
Arbiters aren’t here to feel all the feelings. They’re here to deliver product. Full stop.
Traits of an Arbiter
Speed-focused: Arbiters move fast. They don’t need a perfect product. They need something that ships.
Trend-aware: They spot market gaps, hit rising genres, and drop content when the timing is right.
Tactically driven: Everything is part of a system including building, launching, advertising, and scaling. It’s all part of the engine.
Minimalist marketers: Arbiters don’t spend months building community. They build a funnel, test the ads, and optimize for ROI.
Emotionally detached: They don’t romanticize the work. They produce. If the market doesn’t respond, they move on.
What Success Looks Like for Arbiters
A healthy Arbiter has systems for everything. They know their niche, their customers, and their competitors. Their work is dialed in to hit expectations on purpose. They track data, tweak quickly, and test ruthlessly.
Their marketing is lean. Think low-cost lead magnets, Facebook ads, newsletter swaps, and backlist optimization.
When everything is working, Arbiters generate steady cash flow. They may not have a huge audience, but the audience they do have is highly targeted. They’re not building community, they’re building income.
Where Arbiters Struggle
Burnout is the big one. Arbiters can run hot, especially when chasing trends or trying to match the pace of others in their niche. Because they’re constantly producing and rarely pausing to refill the well, they risk hitting a wall and wondering, “Why do I even like this anymore?”
There’s also the risk of commodification. When you’re producing fast and marketing to data, it’s easy to lose touch with why you started in the first place. That’s when stagnation sets in—and suddenly the money machine starts sputtering.
Plus, not every Arbiter is ready to scale. A lot of new entrepreneurs try to become Arbiters without the infrastructure. They don’t have processes, data, ad budgets, or audience insight and crash hard trying to keep up.
Best Platforms and Strategies for Arbiter
Arbiters thrive on systems where speed and scale are rewarded. That includes:
Amazon: Short-term sales windows, rapid release, and voracious buyers? Check.
Amazon Ads and Facebook Ads: Great for pushing products to hungry markets.
Social Media: Anywhere they can find virality and arbitrage, they can game the system.
The Arbiter model isn’t bad. It’s just not for everyone.
If you’re an Arbiter, lean into it. Build the machine, find your rhythm and automate everything you can, but remember: it’s okay to slow down once in a while.
If you’re not an Arbiter, stop trying to be one. There are other ways to win. You don’t have to outpace everyone. You just have to build a system that works for you.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
The (L)auncher path
Explosive. Cyclical. Launch-Oriented.
Launchers aren’t here to build forever. They’re here to build for something. They don’t just create, they build toward. If there’s no deadline, no audience waiting, no ticking clock pushing them forward, they often freeze up, but give them a big launch, a hard date, and a shot to make noise? They light up like fireworks.
Launchers are the sprinters of the business world.
They don’t do well with never-ending content calendars or slow-drip marketing. They need a build-up. A release. A moment to explode. Their energy is cyclical, vacillating between intense and all-consuming during the push, followed by a necessary period of rest and recovery.
If you’ve ever crushed a Kickstarter then ghosted your audience for three months? You might be a Launcher. If your productivity spikes the moment you set a public launch date, and completely dies when you’re “just working on the next thing”? Welcome to the ice fields.
Launchers don’t create for the sake of it. They create for impact.
Traits of a Launcher
Launch-driven: Deadlines, campaigns, and events are what get them moving.
Hype-loving: They enjoy the energy of anticipation—teasing a new project, revealing covers, running countdowns.
Focused creators: When they’re in a production sprint, they can be unstoppable.
Recovery-based: After a big push, they have to rest. Otherwise, they burn out (and so does your audience)
Emotionally invested: Their launches feel personal. Wins are euphoric. Losses can knock them out.
Launchers have never met a project they didn’t want to launch, and generally they can do so very well. They’re not usually the ones emailing every Tuesday. But when they hit your inbox? It’s with a mission.
What Success Looks Like for Launchers
A healthy Launcher is a launch machine.
They plan their calendar around campaign cycles. They stack content and production schedules to align with big releases. They know how to build buzz, how to galvanize a list, and how to create momentum. Launchers excel in event-based marketing: Kickstarter, convention signings, limited-edition drops, box sets, timed bonuses.
They don’t need a massive audience, just a motivated one. Their strength isn’t in being everywhere, it’s in showing up exactly when it counts, with energy that’s contagious and stakes that feel real.
And when the launch is over? They disappear to the mountains (figuratively…usually) to recharge and gear up for the next one.
Launchers don’t win by being always-on. They win by knowing when to turn it on and when to turn it off.
Where Launchers Struggle
Launchers are masters of momentum… but can be total messes without it.
They often struggle with consistency. If there’s no urgency, no countdown, no audience to perform for, they drift. They’ll second-guess their work, overthink every decision, or jump to a new project just to get that dopamine hit of “starting fresh.”
Burnout is real, and it’s brutal. Their cycles are intense, so Launchers are prone to flaming out, especially if they try to go back-to-back-to-back without building in recovery time.
Another trap? The Launch Spiral.
This happens when a Launcher finishes a project and immediately feels the need to start hyping something else even if the last launch nearly killed them. They don’t know how to rest without guilt, so they overcommit and self-sabotage.
Unhealthy Launchers also risk tying their self-worth to launch outcomes. If a campaign flops or underperforms, it doesn’t just feel like a business failure, it feels personal, and that can cause deep creative paralysis.
Best Platforms and Strategies for Launchers
Launchers thrive where visibility spikes, deadlines matter, and launches have built-in urgency. Their best playgrounds include:
Kickstarter & Crowdfunding: The ultimate Launcher environment, fixed deadlines, public stakes, and community buzz.
Convention Sales: High-energy, face-to-face selling with built-in adrenaline.
Pre-order windows: Give them something to build hype around.
Launchers can also do well with seasonal schedules with 3–4 big pushes per year, spaced out with strategic downtime. They don’t need to be everywhere. They need to be where it matters, when it matters most.
Launchers are volcanic. Cold most of the time, until they erupt with creative fire.
If that’s you, embrace it. Don’t beat yourself up for not being consistent. Be cyclical on purpose. Plan your year around your bursts. Build rest into your schedule like it’s sacred.
You’re not lazy. You’re just hibernating until it’s launch season.
Don’t try to be “on” all the time. You’re not built for it. You’re not supposed to be. And when you try to be like a Arbiter or a Spotlighter, you’re only accelerating your burnout.
Launch hard. Recover harder. That’s the Launcher way.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
The (E)vangelist path
Resonant. Referable. Community-Driven Growth.
Evangelists don’t grow by shouting louder, spending more, or optimizing funnels to death. They grow because other people spread the word for them like a social contagion.
This path is built on advocacy that compounds.
Evangelists create products, experiences, and stories that people can’t help but talk about because it speaks to the core of their identity.
When those customers share your work, through testimonials, referrals, recommendations, and community hype, that’s where the exponential curve comes and shoots you to the moon.
You’re not just trying to “get attention.” You’re building a world customers want to invite other people into and live inside.
Evangelists thrive because they:
Create highly shareable customer experiences
Generate stories customers want to repeat
Build identity-driven brands that people self-identify with
Make customers feel seen, included, and valued
Empower fans to become advocates, testers, and ambassadors
The business grows because people talk, and keep talking, and keep talking. Evangelists don’t need a big audience, but they do need an activated one.
Traits of an Evangelist
Brand-first thinkers: Evangelists are often their brand. Their voice, aesthetic, and story all reflect who they are.
Sensitive to rejection: Evangelists take feedback (especially silence) personally, sometimes painfully so.
Belief-based brands: Your values, voice, and ethos are easy to understand and even easier to share.
Emotion → Advocacy: Evangelists connect deeply, which triggers organic word-of-mouth.
Community trust: They naturally build circles of belonging that customers want to bring friends into.
Testimonial rich: Customers describe your work better than you can.
If you’ve ever said, “I want to build things that matter to people,” or “I want to create something that makes customers feel seen,” you’re probably a Evangelist (or at least embracing your inner Evangelist).
What Success Looks Like for Evangelists
When an Evangelist succeeds, it never looks like a spike or a sprint. It looks like compounding advocacy, the slow and steady stacking of people who genuinely love what you do and can’t help talking about it.
Their customers become their amplification system. Every launch creates a ripple of excitement, and every ripple pulls new people into the orbit.
An Evangelist doesn’t need a giant audience; they need the right fifty people saying the right things to the right friends. Their growth comes from a rising chorus of screenshots shared in stories, long heartfelt emails, unexpected tags on social media, and glowing reviews that explain the product better than any marketing copy ever could.
Those stories spread through group chats, Discord servers, comment sections, and private DMs. It’s subtle at first, but then one day the Evangelist realizes that most customers didn’t find them through ads or search, they found them because someone else vouched for them.
When Evangelists thrive, their community feels alive. Not the “I post and hope someone comments” kind of alive, but a real sense of belonging. Customers form friendships inside the ecosystem.
They start using the Evangelist’s language to describe their own goals and process. They recommend the brand without being asked. They show up for launches not just to buy but to participate, to spread the word, to help.
That’s the moment when the business stops feeling like an exhausting solo push and starts feeling like a shared movement. Success, for an Evangelist, is when the community takes the torch and begins to carry it forward on its own.
Where Evangelists Struggle
The shadow side of the Evangelist path is that everything is personal. When the business is built on connection, silence can feel like abandonment.
A slow launch doesn’t just sting financially. It feels like a reflection of your worth. A quiet inbox can spiral into self-doubt. Evangelists are wired for emotional resonance, which means they absorb emotional noise in both directions. The praise lifts them higher than it should, and the absence of praise hits harder than it needs to.
Evangelists also struggle with the structural side of growth. They often assume that if people love the work, they’ll naturally talk about it. But love alone doesn’t create referrals. People need prompts, systems, and invitations to share.
When an Evangelist doesn’t build those pathways intentionally, they end up doing all the work themselves, waiting for organic word-of-mouth that never fully materializes. They pour more energy into nurturing everyone individually because that’s what feels natural, but without boundaries, they end up depleted, resentful, or creatively shut down.
There’s also a unique form of guilt that comes with being an Evangelist. Charging money feels fraught. Asking for testimonials feels like fishing for compliments. Running a referral program feels like asking too much.
They want to help, to hold space, to connect, but this instinct can become a trap. They say yes too often, overshare, overgive, and overstretch. And when the community becomes too heavy to carry, they retreat, not because they don’t care, but because they cared too hard for too long without a system to support them.
Evangelists don’t fail because their community doesn’t love them. They fail because they try to grow on heart alone without the containers, boundaries, and structures that turn love into advocacy.
Best Platforms and Strategies for Evangelists
Evangelists do best where authenticity, story, and relationship-building are rewarded. Their entire growth model depends on creating moments, stories, and experiences that customers feel compelled to pass along.
For an Evangelist, marketing is never a one-way broadcast. It’s a chain reaction. Every sale has the potential to become two more, every customer can become a storyteller, and every story can become a spark that pulls someone new into the ecosystem.
Referral and ambassador programs Create simple, frictionless referral pathways. Design insider roles for your most passionate supporters. Give them early access, exclusive perks, and a sense of identity. Ambassadors become the engine of hype, testing products, creating buzz, and rallying the community during launches.
Influencer partnerships and User-Generated Content campaigns: Evangelist brands thrive with creators whose audiences trust them deeply. Encourage customers to show your product in action. UGC and Influencer content spreads faster than brand content and activates the referral engine effortlessly.
Community spaces (Discord, FB Groups, Patreon): Evangelists need a place where their people can see each other. Communities amplify your language, share experiences, and create the emotional glue that makes referrals explode.
Story-forward social channels: Platforms like Instagram Stories, TikTok, and YouTube Vlogs help Evangelists build trust at scale. Customers share these videos with friends, which creates organic, high-quality discovery loops.
The key for Evangelists is building a business with structure behind the connection. Not just hoping people will talk, but making it easy, fun, and rewarding for them to do so.
You don’t grow by shouting louder. You grow by giving your community the tools, the prompts, and the experiences that make sharing feel like a joy rather than a chore.
You’re not here to chase virality or fame. You’re here to build something people care about so deeply that they want others to care too. That’s the heart of the Evangelist path.
And when you lean into building with your community instead of for them, growth stops being something you fight for and starts becoming something that flows through your people.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
Embrace Your Path
There is no one right way to build, Only the right way for you.
Maybe you’re a Spotlighter, quietly building something deep and unshakable. You’re here to master something, refine it, and share it with the people who care. You make work that lasts.
Or maybe, you’re a Collaborator, a builder who doesn’t want to do it all alone. You grow through co-creation. You expand through aligned partnerships. You’re here to create something new with people who are already building something real of their own.
Maybe you’re an Arbiter, wired for speed, efficiency, and repeatable wins. You don’t need everything to be beautiful, just effective. You build engines, print money, and keep it moving.
You might be a Launcher, living in bursts, driven by the moment, the stage, the crowd, and the countdown. You build for the build-up. You create for the launch. And when it’s over, you vanish to recharge.
Or maybe you’re an Evangelist, built on resonance, story, and connection. You make people feel seen. You create belonging. Your brand isn’t a product line. It’s a heartbeat. And people follow you because they feel it.
None of these are better or worse. They’re just different ecosystems. Different engines. Different ways of growing.
So, stop forcing yourself to fit someone else’s path. Stop acting like you’re broken just because you’re not fast, loud, optimized, or always-on, and stop chasing advice from people who are playing a completely different game.
You don’t need to be more consistent or more confident. You just need to be more you, on purpose, and with a strategy that actually fits.
Know your path. Build from it. And if you ever feel lost?
Find your way back to the path.
Sound like you? Take the quiz and find out.
I’m a Spotlighter. And I’m struggling to finish things. Took a bit of a breat and finished editing my book, and am having trouble getting back to posting.
I'm definitely an Evangelist but like growing community through workshops and sharing stories, holding space. Tik Tok doesn't feel authentic to me. Perhaps vlogging to bring personal stories to light.
This article really opened my eyes to what I can be doing to grow. Thank you!