3 Ways to Amplify Your Creator Gravity (For Creators With 5,000+ Followers)

The blueprint to amplifying your existing gravity so you can become a legendary planet of one.

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If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Creator Gravity: Its pillars—health, energy, and purpose—and why people struggle to build it.

(No idea WTF I’m talking about? Start here.)

But what if you’re a creator who already has a gravitational pull, yet feels it could be stronger?

This is you if you:

• Have an audience of 5,000 people or more*

• Have consistently posted for at least one year

• Get some opportunities (jobs, sponsors) through your content

• Are suffering from content indifference (i.e. most things you post go unnoticed)

*Why 5,000 followers? To be honest, it’s an arbitrary (ish) number. Followers don’t determine gravity—I’ve seen a TikToker with 1.3M followers organize a meet and greet where nobody comes, and a Substacker with 9,000 devoted subscribers featured on Slate and CNBC’s Make It.

I put that number because to implement the following tactics, you’ll need a basic foundation first. (After all, amplifying gravity requires something to amplify in the first place.)

Usually, a couple thousand followers signals you’ve carved out your voice, developed real-world experience, are comfortable posting, and shows you’re in this for the long haul.

Onwards!

After writing for creators such as Hannah Williams from Salary Transparent Street, Kat Norton from Miss Excel, and former ABC Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton of Ajenda, I’ve seen three levers creators can pull to amplify their gravity:

The super moon on a radio receiver dish!

1. Magnetize Your Message

First things first, your gravitational center must be something people want to learn more about, get better at, or avoid. There’s always an action involved—a transformation to be had.

For example:

• Kat Norton (Miss Excel) helps people get better at Excel.

• Hannah Williams (Salary Transparent Street) helps people avoid being underpaid.

• Tori Dunlap (Her First $100K) teaches women financial freedom.

This topic and transformation is the fundamental exchange of gravity. Without it, your planet does not exist. (Without Excel, there would be no Miss Excel. Without pay transparency, there would be no Salary Transparent Street.)

By helping people transform, they connect with you, and that connection builds your gravitational pull.

But how do you find your “topic?”

Step 1) Map Your Love and Hates

Ray Bradbury gives us a perfect starting point:

“Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them.”

(Fun fact: This is how Bradbury got the idea for Fahrenheit 451—he hated book burners and loved libraries.)

This tactic is great because it forces you to define what you’re up against and what’s on the line. In other words, it’s a map of emotional hotspots—radio signals for where your unique topic lives.

It’ll also help you pinpoint your “enemy.”

Step 2) Find Your “Enemy”

I know, I know—slamming an enemy sounds rage-baity.

But I promise this isn’t sinister. An “enemy” is an idea, concept, or way of doing something that you openly reject, and invite other people to as well.

For example:

• Tori Dunlap (Her First $100K) rejects the patriarchy.

• Hannah Williams (Salary Transparent Street) sheds a light on pay inequality.

• Kat Norton’s (Miss Excel) enemy is wasting time in Excel.

This “enemy” gives your content direction and your audience a rallying point.

Step 3) Carve Out Your Origin Story

Now, ask yourself: Are there any personal experiences that brought you face-to-face with this enemy?

• Tori Dunlap was able to quit her toxic job because she had an emergency fund. Today, helping women achieve financial freedom is Her First $100K’s entire mission.

• Hannah Williams realized her old employer was underpaying her by $30,000—and she wouldn’t have realized it had it not been for pay transparency. Cue: Salary Transparent Street.

• Kat Norton used to teach Excel presentations at her old 9-5 and saw just how many people needed help with Excel—and Miss Excel was born.

Don’t panic—your story doesn't need to be dramatic! But it does have to be the truth.

Step 4) Add Your Unique Lens

This is where you differentiate yourself from everyone else talking about similar topics (Miss Excel wasn’t the first Excel creator nor was Tori Dunlap the first finance creator).

A few tips:

1. Marry one of your loved topics with a unique lens. Tori Dunlap did it with finance and feminism. Dan Runcie, creator of Trapital, does something similar with the economics of hip hop. Emily Sundberg writes about American subculture through the lens of business.

2. Resurrect the wheel instead of reinventing it. Anna Mack built her business from teaching others how to create a Portfolio Career—a term that was first introduced in 1989 by Charles Handy.

3. Coin new phrases or terms. James Clear has Atomic Habits. Anne Laure Le Cunff has Tiny Experiments. David Perell has Personal Monopoly. Notice all of these phrases have an implied benefit. If your online planet promises a “better tomorrow,” you’re in the sweet spot.

Step 5) Stretch It Like Taffy

Once you have a topic you’re ready to explore, create a written or video series about it. Or as I like to say, stretch it like taffy.

Not only will more content increase your visibility (duh), but it’ll help you uncover the core of your idea. For example, I didn’t realize having an “enemy” was key to building gravity until I wrote this article.

More examples:

Anna Mack did this with her six-part Substack series on the Portfolio Career. Lenny Rachitsky did the same with his series on kick starting and scaling a B2B Business.

And hello! You’re reading part five of my Creator Gravity series.

2. Find Neighboring Planets

Great! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Now that you’ve magnetized your message, it’s time for you to meet other planets in your galaxy, since your Creator Gravity strengthens when you connect with others.

As entrepreneur Ben Casnocha says:

“Every opportunity is attached to a person. Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They’re attached to people.”

Two practical ways to accelerate this connection:

1) Show Yourself

The best way to connect with people is to meet one-on-one.

But if you did that, you’d be overwhelmed and get nothing done. That leaves us with the second-best way: Upload short-form videos of yourself.

I know, I know—it’s a pain in the ass. If it were up to me, writing alone would be enough. But people are visual, and seeing you on camera is one of the best ways for them to feel you out.

(Not to mention, short-form is the best discovery channel on the internet right now. Full stop.)

Not down to post videos? Fair. Instead:

• Write with your personality splattered on the page.

• Share tidbits from your life and professional experience.

• Upload pictures of yourself (e.g. your profile pictures are pictures of you).

2) Connect With People

Next, invest time in connecting with people.

If you’re objecting with thoughts such as, “I don’t have time,” or “I have better things to do,” you’re missing the point.

Those with gravity know they’re not above anybody or “better than” putting in the effort to respond to comments and emails or meet people in real life.

A few ways to connect with others:

Return the Gift of Attention

When people leave a thoughtful comment on your post, directly message them to let them know you appreciated their time and effort. (In the age of “Great insight! 🚀” [kill me] these people are few and far between.)

Reach Out to New Readers

After someone subscribes or follows you, introduce yourself personally.

Side effects might include making new friends. :)

Go to Industry Events

Take your connections offline by saying “yes” to any and all events.

Meet people—you’ll never know where it’ll lead! In my case, last July, I went to an entrepreneurship event where I met the lovely Gabby Beckford.

Not only did Gabby hire me to help her with her website, but she inspired me to write an article about her success. That article led to 300 subscribers and is one of my most popular posts of all time (“She Made $170,000 By Being Delusionally Confident”).

3. Build Dense Things

The final step is to create dense things.

LinkedIn posts and Substack notes and Skeets (that’s Bluesky for the uninitiated) are not dense. They extend your reach, sure, but they’re more like your planet’s atmosphere—thin, easily dispersed, and quickly forgotten.

Instead, you need density. When I say dense, I mean something that doesn’t have a 24-hour life cycle and can’t be plucked from the top of your head. It should:

• Challenge you

• Push the edges of your thinking

• Be impossible to build overnight

The article you’re reading now, for instance. I spent 57 days writing this thing. 57 days! I lost count of how many times I wanted to give up and just post on fucking LinkedIn instead.

(Not kidding. Below is a clip from one of the many conversations I had with my coach about this piece where I was this 🤏 close to giving up. I am dead inside.)

But gravity doesn’t get stronger through bite-sized social media posts alone. If your main discovery channel (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc) suddenly banned you tomorrow, and nothing you created remained, you never had gravity—you had visibility.

Examples of Dense Things

• Jen Ashton (Ajenda) has an Eight-Week Wellness Experiment to help women over 50 commit to their health.

• Hannah Williams (Salary Transparent Street) has a job board that shares transparent listings.

• Kat Norton (Miss Excel) has a suite of online courses, from Excel to PowerPoint to OneNote.

Note how these examples exist on owned channels (community, job board, online courses). That’s a big part of amplifying your gravity—creating value independently of a testy algorithm. Otherwise, your planet is constantly under threat of being extinguished.

“But Creating Dense Stuff is Hard…”

Good. It should be hard!

There is no gravity if you’re just echoing what everybody else is saying online. If you want to stand out, you have to map a new territory. And you can’t do that without venturing where others haven’t, risking being wrong, and experimenting with ideas that might fail spectacularly.

*Note: The idea from this section came from reading Anu Atluru’s incredible piece, Make Something Heavy. I would highly recommend you read it!

One Last Word of Caution: Don’t Slip Down the Dopamine Slopes

Before we part ways, I just want to tell you one last thing.

After creating for a while, there’s a chance you slip into the Dopamine Dungeon. I’ve seen it happen to so many creators. It happened to me.

What is The Dopamine Dungeon? It’s when your posts become algorithmic birdfeed. It’s when you sacrifice originality for virality. It’s when you become an unwitting citizen of Big Tech’s homogenized country and tell yourself you just need to “grow an audience first.”

What total bullshit.

I’ve been there. (If you saw me posting regurgitated platitudes on Twitter in 2022…no you didn’t). It wasn’t until I stepped away from posting for a couple months did I get clarity.

I realized I’d “sold my soul” to the algorithm—and I refused to sign that contract again.

That’s why sometimes, the first step to amplifying your gravity is to walk away. When you return, you’ll create not under the dim bulb of your ego but in the white light of your truth.

This is where the real gravity begins.

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This newsletter is part of a six-part series.

1. Creator Gravity: How to Pull People Into Your Orbit

2. WTF is Creator Gravity? (This Isn’t Your Traditional Influence)

3. What’s Preventing You From Building Gravity: Part 1

4. What’s Preventing You From Building Gravity: Part 2

5. How to Build Gravity From Scratch (My Story & Case Studies)

6. How to Have a Lucrative Career From Gravity