This Skill Is Career-Defining for Community Managers
So… you’ve just been hired as a community manager and asked to complete a huge task: growing more than 20 communities, all from scratch.
So… you’ve just been hired as a community manager and asked to complete a huge task: growing more than 20 communities, all from scratch.
At first, that can feel overwhelming. But it’s also exactly the kind of challenge where you grow the fastest. You’re outside your comfort zone, and that’s usually where the real learning happens.
A few days ago, I spoke with a community manager who was in exactly this situation. They were motivated, capable, and genuinely trying to make it work.
But they felt stuck.
Not because they weren’t working hard, and not because they lacked ideas. The pressure was coming from the expectation to move quickly, even though everything was starting from zero.
Why Building From Scratch Changes How You Think
When you’re building communities from scratch, especially multiple ones at the same time, progress rarely comes from doing more things faster. There’s no momentum to ride and no existing trust to lean on.
From the outside, it can look like nothing is happening. But this early phase is where direction is set.
It’s where decisions are made about who the community is really for, what it should exist to solve, and whether it’s worth someone’s time to show up at all. Get this wrong, and no amount of posting or promotion will fix it later.
Why This Skill Is Career-Defining
Situations like this are uncomfortable, but they’re often defining moments in a community manager’s career.
Maintaining an established community teaches you how to manage systems that already work. Building one from scratch teaches you many many skills. It forces you to think strategically, make decisions with incomplete information, and focus on fundamentals rather than surface-level activity.
It also changes how you see your role. You stop measuring success purely by short-term engagement and start thinking about relevance, trust, and long-term value.
Those skills are harder to develop, and not every community manager gets the opportunity to build them.
Why This Skill Makes You Stand Out
If you can build communities from scratch, you’re developing a skill that not every community manager has. And it’s one that genuinely sets you apart.
Not because it’s flashy, but because it shows you can operate without a playbook, adapt to uncertainty, and build something meaningful where nothing existed before.
That ability matters whether you’re growing in your current role, stepping into a more senior position, or positioning yourself for your next opportunity.
Challenges like these aren’t a sign that you’re failing. More often, they’re a sign that you’re being pushed into the kind of work that defines how you think, how you make decisions, and how you show up as a community manager.
And that matters far more than the numbers on a dashboard.
Get the 30-Day To Your Community Management Role, a free step-by-step guide to help you grow your career starting this month.
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💬 And if you want personalized support, feedback, or help applying these steps to your situation, book a free personal guidence chat