Boss Mom founder Dana Malstaff has built her reputation on creating engaged communities that foster genuine connection. Her San Diego-based company, founded in 2013, recently closed a 76,000-member Facebook group to launch Boss Mom Plus, a proprietary platform that gives entrepreneurial mothers control over their community experience.

“The only way you create real community is if you actually ask your audience questions where they get to have a voice. That’s the only way,” Dana emphasizes. “A true leader of a community doesn’t just talk and lead and give amazing inspiration. That’s part of it. But they have to facilitate conversation.”

Within two years of launching Boss Mom, Dana grew her business to $30,000 in monthly revenue by building a highly engaged community of mother entrepreneurs who felt fractured between their identities as business owners, mothers, and women. Her community-first approach offers valuable insights for creator economy professionals seeking to build sustainable audiences.

Community Building as Business Strategy

Dana’s expertise in community building wasn’t accidental. After leaving her role as Director of Health Improvement at Quantum Health, she recognized that mothers starting businesses faced unique psychological challenges that tactical business advice alone couldn’t solve.

“Starting a business for a mom becomes this intense self-discovery journey,” explains Dana. “Women are beating themselves up because they’re not making money right away. What they don’t realize is the sudden self-discovery journey of not knowing what their voice is, not knowing what their identity is.”

She began by creating products that addressed specific needs: content calendars, social media plans, and buzz-building strategies. However, the real business growth came from the community she cultivated through her Facebook group, podcast, and events.

“When we started making money, I would make small products that would solve a problem,” she explains. “How to make a business plan, how to do social media, how to make a content calendar.”

These digital products, combined with a highly engaged Facebook community, formed the foundation of a business that would reach six figures within eight months.

The Three Pillars of Community Connection

For Dana, effective communities require three essential elements:

1. Shared Vision of the Future – “Community has to be that we all agree we’re building towards a better world,” Dana states. “And every community has a different version of what that better world is.”

Her example for Boss Mom’s shared vision: “I want to live in a world where the government and businesses and banks take moms working 10 hours a week seriously. That’s a real business.”

2. Agreement on What’s Broken – “The second one is agreeing on what’s broken with the world in that particular area. We call it your industry opinions,” she explains.

For Boss Mom, this includes recognizing that society doesn’t take work-from-home mothers seriously, often dismissing their businesses as “side hustles” rather than legitimate enterprises.

3. Audience Voice – Most crucially, Dana emphasizes that community leaders must create space for participants to speak and connect with each other.

“You can create a sense of community by doing those two things. The only way you create real community is if you actually ask your audience questions where they get to have a voice,” she explains. “It only becomes a community when the person at the top isn’t the one dictating all of the conversation.”

From Facebook to Proprietary Platform

In early 2024, Dana made what many considered a risky decision: shutting down her 76,000-member Facebook group in favor of Boss Mom Plus, a subscription-based platform ($67 annually or $7.99 monthly) built on Circle.

“We shut all our coaching programs down. We shut down all revenue streams for Boss Mom. It was a huge, very scary thing,” she reveals. To replace this income while rebuilding, Dana took on several fractional CMO clients.

This move reflects Dana’s belief that owned community spaces offer greater control and trust-building potential than social media platforms. Initially, about 600-700 members transitioned to the new platform.

“The reason it’s so good is because we know how to build community. We know how to do it,” Dana explains about her confidence in rebuilding despite walking away from a massive Facebook following.

Meaningful Community Engagement

Dana shared her community-building expertise as a panelist at the latest Mom 2.0 Summit held in April this year, focusing on engagement strategies for creators. The panel discussed whether today’s fast-paced digital environment still allows for meaningful community building.

“The panel is about building community and engagement,” Dana explains. “Can you build community in the fast-paced world that we’re in today? And what does the community look like today that maybe looked different 10 years ago?”

The panel addressed practical questions about starting a community from scratch, approaches that work in today’s environment, and when community-building makes sense for different types of businesses.

“I don’t want people to just walk away and go, I wrote down a bunch of notes, and I’m going to do some things. I want women for the week after the panel be discussing the panel,” she says. “If we can get to that, then everybody who walks away from the event and walks away from that panel will do things differently.”

Trust as Currency in Community Building

At the heart of Dana’s community strategy is building trust through genuine connection rather than algorithmic reach.

“Trust is the commodity of the next decade,” she asserts. “And that means that what people want is more transparency.”

This approach aligns with what she calls “messy marketing” – a shift away from polished perfection toward more authentic content. “This is an amazing time for moms to create content, an amazing time for anybody in the creator economy because it means you don’t have to be perfect.”

For Boss Mom, this translates to a strategy centered on building trust through real connection rather than optimizing for algorithms. The proprietary Boss Mom Plus platform embodies this approach, prioritizing relationship-building over virality.

Expanding the Community Vision

Boss Mom is now expanding its community-building efforts through several initiatives:

Research and Data – Conducting studies on issues affecting mothers to produce reports that establish Boss Mom as a trusted source.

Recognition Programs – Every Labor Day celebration (what Dana calls “the Boss Mom New Year”), the company will publish annual lists including “Boss Mom Legends” and “Up and Coming Boss Moms” to celebrate community achievements.

501(c)(3) Nonprofit – In development for launch by the end of 2025, this foundation will provide funding for daycare, business coaching, and other support for vulnerable mothers.

The Boss Mom Book (Second Edition)—This revised edition, set for release this year, focuses on identity integration rather than just business tactics.

Virtual Summit – Scheduled for after Mother’s Day, this online event will gather the community for learning and connection.

Maternal Entrepreneurship: Building Community Through Shared Experience

Dana’s community-building success stems from her deep understanding of the maternal entrepreneurship experience. After becoming a mother herself, she experienced the identity fracturing that many entrepreneurial mothers face.

“Before I had kids, it all felt so easy and integrated. The moment I had my son, I didn’t know who I was anymore,” she shares. She felt guilty for wanting professional fulfillment alongside motherhood, admitting, “I had this pain in me that was this deep guilt that I felt for the fact that I wanted my son at 6 weeks old to take a nap so that I could work on my business.”

By openly addressing these tensions in her community, Dana creates space for mothers to acknowledge their complex identities rather than compartmentalizing them.

The Future of Community-Based Business

Looking ahead, Dana envisions Boss Mom’s community approach transforming how society views mothers’ professional contributions.

“Our long-term goal is that whenever a woman finds out she’s pregnant, she buys What to Expect When You’re Expecting. And Boss Mom,” Dana states. “Our goal is that every mom starts a business because we believe it is an important self-discovery journey back to being whole again.”

She aims to remove the term “side hustle” from discussions about mothers’ businesses and help women build businesses without conforming to traditional social media expectations.

“That every mom could have a six-figure business by hiring each other without ever having to dance on Instagram unless they want to,” she explains. “Because right now the only way to succeed is you have to be out in this audacious way online.”

For creator economy professionals, Dana offers this advice: “If you can figure out what that shared vision is, if you can figure out what the broken part of the world is, you can create belonging, you can help create that kind of connection, and then you create trust. And if you can create trust, that’s the way to win right now.”