This week I’m sharing the 3 problems that show up right before you scale

If growth has plateaued and selling feels harder than it should, engagement is inconsistent, or you’re feeling burned out because everything depends on you, these are not marketing or motivation problems. They’re design problems. I walk through how stalled growth is usually tied to member progress, why engagement drops when there’s no clear path forward, and how burnout shows up when the system relies too heavily on the founder.

Whether you’re just getting started or running a large, established membership, these patterns surface at every level. The good news is they’re fixable when you focus on structure, member momentum, and designing journeys that work without you carrying all the weight.

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So this week I led a free training called Future Proof your membership.

And it was a lot of fun.

There was a bunch of items on the agenda, but I wanted to share a section that I reviewed with everybody, which I called the three problems.

I've seen every client experience before they scale.

And when I say before they scale, I mean when they finally get past that plateau, they start bringing in new members, their engagement is thriving and they're on their way to that seven figure membership level.

Now we see this with pretty much clients at every single stage, even those, I mean, we have a client right now with 80,000 paying members and they're experiencing some of these issues.

So a lot of these problems will surface and then you'll fix them and then they'll surface again when you reach a new level of growth.

And that's totally normal.

So whether you're just starting or you have a membership that has been thriving for a while, but now you're starting to have some stickiness.

Stickiness in a bad way, not stickiness like the last episode.

That is totally normal.

And so this episode should really resonate whether you're just starting or you're really on your way to growth.

So problem number one is that membership growth has plateaued and selling feels harder than it should.

I see a lot of different plateau levels and they'll hit, like I mentioned, like they really come up again and again.

So my 80,000 member client is experiencing this and I see it a lot in the early stages with like 25 members, 50 members, a hundred members.

It's totally normal.

And this happens.

So what it ends up looking like is that sales come in bursts, but they're not consistent.

Launches work, but only with a lot of effort.

You hesitate to sell harder because it just feels off.

Something about what you're offering feels icky to sell and referrals feel unpredictable or slow.

Your people aren't always sharing the membership and getting the word out there.

And if you're getting, getting any referrals, oftentimes you're having to like really ask for them.

Now when these problems arise, a lot of what we're thinking is I need more leads, I just need to get more people in my funnel, I need a better funnel, I need to post more consistently.

And so we jump to the fact that this is a marketing issue, but this actually isn't a marketing problem.

Marketing can bring people in, but it can't make growth compound.

So you have new members join, but they don't stay long enough to actually see results or when they're not doing the work and because of that they don't see results, they're not confidently referring.

And just to be clear, this doesn't mean that your membership is bad.

It usually just means you need more structure.

So compounding growth actually comes from creating member momentum, from getting your people results.

It means that people know where to start, that progress happens early, and you're giving them quick wins, that members experience connection and belonging early in their journey, and that wins are really visible and shareable.

The shareable piece is super crucial because the number one way to grow a community is through word of mouth marketing.

It's the best way.

And so the only way to get word of mouth marketing is for your members to actually experience wins or for people in their life to witness their evolution and growth and success and ask them, hey, what are you doing differently?

What's working for you?

What places are are you check like getting information, where?

What membership did you join?

Like, those are the questions that lead to the word of mouth buzz that we all want.

The second problem is that members are in, but they're not consistently showing up or doing the work.

So you're struggling with engagement.

They don't show up to the calls, or maybe they fall off like they came to the first couple calls and then they stop coming.

They don't actually use the content or you have no idea if they're using the content.

They never log in and they just totally ghost or they don't follow through with action.

They're not actually doing the work.

And because they're not doing the work again, they're not seeing any results.

And what this leads us to believe is that we need to add more value.

I just need to add more content.

I need more forum prompts.

I'm going to start posting more in the community.

I need to maybe add more calls.

Maybe I should try adding an additional Q and A.

But the solution is rarely that you need more.

This is not actually the problem because the number one reason people leave communities is because they feel overwhelmed.

What actually drives engagement isn't more content or more, more more of anything.

It's just better curation of an experience and a journey.

It starts with creating a roadmap or a really clear starting point and a personalized path for your members to follow so that they know what they should do, what they should do next, and what they should do next, and what they should do next.

And then intentional and supportive programming that encourages them to do the work.

And that's really why they engage, because they start doing the work through coming to these sessions and using the content that's there to help them with this integration.

And also this facilitates connection, which is why they stay.

So this starts to build a sense of belonging and accountability, which really increases engagement.

So, so this is the hierarchy, right?

But when they don't know where to start, when the content library is overwhelming and they don't have a clear path in front of them and it's generic and doesn't feel personalized to their specific journey, then they're not going to engage with it.

The third problem is that I'm putting a lot into this membership and I'm not sure it's paying off.

And this shows up usually as burnout.

It means that you're always on, you're carrying all the momentum yourself.

If you step back, things slow down.

You are the primary driver of conversation in every area of your community.

Everything basically depends on you.

And you feel like in order for your membership to be successful, you're thinking, I can't step back.

I just need to be more consistent.

It has to be me.

That's who they want, that's what they paid for.

And when you think about it like, that's really like a fan club experience.

And the reality is you don't have a personal capacity problem.

This isn't a capacity issue.

This isn't an issue where everything falls to you.

Burnout isn't failure, but it is a design signal that your systems aren't working, working, because if you step back and things fall apart, it means that the system itself is too fragile.

You haven't crafted an experience that's supported without your facilitation.

This shows up as feeling like it's.

There's no shared ownership.

And what I mean by that is like, your community doesn't step up when you step back.

And a good example here that I can give you is like, my friends Jay and Mallory Clouse had a maternity leave.

I think this was like two years ago now.

So they had a maternity leave in the summer and they said, said, hey, guys in the lab.

Community for professional creators.

Hey, we're, we're taking a maternity leave for a few months.

Do other people want to run calls?

And that was some of the most fun programming in that community that I can remember in the last four years being a member because they weren't there.

And so other members led calls and those calls were interesting and different.

You're introducing variation, you're introducing a pattern break.

So if you say, you know what, I'm going to take a Couple of weeks vacation and I'm going to have somebody else come in and do a call for my community that's actually fun for your members.

It's not a slight.

And also when you take vacation or when you step back, you're modeling good behavior to your members.

You're not saying, hey, burn the candle at both ends and constantly be available for everything all the time.

Like that's not real.

Besides the programming piece, then there is the problems that there's not a clear path for your members or there's no self sustaining momentum.

Now going back to the engagement conversation, if they had a really clear roadmap, personalized path, they have this plan they're working towards, they already have momentum, then if you're not there for a minute, it doesn't really matter because they're on this path.

So a lot of this has to come down to you don't have clear systems for how your community operates when you're not running the day to day.

So these three problems that most my clients experience when they're just about to scale actually are design problems.

The growth stalls when members don't experience progress, the engagement drops when there's no clear path forward, and burnout shows up when the system depends on you.

So when members don't know how to succeed inside your membership, growth, engagement and energy all take a hit.

If any of this resonated and if you're excited to scale your membership and you're like, man, I just need to think differently here, then what you really need is to revisit your structure.

You need to look at your insights, understand what's working and what's not, and you need to design new member journeys.

And if that feels like an overwhelming task ahead of you, then book a call with my team.

I'm gonna put the link in the show notes and we can chat with you about how we can help because there we have offers for really every stage and there's absolutely a way that we can help you with this so that you are able to scale, step out of that burnout, get your people super engaged and move past whatever growth plateau you're experiencing.

So we'd love to chat with you.

Book a call, it's linked in the show notes.

And let me know what you thought of this episode.

If any of these three problems resonated, I would love to chat with you.