Episode

BTS: Evolving the Deeper Foundations Membership from 20 to 150 members

Podcast
Aggressively Human: For experts choosing expansion over extraction.
Published
May 21, 2026
Duration seconds
3282
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://aggressivelyhuman.substack.com/p/74-deeper-foundations-membership
Audio
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/198411764/f4ccfe3b2090ce8cdc685053a1189a20.mp3
JSON
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Markdown
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Summary

After nearly two years and a survey of 50+ members, Jessica’s Deeper Foundations membership had clearly outgrown its original container — and Jessica finally had the data to prove what was working, what was friction, and what needed to be rebuilt. In this episode, Jessica walks Meg through the full arc: how the membership started as a 10-lesson video library for 20 superfans, grew to 150+ members with 2-3 weekly events, and what happened when she asked them what they needed now that the membership had grown. She shares the five member profiles she identified, the eight themes Claude surfaced from survey responses, and the new five foundations framework that now anchors the entire onboarding experience. We talk about what it looks like to redesign something that isn’t broken but has gotten too unwieldy to navigate — and what it cost (including her back) to rebuild it in two weeks. Get a real look at what happens when you’ve been cobbling together gaps with your own presence for two years and then evolve the infrastructure to match. * Why a membership built for 20 superfans doesn’t automatically work for 150 people who don’t already know your work * Why the new design wouldn’t work on a smaller scale, and why community needs to evolve * The five member profiles: Students, Coworkers, Community members, All-ins, and Drop-ins — and why welcoming all five changes how the experience is designed * What members said about Sacred Sales Hour that Meg immediately called a sales page testimonial * The eight themes surfaced from 40 survey responses and 10 intervies, and which ones were already suspected vs. actually surprising * Why “content volume and navigation” is the top friction point — and how Jessica’s new Five Foundations framework addresses it * Dunbar’s number, capping the…