Milestone and Mentor Community Ladder
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Brunson's structure for scaling a membership community without the intimacy collapsing. The problem with a circular, always-on community is that veterans get irritated by beginners' questions and the founder becomes the only source of help, which caps growth. The fix is to replace the flat room with a timeline of milestones, badges for each stage, and a mentorship obligation baked into progression: reaching the next level requires mentoring people at the level below. Members know exactly where they are, peers know how to help them, and the founder stops being the bottleneck. Brunson's claim is this is what lets a community hold 5,000 people without feeling overwhelming.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Check whether your community is circular or progressive
Ask if members are moving toward defined outcomes or simply showing up repeatedly. Ali's productivity membership was explicitly circular — like CrossFit classes, you keep attending to stay in shape — which is exactly the shape that resists scale.
Pro tip Circular communities are not wrong, but they need an invented progression layer if you want them large.
- 2
Define milestones as outcomes, not modules
Lay out a timeline of achievement levels members progress through. In Brunson's certification program the milestones are earnings as a funnel builder: first $10K, then $50K, $100K, then $1M.
Pro tip For non-revenue communities, pick the outcome your promise implies — for a productivity membership, something measurable like the doubling Ali already surveys for.
Watch out Milestones tied to content consumed rather than results achieved recreate the circular problem with extra steps.
- 3
Attach badges to sub-goals inside each milestone
Within each level, define the small things a member must do to advance. These make progress visible between the big jumps.
- 4
Make mentoring a requirement for advancement
Members past a milestone must mentor those below it as part of reaching the next one. Brunson's design means everyone is simultaneously a mentor to people behind them and a mentee to people ahead.
Pro tip This is what converts veteran irritation into engagement — the beginner's question becomes their job, not their annoyance.
- 5
Use level labels as the shared language on calls
When someone asks a question they state their level: 'I'm on level three.' Everyone instantly knows the context and can say 'I was stuck at level three too, here's what unblocks it.'
Pro tip Levels compress diagnosis time more than any support ticket system.
- 6
Only then open the doors
With progression and peer mentorship in place, new members can be added continuously without diluting the experience — the structure absorbs them. Brunson's test is whether you are now pumped about 5,000 members rather than afraid of them.
Pro tip Pair the ladder with smaller sub-groupings — 90-day cohorts, house-style teams — so belonging stays local while the whole scales.
Watch out Adding volume before the ladder exists is what produces the diluted community founders fear.
In the wild
Brunson's certification program admitted people continuously, so a member 18 months in sat alongside brand-new arrivals asking basics — and found it annoying. The rebuild put a timeline underneath it: milestones at $10K, $50K, $100K and $1M earned as a funnel builder, with badges for the steps in between. Crossing a milestone carries a mentoring duty toward the level below. Members now identify by level on calls, veterans engage instead of disengaging, and Brunson says the structure is what makes a 5,000-person room workable.
→ Turned veteran frustration into a mentorship engine and removed the founder as the sole source of answers.
Ali's $1,000-a-year Productivity Lab sold 500 capped spots in 48 hours and delivers daily co-working, weekly planning, monthly sessions and quarterly webinars. Wanting to scale without dilution, his team was experimenting with quarterly launches feeding 90-day cohorts and splitting members into smaller Harry Potter-style houses so each person's felt community stays small. Brunson's addition was the missing vertical axis: milestones and mentors, so members are progressing through something rather than only attending.
→ Community architecture became the identified prerequisite before scaling from 500 toward 5,000 members.
Common mistakes
Scaling headcount before building progression
Adding members to a flat room concentrates beginner questions on veterans and the founder. Brunson's sequence is structure first, volume second — otherwise the dilution you feared actually happens.
Leaving veterans with no role
A long-tenured member with nothing to advance toward becomes an irritated member. Making mentorship the price of the next milestone converts that energy into retention and peer support.
Milestones nobody can see themselves on
If members cannot say which level they are on, the ladder does nothing for calls, support or peer help. The labels are the operational payoff, not decoration.
From the transcript
“it it's based on there's there's um modules and Milestones right so I look at a timeline here where it's like you come in and…”
“so people who are past the 10,000 Mark they're like part of their role to get to here is like to become mentors”
“you could have 5,000 people and it doesn't get overwhelming the community”
From the episode
A Sales & Marketing Coaching Session with Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson