How LWS built a love letter to the 90s internet: a membership hub that hundreds of strategists love

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The Problem

For most of its ten years in operation, the LWS community lived in Slack, group chats, and a few clunky tools that didn’t talk to each other.

As the paid membership grew into the hundreds, founder Kim Mackenzie knew she needed a better user experience. Strategy tools and recorded classes lived in Notion, events ran through Luma, in-person event tickets ran through Stripe, and the annual in-person retreat in Mexico went through CheddarUp.

Tiered access was the biggest pain point: different membership levels were supposed to unlock different resources and events, but gating them reliably in Notion and Luma was nearly impossible. Members also bemoaned the biggest barrier to jumping fully into the community: shyness. They needed a digital platform that didn’t feel like it was mining member data (or being creepy) while also helping members "freely discover juicy bits of knowledge about one another."

Kim didn’t want to hire developers for a custom build and she didn’t want a black box — when something broke, she wanted to be able to understand or fix it herself. She knew she needed a platform that could:

• Centralize information in one place: The LWS member directory, resources, events, and tools (like a matchmaker and mentorship program) needed to live in one place. Everything needed to help members discover other members and reach out. ‍
• Provide tiered content access by membership level: Members pay monthly or annually across different tiers, and each tier should automatically unlock the right content when a member logs in. ‍
• Protect member trust: The community is built on psychological safety, consent, and data privacy. No upsells, no data selling. The platform had to feel private and standalone.

The Solution

Kim started by building a public-facing freelance strategist directory in Softr over a single holiday weekend. She then expanded it into a full membership hub, which is now the private home base for LWS's paid members: the central place where they connect with other members, sign up for events, view resources, join a mentorship program, and more.  

LWS membership runs on tiers, and each tier maps to a Softr user group. This means when a member logs in, they automatically see only the resources and sections their tier gives them access to. 

The hub covers 7+ core membership workflows: 

• Member directory and profile management: Members add their profiles and can browse the full community and filter by strategy specialty, industry experience, location, Enneagram and Myers-Briggs type, or star sign. Each profile holds up to 54 fields — only email, LinkedIn, a photo, and star sign are required, so members share as much personal or professional detail as they want. Members can privately bookmark one another’s profiles and DM one another on Slack through their member profile on Softr.
• Cosmic matchmaker: A simple algorithm Kim built in her database surfaces 3 naturally compatible members based on star sign. It's the deliberate opposite of sterile professional networking, and it's usually the first thing members open, even the busy senior ones. It gives people who'd never cold-message a low-stakes, genuine reason to reach out.
• Mentorship matchmaker: Members can find mentors or mentees filtered by strategy specialty, geography, preferred way of connecting, and whether someone is open to mentoring, being mentored, or both. (“It drives real reach-outs by breaking down the shyness barrier,” said Kim). When a member's profile email matches their Slack account, other members can DM them directly from the hub.
• Member spotlights: Members can nominate one another for a spotlight, a public "pay it forward" moment where the community says nice things about a highlighted member.
• Resource library: A tier-gated library of community resources, migrated from Notion to Softr so access follows each member's membership level automatically. Members can bookmark profiles and resources to a personal saved section as they explore the community. 
• Community calendar: An events calendar where members can see and register for upcoming events, replacing the need for a separate subscription like Luma.
• Automations: A handful of Softr Workflows already power the member experience, including saving bookmarks, registering for events, setting up member generated local gatherings, updating profiles, and helping members discover what's included in their membership.

The Impact

The LWS hub now serves hundreds of paid members, with 72% of paid members actively logging in and using it. Kim built the full hub herself over the course of a few weeks, with no technical background or developer help — and replaced 4 different tools and subscriptions in the process. She ships changes herself, with full confidence to iterate on and expand the platform based on community needs.

The response from members has been enthusiastic. “They love it,” said Kim. The cosmic matchmaker is usually the first thing they open, and the mentorship matchmaker is generating real reach-outs by giving senior strategists a tangible reason to connect. 

Kim frames the Softr build as an investment: the time she spent building has paid off in member experience, in how members perceive LWS as a company, and in her own mental and business health.

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