Behind The Membership with Callie Willows (The Membership Guys)

Chris Ducker joins Callie in the final season 3 episode of Behind the Membership to talk all about his membership site Youpreneur Academy.

Chris already had several successful 7 figure businesses before starting Youpreneur Academy four years ago, and here he talks about how his desire to create a legacy and help others achieve success led to him creating his membership in the first place. And how then niching down from focusing on general online businesses to personal brand businesses really made a difference to his results.

Chris also discusses how the positioning of the membership and its place in his ecosystem has evolved over the years as he's added additional features like a live event, new book and round table mastermind, as well as new projects he has on the horizon.

And Chris talks about how he spent 12 months testing the closed door model, and why he wouldn't do it again. How organic marketing and content is the key to their new member sales, and what he's doing to achieve a five to 6% retention rate, including the importance of growth records in his community, and why he's stopping his monthly member q&a call.

Plus, Chris reveals that he spends just three hours a week on the membership on average! Listen in to find out how.

In this episode of behind the membership, I'm talking with Brandon Vogt from Claritas U about how he's achieved success with his membership site for Catholics who want to get clear on their faith.

Brandon has managed to create and run this six figure membership site alongside a full time job and gained over a thousand members with just his first launch, a pretty impressive achievement by anyone's standards.

Here we look at how Brandon uses the launch model to only open his site twice a year and the pros and cons he's found of doing this, including how it impacts his churn and ongoing member numbers.

We also talk premium tiers, engagement, content creation, retention and more!

Listen in to hear

• How he managed to achieve over 1200 members with his first launch
• The pros and cons he’s found of having a launch cycle membership and why he might not choose that route if he was starting again
• How he cut his churn in half and and uses ongoing content to keep members coming back for more
• Why Brandon decided to move from books and speaking to a membership site and how it’s saving him time and stress
• How Brandon created and runs his membership alongside a full time job and with a minimal team
• Offering both standard and VIP membership options and how this impacted sign up numbers
• How he overcame objections from an audience unfamiliar with membership sites
• Why he gave influencers in his niche free accounts and how this created a loyal band of evangelists for the membership
• Why he’s considering moving to an evergreen membership despite his success with launches

Felicia Lo from School of Sweet Georgia, a membership site for fibre artists, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

Felicia first started her blog way back in 2004 and her physical business manufacturing beautiful hand dyed yarns, Sweet Georgia Yarns, in 2005. Over the years Felicia has also taught classes for companies like Craftsy, written a book, and run a yarn based subscription box, so by the time she started her membership School of SweetGeorgia in 2017 she already had a huge amount of experience in her market.

In this episode, we're talking all about how Felicia is able to run the membership site alongside her well established physical business, and how having the two overlapping, but still separate, sides of the business works well for her and gives her more flexibility and stability.

We also talk about how Felicia used Patreon for her initial idea validation, which gave her the incentive and accountability to create her full membership site. And we talk about the team she has helping her to keep both businesses thriving, plus how she focuses on YouTube for attracting new members, her plans for bringing guest teachers to her in-person studio to record courses, and much, much more besides.

Lisa League from QPractice is today's guest on episode 9 of Behind the Membership with Callie Willows.

QPractice has been running for 4 years and focuses on helping interior designers to pass their professional exams, which means that the membership is somewhat finite as there is a natural conclusion to the membership once members pass their exams. Listen in to find out how Lisa deals with this and ensures that the membership works for both her and her members.

"I really have liked how it's just grown and evolved over time...I've really, really enjoyed the under the hood stuff as well as making the content."

Listen in to find out:

• How Lisa initially got started with online education and community building
• Dealing with the inbuilt churn of a results based or limited lifecycle membership
• Using audience feedback to steer course development
• Pre-selling the membership and creating content live
• Providing assessments, hands on review and feedback as core membership features
• The challenge of getting and keeping good team members
• How the membership site has drastically evolved over the last 4 years, including the need for custom software development
• Being hands on in the community and dealing with high levels of customer support
• Why she uses and recommend Mighty Networks for membership communities
• Attracting members with SEO and content marketing
• Using a guarantee to encourage action and implementation
• Why she's focusing on simplifying for the future

In today's episode of Behind the Membership Callie is joined by Mike Collins from The Green Room.

Mike runs his membership site alongside his wife Carina, and over the five years and thousands of members that they've had, they've crafted an amazing community of people around the world, all connected by their Irish ancestry. In fact there is an incredible sense of community in everything that Mike and Carina do, and in this episode you'll hear all about the special touches they add to really make their members feel connected and part of something, including a bi-monthly magazine and member conferences with a difference.

Listen in to hear about that and more, such as how Mike manages to travel around the world creating living history for his members. And of course you'll hear about some of the challenges along the way too, like finding the right team and learning how to attract members on a consistent basis.

John Tuggle from Learning Guitar Now joins me on this weeks episode of Behind the Membership.

Learning Guitar Now has been around for over 10 years now, starting out selling books, DVDs and standalone courses before adding a membership offering into the mix. John's membership now accounts for around 75% of his monthly income, with one-off product sales making up the rest and John has a lot of great experience to share!

John has been running his membership for 3 years now, after spending 7 years selling higher priced one-off products. We talk:

• How nicheing down and focusing on his passion made all the difference to John's success
• Starting out selling DVDs and courses for hundreds of dollars and why John then decided to add a $19.95 per month membership
• How going all in doubled his sales and brought him more freedom
• Promoting a membership with free lessons and member exclusive extras
• The benefits of selling one-off products alongside a membership
• Dealing with ill health and the challenge of staying creative
• How using a forum for answering member questions provides additional content
• John's course production process
• and much more!

Jodie Clarke from The Empowered Educator joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership. While Jodie's membership is only just a year old she has already surpassed her member goals and even managed to retire her partner from his job, which has had an enormous impact on her family's life.

In this episode Jodie's talking all about how she succeeded with her membership, from nurturing her wait list to her webinar strategy that's bringing in 5 to 10 new members at a time on autopilot.

And Jodie also talks about moving from a closed door model to an evergreen model and why she's chosen to do that, and so much more as well!

In the final episode of season five of Behind The Membership, Craig Cannings, co-founder of Freelance University, joins us to share the story of how he and his wife Kelly transformed their business after switching to the membership model. 

He shares what inspired him to go down the membership route after selling a la carte courses for so long, why they made the decision to adopt the closed-door enrollment model and how they’ve found a way to stabilize growth in-between launches. 

He also talks about what it’s like running a membership with his wife, the changes they made to the business during the global pandemic to better serve their audience and how they use badges and certifications to aid member retention… Plus much much more. 

About Craig 

Craig is the co-founder and Chief Learning Officer of Freelance University, the #1 learning hub for Freelancers to level up their skills and increase their income opportunities. Since 2008, Craig has been delivering high-impact online training to 1000s of students in over 75 countries. He has been freelancing successfully since 2003 and has design a proven plan for launching a thriving Freelance business in 30 days or less.

Key Quotes

“It’s a very interesting space as we see this freelance economy boom, even in the midst of a global pandemic.”

“Now we’re at a really good place. We have almost 800 members in our community and we’re at the highest point we’ve ever been.” 

“The membership has allowed me to take control of the business, as opposed to let my emotions or the model control me.” 

Connect with Craig

Freelanceu.com 

Twitter

LinkedIn

Julie Christie from Togs in Business joins Callie on this week's episode of Behind the Membership.

Julie's membership is less than a year old, and Julie shares some great insights into the first 6 months of her membership and how important narrowing down her ideal member has been and why her focus is on quality of members rather than quantity.

We talk Julie's journey so far, including:

• How Julie began teaching the business of photography and decided to escape the launch cycle
• The challenge - and importance - of identifying and attracting her ideal members
• How quality of members is more important than quantity
• Juggling both a forum and a Facebook group for her membership community
• Moving to an application process and purposefully adding obstacles to joining
• Attracting members with live and automated webinars
• How Julie created 'Success Month' to get new members off to a great start
• And more!

Shannon Rogers from The Hand Tool School joins Callie on episode 8 of the Behind the Membership podcast.

The Hand Tool School has been up and running for 7 years now offering standalone courses (Semesters), and the recurring membership element (Apprenticeship) was added just over 12 months ago. Shannon provides a unique approach to his teaching model and makes impressive use of automation and tagging to provide a more hands on and customised approach to his members.

Shannon has a wealth of experience to share so listen in to find out:

• How he's managed to succeed in a low-cost hobby based market by being a niche within a niche
• How his site grew from a podcast and video show to monetising with an online school
• Why he created a coaching based membership alongside his standalone courses and how he's combined these into a cohesive learning system
• How advances in automation have helped him to scale and enable a more personal approach
• How he's using live video and tripwire products to attract new members
• How he manages running the school alongside a full time job (and without a team!)
• Why creating content based on member needs forms the backbone of his membership
• How he completely redesigned and relaunched his site a year ago
• Why you just need to be one step ahead of the people you're teaching
• Why fostering a strong and supportive community makes life easier
• And much more!

John Hatcher from the Blues Guitar Institute joins Callie Willows for this episode of Behind the Membership.

John was previously a CPA and tax accountant working 60 to 80 hours a week, but since having his membership he has been able to quit his job and now focuses full time on his membership site, giving him far more freedom. This is even more impressive when you consider that John's membership only actually costs $9 a month!

In this episode John talks about how he made that career transition, as well as how he manages his time and the challenge of content creation in a video-heavy membership site. John also talks about how he went from not having any community at all in his membership, to struggling to get engagement, to now having a thriving community with members connecting and sharing their own videos as well. And of course lots more too!

Trish Blackwell, a confidence coach and creator of the College of Confidence is our guest for this episode of Behind the Membership. Funnily enough, Trish's biggest challenge with her membership initially was actually having the confidence in her ideas and what she wanted to create. Something that she was able to overcome in order to build a thriving membership site that's now been running for over three years and which is continuing to grow and evolve.

In this episode, we're talking all about how Trish overcame her original doubts and how the membership model has allowed her to 3x her private coaching fee, while still helping even more people. 

We’re also discussing the challenges of running a business with small children at home and how hiring support for her community was a game changer for Trish and her membership, plus much, much more.

I’m kicking off season two of Behind the Membership with a very special guest, the one and only Scott Devine from Scott’s Bass Lessons.

Now, Scott was actually a client of ours for many years, the very last client we stopped working with in fact. And we saw his site go from free YouTube videos and a PayPal donate button to a seven figure membership site in the years that we worked with him.

Scott’s Bass Lessons has been running for 6 years now and has attracted over 30,000 members in that time. It’s also gone from one-man bad to having a full faculty of world class bass educators. So there’s a lot to pack into this episode!

My guest today is Caryn Liles from the Centre of Canine Education. And while her membership is only a few months old, I really wanted to share her experience with listeners to show what's possible with memberships even when you have to launch quickly and in a market that you may not think is a fit for online training. Because when COVID-19 first hit earlier this year, Caryn could have easily thought the worst when she had to close her brick-and-mortar dog training business down overnight.

Instead, she chose to pivot quickly to an online membership model for both her existing clients and a wider audience as well. And it's been such a success that she isn't even sure if she'll open up her physical business again. 

In just a few months having a membership has quite literally been life-changing for Caryn, giving her more time, less stress and a better work-life balance than she ever thought possible. 

I love what Caryn has created and how she has really embraced the membership model while still putting her own spin on things like offering free discovery calls to attract new members. 

Our guest on this episode of Behind The Membership is Vahn Petit, Founder and singing coach at School Visualize, an online contemporary singing school based in France.

When Vahn made the decision to adopt a child she realised that she needed to make some changes to the way she worked so she could prioritize family time… and a membership offered her the perfect opportunity to do that. 

Since launching School Visualize just under two years ago Vahn shares how she has quadrupled her income after niching down to the French market, how she attracts new members using YouTube and how recently introducing a new tier to her membership has enabled her to offer one on one coaching to a limited number of members.

She also discusses how the pandemic has had a positive impact on her membership, how she’s building a thriving community who plan to meet in person soon, her goals for the future and much more!

About Vahn: 

Vahn has been a singing teacher in contemporary music for 20 years helping her students get the best of their voice with passion. She teaches a diverse range of singers from beginners and self-taught to professionals.  

Key Quotes:

“I'm kind of an idealist, so seeing people from all over the world - because it is not only French people. There are Canadian and people living in Africa and in the Arabic countries. Yeah, everywhere - It's just wonderful.” 

“I always have new ideas, so it's not a problem to come up with content.”

“I think that's one of the beauties of a membership is that you can have that relationship with your members where it's a bit easier to say, something's come up. I'm going to need to postpone this, or I need to do this a bit differently this month, and things like that as well.”

Connect with Vahn: 

School Vocalize

YouTube

Instagram

Our guest on this episode of Behind the Membership is offering an interesting and slightly different perspective on memberships… 

Unlike the majority of our guests Ali McGee Kelly doesn’t actually own her own site, she manages The Social Media Marketing Society, a membership owned by one of the world’s biggest social media marketing blogs, Social Media Examiner.

In this episode Ali shares what it's like to manage a membership as part of a wider team for a larger business, she talks about the changes the company has been forced to make as a result of the global pandemic and the Society’s unique approach to recruiting guest experts.

She also reveals some changes that have been made behind the scenes to enhance member experience, why the Society has decided to adopt the open door model and how Ali and her team manage content within the membership to ensure it stays relevant in an industry that changes almost daily. 

About Ali:

Ali McGee Kelly is the manager for the Social Media Marketing Society with Social Media Examiner. For the past several years, she has pursued an expertise in social media marketing to help businesses capitalize on this relatively new marketing resource. Her passion for making social media work for businesses is evidenced by my MBA thesis where she benchmarked the use of Social Media for small businesses in Central Kentucky.

Key Quotes:

“I’m not responsible for acquiring the members, but I am responsible for retaining them.”

“We take pride in the level of service and communication we have with outside speakers” 

“The interesting thing that I think makes us a little different than a lot of other memberships is, we do not come to the table claiming to be the expert in any one thing ourselves. And this is the same across all of our products with Social Media Examiner. We are acquirers of talent.”

 Connect with Ali:

The Social Media Marketing Society

Social Media Examiner

Twitter

Katie Wardrobe from Midnight Music, a membership specialising in helping music teachers with technology, is the final guest for season four of Behind the Membership.

Midnight Music has been running for 4 years now and while it has always been successful, Katie has actually managed to nearly double her member base during the current pandemic, even though she has actually been focused on providing more free content and resources for her audience during this time.

In this episode we talk about how Katie has started providing her previous member only webinars for free each month, attracting thousands of attendees each time, her experiments with creating live courses, and why she reduced her price during the pandemic.

We also talk about the increased challenges involved when schools are paying for a teacher's membership, how Katie engages her members by answering forum questions via video, hiring a content manager to keep her free content on track and much, much more!

Laura Robinson from Worditude joins Behind the Membership this week for the 10th and final episode of Season 1.

The Worditude Club is still in it's first year and Laura talks with us about how the membership has already changed and evolved in that time, why she is aiming for consistency more than scale, how collaborating with others has helped growth and also how the membership fits in with her one-to-one services as well. And much more!

Having the membership club does naturally market my one-to-one services, because I'm constantly marketing the club but there's always going to be those people that look at that and go, "No, I don't want to have to figure out this myself. I just want to pay you and you do it for me."

Laura discusses the lessons learned in her first 9 months of the membership, including:

• Creating the membership based on audience demand
• Moving from a hands-off membership to a more personal offering
• Why she no longer creates new content every month and the benefit of member-led content
• Creating a pathway to help members navigate through content
• Closing the membership whilst making changes to ensure the best new member experience
• Why consistency is more important than quantity
• Juggling running a membership site with one-to-one work
• Taking a break when times get challenging
• Using collaborations to get in front of new people and attract new members
• How having a membership has helped to break the feast-famine cycle of one-to-one work

Holly Gillen from Business Cinema Academy and Holly G Studios is joining Callie on this episode of Behind the Membership.

Holly has been running her membership alongside her video production business for 15 months now, after trying lots of other business models previously. Holly shares a lot of great tips for us in this interview, including how she uses challenges to attract new members, her experience with using Kajabi for her membership site, and how important it is to only attract members when they're ready for your membership.

Holly talks with Callie about the first 15 months of Business Cinema Academy, including:

• How Holly attracts new members with free video challenges
• Using themed months to help members focus
• The power of watching members transform and succeed
• How using Kajabi has cut out the tech headaches of running a membership
• The #oneminuteonetake video challenge
• Using a quiz to tell sales page visitors  if the membership is for them
• The value of experimenting and not staying stagnant
• Increasing engagement and connection with personal check in videos
• Why she wished she'd started the membership site earlier!

In this episode of Behind the Membership I'm talking with Janet Murray, PR and marketing strategist and owner of The Studio membership.

Janet has actually built a whole ecosystem around her membership, providing a natural progression through a different range of services and products including books, live events, consulting and mastermind groups.

Here we dive into the role The Studio has in Janet's business, and how the membership has evolved and expanded over the last few years, actually resulting in a current rebrand and a restructuring.

We also look at why customer care is vital and some of the things Janet is doing differently to help with both attracting new members and keeping existing members, including the use of open days, reset and exit calls.

In this episode of Behind the Membership Callie talks with Scott Baptie from Food for Fitness about his new membership site, The Food for Fitness Inner Circle.

While Scott's membership site has only been open for a few months, he already has a few hundred members, and here we're talking launching, going all in on the membership model after years of offering services and products, and how he's managed to attract members, despite being in a very crowded market.

We also dive into how Scott uses features like private coaching and accountability groups as part of his membership, as well as what he's doing to grow his membership and improve retention going forward.

In this episode of Behind the Membership, Deborah Engelmajer discusses her membership site for makers and handmade businesses, Tizzit HQ. Deborah's membership is just eight months old, but already a six figure a year business.

Deborah shares how she actually delayed creating her membership site in order to build her audience first, which she attributes as the key to her success. She also talks about how having a membership site has reduced stress and provided more balance, enabling Deborah to do what she loves, like focus on her community.

And Deborah also discusses how engaged the Tizzit community is and what she does to encourage this, including how she sent welcome packages to her first 250 members when she initially launched. Plus the challenges of content creation, how aspects of the membership such as coaching calls, have evolved since the membership first opened and much more.

Christopher Sutton from Musical U joins Callie on episode 6 of Behind the Membership.

Christopher has run his business for 8 years now, with his membership site being the predominant offering since 2015.  Christopher places a lot of emphasis on user experience and gamification in the membership and unlike many membership site owners, Christopher is also not the figurehead or guru of the membership, in fact most of the content is created by other people.

Christopher talks about the last 2 years of the Musical U membership, including:

• How Christopher started his company after noticing a big gap in the market
• Moving from creating and selling iphone apps to a membership model
• How Christopher has built his business by predominantly outsourcing content creation and not making himself the guru
• Gamifying the member experience for increased success
• Why his community is such a vital part of the membership and aids retention
• How more sales created a need to change the member experience and reassess his UX
• How offering a trial has benefited his membership sales
• Making use of personalised opt-ins and segmentation for better results
• Building a team with a shared mission and the freedom that brings
• Why his focus is on organic growth and not Facebook ads
• Adding new products and membership tiers as the membership grows

Today's guest on Behind The Membership is Steve Pavlina, a prolific name in the personal growth space and owner of the Conscious Growth Club. 

Steve actually has a bit of a different membership model to most you'll hear on this podcast, offering a 12-month membership at a price point of $1997. He also only launches the membership once a year, so his membership is small and intimate by design.

Steve shares some great insights into why he picked this model and why it's worked well for his audience and the kind of results he helps his members to achieve. 

Steve has really fine-tuned who his membership is for and isn't afraid to remove those that aren't a good fit, realising that alignment and attracting the right members is absolutely key for the kind of community that he is creating.

Listen in to hear how going to Disneyland every day for 30 days was what inspired Steve to first start his membership, how 30-day challenges work for his membership community, and how his low-key five-day launches brings him six figures, allowing him to focus on his members for the other 360 days of the year. Plus, of course, much more!

Mark Asquith, founder of Podcast Success Academy, is my guest on this week’s episode of Behind The Membership. 

Mark’s membership story is a little different to most, not only because of its position as part of a wider ecosystem of businesses, but also because it has a whole tier that members can access for free! 

In this episode Mark shares how Podcast Success Academy came to be and what inspired him to build it using the freemium model. He also shares how he’s building a community with two very definitive segments who share an interest in all of his products and the challenges he’s faced in getting his audience to take action. 

Plus he explains how he’s going the extra mile to give his audience the best learning experience by plugging a gap of knowledge in the podcast industry, without the hard sell… And much more. 

About Mark:  

Mark Asquith is a serial entrepreneur who has built several globally successful businesses since he quit his real job in 2005.

Billed as the U.K. podcast expert, Mark is CEO & co-founder of Rebel Base Media, a podcast tech and strategy company that owns Captivate.fm, Poductivity, Podcast Websites, Podcast Success Academy & Rebel Base Studios and is well known as an insightful, thought-provoking and actionable podcast industry keynote speaker.

He's a wildly approachable Brit, Star Wars/DC Comics geek and believes that good business starts with being good to people.

Key Quotes:

“It's a fascinating model. People like it. I think people like that transparency of "all right, you're a host, but this other thing exists, and if I want that, it's extra, but you're not pushing it down my throat." Whereas a lot of people would have to upsell something”

“The ecosystem, this idea of growing a business or a set of businesses horizontally, not just vertically, was fascinating to us. It took a lot of patience.” 

“Our goal is to be a place that everyone can come to learn. If they end up buying, all well and good” 

Connect with Mark:

RebelBaseMedia.io

MarkAsquith.com

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

On this episode of Behind the Memberhip, George Reid is talking all about his membership site for Amazon based businesses, the LaunchPod Academy. 

George started the membership 15 months ago after originally working for Amazon in the UK and then creating an Amazon agency. Over the last year, the membership has become the main focus of his business though, now accounting for 80% of his revenue. 

One of the things George is most passionate about is ensuring he is giving his members the best experience and making his membership as ‘sticky’ as possible, meaning his retention, even for annual renewals, is great. 

In this episode, we're talking all about how George originally started the membership with his brother but is now flying solo, how he is utilising guest experts for creating content, and some of the new strategies he's trying to improve his retention even further.

Varvara Lyalyagina from Start Blog Up joins Callie Willows for this episode of Behind the Membership to talk all about her membership for Russian speaking entrepreneurs, The Studio.

In this episode Varvara's talking about how she is succeeding with her membership despite it being for a market not as familiar with the membership model, and why she has decided, after a year of being open all the time, to experiment with moving from an always open model to closing the doors and only letting new members in at certain times.

Varvara also talks about the emotional challenges of running a membership and learning not to take cancellations personally, the power of members promoting your membership for you, and how adding a personal touch with things like video and gifts is aiding her retention. And Varvara also shares her strategy for running online parties to attract new members, plus more!

Joining me on this episode of Behind the Membership is Colin Gray from The Podcast Host Academy. 

Colin actually had a false start with his membership, something many of us fear, but is now starting to thrive after pivoting his approach and brand.

Colin's membership is still quite young, but he shares some great insights, including:

• Why his first membership site didn't quite work and what he did to fix that
• Making a natural link between free and paid content, and the different roles his blog and podcast play
• Why he's not sure about having a community in the membership
• The challenge of creating ongoing value
• How live support plays a large part in his membership success
• The value in creating short actionable content to aid member results
• How looking outside of other membership sites for inspiration is a good idea
• How he's adding a SaaS product into the mix with his membership
• and more!

With a background in psychology, hypnosis, entertaining and influencing, Rob and Kennedy, owners of The League of Email Marketing Heroes are no strangers to the membership world.

In fact, they both run successful memberships for their diverse range of businesses. 

In this week’s episode of Behind The Membership they’re sharing the story of The League, a membership that teaches entrepreneurs how to turn their marketing emails into profits using psychology.  

During the episode they tell us how they’ve taken ownership of the email marketing space, growing their membership successfully starting with little to no audience, why they choose to send psychology driven daily emails and how 95% of their member conversions come via email. 

Plus they share how they manage their time effectively while running all of their businesses, why they’ve chosen not to adopt the closed-door enrollment model and how their top lead magnet isn’t actually a lead magnet… And much much more. 

This episode is packed with a lot of value! 

About Rob and Kennedy: 

Rob Temple, Hypnotist, Marketer and Penguin Lover

Born in London before moving to Sunderland in the North East of England as a young child, Rob always wanted to be one of the cool kids.

So he took up learning Magic as a hobby. Go Rob!

Despite not understanding why this kept him from the popular tribe, he went on to win multiple awards as Young Magician of The Year at The Magic Circle.

After performing close up magic at weddings and children's parties he saw a hypnosis show and convinced his Dad to pay the hypnotist for mentorship.

This lead Rob to moving to the Greek island of Kos for a number of summer seasons where he hypnotised and entertained thousands of tourists in his infamous shows.

Realising that these gigs won't keep knocking on his door, Rob decided to apply his skills to marketing himself which lead to him performing all over the world in places like The Seychelles and for events for royalty.

While sitting around the pool waiting to perform, Rob started accepting offers from marketing companies and coaches to help them apply his skills to their businesses and quickly saw the results he was getting for them.

Kennedy, Psychological Mind Reader, Creative and Theatre Lover

Refusing to do PE at school, Kennedy spent extra curricular time in anything and everything to do with the theatre.

Amateur dramatics where he played parts in the likes of The Railway Children and Oliver meant that whenever there was a choice in school, he'd choose the theatre.

His mother discovered his entrepreneurial flare when she emptied out his school trousers to find the 50p coins he'd been collecting from the other kids in exchange for writing excuse notes so they could skip. school.

Naughty Kennedy.

After seeing someone on TV memorise a deck of cards, Kennedy became obsessed with the potential of our minds and this lead him to study influence, body language, micro-expressions, misdirection and memory.

He combined these skills with his natural wit (or as his mother calls it, his ability to ‘think his way out of anything' into an after dinner show.

Since many of the clients who booked him were large corporations like Yahoo!, Mars, Tarmac and Royal London he spent a lot of time in departure lounges and hotel rooms waiting to perform.

He used...

Louise Brogan from Social Bee Academy joins Callie for this episode of Behind the Membership.

Louise has run the Social Bee Academy alongside her business Social Bee NI for around 18 months now and in this episode Louise shares what's been working for her when it comes to attracting new members, including how connecting one to one with people via in person workshops and networking events, as well as online via Facebook and LinkedIn messenger have been great ways to grow her site.

Louise also talks about the challenges and highlights of her membership journey so far, including why she has moved from a closed model to always being open, and how seeing the results from her members makes everything worthwhile. And you'll also hear why Louise plans to focus even more on her membership this year and really make the membership a priority in her business!

Meet Anna Geiger - mom of 6 and owner of The Measured Mom Plus, an online membership that offers resources, printables and training to pre k-third grade educators. 

In this episode of Behind The Membership, Anna joins us to share the story of how she has turned her hobby into a thriving business. 

What started as a blog sharing content with family and friends while living abroad has become, over the space of 8 years, an online shop and membership that attracts millions of site visits per month and hundreds of thousands of subscribers to her mailing list.

In this episode Anna talks about how she’s built her audience, why she made the decision not to sell any of her products until two years after her blog went live and what inspired her to launch her membership just under 2 years ago. 

She also shares how her site attracts over 100 members each month with little to no marketing, what she loves most about being a membership owner and the challenges she faces targeting teachers… Plus much more! 

About Anna:

Anna Geiger, M.Ed.,  is a former teacher and mom of six. She has been sharing education resources since 2013 on her website, The Measured Mom. In 2019 she began her membership site, The Measured Mom Plus, which shares education resources for Pre k-third grade educators. 

Key Quotes

“I've found too, that was surprising to me, but maybe I just should have known this, that most people don't want to join a membership. The people that joined the membership were kind of like my super fans and there's plenty of them. And I do really well with it, but a lot of people just want to buy something.”

“I'd been hovering under 2 million monthly page views for years and I jumped over it to like 2.4 million”

“You can see 150 members leaving, but 95% of people stayed. That's very encouraging”

Connect with Anna:

The Measured Mom

Find her on Facebook

Follow her on Pinterest

Follow her on Instagram

In today’s episode of Behind the Membership Callie talks with Terra Dawn from Uncork Your Dork and the Wham! Bam! Business Plan!

Terra's had her membership for over a year now and in this episode they're talking about why she initially moved from Teachable to WordPress and why she's recently moved her community from an onsite forum to Mighty Networks, and the effect that this has had on both her engagement and her retention.

Terra also discusses how she uses challenges and summits to market and grow her membership site, how the membership has changed her business focus and what she's doing next to grow the membership even further.

Sean Wilson joins Callie for this episode of Behind The Membership to talk about Seanwilsonpiano.com, his membership site for Gospel pianists. 

During this episode Sean shares the details of his journey so far, how he tapped into a small but engaged audience to launch his membership back in 2017, why his approach to delivering content within his membership has changed and the positive impact the pandemic has had on it’s growth. 

He also tells us how he recently overcame his subscription ceiling, now attracting over 100 members a month instead of 40, the steps he’s taken to make engagement skyrocket inside his community and how YouTube has played a huge part in the success of his membership … Plus so much more!  

About Sean: 

Sean Wilson former math teacher has been playing the piano since he was 5

He helps musicians to learn piano by ear and feel confident playing gospel piano

Featured in LA Today as one of the entrepreneurs you should be watching for 2021

Key Quotes:

“I think I maybe overvalued content, the importance of it.”

“We're the only gospel music website in the world, actually, that has a roadmap. So, it's really cool and when I'm on YouTube, it's a nice positioning offer .”

“Honestly, I think the biggest challenge for me is kind of getting out of not being so hard at myself.”

Connect with Sean: 

• Seanwilsonpiano.com
• YouTube 
• Instagram
• Facebook

Alisha Robertson from The Purpose To Service Academy joins me for this episode of Behind The Membership and she has a very interesting story to share…

After experiencing burn out as a coach, Alisha knew that she had to find a solution that would help her scale her business, without the time constraints of one-on-one coaching... and she did, in the form of a membership program.

But the interesting thing about Alisha is that before doing research and launching her membership, not only had she never heard of the business model before, but she’d never been part of a membership herself!

In this episode you’ll hear about Alisha’s membership journey to date… how her program looks very different from when she opened its doors nearly two years ago, her realization that she could serve her members better if she niched down and the challenges she’s faced being new to the membership space. 

Plus you’ll hear how Alisha adds a few personal touches to her member experience, how her life has changed since launching her program and what her plans for the future are…And much more. 

About Alisha:  

Alisha Robertson is an author, business coach and the founder of The Purpose To Service Academy; a group coaching program for coaches and service based entrepreneurs who are ready to launch their signature offer and serve their clients with less stress and more intention.

After experiencing severe burnout, Alisha tore down everything she thought she knew about becoming a successful entrepreneur and decided to build a brand that helped women to focus on building their business without sacrificing the life they desire. 

Through her work, Alisha strives to not only help women entrepreneurs to launch, grow and scale their brands but also help them to prioritise themselves in the process.

Key Quotes

“I had to figure out a groove that worked for me and how to build in that excitement without feeling like I was launching every single month.”

“I think even more access to me has helped a lot because even if you don't have a question now, you know that when a question does come up, you have someone to go and ask. It's like, you almost have a coach on retainer. You have someone there.”

“If I could go again, I would definitely narrow my focus from the very beginning. I would have started out from the very beginning only focusing on this one very specific industry and this one specific problem and audience.” 

Connect with Alisha: 

The Purpose To Service Academy

Alisharobertson.com

Find her on Facebook

Follow her on Instagram

Follow her on Twitter

Stacey Harris is joining me in the very first episode of Behind the Membership to discuss her site, Hit the Mic Backstage.

We delve into Stacey's membership journey so far, including:

• Positioning the membership as an upgrade to her podcast
• How she created her membership in just 2 weeks
• The sales funnel she uses to attract new members
• The impact of $1 trials
• Why she loves running a community
• How Hit the Mic Backstage has evolved over the last two years
• and more!

On Episode Four of Season Two, Callie is talking with SEO and content strategist Kim Bultsma about her membership site, A Cup of Content.

Kim and I talk niching down, running completely free trials to attract new members, implementing member challenges to improve engagement and retention and the joy of watching your members make progress thanks to your content.

We also talk about how Kim came to start her own business in the first place after years of being a teacher, and the impact that this change has had on her family and her life.

Plus, Kim shares some of the challenges that she’s encountered along the way, particularly when it comes to balancing time between her service business and the membership site. So,

Listen in to hear:

• How her daughters serious health problems led to Kim leaving teaching to start her own business and how they are all happier as a result
• Why a membership site was a natural addition to her service business and allows her to reach more people
• The need to niche down rather than be everything to everybody when it comes to attracting members
• Using bite-size 5 day challenges to provide member content and increase engagement
• The challenge of juggling time with both a service business and a membership site
• Why Kim changed from a $1 trial to a completely free, no credit card required, trial, and how that impacted sign-ups
• The importance of making members feel valued and important for increasing retention
• Why Kim spends an hour a day building relationships and engaging with other people’s content
• How the membership site is continually evolving and why listening to members is key

In this episode of Behind the Membership Callis is talking with Nigel Moore all about his membership site, The Tech Tribe.

Nigel places a high emphasis on providing excellent service for his members, including offering all members a personal coaching call when they join, a private coaching section in his community and creating most of his content based on member questions and needs. As a result he's really tuned into what his members and his potential members are looking for, and what will help them to get results and this has enabled him to build a six-figure membership site with relative ease.

Here we also talk about how Nigel gets a member a day without marketing, and what happens when he actually turns his marketing funnel on. And we’re talking about the challenge of content creation, dong things that don't necessarily scale, and introducing a higher membership tier into the mix, plus more.

An introduction to Behind The Membership with Callie Willows: where the idea came from, why we're doing it and an overview of what to expect in the coming season as Callie sits down for frank, no-fluff conversations with membership site owners.

On this episode Callie is talking with Warwick Brown who runs the KAM Club, a membership site for key account managers which has been running for about nine months. 

In this episode, hear all about how Warwick came to start the KAM Club and how he utilised existing resources, like his blog content, to get him started much quicker - although he still put off launching the membership for a long time!

Warwick also talks about the challenge of consistency, particularly when it comes to content creation, and how finding a way to link his free and paid content together has made his life so much easier. And we talk about finding enough time to do everything when running a membership site solo, how Warwick provides a lot of personal support in his membership site, from 30-minute welcome calls, to personal videos and check-in messages, despite it being low cost. And how, despite quitting his high salary job, and not yet making the same amount with his membership, he couldn't be happier. 

Plus, of course, much, much more!

n this episode of Behind the Membership Callie Willows talks with Dr. Melissa West all about her longstanding yoga membership.

Melissa has had her membership for nearly eight years now and here she shares how she went from burnout teaching in-person classes to setting up her membership with her husband Tim, how the membership has evolved over the years, and the importance of community and relationships in her long term success.

Melissa also talks about how she uses YouTube to attract new members (she has over 48,000 subscribers on her core YouTube channel), and some of the things that she does to ensure her membership community continues to thrive, including how she's built a team of committed volunteers that help her with her membership on a day-to-day basis, and a counterintuitive content strategy that she has introduced that is working really well for increasing engagement and retention.

Marisha Mets from SLP Now, a membership for speech language practitioners, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

SLP Now has been running for over four years and over that time has evolved from a simple membership to a full web app offering thousands of practitioners teaching resources and even their own CRM and case tools.

In this episode Marisha talks all about how she went from creating resources for her own use to launching a hugely successful membership and the challenges she's had along the way, including learning how to manage her time effectively and finding the right developers to create her app.

We also talk about the benefits of starting simple, and how a membership has helped give Marisha more freedom and flexibility, particularly when faced with health challenges. Plus how running a twice yearly online summit works well for attracting new members, and how she utilises tools like Net Promoter Scores and Intercom to get feedback from members and provide additional support.

Chris Marr from the Content Marketing Academy (also known as CMA) joins Callie Willows for this episode of Behind the Membership.

Chris launched his membership in 2015 after running a six month in person masterclass and it's now a major focus of his business. Here, he talks about the importance of customer experience in creating a community culture, using free in-person workshops as a way to attract new members and how he has recently launched a very low cost price tier to help those who can't afford his full membership fee yet.

We also talk marketing challenges, how Chris is successfully using Slack for his members community and how the membership has enabled Chris to create the lifestyle that he wants, as he's undergone the transition from flying solo to being a father of four and family man.

Our guest on this penultimate episode of season five of Behind The Membership is Lisa Leander, founder of Women in Business Education. 

Lisa’s story is a very interesting one. What started off as a planned side hustle targeting a very specific niche audience (possibly the smallest we’ve ever seen with only a few hundred people in the world in the market), quickly resulted in Lisa quitting her job and managing the membership full-time due to the pandemic.

During this episode, she shares what life is like as a membership owner. How she’s tapping into her 10 years of experience as a Director of a membership organization to build the business as quickly and efficiently as possible, why she made the decision to invest in building a team from the very beginning and how Lisa’s personalized approach to recruiting new members has a 50% to 70% conversion rate. 

She also talks about why she only delivers live content to her members, how her site is structured to cater for different segments of her members to give them a specialized peer experience and her plans to grow her niche further later this year. 

About Lisa

Lisa Leander is an international development and management expert with eighteen years experience managing higher education initiatives in 22 different countries. In addition to leading WiBE, she currently is a Senior Advisor to the Global Business School Network where she previously spent a decade working to improve management and entrepreneurship education globally. During the day you might find her consulting for U.S. multinational companies navigating complex market opportunities in the Middle East, creating complex art creations with her two daughters or attempting to train a high energy German Shepherd.

Key Quotes

“It's been really a tough year for anyone in business or launching a business trying to balance your family and your priorities.” 

“You can start out scrappy and build towards something great. You don't have to have all the pieces.”

Providing quality content, providing quality discussions, delighting your current members, all helps get the word out.

Connect with Lisa:

Women in Business Education

LinkedIn

Twitter

In this episode of Behind the Membership, Callie talks with Tim Topham from TimTopham.com, whose membership site is all about helping piano teachers to improve both their creative skills and their teaching businesses.

Tim's had his Inner Circle membership site for two years now and in this episode we dive into how he made the leap from his teaching job to full time membership site owner, and the challenges and opportunities that that's brought for him.

We also talk about increasing member engagement via gamification, challenges, and apps, and how Tim uses monthly webinars to attract new members.

And we discuss growing a team, making your first hire early, bringing in other content creators and the importance of just getting started and fine tuning as you go. And much more!

Listen in to hear:

• How Tim’s membership evolved from his free blog sharing tips with other piano teachers
• The benefits of launching to an existing audience
• Why he quit teaching to run the membership site full time and how that enabled him to grow quicker
• The challenge of pricing a membership aimed at solo practitioners
• How Tim is running monthly webinars to bring in a steady stream of new members
• How sending physical gifts and personal videos at key points has improved churn
• The effectiveness of running challenges throughout the year as well as giving members ways to mark progress
• Why he created an app for delivering his free content to members
• The part tech plays in the long term success of your membership site and why he wish he’d got it right from the start
• How he’s building a team to enable him to focus on the more important tasks and his top tips for getting started with hiring
• How bringing other experts in to create content provides a wider perspective for members and diversifies the experience

Avalon Yarnes from Avalon Cakes School joins Callie on this episode of Behind the Membership.

What makes Avalon and her membership so different is just how creative she is, not just with her topic but in both her marketing and her retention tactics as well.

Avalon has been running her membership for nearly 2 years now and we discuss some great topics, including:

• How Avalon walked away from her job of 10 years to start the membership site with her partner
• How she thought outside the box about what competitors were doing, and turned it into a great retention hook
• Getting creative with video trailers and free tutorials to attract new members
• The challenge of balancing life and business and wearing all the hats
• Why choosing a Facebook group for her community was the right decision
• The most fulfilling part of running Avalon Cakes School and the impact having a membership has had on her life and business
• Why she wouldn't offer two tiers of membership if she was starting over
• and more!

We’re kicking off season five of Behind The Membership with an awesome guest. Jenny Finnell is Founder of CRNA School Prep Academy, a highly specialized membership for nurses in the United States who want to become Registered Nurse Anesthetists. 

The Academy has recently reached its first memberversary and in that time has become a big success - so much so that Jenny was able to retire her husband and reduce her own working hours within eight months of launching the membership!  

In this episode we talk to Jenny about her membership journey so far. How some queries from nurses resulted in her creating a free Facebook group that sowed the seeds for her idea of the Academy, why she hired a team to help her ahead of her launch and how she’s growing her membership successfully with little to no marketing. 

Plus we talk about the challenges she faces managing her time juggling life as a mom of three children (one of which is a newborn) while managing the Academy, how the flexibility of the membership model enables her to better serve her members and much much more! 

About Jenny: 

Jenny Finnell MSN, CRNA, and Founder of CRNA School Prep Academy. 

She runs a membership community for aspiring Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists in the United States. She has been working as a CRNA for over 6 years with a variety of experiences. She is passionate about giving back to the anesthesia community and loves fostering leadership through mentoring future generations of CRNA's. 

Key Quotes: 

“I  actually essentially retired my husband to help me full-time with the business. And as of December of 2020, I only work two days a week and when I go back from having our third child, I plan on only hopefully working one day a week.” 

“I really think just showing up and serving has been what has made this business so successful.”

“I just want to keep growing it as far as the resources for my students and getting the community involved. I think that the more community I get involved the better, the more resources for my students”

Connect with Jenny: 

Email: jennyfinnell@crnaschoolprep.academy 

Follow her on Instagram 

Find her on Facebook

Check out her Facebook group

Subscribe to her Apple podcast

John Michaloudis from MyExcelOnline, a membership which helps people to become Excel experts, is this week’s guest on Behind the Membership. 

John started his membership just two years ago after growing tired of running course launches, and with 1600 members is already a third of the way to his goal of making $100,000 per month with the membership. 

In this episode John is talking all about how he is using evergreen webinars with fast action bonuses to make sales every day and how email marketing and Facebook ads also contribute to his sales. 

John also shares how moving from a Facebook group to a forum for his community is one of the best things he’s done, and how John isn’t the person answering questions in his community. 

Plus we talk all about the benefits of adding things like Trustpilot reviews to a sales process, creating a business you can take 6 months away from and how member success stories make all the work worthwhile.

And of course, much more!

"Fairy art mother" Caylee Grey joins Callie on this episode of Behind the Membership to talk all about her art journaling membership, Get Messy Art. Caylee's membership journey is actually a little different to most, as the membership was started accidentally as a result of a personal project rather than being the goal from the start.

However, it's safe to say it was a great accident as the membership is now four years old and has flourished, creating an amazing business for Caylee that has allowed her to quit her job and achieve more freedom than she previously thought possible.

In this episode, Caylee discusses how she makes use of seasonal themes for her content, and is currently testing out the closed door model to only let new members in at the start of each new season. As well as how she utilises the experiences of guest teachers and members to help with content creation.

And Caylee also talks about how she focuses on making the membership action driven, and how she nutures members and provides the space for them to connect and engage with each other on a deeper level. Plus the challenges she has had along the way, and much, much more besides!

Jared Falk from Musora and Drumeo joins Callie on the last episode of Season 2 of Behind the Membership.

Jared has not one, but four membership sites, all in different music niches. And with over 10,000 active members in his original membership site, Drumeo, and having served over 200,000 customers so far in his business, he’s achieved a lot by anyone's standards.

In this episode Jared is discussing world domination when it comes to membership sites, including how he is replicating his successful drum membership site into other markets, and how he’s grown his business to a team of 35, with most working on location in his offices in Canada.

And he reveals why he's always trying new things when it comes to marketing and retention and how what works for one site doesn’t necessarily work for another, even in similar niche, and how he’s able to release an hour of new content every single day, without overwhelming himself of his members.

Carole Copeland Thomas, a diversity and inclusion expert, is talking all about her membership the Multicultural Symposium Series in today’s episode of Behind the Membership.

Carole's online membership actually evolved from her long running annual conference with the aim of providing somewhere business owners could have a year round conversation around important topics that relate to becoming a more multicultural and inclusive business. 

In this episode we're talking about the importance of Carole's work and the impact it's having, how she's able to keep her membership very low cost and affordable because of corporate sponsors, and how her current focus is on scaling the membership even further.

We also talk about how she combines her offline events and online membership and the monthly webinars that she runs as both a retention and marketing tactic. 

Plus of course much more! 

Coach Pamela Mitchell has been a professional coach since 2003, with a focus on helping people to reinvent their careers so that they can live a life that they love. When demand for her services became too high though, she decided to launch a membership offering - the Reinvention Launch Club - in order to help more people.

It wasn’t all plain sailing though and in this episode Pamela discusses the mindset shifts that needed to happen for her to be able to move from creating a more traditional content focused and high volume membership to a smaller, more curated and intimate experience where the focus is on individual and group coaching.

We also talk about how Pamela makes use of associate coaches to provide a more one-to-one experience for her members without her needing to spend all of her own time coaching, the challenge of finding your own path and being clear on what you enjoy and what's going to give your members the best results, and the quest to find the perfect community solution.

Plus lots more!

In this episode of Behind the Membership Callie talks with Mark Warner about his membership site for teachers, Teaching Packs.

Mark has a very different model to most membership site owners, offering only a very low cost non-recurring annual membership.  So we're talking about why Mark made that decision, and how it's enabled him to attract 15,000 teachers to his membership over the last five years, as well as completely transform his own life in the process.

We're also talking about how Mark has spent 20 years building his audience, including an impressive three million Facebook page likes. And Mark discusses how he uses reviews and free resources to attract new members, and why, unlike most memberships, his members join for the content and stay for the content.

In this episode of Behind the Membership, Callie is talking with Kim Jimenez from The Business Lounge, a membership site for online business owners.

Kim has had her membership for nearly two years now, and in this episode she discusses how she didn't initially want to create a membership site, what changed that opinion, and how starting one has actually transformed her business and life.

Kim also talks about how she is using YouTube, webinars, and trials to attract new members, and why she has both a Facebook group and an onsite forum for her membership community, and how she balances the two.

We also delve into work life balance and burnout, why a successful membership site isn't just about adding content, and much more besides.

Warren McPherson from Piano Lesson with Warren joins Callie for episode 1 of Behind the Membership Season 4.

Warren’s membership focuses entirely on teaching people how to play gospel piano, and he transitioned to a membership model after first selling low-cost courses. As you’ll hear though, the initial transition wasn’t smooth, with Warren quickly realising a successful membership isn’t just about putting everything behind a paywall.

In this episode you’ll hear how Warren made that course to membership transition and how he is working to combat the challenge of retention, including how making one particular change cut his churn rate by an impressive 8%.

We're also talking about why he wishes he'd grown his team earlier and how he has played the long game when it comes to audience growth, allowing him to now attract 50-100 new members a month just through content marketing.

And even though Warren’s membership is still just a couple of years old it has allowed him to work less and his wife to leave her job so that they can both spend more time with their young son. They’re even moving to a new state, something that didn't seem like a simple idea for them before the membership.

Hit play above to hear about all this and more!