Behind The Membership with Callie Willows

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...