Behind The Membership with Callie Willows – Details, episodes & analysis

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!