Behind The Membership with Callie Willows

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 evolve...

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 li...

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 memb...

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...

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 ...

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 cr...

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 mem...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 Bran...

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 ...

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 serv...

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 th...

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 hi...

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 ...

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 membe...