As a membership site owner, podcaster, coach, and entrepreneur with a background in personal development, Calan Breckon is a jack of all—or at least of many—digital trades.
After growing several successful online businesses, Calan opens up about following his instinct to focus on the tech side of things and how pursuing his passion was the spark for long-term success.
Calan has been a Searchie user since the early days(Don’t believe us? Check out his Searchie review right here!). He chatted with our Customer Success Lead Paulina about how his business has grown—and evolved right alongside us.
During this interview, we get into:
- The power of being authentic and building meaningful connections through content
- How connecting with your community ahead of big changes can help to curb fears and give you the boost you need to try something new
- The Searchie feature that has blown the minds of Calan’s audience—plus his top two favorite features that have made a big difference in his business
- And SO much more!
Name: Calan Breckon
Business: Gay Men’s Brotherhood
Location: Canada
Niche: Calan Breckon teaches Entrepreneurs, Influencers, and Business Owners the profitable action steps for setting up and maintaining a successful online membership business while guiding them on how to map it all out and build it in manageable steps.
Ready for Calan’s wisdom? Here we go!
Paulina at Searchie: Can you share who you are, the markets you’ve served in the past, and what community you’re serving now?
Calan: I teach entrepreneurs, influencers, and business owners the profitable action steps on setting up and maintaining memberships, courses, and creating monthly reoccurring revenue for themselves.
My past history is in personal development. That’s where I got all my skills and I built out a membership, and I have a podcast called Gay Men Going Deeper, where we talk about personal development, sexuality, and mental health. And so that’s where all of that learning and knowledge came from.
But I really fell in love with building memberships and creating that content and really structuring all those things out.
Paulina at Searchie: What would you say is the connection between the different ways that we package digital content online—whether you’re delivering content through a podcast, through your coaching program, or through a membership—what do they have in common?
Calan: You are the individual. You are the person creating the content. You are the one in front of the camera, in front of the mic, in front of the audience, teaching what you love and sharing that knowledge with the world.
You are the only person who can do things the way that you do things. You’re the only person who can create the way you create. You’re the only person who can show up the way that you show up. That is very important. And regardless if that’s on a podcast, or YouTube, or video, or in a membership, only you have that unique ability to do it the way that you’re going to do it.
Paulina at Searchie: You’ve been with Searchie for quite some time now. Can you talk a little bit about what stage your business or even your personal brand was at when you first started using Searchie?
Calan: When I started using Searchie, it was very early on in the business, and I had created the Gay Men Going Deeper podcast with two other guys. We had the podcast for about a year, and we had a free Facebook group that had grown to a couple thousand members, and we saw the need for deeper coaching.
People really wanted to get in on the action and wanted to actually learn actively. So, about a year after the podcast, we were like, I think we should create a membership community.
I had gone through Stu McLaren’s membership program on how to create memberships. And I thought that this is the time to do that. I was looking through different platforms to use, and when Searchie was just kind of coming out, it was very much an infant at that point. I kind of looked at it, and I went, oh, this is going to be really big. This is going to be really good. Especially just the searchability of the videos, that blows people’s minds. It really alleviates us having to answer a lot of questions like, “where is this?” or “where can I find this?” or “I want to learn about this specific thing.”
It’s now Searchie 2.0—it’s absolutely fantastic! It keeps getting better and better and better. And as we’ve grown, Searchie has grown with us, and we’ve been able to implement all these new things and changes. It’s been a really great adventure and a really great journey.
You are the only person who can do things the way that you do things. You’re the only person who can create the way you create.
Paulina at Searchie: Did you have any fears moving from podcasting to coaching? Was there anything that felt risky?
Calan: Definitely. There were a lot of fears that came up. The biggest one was wondering if anybody would even join. But we asked, we kind of surveyed our community and we said, “Hey, we’re thinking of doing this. Is this something that you would be interested in?”
We did get a very good response back saying yes, we would very much be interested in that. We kind of threw some price points out there and people let us know kind of what they were willing to pay for what we were going to be offering.
So we had an idea that people will join, whether it’s a large number or small number, there will be people. And then that kind of alleviated fear number two which was would will we be able to cover overhead because you have to pay in order to use platforms, email systems, and all these other things.
But we found the right kind of spot for us with the right price point, and everything has been really good and growing consistently since then.
Paulina at Searchie: Was there anything about Searchie that puts some of your fears at ease?
Calan: Searchie has played the biggest role because it really allows people to take their own time. And when we put everything together, we made it very clear in our email nurture sequence. When we welcome new members into the group, one of the biggest focuses is having a journal. If you have a journal, it allows you to sit and write things down because that’s going to automatically give you more power to retain a lot of that information.
And then once you have that, and once you build that routine into somebody, then they’re kind of like a member for life because they have this system, they have everything built in where they can see their success.
I can see my growth happening. And even if they want to go back and look into those things from the past, they don’t have to go hunting for something. They can just click up at the top and go, “I want to go back to that video where Calan was teaching about this,” and they can type it in. Then within seconds, they’ll have all the videos on that topic. So the searchability has been huge with Searchie. That’s probably my favorite, biggest, main point with Searchie.
And then also to add on top of that, my second favorite part is the transcripts. Because in order to do that, it has to produce transcripts for every video, every piece of content that you upload.
And a lot of companies, literally, this is all they do is that they put your transcripts together and send them to you. But this is the cost that’s already built into Searchie.
Paulina at Searchie: What have you learned about yourself in the process of managing, starting, scaling, pivoting, and tweaking online businesses? What does that freedom look like for you?
Calan: When you get to a place where you figure out that you want to do something different, it’s okay to switch. It’s okay to evolve. It’s okay to grow. And the only way you’re going to do that is if you go through the messy parts at the beginning.
So I’m very glad that I built the membership that I built, the podcast, and everything that I’m doing with my business partners. But through that journey, I learned that what really lights me up is the building. It is the backend. It is the tech. All of these techie things that tend to overwhelm a lot of people, I freaking love it.
And I love personal development. I love coaching. It is a lifelong journey, but what really lights me up is this other stuff. And so, the moment I made that pivot, everything started to change. All the things started taking off.
But what I’m really focusing on now is helping other people grow their companies. So I’m probably looking to build like seven to 10 memberships over the next year and really focusing and working with people that I love that are excited to do what they’re doing and help them grow because that’s how I’m going to be able to amplify my voices.
The searchability has been huge with Searchie. That’s probably my favorite, biggest, main point with Searchie. And then also to add on top of that, my second favorite part is the transcripts.
Paulina at Searchie: You talked a lot about how new insights from growing your podcast and membership have allowed you to find your passion for helping other people grow their membership. Where does Searchie fit into that?
Calan: I prefer to build a membership on Searchie because it offers so much more than many of the other tools out there. And there are tons of other tools out there, but Searchie comes from a place of Stu McLaren did this. He went through all of these things. So because he went through all of these things and built them all himself, he knows what a membership owner needs and wants. And you can see that in the tools that they release in all the things that come out, because I go, oh my goodness, he gets it because he’s been there.
I point my clients in the direction of using Searchie just because it’s such a fantastic tool.
And it integrates with so many things so easily and beautifully.
When you get to a place where you figure out that you want to do something different, it’s okay to switch. It’s okay to evolve. It’s okay to grow. And the only way you’re going to do that is if you go through the messy parts at the beginning.
Paulina at Searchie: What would you say to someone who is looking for what lights them up? How do you find clarity around what that is for you?
Calan: Put one foot in front of the other and keep going. It’s a journey. Life is always going to be a journey. There is no endpoint. There is no I will make it “when,” I will feel better “when,” I will be happy “when.” You need to go inside and figure out how to be happy now with all of the things that you have.
I got to where I am because I went through the process, and I went, “I really like this.” But had I not gone through that mess, had I not gone through all of that, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
That’s the point of being here, it’s about growing, shifting, evolving, and finding more things that you love.
Thanks for reading!
Catch Calan’s full Searchie Spotlight interview here!
We’ll catch you in the next blog.
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