Custom Membership Website for Gazelles International Coaches

Project Overview

Gazelles International Coaches (now the Scaling Up Coaches community) is a global network of elite business coaches trained in Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up methodology. Their leadership team came to Peaceful Media with a big vision: create a private, high-value membership platform where certified coaches around the world could access training, tools, and community in one place.

The goal was to replace a patchwork of disconnected resources with a robust “home base” for Gazelles coaches — an interactive membership site that made it easier to onboard new members, deliver premium content, and strengthen the global coaching community.

Deliverables

Custom Membership Website

Work With Us

Custom Membership Website Design & Development

Case Study Details

The Plan

We set out to design and build a social learning platform tailored specifically to the needs of Scaling Up / Gazelles coaches. That meant combining the structure and reliability of a traditional membership site with the ease-of-use and engagement of a private online community.

Key priorities included:

Centralizing all coach resources (trainings, tools, templates, event info) in one secure portal.
Making it simple for coaches across time zones and countries to connect, share wins, and ask questions.
Giving the Gazelles team the ability to publish new content, courses, and announcements without technical bottlenecks.
Ensuring the user experience felt aligned with the high standards and professionalism of the Scaling Up brand.

We collaborated closely with the leadership team to define user roles (coach, admin, etc.), permission levels, content categories, and the ideal “day in the life” experience for a busy growth-focused coach logging in between client calls.

Results

The new membership platform gave Gazelles International a scalable, branded home for its global coaching community. Coaches now had a single login to:

Access training content, tools, and curated resources aligned with the Scaling Up framework.
Participate in a dedicated online community environment, strengthening relationships and peer learning.
Stay up to date on events, announcements, and program updates without hunting through scattered emails and links.

For the Gazelles team, the site became a key asset for coach retention and perceived value: onboarding felt smoother, delivering new material became easier, and the overall experience better reflected the organization’s position as a premier global coaching network.

Tech & Tools

Under the hood, the Gazelles membership platform combined a flexible CMS with community and membership tooling:

WordPress as the core content management system for pages, resource libraries, and updates.
A membership layer (BuddyPress) to control access by role (certified coach, admin, etc.) and protect premium content.
Community features (discussion areas, profiles, or integrated group spaces) to foster ongoing peer-to-peer connection.
Modular content layouts so the Gazelles team could easily publish new trainings, announcements, and resource bundles without custom development.
Integration with their existing email/CRM systems for onboarding, member communications, and renewal reminders.
Advanced search functionality (SearchWP) connected to custom WordPress post types (e.g. Downloads)

Conclusion

This project demonstrates how a thoughtfully designed membership portal can become much more than a file library. For Gazelles, it became an extension of their brand promise: a high-leverage support system for coaches who are helping businesses scale around the world.

By bringing content, community, and communication under one digital roof, we helped turn a loose collection of resources into a true platform—one that grows with the network and deepens the value of being a certified coach year after year.