Hiring as You Grow with Tim Topham

Behind The Membership with Callie Willows

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 that's brought for him.

We also talk about increasing member engagement via gamification, challenges, and apps, and how Tim uses monthly webinars to attract new members.

And we discuss growing a team, making your first hire early, bringing in other content creators and the importance of just getting started and fine tuning as you go. And much more!

Listen in to hear:

• How Tim’s membership evolved from his free blog sharing tips with other piano teachers
• The benefits of launching to an existing audience
• Why he quit teaching to run the membership site full time and how that enabled him to grow quicker
• The challenge of pricing a membership aimed at solo practitioners
• How Tim is running monthly webinars to bring in a steady stream of new members
• How sending physical gifts and personal videos at key points has improved churn
• The effectiveness of running challenges throughout the year as well as giving members ways to mark progress
• Why he created an app for delivering his free content to members
• The part tech plays in the long term success of your membership site and why he wish he’d got it right from the start
• How he’s building a team to enable him to focus on the more important tasks and his top tips for getting started with hiring
• How bringing other experts in to create content provides a wider perspective for members and diversifies the experience