Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

Many of my guests on the podcast have built and skilled large membership and subscription businesses with big teams of specialists and sophisticated software to support their efforts. But what if the team is just you? Mike Morrison, launched the Membership Geeks Podcast 9 years ago to help solopreneurs build online membership businesses. You can drive a meaningful subscription without a team and totally online, and that's what Mike teaches at his Membership Academy. In our conversation, we talk about how the membership economy has evolved since we first met 9 years ago, some of the elements that make one membership more successful than another, and what it takes to scale when you're working alone.     Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:    robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

What do you do when powerful tailwinds change to headwinds as you're growing your business?Many Membership Economy businesses have struggled to keep up momentum in the past few years as the golden era of growth has evolved to a bottom line era. Today's guest, E-Lin Tan, took the helm at BlueMovement offering subscriptions to Bosch Appliances in Europe during the bottom line era. In our conversation, we discussed how they balance circularity and sustainability with profitability. Listen to learn how they've built support across the organization, developed the right culture, and continued to evolve the offering to respond to changing customer needs.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:    robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Today we're talking about sustainability. Where do the circular economy and the membership economy intersect, and how can both be applied to tread more lightly and produce less waste? These questions have been at the center of the work of my guest, Patrick Hypscher. Patrick is a consultant and advisor and the host of Circularity.fm, a podcast about circular business models and Product-as-a-Service (PaaS). With experience running PaaS businesses, both at Bosch BSH and at Bertelsmann, as well as at his own SaaS startup, Patrick has developed some really helpful models for manufacturers building subscriptions. In our wide-ranging conversation, we talk about these models, why Europe is way ahead of the US with regard to product-as-a-service models, and the many benefits that are driving the growth of this emerging approach.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:    robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Zumba is a phenomenon. Since its founding in 2001, the addictive fitness dance program with a Latin beat has taken the world by storm. As of 2022, the company claimed 15 million people taking Zumba classes weekly at 200,000 locations in over 180 countries. At its core is the Zumba Instructor Network, a monthly membership program created to give instructors ongoing support and tools for success. It includes an unlimited, never-expiring teaching license, as well as monthly music and choreography marketing tools and access to the community. Today's guest, Yael Dornbusch is the Chief Subscription Officer at Zumba, responsible for managing what she calls a prosumer subscription. In our conversation, she explains why Zumba built their first subscription around instructors rather than students, why they launched a second subscription specifically for students, and the principles they use to balance the needs of these two constituencies. Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:    robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

 If you've ever had to wait for your doctor first in the waiting room and then in the examining room, or struggled to get an appointment or had trouble getting a prescription filled while on the road, you know why primary care in the United States is in such desperate need of disruption.  One Medical has been transforming primary care through the power of membership and customer centricity since 2007. In 2023, One Medical was acquired by Amazon for nearly $4 billion. Dr. Joseph Michelli has written a well-researched book on One Medical's journey and what enabled such rapid growth and such strong customer engagement. The book is called “All Business is Personal: One Medical Human-Centered, Technology-Powered Approach to Customer Engagement.” In today's conversation, Joseph and I talk about how the company reimagined every step of the patient journey, One Medical's three key success drivers, and what the future of healthcare might hold.     Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:  robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Something I've noticed over the years is that there's a natural membership economy mindset among many family-owned businesses and organizations, not on the venture-backed IPO acquisition path. Companies that aren't on a tight timeline to an exit have the ability to invest in long-term, trusted relationships with customers and with employees. After a career as both a founder of multiple successful companies and a venture investor with Kleiner Perkins, Dave Whorton decided he wanted to work specifically with what he came to call Evergreen leaders, the ones who combined sound business principles, extraordinary purpose, and a desire to share their success with their employees. His Tugboat Institute researches these organizations to identify best practices, and then he brings together these leaders to teach and support one another. Now, he's written a book, “Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last”. It's a playbook for entrepreneurs seeking an alternate path to success. In my conversation with Dave, we discussed how venture capital has changed the face of entrepreneurship, what it means for founders, the 7Ps that are the guiding principles of Evergreen companies, and the two key constituencies that matter most to your organization's long-term success.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:     robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

 In today's episode, we're exploring one of the most ambitious and successful business model transformations in modern corporate history, the shift of Adobe from a traditional software company selling packaged products to a thriving subscription powerhouse. And who better to walk us through this journey than Mark Garrett, Adobe's former chief financial officer and the architect behind this transition?    When Adobe first announced its move to a subscription-based model in 2011, there was plenty of skepticism. Analysts questioned the financial impact, customers worried about cost increases, and internal teams faced the daunting task of restructuring their entire go-to-market strategy. Mark and his team remained steadfast, not just in their belief that subscriptions would create more predictable revenue, but also that they would allow Adobe to serve customers better with continuous innovation and improved accessibility. Since those early days, Adobe's market cap has skyrocketed from around 16 billion before the transition to well over 200 billion, proving just how powerful a well-executed subscription strategy can be. In this conversation, Mark shares the behind-the-scenes story of how Adobe made the leap as a public company, maintaining exceptional financial performance while also enhancing customer satisfaction. We'll discuss the key strategies behind their transition, the biggest challenges they faced both internally and externally, and what other companies can learn from Adobe's playbook. If you've ever wondered how to execute a high-stakes business model transformation, how to balance Wall Street expectations with long-term customer loyalty, or how to design a subscription offering that truly delivers ongoing value, this episode is for you.     Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:   robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Chess.com is one of the most popular freemium platforms in the world, offering millions of users free access to an engaging online chess experience. But how do you encourage players to upgrade to a paid tier when the free version is already so compelling? Adam, with his extensive background in revenue strategy and subscription growth, has played a critical role in designing and optimizing Chess.com's premium offerings. In this conversation, we'll dive into the challenges and opportunities of building a successful paid tier within a thriving freemium ecosystem, how chess.com balances free and premium value, the strategies they've used to convert free users into loyal subscribers., and the key lessons Adam has learned from his experience leading revenue at a fast-growing digital platform. If you're interested in learning how to drive revenue without alienating your free user base, how to craft subscription tiers that meet diverse customer needs, and how to foster long-term loyalty in a competitive market, then  you won't want to miss this episode.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:   robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

 Pricing is probably the trickiest, most stressful part of managing a subscription business. How do you balance revenue and profitability? How can you keep your pricing simple to communicate and execute while personalizing it to optimize for elasticity of demand and value created? If these questions plague your organization, you'll want to take notes today. Matt Lindsay, founding partner of Mather Economics is a subscription pricing expert who's helped hundreds of publishers build and evolve robust pricing models. In today's conversation, we're taking on pricing controversies, including the role of introductory offers, how to raise prices and how to respond to a subscriber threatening to cancel.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:   robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

  When I wrote The Membership Economy, I knew that nearly every organization could build trusted recurring revenue relationships with their customers just by focusing on a forever promise. I really saw a huge future and hoped that companies would follow this path. But what I didn't realize was just how quickly and broadly they would heed my words and invest in subscriptions. It can be hard to predict what will happen next, but in this episode, we're going to do just that. Today, my guest, Joe Rohrlich, CEO of Recurly, and I will talk about trends for 2025. We'll explore what's ahead, both for digital natives and large companies just dipping their toe into the world of recurring revenue. You'll learn best practices of the most successful household names, as well as how to manage challenges relating to speed to market and scaling without losing your secret sauce.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Season 7 is launching soon, but while you wait, catch up on our most recent season. Some of Season 6's most popular episodes include Best Practices in Subscription Funnel Management with Ken Houseman of the New York Times, Subscription Pricing, Metrics and the Changing Role of the CFO with Maxio’s Randy Wootton and How a Subscription can “Smooth the Lumps” in B2B Services with DDI’s Dr. Tacy Byham. And you don't want to miss out on our most loved episodes of all time, Product-Led Growth for Subscriptions, Using Examples from Medium, LinkedIn and The Athletic with Caitlin Roman, Midi Health’s Joanna Strober on the Ultimate Forever Transaction—Healthcare, and Mighty Network's Gina Bianchini on How to Create a Community Worth Subscribing to. If you haven't listened to these episodes, I encourage you to check them out. And if you like them, please take a minute right now to rate and review them on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts. I always ask because it really helps us get the word out. Guests for Season 7 will include Joe Rohrlich, CEO of Recurly, Adam Mayer, Chief Revenue Officer at chess.com, and Mather Economics’ Matt Lindsay, talking about best practices in subscription pricing. To make sure you don't miss a thing, follow Subscription Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Just tap on the follow or subscribe button. And if you like what you hear, please do give us a review and a rating. Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening to Subscription Stories.      Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com

Making pricing simple can be really complicated, especially in the world of subscriptions, where every pricing change can affect how much your members trust you. How do you manage different pricing for different segments? And how do you change that pricing over time? Today's guest, Braeden Russell, is the Director of Pricing for American Home Shield, a home warranty provider with over 2 million members. He needs to optimize the price for the realtors, who often gift the first year of coverage to new homeowners, with the pricing needs of the homeowners themselves, who will eventually be responsible for the relationship. In this episode, you'll learn how to balance the pricing needs of your B2B and B2C members, when to bill monthly versus annually, and how you can use pricing to drive loyalty among your best members.     Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

The subscription stories of publications like The Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Tortoise Media have one person in common, Katie Vanneck-Smith. In her latest role, Katie is going beyond subscriptions. She's leading Hearst UK's efforts to create deep, valuable memberships around each of their 16 specialty magazines, titles ranging from Elle to Men's Health to Good Housekeeping. In this episode, you'll learn how to build a platform that allows for rapid launches of multiple brand memberships, while still incorporating unique features and pricing bundles. You'll also gain insights on how generative AI will and won't affect the publishing world and why the forever promise of news differs from that of specialty content.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

With over 4,600 stores and nearly 1.6 million associates in the United States alone, Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. Walmart+, their membership program, is redefining the contours of paid memberships. I recently had the chance to interview Venessa Yates, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Walmart+, on the main stage at the SubSummit Conference in Dallas, Texas. And I'm delighted to be able to share a recording of our conversation with all of you on the podcast. In this episode, we'll uncover the key elements behind Walmart+’s success and the strategies they've deployed to foster growth and deliver value. You'll also learn how Walmart+ adapts to the evolving needs and expectations of today's consumers to boost engagement, which includes the integration of strategic partnerships into their offering.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Budgets are tight and competition to get and keep subscribers has never been more fierce. But what if I told you that there was a way to nudge your prospects and subscribers to help them engage more deeply and rapidly? It's possible. Today's guest, Nancy Harhut, has a wealth of easy and inexpensive tactics that can motivate your members to do the right thing at the right time. Nancy is the author of Using Behavioral Science in Marketing and Chief Creative Officer at HBT Marketing. In this special live episode, which was recorded at the SubSummit conference in Dallas, Texas, you'll learn how behavioral science can help you get more from your marketing spend, how to use tools like scarcity, social proof and choice architecture to acquire, engage, and retain your subscribers, and the role of emotion on motivating subscribers to act.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:     robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

One of the hottest growth areas for subscriptions is farming. Surprising? Maybe. But with small margins and big numbers, efficiency matters. And farming has become an increasingly high tech, high stakes business. Justin Rose is the President of Lifecycle Solutions, Supply Management, and Customer Success at John Deere, a 187 year old company with revenues in 2023 of over 61 billion dollars. You probably know them for their tractors, but they're investing heavily in subscriptions. In today's conversation, Justin and I talk candidly about why this manufacturing company has committed to reaching 10% of annual revenue in software subscriptions by the year 2030, the right and wrong way to accelerate transformation through acquisition, and how to maintain the trust of long standing customers when you change the business model.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:   robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Many subscription entrepreneurs lament their lack of fancy software and dashboards to allow them to better manage their business. But if you know your ideal member and understand their pain points, and if you're always tinkering and adjusting your offering to better align with the needs of those members, you can build a powerful recurring revenue business. Even as a solopreneur, this week's guest, James Schramko has developed a unique model to help consultants and experts earn more while working less. And while he has been an early adopter of technology, many of the tools and tactics are flexible enough to be used by large or even very small businesses. More importantly, James has succeeded in building his subscription-based business by focusing on his members and their desired outcomes. Ultimately, membership is about trust and relationships, and James is an expert in both. In today's conversation, you'll learn why bundling too much into your subscription can cost you members, how to use technology to support a global community, and why a tiered ascension model sometimes leaves money on the table.    Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

One of the great mysteries for me is why so many otherwise sophisticated companies don’t focus on involuntary churn. Also known as passive churn or accidental churn, involuntary churn happens when a payment issue raises a flag that causes a merchant to cancel a customer’s subscription. In 70% of these cases, there is no fraud, so the company is literally turning away excellent customers. Involuntary churn routinely impacts about 10% of Annualized Recurring Revenue (ARR), according to some estimates. In today’s episode, Vijay Menon, founder and CEO of Butter Payments, and I discuss what drives involuntary churn, why so many companies underinvest in this problem, and some key tactics to drive revenue growth through better payment management.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts  

Loyalty programs seem to be at a crossroads. Industries including hospitality, financial services, and retail are going beyond the points-based programs we're so familiar with and exploring more personalized, emotionally engaging programs. Some, like CVS, Inspirato, and of course Amazon with Amazon Prime have even incorporated paid loyalty subscriptions which provide benefits in exchange for an annual fee instead of requiring customers to earn benefits through their spending and behaviors. Today's guest, Nadia Popova of Euromonitor International, follows the loyalty trends and provides insights across industries regarding best practices in building long-term relationships with customers. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about how consumer expectations have changed since COVID, why personalization is so important, and where subscriptions fit in the broader loyalty landscape.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts  

Loyalty programs have been around forever. Points, cashback, branded credit cards, and now increasingly, we're seeing paid subscription loyalty programs, like Amazon Prime or CVS Care Pass. The goal is the same, to smooth out the lumpy buying behavior common in consumer packaged goods, retail, and hospitality, and to drive habits and engagement. Today's guest, Justin Honaman, leads the worldwide retail and CPG go-to-market team at Amazon Web Services. He also hosts the popular podcast, ContenderCast, where I was a guest a few years ago. In this conversation, Justin and I talk about the changing landscape of loyalty programs, why loyalty is so important right now, and what's driving the rise in these subscription programs.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts  

Building a new subscription model in a large, successful company is hard enough, but when your company's core competency is manufacturing and the subscription involves content and software, you have to do more than build the new business model. You have to change the way the organization thinks about product management. With experience, both at PlayStation and at Ford, today's guest, Ross McGregor, will shed light on how to build a service orientation across a product team. Something critically necessary if you're going to build a forever transaction with your customers. In this conversation, he talks about how to put together the business case that merits a strategic bet on subscriptions, how to build support across the organization from the beginning, and when it's time to scale the experiments.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts  

You're in for a special treat today. My guest, Dr. Tacy Byham, is the CEO of Development Dimensions International, or DDI, a global leadership consulting firm that helps organizations hire, promote, and develop exceptional leaders. A few years ago, I worked with Tacy and her team as they incorporated subscriptions into their business model. The results have been extraordinary. Three years into the launch, over 50 percent of DDI's revenue comes from subscription clients. I've been asking Tacy to share her journey for quite some time, and I'm thrilled that she finally agreed. In today's conversation, we'll talk about how subscriptions can smooth out the lumps in B2B services, how to put together the right team with the right mindset for subscriptions, and how to keep up the momentum after the initial experiments with subscriptions are over.    Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts  

The world of B2B subscriptions has changed a lot since companies like Salesforce first paved the way for what would become known as Software-as-a-Service. And while there are hundreds of marketing and sales-oriented SaaS products, it's taken a lot longer for the subscription model to be fully embraced in the CFO's office. Randy Wootton has seen the evolution of SaaS and understands the changing role of the CFO better than most. He's led businesses focused on sales and marketing solutions at companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Rocketfuel, but more recently took over the CEO role at Maxio, a leading provider of billing and financial ops solutions for B2B SaaS companies. In this very rich and full conversation, we talk about why pricing and packaging of subscriptions is so hard, the power of a pricing council, and the changing role of the CFO in a SaaS world.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

If your subscription uses a freemium model, it can be tricky to decide what’s always free, what’s free for a while, and what’s always behind the paywall. Knowing how to manage people at each stage of the funnel can be really challenging. Today’s guest, Ken Houseman, is an expert on both the strategy and the technology required to monetize the funnel for acquisition, upsell, and retention. Today’s conversation isn’t based purely on Ken’s work as VP of Product for The New York Times, and in no way represents the editorial perspective of the organization. Ken’s experience there, as well as his work with organizations, including Oracle, Nike, and even the US military, have shaped his perspective on managing the customer relationship. In this conversation, we discuss why retention is the next obsession for subscription leaders, what needs to be different about how to optimize your ERP for subscriptions, and a few of the less obvious things that can go wrong on the path to conversion.   Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Season 6 is launching soon, but while you wait, catch up on our most recent season. Some of Season 5’s most popular episodes include Mighty Network’s Gina Bianchini returning to subscription stories for a second time to share her wisdom about building purpose-driven communities, as well as Dan Zavorotny of Nutrisense talking about blending hardware, software, and services into a single subscription, and Anne Janzer on subscription marketing. We went deep on customer success with Rod Cherkas, author of the Chief Customer Officer Playbook, and about scaling membership with Pavilion Founder, Sam Jacobs. We talked a lot about subscription product design with Silicon Valley Product Builder, Tom Willerer, Samsara’s CPO, Jeff Hausman, and Mailin Jappé of Acer. I always love conversations with academic researchers with a strong practical mindset, and this season I was happy to host Harvard Business School’s Ava Escarza and Columbia’s Rita McGrath. And we got into the details of two of the trickiest parts of subscription design, pricing and the law, with respectively Mark Stiving, author of Selling Value, and Paavana Kumar of Davis+Gilbert. If you haven’t listened to these episodes, I encourage you to check them out. And if you really like them, please be sure to rate and review them on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts. I always ask because it helps us get the word out. Guests for Season 6 include Ken Houseman, who leads product management for the New York Times, Tacy Byham, CEO of the leadership consulting powerhouse DDI, and Randy Wootton, CEO of Maxio. To make sure you don’t miss a thing, follow Subscription Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Just tap on the follow or subscribe button. Thanks for your support and for listening to Subscription Stories.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com

Subscriptions are going beyond software, content, and community, and increasingly are providing access to the physical world. The internet of things lends itself well to providing subscribers’ ongoing benefits, blending data from sensors and cameras with sophisticated software. This type of subscription can be complex to build, but has to provide value that is simple for subscribers to understand. My guest today, Jeff Hausman, is the Chief Product Officer at Samsara. Samsara provides an integrated subscription-based platform to increase safety, efficiency, and sustainability in the physical operations world. Think trucks, cargo, oil fields, and construction sites. I invited Jeff to talk about how his team uses customer input to develop his product roadmap, how they bundle hardware and software to deliver on their forever promise, and how they've partnered across the ecosystem to keep things simple for their subscribers.   Other links and resources mentioned:  Jeff Hausman Samsara Sanjit Biswas, Co-founder of Samsara John Bicket, CTO and Co-Founder of Samsara Cold Chain Monitoring Subscription Stories Episode: Ben Foster, Chief Product Officer of WHOOP Chalk Mountain Services of Texas Liberty Energy Kong Global Ford Penske Navistar Fleetcor AssetWorks Thermo King   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

 To launch a successful subscription business, you need to think like an innovator. But what does that really mean? Rita McGrath is widely recognized as the premier expert on leading innovation and growth, particularly during uncertain times. A longtime professor at Columbia Business School, Rita is also the author of several bestselling books, including Discovery Driven Growth, The End of Competitive Advantage, and her most recent book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. In today's episode, we talk about the right skills to launch, scale and lead a subscription initiative, the neuroscience of the status quo, and the seven archetypes of Innovation.   Other links and resources mentioned: Rita McGrath Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath Subscription Stories Episode: Tiffani Bova Rod Adkins of Unix Business Samuel J. Palmisano, CEO of IBM Louis V. Gerstner, CEO of IBM (1993 to 2002) The Permissionless Organization Loonshots by Safi Bahcall Article: Lululemon Hopes to Showcase Home Fitness Business With Membership Program Article: Drinkworks™ Unveils The Home Bar By Keurig® — Cocktails, Brews, Ciders And More At The Touch Of A Button Mirror.co Greg Galle, CEO of Solve Next Jeremy Utley, Co-Author of Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters Daniel Kahneman, Author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Pricing is one of the trickiest elements of good subscription strategy and one that most practitioners feel unprepared to tackle. Coming up with a simple and clear pricing strategy is really complicated. That's why I invited Mark Stiving to the podcast. Mark is an educator at heart as well as a pricing expert, and in this episode, I ask him all kinds of questions about how to determine, test, communicate, and adjust pricing. In this conversation, we talk about: The difference between a ‘Will I’ decision, and a ‘Which one’ decision. How to raise prices. Why so many product prices end in nine.   Other links and resources mentioned: Mark Stiving Selling Value by Mark Stiving Win Keep Grow by Mark Stiving Impact Pricing  by Mark Stiving To be released soon: Power Value by Mark Stiving   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Do you believe in the adage "Kind Folks Finish First"? Entrepreneur Sam Jacobs certainly does, and it's the driving force behind his successful organization, Pavilion. Sam is the Founder & CEO of Pavilion. In 2016, he started Pavilion, originally named Revenue Collective, and bootstrapped it to an impressive $10M in ARR. In 2021, he secured a $25M growth financing round, with Elephant Ventures and GTM Fund leading the way. With 15 years of experience as a senior revenue leader at various VC-backed companies in New York, including Gerson Lehrman Group, Axial, Livestream/Vimeo, The Muse, and Behavox, Sam has a wealth of expertise in the industry. He resides in the West Village of Manhattan with his wife and two dogs, William and Oswald, and fondly remembers his beloved Walter who passed away in the Summer of 2022. In this episode, Sam shares his belief in playing the long game when it comes to business growth. He also shares his experiences as the founder of Pavilion, a paid membership community for revenue executives, and how the key to success lies in creating human connections and continuous learning. He also tackled the challenges of balancing investment in community versus learning, and the importance of aligning incentives for growth. Is there a different way to do business that leads to both success and peace of mind? Tune in to find out!   Key Takeaways from this episode:  3:48 Different ways to do business 9:25 What is Pavilion? 17:45 The constant battle of centralization vs decentralization, consistency vs quirkiness, and how to have intimacy with consistency 24:20 The difference between Acquisition and Retention 29:49 Why bootstrapping is a strategy to achieve success   Other links and resources mentioned: Pavilion Kind Folks Finish First by Sam Jacobs Article: Following Five Years Of Significant Growth, Revenue Collective Rebrands To Pavilion And Announces $25 Million In Growth Financing What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith "Topline Podcast" with Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman High Output Management by Andrew Grove Disney War by James B. Stewart Strava fitne...

If you haven’t been focused on subscription compliance before, you definitely need to start paying attention now.    The Federal Trade Commission (or FTC) is getting serious about cracking down on “dark patterns” in the world of subscriptions.  They recently filed a lawsuit against Amazon for enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without consent and for what they call “cancellation trickery. They’ve also announced plans to increase stringency around subscription rules.    Today’s guest on the podcast, Davis + Gilbert partner Paavana Kumar, is a legal expert on eCommerce, with an emphasis on subscriptions.  In today’s conversation, we talk about some of the key elements in subscription regulations, the planned changes being proposed by the FTC in the US, and specific actions every subscription-based business should take if they want to stay on the right side of the law.   Excerpt: One of the great things about the subscription industry is that you don't have to be super technical to break into it. You don't have to be a coder. You don't even have to have tons of VC money. You can be an industry disruptor if you have a great idea. Paavana Kumar is a Davis + Gilbert partner and a legal expert on eCommerce with an emphasis on subscriptions. She explains the proposed regulations changes in the Federal Trade Commission that will push many to pay attention to subscription compliance. Paavana also discusses the best actions to be taken to follow the law, especially with a lot of subscription-based businesses not aware of such legalities.   https://www.dglaw.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/paavana/   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »   Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

The Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) Market is expected to Surpass $190 Billion by 2026, according to Market Research Future. That’s a compound annual growth rate,of of 55.8%. Acer is at the forefront of that wave, and today’s guest, Mailin Jappé, launched and now runs Acer’s DaaS business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). It’s hard enough to launch a subscription startup on your own—doing it inside a large manufacturer adds a whole level of complexity. In today’s conversation, Mailin shares the challenges she faced in launching the business, how she’s transformed the culture to one of access, not ownership, and the right kind of team to support subscription innovation in manufacturing.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »   Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

In the world of subscriptions, the role of a marketer is rapidly evolving. It’s not enough to acquire subscribers—you have to acquire the right subscribers. But how do you market with an eye toward retention? Today’s guest, Anne Janzer, is the author of Subscription Marketing, now in its third edition. In this episode, we focus on the right mindset for marketers and how to establish the right voice to connect with your subscribers. Anne also shares some clever ways to get the biggest return on your marketing spend, as well as who and how to hire for your subscription marketing team. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »   Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

When I first started talking about the Membership Economy, there just weren’t that many academics or researchers interested in studying the power of customer retention.  That’s why I’m really happy to see some of the best minds in finance, strategy and marketing today are thinking about how to build, and measure durable relationships between organizations and the people they serve. Today’s guest, Eva Ascarza, is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her primary research subject is customer management (with special attention to the problem of customer retention). That’s good news for all of us building subscription businesses. In today’s discussion, we talk about the right metrics to measure and improve customer retention, how to use pattern recognition to predict which customers will be most valuable, and why cohort-based analysis is so important.

Based in Germany, and a global leader in digital language learning, 16-year-old Babbel was part of the early wave of online subscriptions. When they launched, subscription pricing was unusual and controversial. The early team even had to develop their own Subscription Engine to support the business. My guest today, Julie Hansen, has led the company’s expansion to North America, as well as their evolving overall business strategy. In our conversation, we discuss the differences between European and US-Based Subscription best practices; how to make the case for investing in features that drive engagement, rather than just acquisition; and how a first mover can stay nimble even as the competitive landscape grows more crowded.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »   Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

Before you start building your subscription product, make sure you really, really understand the ongoing problem you are solving. So says product leader Tom Willerer. Tom, my guest today, has worked with some of Silicon Valley’s most renowned companies, like Netflix, Opendoor and Coursera. He’s also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Reforge and a Venture Advisor at VC firm NEA. Today we’re talking about how to define your forever problem so you can build a forever transaction. In our discussion, we share the secrets to building subscription products, how to build conviction you’re on the right path and when to commit to scale. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How »   Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie Kellman Baxter on Instagram Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches on Apple Podcasts

In the Membership Economy, customer-centricity is critical in building lasting relationships and optimizing lifetime value. As a result, the Chief Customer Officer, or CCO, is increasingly present at the leadership table. Today’s guest, Rod Cherkas, founder of HelloCCO, literally wrote the book on the CCO role. It’s called The Chief Customer Officer Playbook: 8 Strategies that will Accelerate your Career and Win you a Seat at the Executive Table and it just came out in Spring of 2023. The book is based on Rod’s own experience as a Post-Sale leader at companies including Intuit, RingCentral, Marketo and Gainsight. In today’s conversation, we talk about key metrics for customer success, the changing role of CCO, and what most companies get wrong when trying to build forever transactions with their customers.

I’m fascinated by the recent explosion of healthcare subscription companies.  If you’re a regular listener of subscription stories, you probably knew that, as recent guests have included Midi Health’s Joanna Strober, Whoop’s Ben Foster and Matthew Mengerink of Thirty Madison.  We’ve even explored telehealth for PETs on the show with Fuzzy’s Zubin Bhettay.  Today’s guest Dan Zavorotny, Co-Founder and COO of Nutrisense, is focused on helping subscribers optimize metabolic health through a solution that combines hardware, software, and professional advice.   In our conversation, Dan shares the story of how he found product market fit, the challenge of building retention around a “checkup-type offering” and how to manage a business when  third parties (in this case hardware manufacturers) provide a significant part of your prop.

I have interviewed today’s guest many times, and it’s always a wild ride. Mighty Networks founder and CEO Gina Bianchini is so smart, passionate and insightful.  She was my finale guest for Season 1 of the Subscription Stories podcast, back in 2020. That episode holds the record for most popular Subscription Stories show of all time.  We were all stuck at home, afraid to go out in person, and were looking for ways to connect, authentically with others.  Mighty Networks was established to make it easy for people to build engaged communities around their passion and purpose. Nearly 3 years later, people are back to connecting in person—but Mighty Networks continues to grow.  Why? Gina would say it’s because people crave meaning and connection through community.     I invited her back to the show to talk about her new WSJ bestselling book, Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life. In our wide-ranging conversation, we also discuss how to implement best practices in launching, scaling and hosting a vibrant online community, and how someone can actually discover their purpose, even if they’re feeling stuck. Welcome to the show Gina!

Hey it’s Robbie Kellman Baxter, host of the Subscription Stories podcast. Season 5 is launching soon, but while you wait, catch up on our most recent season. Season 4 has some of our listener’s favorite episodes ever. We opened the season with two thought leaders, Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractible, and Tiffani Bova, Salesforce Global Evangelist. If you’re interested in the technical side of building forever transactions, you’ll love hearing from, Piano’s Travor Kaufman and Optimized Payment’s Paul Larsen, experts in operationalizing online subscriptions and billing. And there were some great practitioners with years of “in the trenches” experience leading Membership Economy businesses—LinkedIn Learning’s Jill Raines, Fuzzy’s Zubin Bhettay, and Product Leader Caitlin Roman, most recently of The Athletic. If you haven’t listened to those episodes—I encourage you to check them out. And if you like them, please be sure to rate and review them on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts—that helps me, and makes it easier for others to find the podcast. This spring, I’m hard at work to make sure that Season 5 is the best and most practical season of Subscription Stories so far. You’ll hear from Mighty Network’s Gina Bianchini, our most popular guest ever returning to talk about her new book, Purpose, as well as Rod Cherkas of Hello CCO sharing the Chief Customer Officer’s Playbook, and Dan Zavorotny, founder of Nutrisense, sharing a new model for metabolic health. And that’s just the beginning. To make sure you don’t miss a thing, Follow Subscription Stories wherever you get your podcasts—just tap on the Follow or Subscribe button.   Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening to Subscription Stories. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook  

Everyone’s talking about “product-led growth” in the subscription world right now. Companies are seeing the connection between the way the product is designed and how effective the company is at acquiring, engaging and retaining customers—and even driving referrals. To do product-led growth well, product managers need to think like business leaders, as well as thinking like product builders. It isn’t easy and not everyone has the right skills. My guest today, Caitlin Roman, has led product teams at three great subscription-first organizations, LinkedIn, Medium and most recently The Athletic, which was acquired in January of 2022 by the New York Times, for about $550Million. I’m excited to talk to her, because she has developed pattern recognition about what it takes to build great products that actually help grow the business. In today’s conversation, Caitlin and I talk about best practices learned at LinkedIn, Medium and The Athletic, the skills needed to drive product-led growth, and how to partner with data analytics teams to make better, faster decisions. Excerpt: "If you have real value behind your content, you can confidently charge for it." Caitlin Roman has led product teams at LinkedIn, Medium, and most recently, The Athletic. She sits down with Robbie to share the best practices she has learned working in these companies, putting product development into the spotlight to generate tangible business growth. She also talks about building an effective product team that can work alongside the data analytics team to make better and quicker decisions.  Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie's Instagram Profile

Sometimes the best way to launch a digital subscription is to launch a physical subscription. Even if you plan to scale with a virtual business model, you can learn so much more about your customer, value proposition and messaging by starting the old fashioned way—in person. That’s the approach Zubin Bhettay used in launching Fuzzy. Today, Fuzzy’s Pet Parents get round the clock access to exceptional virtual veterinary care, as well as wellness products for their pets' health needs. But when Zubin and his cofounder launched the company in 2016, they recruited and served their Pet Parents in person. Starting slow allowed Fuzzy to “crack the Product Market Fit code” and scale rapidly, raising over $80 million in the process. Full disclosure—I’ve been involved with Fuzzy since the beginning, and think Fuzzy is one of the most thoughtful Membership Economy organizations I have ever worked with. In this conversation, Zubin and I reflect on Fuzzy’s humble beginnings in San Francisco dog parks and Pet Parent living rooms, explore the path to profitability, and discuss the right metrics at each stage. Excerpt: "We wanted to be the guide and partner of pet parents through every stage of their pet's life. We wanted to ensure that was available to every pet parent and not just a luxury service only available to the select few." Zubin Bhettay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fuzzy, a telehealth subscription service offering virtual veterinary care. In this episode, he shares how their in-person company evolved into a digital platform, expanding their reach and saving a lot of pets in the process. Zubin explains the business scaling process they followed to fully embrace the digital scene and how to decide if a subscription model is ideal for you. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Robbie's Instagram Profile

We can learn a lot from subscription businesses that experiment with different revenue models and personalization. Organizations with too many offers risk overcomplicating things with competing goals. I’m talking about companies with multiple revenue streams—different promotions, pricing options and tiers and/or a combination of subscription, one-off transactions, and advertising. But increasingly we’re seeing examples of organizations incorporating multiple revenue streams successfully—for example, in news, fitness, streaming media and ecommerce.   Today’s guest, Trevor Kaufman, is an expert on subscriptions, personalization and digital experience. He is the CEO of Piano, a digital experience platform that helps organizations launch products and programs faster, strengthen customer relationships and drive personalization at scale. Piano recently released their annual Subscription Performance Benchmark Report. It’s full of valuable insights gleaned from their customers, and relevant across many types of subscription models. In our conversation, we talk about the emerging best practices in subscription pricing, the role of freemium and whether there’s a place for ads in the world of subscriptions. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

The single biggest source of churn might surprise you. It’s not a communications issue, or a product/market fit issue, or even an onboarding problem. The biggest driver of churn in most consumer subscriptions is what’s known as passive or involuntary churn. Involuntary churn is when a customer is canceled due to a payment issue or other technical problem. According to ProfitWell CEO Patrick Campbell, a recent guest on Subscription Stories, involuntary churn makes up 20-40% of overall churn.  Many organizations don’t even track passive churn, and that’s a mistake, because there are ways to manage. Today’s guest, Paul Larsen of Optimized Payments, is one of the leading experts on “card not present” payments, and works with many of the largest subscription businesses in the world on churn management. He launched his career at Reader’s Digest, one of the earliest and largest subscription publications in the world. When Paul started, churn management focused on getting people to renew their subscription by mailing in a check. Since then, he has been deep in the world of credit cards, debit cards and alternate payments, helping subscription merchants reduce costs and increase customer retention. In our conversation, we talk about why so many good subscribers end up in the dreaded “do not honor” bucket, who should own passive churn in the organization, and how to bring together the right team to manage involuntary churn.  Excerpt: Subscriptions are great. We love them, but there's promise and peril associated with them at all times. We are joined by Paul Larsen of Optimized Payments, one of the leading experts on "card not present" payments. He shares his vast knowledge about working with the largest subscription businesses on churn management as he discusses the reasons behind the dreaded "do not honor" bucket and how to build the dream team to address this involuntary issue. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

You’re probably all familiar with LinkedIn Learning, formerly known as Lynda.com. It’s LinkedIn’s professional development platform. They offer more than 18,000 video courses available via subscription. There’s a huge range of educational topics covered—from how to use Adobe Aftereffects, to how to have difficult conversations, to the fundamentals of customer success . Consumers can subscribe to LinkedIn Learning on their own, or access the platform through an enterprise license. My guest today, Jill Raines, is Director of Product Management at LinkedIn, where she leads the LinkedIn Learning Business. I first got to know her when I was developing my own LinkedIn Learning courses for the platform. I was interested in the business model for the platform. I have learned so much through my discussions with Jill. It’s fascinating to get her perspective on the unique challenges and opportunities facing the world’s largest professional development and educational platform, In this conversation, Jill and I discuss the LinkedIn ecosystem, and LinkedIn's Forever Promise more generally, before diving into the role of LinkedIn Learning within that ecosystem. We also talk about the specific challenges of professional development subscriptions, how to balance the needs of consumers with the needs of enterprise customers, and whether to offer both pay per course and subscriptions as pricing options.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

We’ve spoken before on the show about the importance of Customer Experience in driving growth, with guests like Wharton’s Peter Fader, Gainsight’s Nick Mehta and Bain & Company’s Stu Berman. But today’s guest says you need to think beyond the customer. If you really want to accelerate growth, you need to focus on the employee experience.  Tiffani Bova is the global growth evangelist at Salesforce. She’s also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. Tiffani has been named to the latest Thinkers50’s list of the world’s top management thinkers and is a welcomed guest on Bloomberg, CNN, Cheddar, MSNBC, and Yahoo Finance, among others. In our conversation, we talk about whether your Growth IQ is something you’re born with or something you build, the ten paths to growth, and how Software-as-a-Service has changed what it takes to thrive in Sales. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

To drive recurring revenue, you need products and services that people use. Habitually. Repeatedly. Organizations strive to design addictive subscriptions. But for every beloved membership, there seem to be a dozen offerings that drive subscription fatigue. How do you design for engagement, retention and expansion, while ensuring the you’ve earned the right to do so? Bestselling author Nir Eyal has looked at this problem from both sides.  His first book, Hooked, is a how to guide for building habit-forming products. More recently, he wrote Indistractable, to help individuals control their attention and choose the lives they want. On this episode of Subscription Stories, Nir and I talk about the specific processes and tools that drive habits, what it means for your subscription business, and how to be more deliberate about how we form our own habits.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook Instagram

Hey, it’s Robbie Kellman Baxter, host of the Subscription Stories Podcast. I wanted to just reflect on some of my favorite moments of season 3 and also share a sneak peek at Season 4.  We packed a lot into this season, truly something for everyone.  We opened the season with David Lorsch, the Chief Revenue Officer of Strava, the world’s largest athletic community, talking about how to upgrade freemium subscribers to premium.  If you’re interested in how the membership economy is transforming Health & Wellbeing, you’ll also enjoy my conversations with Ben Foster of Whoop, Joanna Strober of Midi Health, Bryan Welch of Mindful,org and Matthew Mengerink of Thirty Madison. If you’re building subscriptions around great content, check out my conversation with Ariel Zirulnick, who led the 4-year long Membership Puzzle Project which identified best practices in building deep, trusted relationships with readers of newspapers around the globe. You’ll also learn about key metrics and cultural tactics for building a member-first team from Mayur Gupta, the CMO of Gannett, and about building a membership bundle from Outside’s Tommy O’Hare (who happens to be a former Olympian).  And if your startup is looking for a great story to build traction, listen to my conversation with Chief Storyteller at GoodTrust, Daniel Sieberg  Venture investor Ira Ehrenpreis had a lot to share about the power of profit and purpose in creating iconic companies like Tesla, The RealReal and Bellwether coffee.  And Rafat Ali, CEO of the Skift talked about the power of subscriptions in travel and hospitality. For those of you who like to nerd out--Season 3 was like a PhD in subscriptions, with several experts on the cutting edge of markets and trends—Wharton Professor and author of the CustomerCentricity Playbook Peter Fader, as well as Harvard Business School’s Marco Bertini, with whom I have had many spirited discussions about pricing for outcomes and his new book The Ends Game, Google’s Chief Measurement Strategegist Neil Hoyne, whose new book Converted is a must-read for any subscription practitioner, Patrick Campbell, founder of Profitwell, who uses data to go deep on customer retention, and my old friend and colleague Bob Baxley, a leading Silicon Valley product designer and educator who has led design teams at Apple, Pinterest and now Thoughtspot. If you haven’t listened to those episodes—I encourage you to check them out.  And if you like them, please be sure to rate and review them on Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts—that helps me, and makes it easier for others to find the podcast. This summer, I’m hard at work to make sure that Season 4 is the best and most practical season of Subscription Stories so far. You’ll get to learn about building habits through your products with Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Indistractible and Hooked.  You’ll see how to use employee-centricity to grow customer engagement and retention with Salesforce global growth and innovation evangelist, Tiffani Bova. Employee Experience is an often overlooked lever in building great business models as well as the subject of Tiffani’s forthcoming book. And you’ll learn some of the secrets that have made LinkedIn such a powerhouse in the Membership Economy.  That’s just the beginning. To make sure you don’t miss a thing, Follow Subscription Stories wherever you get your podcasts—just tap on the Follow or Subscribe button. Thanks for your support, and thanks for listening to Subscription Stories.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today:

My final guest of Season Three, Joanna Strober, was the very first guest on the Subscription Stories podcast. Back then, we were talking about Kurbo, the children’s service for WW (that’s Weight Watchers new name). Today, she’s back to talk about her latest venture in direct-to-consumer healthcare, Midi Health. While Kurbo focused on helping kids get to and maintain a healthy weight, Midi is for women at midlife, helping them get better as they get older. You may have noticed my interest in how the way we stay healthy is changing—with guests from Whoop, 30 Madison, Strava, just this season alone. I am fascinated by all of the transformation in the space, as healthcare embraces the concept of a forever transaction. After all, what forever promise is more compelling than more happy, healthy minutes. Healthcare is just embarking on a massive rethinking of how to better align their business models with patient outcomes. Midi is a great example of this. In today’s talk, we cover the consumerization of healthcare and how COVID accelerated the move to digital patient-centric health, the importance of “forever transaction” in treating patients, and the challenges of developing a clear business model in a highly complex environment.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Not all customers are created equal. The best subscription businesses know the power of customer lifetime value (CLV). They optimize around understanding who their best subscribers are, and then deepening the relationship with those best subscribers over time. Neil Hoyne is an expert at this. As the Chief Measurement Strategist at Google, as well as a Senior Fellow at The Wharton School, Neil helps people use data to win their customer’s hearts. He’s written a new book Converted: The Data Driven Way to Win Customers’ Hearts on this topic, which I read on the beach while on vacation. It’s a book about data that’s entertaining and engaging enough to read on holiday, if you can believe it. We recently spoke about how to measure the full value of each relationship, engage in an ongoing conversation with your best subscribers, and perhaps most importantly, how to find and win new subscribers just like the ones you find most valuable. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

The first wave of the Membership Economy was mostly digital-- software, content, and services. But increasingly we’re seeing subscriptions around physical products. Challenges abound when manufacturing comes into play, especially with the pricing model. Many companies are selling the physical product and then offering subscriptions as an add-on. Examples include Peloton, where much of the value is in the subscription, but also products like Tile, Ring and Tesla where the subscription is truly optional. One company that’s getting a lot of attention for its innovative model is WHOOP. WHOOP offers a subscription-based service that combines a wearable fitness tracker with software to achieve its mission of “Unlocking human performance”. Today I talk to WHOOP’s Chief Product Officer, Ben Foster. Ben has literally written the book on Product Management along with his co-author Rajesh Nirlikar—Build What Matters, Delivering Key Outcomes with Vision Led Product Management. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ben and I discuss the best metrics for tracking customer value, the unique challenges of a subscription that includes hardware and software and why scrappiness is a key attribute of the best product managers.    Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook