Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

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

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?&nb

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 Stori

 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 li

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 Ja

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.