Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

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

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

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!

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

Most subscription-based businesses focus too much on acquisition and not enough on retention. But actually retention improvements are usually more effective, both for total revenue AND profitability. Today’s guest Patrick Campbell couldn’t understand why so many organizations weren’t doing the math, and so he started his company Profitwell to help companies better manage churn. Patrick says you have more churn levers than you think. They include how you target prospects, onboard subscribers, support engagement, and of course what you say when they are getting ready to leave. And did you know that one of the best places to look for new subscribers is in your list of former subscribers? In today’s episode, we’ll show you how to optimize your subscription for fewer and softer Goodbyes… from the moment you say Hello. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Nearly every industry can benefit from joining the Membership Economy, and most industries have great examples of subscription-based organizations. One of the slowest movers has been the healthcare industry and for good reason. There's so much complexity to delivering health outcomes—as well as great risk. And that's why I'm so excited about this episode of Subscription Stories. Today's guest, Matthew Mengerink, is the Chief Technology Officer at Thirty Madison. The company describes itself as "the human-first health company bringing specialized care and treatment to everyone." One by one, they are tackling some of the most challenging chronic health issues, like allergies, migraines, and hair loss, using a combination of digital and real-world services through "forever transactions" with the people they serve. In this conversation, Matthew and I talk about Thirty Madison's uniquely scalable approach to healthcare, the challenges of balancing personalization with systems and protocols, and what subscriptions might mean for the future of medicine. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Even though people think of me as a subscription person, I always say that for me, subscriptions are simply a tactic. Subscriptions force companies to better align their pricing with performance. If the subscriber doesn’t perceive ongoing value, they cancel the subscription…so it becomes the organization’s responsibility to ensure that the customer is achieving the desired outcome. That’s the real goal of subscriptions—to better align payment with outcome. Professor Marco Bertini is a professor at both Esade in Spain and the Harvard Business School here in the US. He is an expert on performance-based pricing—not just subscriptions, but pay-for-consumption models and even outcome-based pricing. Marco’s new book, The Ends Game: How Smart Companies Stop Selling Products and Start Delivering Value, which he cowrote with Oded Koenigsberg of the London Business School is one of the best pricing books I’ve read in a long time. In today’s conversation, we talk about how to optimize your pricing model to ensure that your customers can access the value you provide, use your offering well, and most importantly get the performance outcomes they need. Welcome to the show marco.

Bob Baxley is a design executive who lives and works in Silicon Valley. He currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Design & Experience at ThoughtSpot, a business intelligence and data analytics platform. Prior to ThoughtSpot, Bob was Head of Product Design at Pinterest where he built, led, and managed a multifaceted design team responsible for both the consumer and business facing elements of Pinterest. Starting in 2006, Bob spent over eight years at Apple, where he served in senior leadership roles for Apple’s retail and e-commerce teams. As a Director of Design, Bob hired and led the creative team responsible for a broad variety of applications including the Apple Online Store, the Apple Store app, and the transactional areas of iPhoto and GarageBand. As Director of Design for Yahoo! Search, Bob built and led the design team that created Yahoo! Answers and designed other search-centric properties. Bob’s career as a designer began at Claris Corporation where he was Lead UI Designer for the initial releases of ClarisWorks and MacProject Pro. The author of Making the Web Work, Bob is also a sought-after public speaker sharing his experiences and observations about a range of topics related to design, technology, innovation, and the culture of Silicon Valley. Bob holds a B.A. in History and a B.S in Radio/Television/Film from the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford University.

Mayur Gupta is the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Gannett – USA Today Network. He is responsible for leading the transformation of Gannett into a subscription platform that is obsessed with user value and not just site traffic. Mayur is responsible to actualize Gannett’s mission to build trusted local communities where people thrive. This is not his first time driving growth among subscribers. Prior to Gannett, he was CMO of the subscription meal company Freshly and before that, Mayur was Global VP for Growth & Marketing at Spotify. Mayur was recently named to Forbes’ list of the World’s most influential CMOs of 2021. In this conversation, we talk about the kind of teams needed for sustainable long-term subscription success, the role of “growth” as an emerging discipline and his formula for creating a flywheel for growth that can work at any kind of company.

In March of 2020, travel as we knew it abruptly ground to a near standstill. First cruise ships were docked, and then air travel quickly became limited to very special cases. Hotels stood empty except for those that held people in quarantine and the health care workers who cared for them. I think it’s fair to say that no industry has changed more as a result of COVID than travel. Today’s guest, Rafat Ali, has been at the forefront of understanding these changes, and the massive impact they are having on the entire industry. He is the founder and CEO of Skift, “the daily homepage for the world’s largest industry”, and perhaps the leading news source for travel executives. In today’s conversation, we’ll talk about the key changes happening in the world of travel that affect us all; why he believes in a reader-centric model optimized for travel professionals, rather than advertisers, and Skift’s recent decision to “debrand” their site.

Customer-centricity is essential in the world of subscriptions. To succeed you have to understand who your most valuable customers are, and invest your resources in those relationships. But measuring the value of each customer over an extended period of time, and understanding which metrics matter most, can be tricky. Peter Fader, the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, is perhaps the leading expert in the world on how to assess the value of a business by understanding the value of the customer over their entire relationship with an organization from source to completion. Peter has literally written the book on customer centricity. Well, actually, two books: Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and The Customer Centricity Playbook which he co-authored with Sarah Toms. In this episode, we discuss customer-centricity, customer lifetime value and how to use available public data to evaluate a company--using D2C prescription glasses retailer Warby Parker as an example. We also talk about why current accounting standards don't always tell the full story--and how this needs to change.

Bundles are a hot topic right now and Outside+ is a fascinating example. A few months ago, the Outside Magazine organization announced they were welcoming 20 new publications including Trail Runner, Velo News and Yoga Journal to their family. More recently, they launched a suite of new features such as training plans & workouts, access to the Gaia GPS Premium app and discounts for outdoor events available with the new Outside+ membership. By bundling together content, discounts and other benefits, Outside is building a membership that more fully delivers on their promise to inspire active participation in the world outside I recently interviewed Tommy O’Hare, SVP Business Development and Licensing for Outside for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I co-created with Global Media Association, FIPP, and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast. In this conversation, he shared the journey of rolling up this bundle of benefits to support the goals and challenges of Outside’s most engaged members. I hope you enjoy it.

There is no bigger topic when it comes to consumer sentiment than the rising demand and focus on Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance related issues. Today we’re looking at this challenge from the perspective of a leading VC who has invested in some of the most iconic consumer focused, mission driven businesses. Ira Ehrenpreis has been investing in companies that are committed to making a positive impact on the world for more than 20 years. A double bottom line investor, even before impact investing was cool, Ira has helped build the category and the discipline in venture capital. He currently serves as president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists and co-chair of the VC Network. He's a founder at DBL Partners, which is perhaps the largest and most well-known impact investing and sustainability focused firm in the venture asset class. An early investor in companies like Tesla, The RealReal, SpaceX and Bellweather Coffee, Ira is a real visionary. He's also a longtime friend, and always inspiring. I recently interviewed Ira for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I cocreated with Global Media Association FIPP, and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast. In it, he talks about bold innovation across sectors and D2C business models, and shares several examples of how companies are using a focus on impact as a strategic advantage. Welcome, Ira.

The ability to tell a good story is valuable—and not only when the story is the product, as it is in journalism. Stories can build understanding, trust and connection with members, prospects and investors alike. Storytelling is an important skill in the Membership Economy, and GoodTrust Co-founder Daniel Sieberg is a fantastic storyteller. Daniel Sieberg started his career as a journalist, and writer, working for the likes of CNN and CBS News. He went on to work at the intersection of news and technology at Google, where he was a senior leader in the Google Newslab. As a journalist and a technologist, Daniel knows how to tell and share stories—he has used these skills well at GoodTrust, the subscription-based company he cofounded to help people safeguard their digital assets and share them with loved ones today or after they pass away. Daniel has an interesting title-- he currently serves as Chief Storyteller. He uses his experience in journalism to build trust, understanding and connection with GoodTrust stakeholders—members, investors and partners alike. I recently interviewed Daniel for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I cocreated with Global Media Association FIPP, and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast. In our conversation, we talk about how to launch a new company in an undefined space, the power of transparency in storytelling, and how to use a journalistic lens to turbocharge your market research strategy. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Mindful.org is dedicated to a very specific goal--sharing the gifts of mindfulness through content, training, courses, and directories— and helping people enjoy better health, foster more caring relationships, and cultivate a more compassionate society. Because of that core focus, Mindful has been able to develop deep expertise about how people want to engage in mindfulness--expertise which has provided a launching pad for a range of additional offerings, including a very successful corporate training business, which has become a larger source of revenue than the subscription itself. In other words, their niche focus has allowed them to be more impactful, while generating multiple revenue streams to support their mission. In this conversation with Mindful.org CEO Bryan Welch, we’ll discuss how you can build multiple revenue streams around a strong vertical with a small number of passionate members. This conversation was recorded as part of the D2C (Direct to Consumer) Summit that I coproduced with FIPP, the Global Media Association, so you’ll hear a couple of references to the conference. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Since The Membership Puzzle Project (MPP) launch in May 2017, they have studied, advised, and supported more than 100 newsrooms around the world, from Akron, Ohio, to New Delhi, India as they make the transition to a member-driven newsroom. In this conversation I’m talking with Ariel Zirulnick, who runs MPP's Membership In News Fund, which supports these exceptional experiments with. I recently interviewed Ariel for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I co-created with Global Media Association FIPP and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast. In our conversation, we discuss the original goals of the MPP as this public research project nears its end, explore how the project has fared since launching four years ago, and share key lessons from the Project that can help any membership organization to thrive. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Just over 10 years ago, I had my first conversation about the idea that would become Strava with serial entrepreneurs Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath. They talked to me about their bold objective of building the world's largest community of athletes. Since then, they've achieved that goal, touching over 90 million athletes and logging over five billion activities across more than 30 sports in virtually every country in the world. While subscriptions have always been a part of Strava, in the past year, they've moved some of their most popular features behind the paywall and an introduced a bunch of new features for paying subscribers. I recently interviewed David Lorsch, Strava’s CRO for the inaugural D2C Summit, a new conference I co-created with Global Media Association FIPP, and want to share that conversation with you here on the podcast. We discussed how Strava determined what should be free and what should be paid as they build a subscription business around a social platform, and how to guide members to make the most of their membership. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

As we wrap up Season 2, we’re reflecting on the amazing guests we had, and all of the wisdom that was shared. We covered best practices in pricing, scaling and supporting your subscription offering, and did deep dives on what membership means at organizations including CrossFit, Nike and YPO. Take a listen to this 5 minute short, to hear about them all. We’ll be back with new episodes this fall! Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Much has been written about the so-called "Streaming Wars." The market for streaming video content is crowded with players, each with unique strengths—from Netflix's digital native, early adopter status, to the platform power of Apple and Amazon to the highly specific and valuable content of niche players like Crunchy Roll or the History Channel, whom we recently profiled on this show. Anyone interested in subscription models can learn a lot from understanding the diverging strategies of streaming players, many of whom number among the most powerful companies in the world. Today's guest, Molly O'Connor leads Business Planning Strategy for WarnerMedia Sales Distribution, HBO Max, Cinemax and Turner Networks, all US distribution partners. That means she's responsible for managing the (sometimes competing) demands of the consumers, cable and satellite partners, and the app stores, weaving these disparate products and partners into a single cohesive strategy. In our conversation, we discuss how to think about balancing direct and indirect channels, how a subscription offering can achieve strategic and/or financial objectives and the nerdy world of subscription math. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Pricing is one of the trickiest parts of building a successful subscription model. You want to make the model simple, transparent and easy-to-understand, but you also want it to be optimized for each customer, and of course to maximize revenue and profitability. It can be tempting to offer multiple tiers for different use cases, as well as promotions and add-ons. Before you know it, you have a complex mess. Today’s guest, Xiaohe Li, is an expert on subscription pricing, with experience at organizations including Apple, VMware and now GitLab. In our conversation, we cover what Xiaohe learned about pricing in the Membership Economy at three dramatically different organizations, how to balance the “art” and the “science” of good pricing strategy, and what Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has to teach us about pricing innovation. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Launching something new is always tricky. It can be especially challenging be entrepreneurial inside a global brand like Nike. You want to align with the broader goals of the organization while also staying nimble and creative. When you’re also introducing subscription models into a transactionally oriented organization, the stakes are even higher. Dave Cobban spent over 12 years at Nike, many working with the innovation team. A few years ago, as a result of his work as part of a team looking at driving exponential growth at Nike, Dave identified an opportunity for subscription commerce as a potential way to achieve several key Nike objectives. Dave incubated and developed what has come to be known as “Nike Adventure Club,” a shoe subscription for children. Today Dave is a co-founder of Unbrkble, an organization that helps start ups and scaling businesses stay close to their customers as they launch and scale their own businesses. In this interview, Dave and I talk about how to start small with your subscription offering while thinking big, incorporating sustainability into an eCommerce strategy, and best practices for defining your subscription MVP. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Many businesses struggle to decide what should go behind the paywall, and what should be free. Some experts say nothing should be free. But monetization expert Elena Verna of Reforge has come to believe in the power of “free” through her work with organizations including Miro, Survey Monkey and Malwarebytes. In her conversation with Robbie Kellman Baxter, Elena explains organizations can benefit from free trials, freemium offers and even free surprises. She also talks about the emerging discipline of “growth", and why everyone needs to be more data driven. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

How much content is too much? If you have really honed down to your ideal audience, the answer is there will never be enough. Indeed, you have to practically create a content machine to support the needs of your avatar because they would simply love it! With an uncanny stroke of genius, John Lee Dumas solved this problem early in his podcasting career. An avid podcast consumer himself, he identified an unmet need for a daily podcast to punctuate entrepreneurs’ long days with bouts of gainful learning. John started EntrepeneurOnFire out of that need. Since launching in 2012, the podcast has interviewed over 3000 people, including Tony Robbins, Tim Ferris, Barbara Corcoran, Gary Vaynerchuk, and this show’s host, Robbie Kellman Baxter. The podcast has gathered over 100 million listens over the same time. Over the years, John has incorporated courses, community, journals and other experiences, layering in more ways to help his members thrive. He recently launched a new book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. In this short and sweet conversation, John and Robbie talk about how he has evolved his offerings over time in support of his avatar, "Jimmy", why he wrote his new book and how he has been able to build a content creation machine to serve the ongoing needs of his members. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Now that you have launched your subscription model, it’s time to operationalize your business. For this, you will need a real team, systems to support your processes, and metrics to let you know how the business is doing. This episode’s guest, Matt Fiedler, is the co-founder and chairman at Vinyl Me, Please, a record of the month club and online record store. After launching in 2013, Matt successfully scaled VMP to more than $15M in revenue, while establishing the brand as one of the largest DTC vinyl retailers, and one of the most admired and respected brands in music. Joining Robbie Kellman Baxter on the show, Matt shares how he scaled VMP from a labor of love for a few fellow music fans to a multimillion-dollar business, how he operationalized the business without losing the personal touch, and how he recognized when the time was right to step back as founder. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Most subscription entrepreneurs initially are attracted to the model for its predictable recurring revenue, but there are other benefits to having an ongoing relationship with members. Alli Harper works at the intersection of subscription eCommerce and social impact. Dedicated to the advocacy of promoting diversity in the picture book industry, Alli is building OurShelves, a scalable enterprise that serves the underestimated audience for diverse children's books. Trained as a lawyer and community organizer, Alli launched the business from her kitchen table in the home she shares with her wife Jenn and their two children. Host Robbie Kellman Baxter featured Alli’s launch story in her recent book, The Forever Transaction. She now invites her to the podcast to share the way she is using her subscription business to persuade publishers to include more diverse families in the everyday stories they tell in their children’s books. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

McKeel Hagerty is the CEO of Hagerty, a specialty provider of classic car insurance and lifestyle company headquartered in Traverse City, Michigan. The company has become well-known for the tremendous loyalty of their policyholders, who feel a kinship with the brand and its forever promise of helping classic car enthusiasts get the most enjoyment from their passion. Host Robbie Kellman Baxter met McKeel when she was helping the company as they prepared to launch the Hagerty Drivers Club. In this episode, they talk about how this insurance company has transformed into a lifestyle organization with a powerful membership offering by focusing on their forever promise. They also discuss how Hagerty has nurtured, engaged and celebrated their Superusers – those people who go beyond just being loyal subscribers and contribute their own time, resources and skills to support the Hagerty Brand. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

As subscription organizations scale, one of the trickiest challenges they face is entering international markets. While they often focus first on things like managing local currency, translating copy into local languages, and ensuring compliance with local regulations around privacy, securities and recurring billing, these tactical steps are only table stakes. It takes much more than that to truly localize the subscription experience for a particular region. Today, host Robbie Kellman Baxter and her guest talk about what it really takes to grow your subscription rapidly outside of your home country. Renate Nyborg is an expert on globalization strategies for subscription-based business. Prior to her current role as General Manager of the EMEA region for Tinder, she spent many years helping two of the world’s biggest subscription companies and many small and fast-moving European subscription startups learn to compete on a global stage. In this wide ranging conversation, Robbie and Renate discuss how to staff your first international program, the biggest mistakes American subscription businesses make when scaling into Europe, and the most powerful secret to increasing lifetime customer value, not just in Europe, but everywhere. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

With subscription models, acquisition is only the starting line. Organizations need to develop competence around onboarding new members, driving engagement, and expanding the relationship to maximize customer lifetime value. A whole new discipline has grown around this idea of "customer success," often replacing customer support, and with a radically different focus. Customer success is about proactively ensuring that subscribers get the value they're paying for. On this episode, Robbie speaks to Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, often called The Customer Success Company. Nick is both an expert on the emerging discipline of customer success and the leader of a SaaS company that is forever dedicated to a promise of “helping businesses develop deep and lasting relationships with their customers.” They explore the secrets of customer success—what it is, why its growth so closely aligns to the rise of subscription-based businesses and Saas specifically, and how a customer success orientation can help dramatically increase your customer lifetime value, a key metric in the membership economy. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

In mid-2020, Eric Roza bought CrossFit, Inc. from CrossFit Founder and former CEO, Greg Glassman. The sale was first announced on June 24, 2020, just a few weeks after Glassman had resigned as CEO amidst a swirl of controversy. Eric took over as CEO at a critical time for a membership organization known for its cult-like following and devoted members. He brings tremendous experience and passion to CrossFit. Robbie Kellman Baxter invited Eric to the show because she's been fascinated by CrossFit since her sister and brother-in-law discovered it in 2010. She wrote about how CrossFit develops superusers, members so committed and passionate that they spend their own money and time for the good of the brand, in her book, The Membership Economy. In this episode, Eric and Robbie talk about how to right a membership culture after a crisis, walking that fine line of rebuilding the organization while not losing what had made it great, and bringing together a broad group of stakeholders around a new forever promise. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Today’s guest, Steve Cakebread, knows a great deal about subscription pricing models and IPOs. Steve has brought three notable subscription-based companies—Salesforce, Pandora, and Yext—to successful initial public offerings, or IPOs, and served on the board of three other subscription-based companies - eHealth, SolarWinds, and Bill.com - as those companies went public. Steve is frequently sought-out for his advice on IPOs, often fielding three or more requests in a single week. He decided to put his advice on the subject into a new book, The IPO Playbook: An Insider’s Perspective on Taking Your Company Public and How to Do It Right. On today’s show, Steve sits down with Robbie Kellman Baxter for a discussion on why investors love subscriptions, how to take your subscription business public, what it takes to build a solid foundation, and how to tell your subscription story in a way that investors will understand. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Scott Mordell was CEO of the Young Presidents Organization, or YPO, from 2011 through 2020. What is fascinating about YPO is how intensely engaged their community is. Members will move mountains to make sure they can attend their regular meetings, despite the fact that they’re among the busiest people in the world. Many of them even qualify as “Superusers”—host Robbie Kellman Baxter's word to describe members who go beyond just being good paying members, and actually contribute significant time and money of their own to benefit the organization. In this conversation, Robbie and Scott discuss the processes YPO has developed to attract, engage and retain CEOs around the world, the surprisingly friction-laden process they use to onboard new members, and the reason so many members become superuser. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Customers often come and go, so what does it take to make them stay? The simple answer is to make your product part of their lifestyle by building that forever transaction with subscriptions. Inviting a special guest to take us deeper into this topic in today’s show, host Robbie Kellman Baxter sits down with John Warrillow, the founder of The Value Builder System™. John and Robbie first met when John published The Automatic Customer around the same time as Robbie released The Membership Economy, bonding over a shared belief in the value of businesses that were optimized around recurring revenue and long-term relationships with customers. He’s launching a new book, The Art of Selling Your Business, through which he helps us connect the dots about why subscription businesses are so valuable, how to optimize business processes and dashboards to create more value, and how to determine what your own business is actually worth. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

Get ready for another season of Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches. This season, I've interviewed guests like Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, about building a customer-centric organization, Steve Cakebread, a serial CFO, who has shepherded IPOs of companies like Salesforce, Autodesk, Yext, and Pandora, and Eric Roza, my business school classmate as well as the new owner and CEO of the fitness and training empire, Crossfit. And that's just the beginning. We'll also have stories from a subscription box entrepreneur, the CEO of a family-based insurance business with a rabid fan base, and the head of the Young President's Organization, or YPO on building a global community of senior leaders.

Gina Bianchini brings her community-building and subscription expertise to this episode. She joins Robbie to discuss the role of community in building a broader Forever Transaction, why some communities go off the rails, and how to use community as a starting point for membership, before layering in other elements of value, like content, digital courses and subscription commerce. Highlights from this episode: 1:57 - Why Gina decided to create another online community platform after leaving Ning 5:40 - The distinction between launching a subscription company, and an ad-based one 8:20 - The Myth of More - why content is not always the answer 11:36 - Subscription Overwhelm and how to avoid it 13:00 - How MightyNetworks defines “community” 15:47 - Knowing when not to build a community 16:39 - How COVID turned a community from social running to career networking 18:12 - The importance of focusing on helping a customer achieve their goal, not consume a product 22:26 - Two common mistakes when building a community 23:25 - The right resources and structure for starting that nascent community 26:26 - MightyNetwork’s extra easy approach to onboarding 31:21 - Story Time: how a group of Cacao Growers built a MightyNetwork of their own 33:10 - Gina’s advice for entrepreneurs and executives who are sitting on the sidelines of community 34:48 - Robbie’s Speed Round Gina's Bio: Gina Bianchini is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks, an online platform that serves “creators with a purpose.” Creators can offer experiences, relationships, and expertise to their members via community, content, online courses, and subscription commerce. All of these features are offered in one place, under the creator's brand. In addition to Mighty Networks, Gina serves as a board director of TEGNA, a $3 billion broadcast and digital media company. Under Gina’s leadership, her prior company, Ning, grew to 100 million people in 300,000 active social networks across subcultures, professional networks, entertainment, politics, and education. Gina received a BA and MBA from Stanford University. Links: Gina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginabianchini/ Gina’s Email: Gina@MightyNetworks.com Oiselle Community: https://www.oiselle.com/pages/community Mighty Networks: https://www.mightynetworks.com/ Robbie’s Membership Economy Lab: http://membershipeconomylab.mn.co/ Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/ Robbie's Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/podcast

Vena CEO Hunter Madeley joins Robbie to share best practices learned working at multiple B2B SaaS success stories. They discuss when it does and doesn’t make sense to pull out another company’s playbook, how to onboard for engagement and loyalty in a complex B2B environment, and his concept of “methodology before technology”. Highlights from this episode: 2:12 - Vena’s Forever Promise and business model 5:00 - The role community plays at Vena 8:29 - PlanToGrow.com - Vena’s hub for community engagement 10:09 - Using a “methodology before technology” mindset to improve the customer’s journey 16:27 - Making sure the software follows through on its Forever Promise to the customer, the buyer, and the user 19:23 - How Vena’s onboarding process begins before the customer makes the purchase 21:50 - Vena’s “time to value” metric 24:00 - Balancing the needs of the salesperson and the customer 25:13 - When focusing on revenue can be counterproductive to creating a Forever Transaction 28:19 - How to analyze data in a productive and unbiased way 31:14 - Robbie’s Speed Round Hunter's Bio: Since 2019, Hunter Madeley, a serial SaaS entrepreneur, has served as the CEO of Vena. There, he continues his track record of leading transformational growth at some of the cloud’s most important companies. Prior to Vena, he was at HubSpot, where as chief sales officer he led annual revenue growth from $80 million to $600 million in just five years. His 20-year career also includes sales and growth leadership roles at ADP and Salesforce.com. Links: Hunter’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huntermadeley/ Vena: https://www.venasolutions.com/ Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/ Robbie's website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/podcast

Electronic Arts’ Mike Blank joins Robbie to talk about his journey bringing subscription to the world of gaming. They discuss the challenges of subscriptions in the gaming industry, how to encourage consumers to discover new content within the subscription, and how EA offers multiple consumer models to support their “player first” promise. Highlights from this episode: 2:15 - EA’s journey to subscription and why subscription models are particularly challenging in the gaming industry 8:00 - How EA used their “player first” mindset to create a subscription that would not cannibalize their business 11:29 - The importance of giving subscribers a taste of the product that leaves them wanting more 12:50 - EA Play’s ideal customer 16:47 - The metrics EA used to measure success, and the key data point for tracking returning customers 18:58 - Why helping a customer discover more content is so critical in a subscription business 21:53 - How EA shares subscription data across the company without distracting from other “player first” projects. 24:45 - How to tackle pricing in the gaming world and how EA chose its pricing model 30:16 - How to create a subscription that is beneficial from both a business and a “player-first” standpoint 33:29 - Mike’s advice for someone tasked with bringing subscription to a transactional or episodic business 35:51 - Mike’s advice for creating something evergreen within a “hits” or season based industry 37:21 - Robbie’s Speed Round Mike's Bio: Mike Blank is EA’s SVP of Player Network. In this role, he oversees how the company enables players to connect together, discover games and evolve to new distribution models. Mike is responsible for building teams, providing vision, and helping to invent the next generation of EA including the consumer platform and subscription-based products. Before his 18+ years with EA, Mike worked in law. He received a BA from McGill University and a JD from The University of British Columbia. Links: Mike’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blankmichael/ EA Play, EA’s subscription service: https://www.ea.com/ea-play/news/welcome-to-ea-play Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/ Robbie's website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/podcast

Jessie Teitz Becker, the SVP Marketing at Impossible Foods, brings her impressive marketing knowledge and expertise in forming long term recurring revenue relationships to Subscription Stories. She joins Robbie to discuss how Impossible is applying principles learned at subscription companies like Netflix, YouTube and Optimizely, best practices in introducing & building habits with a new product category, and why they launched an “every day” product at special occasion restaurant Momofuku. Highlights from this episode: 2:17 - The birth of Impossible Foods 4:24 - How Impossible earned its credibility through the famous restaurant empire, Momofuku 6:21 - Why the product, and not the marketing, is the key to creating repeating consumer habits 9:25 - How to build customer loyalty through an “easy out” 12:00 – Impossible Foods’ key to restaurant success: ensuring every employee gets a taste of their meat 15:33 - The milestones and metrics Impossible looks for 18:38 - How COVID rocked the food industry - and what Impossible did to battle it 21:03 - Why Impossible Foods made the jump to direct-to-consumer shipping 23:50 - What Impossible Foods learned from launching their own ecommerce direct to consumer 26:36- The magic of free shipping 29:10 - The ideal Impossible customer 32:45 – Impossible Foods’ loyalty program Taste Place, and how Impossible is building their Forever Transaction 39:26 - Robbie’s Speed Round Jessie's Bio: Jessie Teitz Becker is a marketing executive based in Silicon Valley. She is currently the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Impossible Foods where she leads the B2B and B2C marketing, insights, and brand marketing teams. Jessie began her career at Netflix in 2000 as one of the first people hired in the marketing department, and eventually rose to interim Chief Marketing officer. She then joined Optimizely, a B2B software company, as Chief Marketing Officer and later served as the Director of Marketing at Google and YouTube. Jessie holds a Bachelor’s in History from the University of Pennsylvania, a Bachelor’s in Economics from The Wharton School and an MBA from Stanford University, where she was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Links: Jessie’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessiebecker/ Impossible Foods: https://buy.impossiblefoods.com/ Podcast Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/podcast Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/

Bain and Company’s Stu Berman joins Robbie to talk about what makes the Net Promoter System (NPS) Loyalty Forum itself so powerful for the members and for Bain. They also explore how the best organizations build customer-centricity into the fabric of their businesses, a core value of NPS. They discuss the value of creating a private community for senior executives across different companies to meet and discuss, how a subscription can be used to deepen relationships with key customers, and the importance of always listening to your customers first. Highlights from this episode: 4:10 - How the NPF Loyalty Forum remains an open environment for members to speak about their companies without holding back 10:08 - The origin story of the forum - how Fred Riechheld’s book lead to one of the most powerful discussion rooms 12:50 - How the forum has created a community that members never want to leave 15:00 - Subscription as a marketing tool or strategic element 16:17 - The benefits offered by the forum to keep its high-profile members engaged and open 19:20 - Stu gives a look inside the Loyalty Forum and the types of conversations that its members love so much 24:10 - Changes in the world of NPS and securing loyal subscribers over the past decade 28:03 - Stu’s advice for smaller firms and subject matter experts on creating a community around their practice or expertise 31:10 - Robbie’s Speed Round Stu's Bio: Stuart Berman currently runs the NPS Loyalty Forum at Bain & Company where he works to build forever relationships with customers, employees, and partners. He spent the early years of his career as a management consultant at Bain before becoming General Manager of Intuit’s online store. He then worked in startup companies for a number of years before going to work as a Group Product Manager at eBay. Stu obtained a BA with a dual major of Economics and Mathematics/Computer Science from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Stanford University. He has over 20 years of business management and development experience. Links: Stu’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartberman/ Bain and Company’s NPS Loyalty Forum: https://www.netpromotersystem.com/resources/the-nps-loyalty-forum/ Robbie’s Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/ Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/

Charity: water’s MZ Goodman joins Robbie to share how she is applying subscription model best practices to a nonprofit. They discuss how MZ leverages content marketing and digital community strategies developed in her work at The New York Times, Glossier and goop to build a donation-based subscription model, how they’ve leveraged a single 20-minute video to raise millions, and how to think about a Forever Promise in the context of engaging donors. Highlights from this episode: 2:00 - The birth of The Spring, charity: water’s subscription program 5:44 - Why a mission is the most important factor for attracting subscribers 7:15 - The importance of building a brand based on quality over charisma 11:00 - How to lure customers in with emotion, and make them stay through strong relationships 15:00 - Why charity: water is allowing subscribers to press “pause” during the COVID-19 pandemic to combat high churn rates 17:26 - Ways for nonprofits to allow members to remain active without opening their checkbooks 19:00 - MZ’s advice for product leaders who want to transition to the nonprofit world 20:24 - the differences between building a community at a news company, a make-up company, and a nonprofit 24:20 - Robbie’s Speed Round MZ's Bio: MZ Goodman is a product and marketing executive with expertise in digital products and subscriptions. MZ began as the Product Management Executive Director for The New York Times in 2007, managing the digital product team as the company first created its online subscription product. From there, MZ joined Ralph Lauren as Product Management Senior Director and was then recruited to join the leadership team at goop. After goop, MZ joined Glossier as Vice President of Digital and Business Insights. She now serves as Senior Vice President of Subscription at charity: water where she oversees consumer and subscriber revenue. MZ earned a BA in journalism from Boston University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Links: MZ’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mz-goodman/ Charity: water’s The Spring: https://www.charitywater.org/donate/the-spring?utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=adwords&utm_content=spring_sitelink&utm_campaign=sitelinks_paid&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8qfi24rl6wIVzMDACh0cdQYdEAAYASABEgJ_KfD_BwE Robbie’s Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/ Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/

Dan McCarthy, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, joins Robbie to share his expertise on the intersection of marketing and finance. They discuss why customer lifetime value is such an important and misunderstood metric, how to rethink the way companies are valued by the public markets, and what all of this means for subscription businesses. Highlights from this episode: 2:50 - Dan introduces Customer Based Corporate Valuation (CBCV) 4:08 - The importance of knowing your customer data 8:46 - Dan’s time working with CBCV at Blue Apron 12:17 - The importance of focusing on the right metrics 15:18 - The challenges of a physical subscription 17:28 - The cycle of Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) 24:11 - How COVID-19 has impacted customer behavior 27:44 - Dan’s advice for entrepreneurs 28:36 - Dan’s Advice for academics at the intersection of research and commercial 30:00 - Robbie’s Speed Round Dan's Bio: DANIEL MCCARTHY is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta School of Business. Among other things, he’s an expert on valuing companies by focusing on the lifetime value of their customers—a novel approach at the intersection of marketing and finance. His approach, which has won him many accolades, is known as “customer-based corporate valuation” (CBCV). His research has been accepted and published in top-tier academic journals, as well as nearly every major financial publication, from HBR to the Financial Times to CFO Magazine. In 2015, he co-founded a predictive analytics company, Zodiac, which was acquired by Nike in March 2018. Dan subsequently co-founded Theta Equity Partners to commercialize his work on customer-based corporate valuation. He earned a BSc, a BS, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Links: Dan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmcc/ Dan’s Website: http://danielminhmccarthy.com/ Dan at Emory University: https://goizueta.emory.edu/faculty/profiles/daniel-mccarthy Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/ Robbie’s Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/

Greg Piechota, Researcher-In-Residence at the International News Media Association, joins Robbie to discuss the increasing importance of subscriptions and reader revenue in a world of declining ad sales. They talk about the value of studying one industry to gain insight for another, new models for advertisers, and the importance of customer-centricity in any subscription business. Highlights from this episode: 2:20 -- How Greg’s career took him from Poland to Massachusetts to Oxford 3:40 -- The importance of looking across industries to develop insights 6:13 -- How data causes companies from different industries to start competing with each other 9:41 -- Greg’s advice for companies dealing with competitors who come from different spaces but target the same customer 10:37 -- Advertisers that take on new business models in retail, media, and e-commerce 17:38 -- The importance of customer centricity, especially in a subscription business 24:20 -- Greg’s advice for companies that want to move to a subscription model but are worried about the cannibalization risk and leaving money on the table during while they are in between models 28:05 -- Subscriptions as a way to stabilize a business model 30:20 -- Greg’s advice for entrepreneurs and executives, in any industry, who are trying to build robust subscription businesses 31:00 -- Robbie’s Speed Round Greg's Bio: Grzegorz "Greg" Piechota studies technology-enabled disruption patterns across industries, with a focus on business model innovation in news media. Greg is a former media executive with 20+ years of industry experience. He began his career at Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza in 1996 as a reporter in one of the smallest local offices, and then rising to a news editor and a vice-president of Agora Foundation. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University from 2015-2016 and continued as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School for three more years. Following his time at Harvard, he moved to Oxford where he conducted research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He now serves as a Researcher-In-Residence at the International News Media Association (INMA), and a board member at various media, software, and e-commerce companies. Links: Greg’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grzegorzpiechota/ Greg at the INMA: https://www.inma.org/modules/event/2019ReaderRevenue/about-greg.cfm Robbie’s Website: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/ Robbie’s Book THE FOREVER TRANSACTION: https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/